EarZoom Sonic Arts Festival

The EarZoom Sonic Arts Festival was founded in 2009 and is led by the Ljubljana based Institute for Sonic Arts Research (IRZU). The festival is a condensed, international extension of the institute's focus into audio technology research, artistic productions and educational projects. The main person behind the festival is the researcher and artist Miha Ciglar, who has modelled it as distinctively nodal, platform-like project that connects all sort of institutions, from local governmental and non-governmental to different protagonists from abroad – universities, networks, festivals, businesses enterprises, etc. The aim of the festival is to "create a referential international platform for discussing the latest developments within audio technology research and the artistic trends in sonic practices".

The festival features electro-acoustic performances, workshops, lectures and installations by invited foreign and domestic artists and sonic researchers. Though it primarily focuses on new music technologies and sonic arts research, it also considers the related institutional, social and political dimensions. In 2012, the festival was merged with that year's edition of the (38th) International Computer Music Conference. Similarly, in 2015 Earzoom was done as an Central European stop of the Music Tech fest - The festival of music ideas

Venues and co-producers

As EarZoom is actively seeking to connect the already active protagonists in the field of contemporary sonic arts (this even being a part of its creed), its past and current partners are numerous. Some of them are Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre, Moderna galerija, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MSUM), MoTA Museum of Transitory Art, Sploh Institute, Jakopič Gallery, Kino Šiška Centre for Urban Culture, Klub Menza pri koritu, Projekt Atol Institute, Kapelica Gallery, Aksioma Institute, ŠKUC Association, Stara Elektrarna - Old Power Station, Španski borci Culture Centre and Ljudmila - Ljubljana Digital Media Lab.

They are involved at the festival by providing the infrastructure needed for the realisation of the festival (most prominent partner in this respect is Cankarjev dom, Cultural and Congress Centre|Cankarjev dom) and/or by contributing to the program of the festival itself (such is the nature of the collaboration for example, with Ljudmila and the Sploh Institute).

Programme

EarZoom is usually composed as a three-day symposium, though it can sometimes be prolonged up to 6 days. There, international artists and scientists are presenting state of the art research in disciplines like machine listening, algorithmic composition, new interfaces for musical expression, gesture recognition, ubiquitous computing, systems for virtual sound environment synthesis, mobile music computing and hardware hacking etc. The invited artists and researchers give talks on their research activities, organization schemes and their artistic productions, and further, present those in form of live performances, installations and workshops.

A few of the presented themes and focuses were live coding, where the musician is writing computer code live on stage; the potential of music technology startups, pointing out artistic projects that emerged through the development of commercial technology and products (worth mentioning here is that in 2011, an IRZU spin-off company Ultrasonic audio technologies was established); the survival and identity creation within the diverse institutional landscapes of sonic arts research; and the current trends and the future of music and audio technologies.

Guests

The festival has about 50 guests annually, give or take, and a significant part of them is chosen in the basis of an international call for works. Some of the more prominent ones were Miller Puckette, author of the Pure Data software, the British composer and researcher Alex McLean, the composer Peter Ablinger and the musicians Keith Rowe, Matt Black (of Coldcut) and Graham Massey (of 808 State).

Of the local artists, one can highlight Theremidi Orchestra, TILT, Luka Juhart, Tomaž Grom, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec and Miha Ciglar himself.

Moog-ish drone performance at earzoom festival by Servando Barreiro on YouTube

International collaboration

IRZU collaborates or has collaborated with many other international institutes, with the most in-depth one being the 2010 created network called T.R.A.C.E.S. - Transcultural Research, Artist, Curator Exchange Series. This trans European exchange and collaborative platform featured Transcultures: Centre for Intermedia and sonic arts & cultures (Mons, BE); Nida Art Colony: Interdisciplinary art, education & residency center (Vilnius/Nida, LT); Kitchen Budapest: Cross-disciplinary new media lab (Budapest, HU); Pixelache: Festival of electronic art and subcultures (Helsinki, FI); and MigAA: Migrating Art Academies (Cologne/DE, Vilnius/LT, Poitiers & Angoulême/FR).

Another international link is Earzoom's collaboration in the European-wide platform for field recording practices, called Sounds of Europe. The festival was also supported by the Queen Mary University of London and the UK based The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). A number of private companies has also been involved with lending or contributing their hardware and software for the different purposes of the festival.

Collaboration with ICMC

In 2012 the festival was joined with the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), a travelling annual conference of the Internation Computer Music Association (ICMA), which has been the most important european forum for research, both musical and theoretical, involving computers in creation of music since 1974.

Each year it is held in different countries and in 2012 it was held in Slovenia, co-produced together with Faculty of Computer and Information Science. It lasted for 6 days, with the key-note speakers being Seth Kim-Cohen and Diedrich Diederichsen. The festival at that featured guests from XY countries.

Collaboration with Music Tech fest

The Music Tech Fest is a travelling festival platform that coupled with Earzoom in 2015 (it was previously held in Berlin, Paris, London and Umeå) under the name MTFCentral.

Among other, regular Earzoom features, MTFCentral arranged for exclusive access to new technological solution produced top European research institutes. It also organised 24-hour hack camp, a competitive project that offered electronics & technologies from institutions such as Fraunhofer, IRCAM, Technische Universität Wien and the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra and at the end chose the best applications and implementations of these tools.

#MTFCentral Harshside - AUUG Motion Synth Performance by MTF Labs on YouTube

External links

EarZoom Sonic Arts Festival

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