Perception and communicability comprise two key elements for many artistic explorations of sonic affect. When attempting to build shared experiences and open up unknown states of receptivity and awareness, artists concerned with the affective potential of sound, music, light, and image explore different compositional methods and tools, instruments, performative techniques, and technologies. Both premieres featured this evening suggest unique ways to explore and play with what and how we see and hear.

Pierce Warnecke and Matthew Biederman present the world premiere of "Perspection", a series of audiovisual explorations of the limits of our sonic and visual perception. Anamorphism and illusions of three-dimensional objects are projected onto two separate screens, placed orthogonally from one another, and exploring the primacy of the line vs the primacy of colour. Rotating hypersonic speakers sweep the audience with narrow beams of sound, confusing the senses by navigating between interactivity and synchronisation, extreme dynamics and static drone moments, and the very dimensions and characters of the physical space created by the interplay between light, sound, and colour.

PERSPECTION TEASER from Matthew Biederman on Vimeo.

Having performed at previous CTM events together with Mika Vainio, Kevin Drumm, and Axel Dörner, Lucio Capece appears with the world premiere of a solo piece. "RX-11 Space Drum Machine" is a composition using sine wave generators and drum machines that feed into a PA system as well as into a swarm of balloons carrying bluetooth-enabled speakers. By distributing the various output channels of his instruments throughout the spatialized speaker array via time delays in the signal paths as well as through the specificity conferred by the HAU2 building’s resonant properties and the random variations generated by chance movement of the balloons in the air, Capece engulfs the listener into a complex landscape of overtones and constantly swirling beats. The disorienting and engrossing spatial ecosystem takes on an uncontrollable sonic life of its own, destroying any sense of a precise focal point.

Perspection is made possible by support from: ARCADI, Centre National de Cinéma, Région Rhône-Alpes, Le Cube, Crossed Lab, Bandits-Mages / EMARE Canada and the Culture 2013 programme of the European Commission. The presentation at CTM 2015 is supported by the Embassy of Canada and the Québec Government Office Berlin.