audio-visual

Herman Kolgen

HERMAN KOLGEN-SEISMIK-perfo extracts from Herman Kolgen on Vimeo.

-> Herman_Kolgen_Seismik_perfo_extracts.mp4

 

AN ACCLAIMED MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST WITH MORE THAN TWO DECADES OF EXPERIENCE IN MEDIA ARTS, HERMAN KOLGEN LIVES AND WORKS IN MONTREAL. AN AUDIOCINETIC SCULPTOR, HE DRAWS HIS RAW MATERIAL FROM THE INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOUND AND IMAGE. KOLGEN CREATES PIECES THAT TAKE ON THE FORM OF INSTALLATIONS, VIDEO AND FILM WORKS, PERFORMANCES AND SOUND SCULPTURES. HE WORKS IN A CONSTANT CYCLE OF EXPLORATION, AT THE CROSSROADS OF DIFFERENT MEDIA, TO CONJURE UP A NEW TECHNICAL LANGUAGE AND A SINGULAR AESTHETIC.

THE IMPACT OF TERRITORIES ON HUMAN LIFE LIES AT THE HEART OF HIS CONCEPTUAL PURSUITS. THE RESULTING BRUTAL TENSIONS AS WELL AS THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN VARIOUS ELEMENTS CONSITUTE THE EPICENTRE OF HIS PRACTICE. HIS MULTIFACETED WORK IS CHARACTERIZED BY A RADIOGRAPHIC APPROACH. IT’S THIS X-RAY EFFECT, WITH ITS IMMATERIAL QUALITY, THAT ALLOWS THE INVISIBLE TO BE SEEN.

INITIALLY ASSOCIATED WITH THE DIGITAL AND ELECTRONIC REALMS ACROSS AN ASSORTMENT OF HIGHLY SENSITIVE WORKS, HIS APPROACH THEN TAKES A SHARP TURN TOWARDS INCREASINGLY HYBRIDIZED FORMS. HIS INSTALLATION PRACTICE ALSO INTEGRATES AN IMPORTANT SPATIALISATION COMPONENT, MOST NOTABLY REGARDING THE FIELD OF SOUND. THE DESIGN AND APPLICATION OF RANDOM SYSTEMS OF AUTOGENERATIVE IMAGE/SOUND ALSO ALLOW FOR THE CREATION OF AUDIOPHONIC SPACES MARKED BY THEIR IMMERSIVE QUALITY.

HERMAN KOLGEN’S WORKS HAVE MOST NOTABLY BEEN PRESENTED AT THE VENICE BIENNALE, ARS ELECTRONICA, BERLIN’S TRANSMEDIALE, ISEA, THE GEORGES POMPIDOU CENTRE, CIMATICS, DISSONANZE, MUTEK, ELEKTRA, SONAR, TAPEI DIGITAL ARTS AND SHANGHAI E-ARTS. HE HAS ALSO PERFORMED WITH PARIS’ ENSEMBLE INTERCONTEMPORAIN AND THE LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC. HERMAN KOLGEN HAS BEEN AWARDED MANY PRESTIGIOUS PRIZES, INCLUDING ARS ELECTRONICA, QWARTZ AND THE NEW YORK AND LOS ANGELES INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVALS’ BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM. FROM 1996 TO 2008, HE DEVOTED MUCH OF HIS CREATIVE OUTPUT TO THE SKOLTZ_ KOLGEN DUO.

https://vimeo.com/user2308701
http://www.kolgen.net/

Modell 5 – Granular Synthesis

Kurt Hentschlaeger und Ulf Langheinrich have been working together as Granular-Synthesis since 1991

“from a few expressions on the face of the performer Akemi Takeya to a frenzied exploration of the alter ego, any known context of meaning ends in the dissolved movements, is stalled in denaturalized redundancy, in machine pain. The semantic void is too loud to be amenable to meditative reception. The frontal images, the rhythmic structures generate contradictory emotions and great strain. Entertainment is offered and almost violently denied. At the highest level of energy, enjoyment reaches the limit.” Sample session performed by Akemi Takeya. Edited on various AVID Suites in England and Austria between 1994-96.
Produced by: Mike Stubbs, at HTBA (Hull Time Based Arts) in Hull England.
Co-produced by PYRAMEDIA Vienna.

from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATWljMbvVTg

see also http://www.granularsynthesis.info

IF3 Progress Report #1

With the summer-time, a working-time on my new audio-visual piece, Interface Fractures III, begun. It is now almost confirmed that the date of premiere showing at Slovenian Cinemateque (Slovenska Kinoteka) is most probably 15/september. Since the plan was that we spend some quality sun&salt time at Croatian coast I brough some machinery with me to vacation. It’s always fun to work in the summer heat!

Anyway, with this next episode in the series I want to upgrade technically a “little bit”, so I acquired a better graphic card (Nvidia GTX960) and a multi-touch screen monitor with fullHD 1080p resolution. Adding also a 120GB SSD drive I needed to reinstall operating system (UbuntuStudio 14.4.1), separately compiled drivers for Nvidia and the rest worked pretty much out of the box (after some apt-get-ing). Multi-touch is application-dependent and my idea (for many years now) is to write custom interfaces for live sound/music/noise and visual composition and improvisation.

More technicalities: I compiled Processing and SuperCollider, tried a multi-touch library in Processing (SMT) but it didn’t work. Filed an issue at their GitHub and went on with a version of SuperCollider that supports multi-touch (I was kindly pushed in the right direction by Scott Cazan, who added MT support to his own branch of SC on GitHub). After some basic testing I wrote a simple granulator with a GUI. I also tested a very basic idea of TABs-like interface. In Processing I’ve whet my appetite with an excercise that focused on off-screen rendering and blending two images together.

Processing: slice and blend screeshot

 

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