Team
Almat is a conjoint project developed by the two principle investigators Hanns Holger Rutz (project lead) and David Pirrò. Both artists have a background that combines scientific with artistic praxis, while following distinct questions in their previous research projects that complement each other here.
Principle Investigators
Hanns Holger Rutz
Hanns Holger Rutz is a sound artist, composer, performer and researcher in electronic music. He studied computer music and audio engineering at the Technical University Berlin, and worked as assistant professor at the Studio for electroacoustic Music (SeaM) Weimar. He holds a PhD in computer music from Plymouth University, UK. Since 2013 he works at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) Graz and was member of the FWF projects “Patterns of Intuition” on algorithmic composition and artistic research, and “SysSon” on sonification research.
His artistic work ranges from electronic live music to electroacoustic music to intermedia pieces to sound installation. In all his work, the development and research on software and algorithms plays an important role. He has created various novel open-source software. The central theme in the recent works is the materiality of writing processes, processes where the time in which a work is written by a human or the machine is interwoven with the performance time.
David Pirrò
David Pirrò is a sound artist and researcher based in Graz, Austria. His works include interactive compositions and sound installations as well as audiovisual and electroacoustic pieces in which aspects of performance and spatialisation of sound are central. Departing from a radical inclusive point of view, he seeks ways of composing by which the work of art is constructed through mutual interaction of the agents involved in its performance.
David studied piano at the Conservatory “J. Tomadini” in Udine and Physics at the University of Trieste where in 2004 he obtained the Master of Science degree in theoretical physics with Prof. R. Resta. In 2007 he obtained the Master degree at the School of Music and New Technologies at the Conservatory “G. Tartini” in Triest under Maestro R. Doati. Since 2007 David is assistant professor at the IEM (Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics) in Graz, Austria working as lecturer and researcher. Since 2008 he is the curator of the “Open CUBE” concert series at the institute. He collaborates in scientific and artistic research projects on sonification (“QCD-audio”, “An Acoustic Interface for tremor analysis”), sound spatialisation (“The Choreography of Sound”) interaction design in computer music (“Embodied Generative Music”, “Klangräume”). He holds a PhD in computer music from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
Research Assistant
Daniele Pozzi
Daniele Pozzi is an electronic musician and artist living in Graz, Austria. Among his works are live performances and improvisations, sound installations and electroacoustic music, often involving the design of original computer programs and interfaces addressing compositional or performative issues. His recent practice investigates the relation of process and form in feedback system composition, and the becoming of sound and algorithmic processes. Daniele holds a BA in Electroacoustic Music Composition from the Conservatory of Padua, Italy, and a MA in Computer Music from the Institue of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He is currently pursuing his doctoral degree at the same university.
Guest Artists
Invited artists are participating, each in one of the configurations and surrounding events, and each working in situ at the IEM during an intensive period.
Luc Döbereiner
Luc Döbereiner is a researcher and composer of instrumental and electronic music from Berlin. He studied at the Institute of Sonology in The Hague and holds a doctoral degree from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. His work is concerned with compositional models and explores the relation of materiality and ideality of sound in musical composition. He has been guest lecturer at the Bern University of the Arts and he is currently visiting researcher at the Centre for Research in New Music at the University of Huddersfield.
➜ Research Catalogue documentation
Erin Gee
Erin Gee is a composer and artist living in Montréal, Canada. She creates interactive object-scores, biotechnological performances and digital prints inspired by vocal performance practice and technological otherness. Her current research into affective computing and incorporating physiological effects of emotion into works for robotic musical instruments has been reviewed by VICE, Canadian Art magazine, and Scientific American blog. Other research interests include feminist media practice, virtual pop idol culture, and making subversive first-person shooter games for VR.
➜ Research Catalogue documentation
Erin’s project was co-sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Ji Youn Kang
Ji Youn Kang is a South Korean composer and sound artist. She has master’s degrees in Sonology at The Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and in Composition at Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Most of her music pieces have been composed based on the rites of Korean Shamanism, many of them written for Wave Field Synthesis. She has been composing live electronic pieces for both traditional and non-traditional instruments, and she is active as a solo performer, seeking to combine acoustic instruments, analog and digital sound of handmade synthesizers and live processing on laptop. She lives in the Netherlands and teaches at Sonology.
➜ Research Catalogue documentation
Ron Kuivila
Ron Kuivila composes music and designs sound installations that revolve around the unusual homemade and home modified electronic instruments he designs in hardware and software. He pioneered the use of ultrasound (In Appreciation) and sound sampling (Alphabet), compositional algorithms (Loose Canons), speech synthesis (The Linear Predictive Zoo) and high voltage phenomena (Pythagorean Puppet Theatre) in live performance. His sound installations extend this ideas to time scales beyond that of concert situations. He is currently University Professor of Music at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
http://www.soundartarchive.net/ARTISTS-details.php?recordID=90
➜ Research Catalogue documentation
Jonathan Reus
Jonathan Reus is an American composer, researcher and curator whose work blends machine aesthetics with free improvisation. His broader research is into instruments and instrumentations, and their potential to bring new insight into knowing the world. Reus conducted research at the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM) in Amsterdam, and later worked at STEIM as a curator, research coordinator and educator. He is associate lecturer of Computing and Coded Culture at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media in Leuphana University, Lüneburg.
Advisors
The project is supported by a board of advisors, comprised of
- Agostino Di Scipio, L’Aquila. Composer, sound artist, and scholar. Known for solo live- electronics concert works and sound installations where cybernetic principles and “man- machine-environment” networks of sonic interactions are elaborated. Author of internation- ally published papers, bearing both on experience as composer and sound artist, and on the analysis and history of musical technologies and their socio-cultural, cognitive and political implications.
- Carsten Seiffarth, Berlin. Curator and Producer in the field of Sound Art and Contemporary Music. Curator and artistic director of “singuhr – sound gallery”, Berlin. Former member of the artistic direction of the festival “Inventionen” Berlin and of the artistic direction of the media art laboratory “Tesla” Berlin. Seiffarth is currently the curator of the urban sound art project “Bonn Hören”.
- Christa Brüstle, Graz. Professor at the Institute of Aesthetics of Music and Director of the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. She worked at the collaborative research centre “Performative Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin, and habilitated in 2007. Former chair of the Berlin Society of New Music BGNM and guest professor at the Berlin University of the Arts UdK (2008–2011) as well as at the University of Heidelberg (2014).
- Gerhard Eckel, Graz/Stockholm. Composer, sound artist and Professor of Computer Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He has led and is leading the FWF projects Embodied Generative Music (TRP), The Choreography of Sound (PEEK), and Transpositions: Artistic Data Exploration (PEEK). He is professor affiliate at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm.
- Luciana Parisi, London. Reader in Cultural Studies and Director of the PhD Programme at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London. She has written on topology and digital design, and engaged with computation, cognition, and algorithmic aesthetics. In 2013, she published Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space (MIT Press).
- Michael Schwab, London/Vienna. Artist and artistic researcher who interrogates post- conceptual uses of technology including photography, drawing, printmaking and installation art. Tutor at the Zürich University of the Arts as well as research fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Co-initiator and inaugural Editor-in-Chief of JAR, the Journal for Artistic Research.