A transmission art project exploring the performativity of television in light of the challenges brought about by a converging mediascape. Signal, noise, liveness and flow along with standardized production formats are all aspects of the television medium which are reshaped in digital, networked media. Rather than a stream-lined sound-image of digital convergence, SOUND & TELEVISION will strive to act as a springboard for an aesthetic "media-clash" reflecting on the political-aesthetic of old and new media forms.

SOUND & TELEVISION invites artists who work with the materiality of audiovisual flows to realise performances exploring the performativity of television: not live on TV, but live as TV.

During six half-hour long television transmissions, a group of Danish and International artists develop performances where the transmission itself becomes the artwork. The performances all reflect on different significant aspects of the changing conditions of broadcasting. In the new DVB-T (digital terrestrial television) environment, the very transmission format of TV has changed, from symmetric analog to asymmetric data flows, encoded in the MPEG format and decoded through software implemented in everything from flat-screen TV's, set-top-boxes and PC's. "The cracking of LCD screens" ...all is not smooth in this world of digitally compressed TV, as ROSA MENKMAN shows in a performance based on her Glitch Studies Manifesto, creatively appropriating the hidden error-spaces accidentally opened up in new forms of encoding-decoding. Such compressed data signals are actually still transmitted over the air, meaning that there is still use for airwave monuments such as the Berlin TV-Tower. In his "Loop Tower" (2005), JACOB KIRKEGAARD explored how the TV-Tower also has a (spinning-) sound mechanics of its own, and for SOUND & TELEVISION he will perform an adapted version of the original recordings. But what exactly does a TV-Test image for the digital and so called participatory media age look like? This question is asked by DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION (Kent Hansen & Aharon Amir) who, in collaboration with Lamburg Tony, are inviting the viewer to come up with the parameters for a new TV-Test image. Although a test-image is a kind of primal image in the institutional context of TV, it is probably white noise which has attained this status of primacy in our collective cultural memory of the medium. The melancholic aesthetics of these b/w images are explored in 4NX, AYMERIC MANSOUX 's violent audiovisual sculpture where sound and image signals are alternately tuned into each other. If white-noise is the most pure form of TV sound and image interplay, then it's most corporate form must be the MTV music video. SVEN KÖNIG thoroughly deconstructs the music-video form in a kind of digital de-collage through his software and performance sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! This artistic strategy of making the familiar strange again is also celebrated by VICKI BENNETT who presents her shamelessly entertaining new A/V set Genre Collage. Reassembling well-known film genres and icons, Bennett's piece reflects the fact that cinema has been increasingly domesticated in the home cinema age of 42" LCD screens. If digital television was once the stage for Utopian dreams of our active TV-future, broadcasters seems to have boiled these down to the oh-so interactive functions of turning subtitles on/off. No need to despair though, as l1ND4 offers you 1000 compositions for making your television interactive again, using the low-tech means of your remote control, scissors, scotch tape and the project flyer.

The transmissions will take place throughout six Tuesday evenings from mid April to mid June 2010. On these Tuesdays, at 21.30-22.00, the artists will occupy the transmissions of "i mellemtiden" ("meanwhile"), a new artistic TV-project administrated by the artist-run experimental TV-station tv-tv in Copenhagen. tv-tv is a non-commercial TV channel which started as a local Copenhagen channel in 2005 but which can now be viewed across Denmark, broadcasting 1 hour per week.

The curators behind SOUND & TELEVISION are researcher Kristoffer Gansing and media artist Linda Hilfling. They have previously worked together in a number of projects such as The Art of the Overhead - a media art festival devoted to the almost forgotten medium of the overhead projector - http://www.overheads.org.

SOUND & TELEVISION is supported by the Danish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Arts. The project is realized in collaboration with tv-tv, Copenhagen.

Artists who in different ways are exploring the relation between sound and image are invited to each develop an half hour live television performance, where the transmission itself becomes the artwork. Sound and Television is not live on TV, but live as TV.

The half-hour long transmissions all reflect on different significant aspects of the changing conditions of broadcasting. "The cracking of LCD screens" ...all is not smooth in this world of digitally compressed TV, as 25/05 ROSA MENKMAN shows in a performance based on her Glitch Studies Manifesto, creatively appropriating the hidden error-spaces accidentally opened up in new forms of encoding-decoding. Such compressed data signals are actually still transmitted over the air, meaning that there is still use for airwave monuments such as the Berlin TV-Tower. In "Loop Tower" (2005), 08/06 JACOB KIRKEGAARD explored how the TV-Tower also has a (spinning-) sound mechanics of its own, and for SOUND & TELEVISION he will perform an adapted version of the original recordings. But what exactly does a TV-Test image for digital broadcasting look like? This question is asked by 20/04 DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION (Kent Hansen & Aharon Amir) who, in collaboration with Lamburg Tony are inviting the viewer to come up with the parameters for a new TV-Test pattern. The most primal test pattern of TV, however, is probably white noise. The melancholic aesthetics of these b/w images are explored in 4NX, 27/04 AYMERIC MANSOUX 's violent audiovisual sculpture where sound and image signals are alternately tuned into each other. If white-noise is the most pure form of TV sound and image interplay, then it's most corporate form must be the MTV music video. 01/06 SVEN KÖNIG thoroughly deconstructs the music-video form in a kind of digital de-collage through his software and performance sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! This artistic strategy of making the familiar strange again is also celebrated by 15/06 VICKI BENNETT aka PEOPLE LIKE US who presents her shamelessly entertaining new A/V set Genre Collage. Reassembling well-known film genres and icons, Bennett's piece reflects the fact that cinema has been increasingly domesticated in the home cinema age of 42" LCD screens. If digital television was once the stage for Utopian dreams of our active TV-future, broadcasters seems to have boiled these down to the oh-so interactive functions of turning subtitles on/off. No need to despair though, as l1ND4 offers you 1000 compositions for making your television interactive again, using the low-tech means of your remote control, scissors, scotch tape and the project flyer.

SOUND & TELEVISION is supported by the Danish Arts Council and the Danish Arts Council Committee for International Visual Arts. The project is realized in collaboration with tv-tv, Copenhagen.

25/05 ROSA MENKMAN :
Every technology has its own accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch visualist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches, compressions, feedback and other forms of noise. Although many people perceive these accidents as negative experiences, Rosa emphasizes their positive consequences. By combining both her practical as well as an academic background, she merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory artifacts (a glitch studies), in which she strives for new forms of conceptual synthesis (synesthesia) of the two.

Rosa has shown her works at festivals like Blip (Europe and US), Haip (Ljubljana 08), Cimatics (Brussels 08/09), Video Vortex (Amsterdam '08 + Brussels '09) and Pasofest (Ankara 08) and collaborated on art projects together with Alexander Galloway, little-scale, Govcom.org, Goto80 and the internet art collective Jodi.org. In 2009 she finished her master thesis (on digital glitch) under the supervision of Geert Lovink, and started a PhD at the KHM Cologne (on the subject of Artifacts).

More info: http://rosa-menkman.blogspot.com/

04/05 DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION feat. LAMBURG TONY : WIDER CIRCLES
A Test Pattern is a geometric chart transmitted by a television station to assist viewers in adjusting reception. But what does a TV-Test pattern for digital broadcasting look like? Wider Circles is a project by Democratic Innovation (Kent Hansen & Aharon Amir) in collaboration with Lamburg Tony which invites the viewer to come up with the parameters for a new kind of TV-Test pattern.

Originally, TV-Test patterns were implemented as physical cards held in front of a camera in order to calibrate the image. In analogue television they were also used as an aid for the viewer to adjust the reception of images correctly. Due to 24-hour broadcasting and the automated techniques of digital television however, the TV-test pattern has been rendered obsolete. Or?

Wider Circles is a high-low-tech audio-visual TV-performance that involves the TV-viewer in the development of an Utopian analogue test-pattern for digital television. This pattern is not predicated on the perfect reception of sound and vision but rather on the seemingly obsolete idea that the future of television could be defined by its viewers. A new test-pattern would thus be created from viewer feedback. During a half-hour live TV transmission, sound clips may be sent in through MMS, feeding directly into the live modulated visuals and mixed soundtrack .

"The overarching goal of Wider Circles is to create modes and situations that democratise the production and development in and of the TV media. Technologies of the future will be defined and developed by the users, citizens and workers via a democratization of development and change processes. Join! "

SEND a sound via MMS to +45 28 64 70 06 AT ANYTIME BEFORE OR DURING THE SHOW April the 20th, 21:30-22:00 CET.

Wider Circles are developed by Aharon Amir and Kent Hansen on behalf of Democratic Innovation

More info:
****** www.democratic-innovation.org
****** www.lamburgtony.com

15/06 VICKI BENNETT aka PEOPLE LIKE US : GENRE COLLAGE
For nearly 20 years, People Like Us aka Vicki Bennett (UK) has refashioned popular culture according to an anarchic aesthetic which she has ingeniously dubbed as "avant-retard". In her plunderphonic films, sound-collages and live-performances, Benett recontextualizes found footage with an equally witty and dark view of popular culture. Vicki has shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, The National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, The ICA, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre, Sonar in Barcelona and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She has also performed radio sessions for BBC's John Peel, Mixing It, and also CBC, KPFA and does a regular radio show, DO or DIY on WFMU. Working according to a share-alike dictum, most of the works by People Like Us are freely available on the net, through UbuWeb. Vicki recently premiered her new live A/V set "Genre Collage" in October 2009 which she will also be performing at Sound & Television. In People Like Us own words: "By changing context and content of recurring icons, elements, characters and film stars held within selected movie genres/sub-genres (i.e. action, adventure, comedy, crime/gangster, drama, epics/historical, horror, musicals, science fiction, war and westerns), we hope we've created a humorous and entertaining take on the content held within. The sound is partially used from the films, accompanied by new People Like Us music holding corresponding messages, mood and lyrical content."

More info: www.peoplelikeus.org/
Vicky Bennett on wfmu: http://wfmu.org/playlists/PL
Vicky on ubu.com : http://www.ubu.com/film/plu.html

08/06 JACOB KIRKEGAARD : LOOP TOWER
Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist who focuses on the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time, sound and hearing. His installations, compositions and performances deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain imperceptible. Using unorthodox recording tools including accelerometers, hydrophones and home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard captures and contextualizes hitherto unheard sounds from within a variety of environments : a geyser, a sand dune, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, and even sounds from the human inner ear itself. Now based in Berlin, Kirkegaard is a graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany and has given lectures and workshops in institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the last fourteen years, Kirkegaard has presented his works at exhibitions and at festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label Touch).

Jacob is invited to Sound & Televison to do an audio/visual piece adaption of his 2005 project 'Loop Tower' - Sound recordings of the spinning mechanism of the Berlin TV tower.

More info: http://fonik.dk/
Info on the original audio version of Loop Tower: http://fonik.dk/works/looptower.html

01/06 SVEN KÖNIG : sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!
Gramophone records, magnetic tapes, vinyl records, digital samplers and computers have already liberated the samples long ago. But still - to infringe copyrights - one has to decide which sample one actually wants to steal. One has to arduously load audio files into sample editors or sequencers. One has to cut, copy, paste and arrange. All that takes precious creative energy and a lot of time.

Enough of that!

Copyright infringements have never been easier than with sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!

German artist, Sven König, arrived on planet earth in 1975 in some small boring village in Eastern Germany. In 1998 he found a small company with some friends to ride the dot.com wave. After a while he became concerned that business would spoil his character. He fortunately left his company to move to Zurich to study New Media (Art). In Zurich he had a lot of fun beeing a neo-dadaistic squatter throwing some parties wasting the rest of his youth. In 2004 he decided to take a break from Zurich to do some internship at the SAT Montreal where he was appointed artist in residence which is cool because it sounds good in the CV. In 2005 he received his diploma (with distinction) and became a serious artist. Since then he is mainly busy performing around the world because of the success of his project sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!

27/04 AYMERIC MANSOUX : 4NX
The bootstrapping of a stochastic noise generator, the search for structure and frozen moments of accidental beauty - 4NX is an audiovisual sculpture on white TV noise, starting with the panic of a flat signal, turning it into image then back into sound. A cornucopia of clicks, pops and glitches. 4NX is violent, but draws you into this world of chaos through its black and white aesthetics, melancholic atmosphere and unexpected shaping of raw noise into hypnotic patterns. 4NX is on ongoing research on noise aesthetics.

Aymeric Mansoux (FR) is an artist and member of the GOTO10 collective. Aymeric's main artistic and research interests revolve around online communities, software as a medium and the influence of FLOSS in the development and understanding of digital art. From August 2007 until January 2008 he was co-editor (with Marloes de Valk) of the Digital Artists' Handbook and in 2008 released the GOTO10 publication FLOSS+Art.

More info: http://goto10.org/

TRANSMISSION SCHEDULE
27-04-2010___AYMERIC MANSOUX
04-05-2010___DEMOCRATIC INNOVATION feat. LAMBURG TONY
25-05-2010___ROSA MENKMAN
01-06-2010___SVEN KÖNIG
08-06-2010___JACOB KIRKEGAARD
15-06-2010___VICKI BENNETT aka PEOPLE LIKE US

****** All performances are broadcasted
****** at tv-tv Tuesdays 21:30-22:00