sunday summer listening salon @ grimmuseum

To celebrate the creation of their new sonic-archive, GRIMMUSEUM introduces the
Sunday Summer Listening Salon.   

In order to network people interested in the construction and methods of sound as an experiential medium, the gallery will be transformed each Sunday into a casual listening-room with a fine sound system and comfortable seating.  The participants and audience are invited to bring food, drink, and coffee for a late-afternoon 'brunch' of sound and discussion. 

In his 1966 publication 'Traité des objets musicaux' Pierre Schaeffer defined the acousmatic as: referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it. (Schaeffer 1966: 91)  In this tradition it was normal to present works in a "salon d'ecoute" to place a spot-light on the beauty of collective listening and to provide the participants with a possibility to get in contact with each other through hearing one another's work and the exploration of other relevant contemporary and historical artists.

Berlin is the home of many composers of new, adventurous art-music, but we mainly hear only their live manifestations while beautiful, intrepid studio works are relegated to media that's intended to be privately experienced at home. The listening salon is meant to create a forum for new works to be heard before publication and to allow older works to be shared in new contexts.  Each invited composer will be asked to submit a selection of their catalog for the Grimmuseum archive. This archive will then be made available to the public for research and study purposes.

Each 'salon' will be given a theme and direction by the Grimm sound archive curator, Michael Northam, as a way of exploring possible continuums between various artists' methods and intentions throughout the years, local composers are invited to present new works in person while other rare and special composers will be presented from Northam's personal archive.


program:

25. july 2010 [13h00-16h00] - "Listening to the Veins of the Stars" - Marcel Turkowsky, Giovanni Conti, Michael Northam - archive references such as : Roland Kayn, Iannis Xenaxis..
(discussion of the frontier from between the artificial and the organic in acousmatic compositions)

1. august 2010 [13h00-16h00]  - "The Unfolding Passage"  Melanie Velarde, Midori Hirano, Steven Warick, Kurt Korthals - archive references such as : VU, Church of Anthrax, Brainticket, Richard Youngs,...
(discussion of the landscapes between pop music and art music)

8. august 2010 [13h00-16h00] - "Tactile Traces" Francesco Cavaliere, Seiji Morimoto  - archive references such as : Seth Nehil, Loren Chasse, Jeph Jerman, Giancarlo Toniutti...
(discussion of concrete surface morphologies as starting points for new sound works)