Tape to Zero presents different musicians and projects with both electronic and acoustical soundscapes. The main idea is to present both known and unknown names, with new projects and unique musical expressions. The music is both experimental and challenging, but also more melodic and accessible. Visit their homepage tapetozero.no for updates!

Program:

Tape to Zero – dag 1 (Torsdag 18. april)
19.30: Bendik Hovik Kjeldsberg (solo)
20.15: Kjetil Husebø (solo)
21.30: Splashgirl with Stian Westerhus

Tape to Zero – dag 2 (Fredag 19. april)
19.30: Sea Change (Ellen A. W. Sunde)
20.15: Pd conception (Ingvo Clauder, Terje Evensen, Anders Tveit)
21.30: Stian Westerhus/Jan Bang/Erik Honoré
23.00: Leafcutter John

• More information at Oslo Open´s  website.

• Concert date: April 5
• Doors: 7 pm
• Concert: 8 pm
• Tickets: 50 NOK (bring cash for the ticket and the bar!)
• Where: NOTAM – where to find us

Links to some of the works done by Yurodny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAuhQsXWEw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMeTcEreZqY

Welcome – it would be nice if you bring a friend!

LydMyren is supported by Arts Council Norway

• Date: November 1
• Doors: 7 p.m.
• Concert starts: 8 p.m.
• Tickets: NOK 150 / 100 – Order
• Sted: Riksscenen (Schouskvartalet)

The concert will play over 16 speakers set up in a cube formation around the audience. Vinjar’s and Barrett’s works are composed for the ambisonics format, and are therefore tailored for this type of set-ep.

Island Music (7’) 2012, by Rose Dodd

Solitary music – nature and the elements reminding us how small we are – how isolated – island culture leads back to its history and traditions. Island music plays conceptually with seemingly diverse musical lines. Moving through the piece these lines are shown to be facets of the same material, although extracted/processed in different ways – exploring notions of landscape and the individual’s place in it.

Monty Adkins – Kyoto Roughcut (2012)

This is the third of four pieces in the Shibusa series. This series was the result of an audio-visual collaboration with the artist Pip Dickens. The project has its origins in the katagami stencils used in the dying of kimonos. These hand-made objects are beautiful artefacts in their own right. The older, geometrical and abstract patterned katagami provided the starting point for Dickens. Four concepts united the music and image: colour, repetition, pattern and shibusa. The last of these concepts is by far the most difficult to explain – in Japanese a shibui object, such as the stencil or an earthenware pot is something that has an innate simplicity but also betrays surface imperfections, it does not draw attention to itself. Above all of the concepts, it is this last one that Adkins has tried to convey most in the cycle.

Rose Dodd – mobius ii (2011)

Performed by Britt Pernille Frøholm

Sound engineer, Cato Lagnes

Premiered at the HCMF 2011. Written during a residency at NOTAM studios, Oslo as part of the exchange programme with CeReNeM, University of Huddersfield. With generous support from the Musicians Benevolent Fund Professional Development Award.

‘..a Nordic whisper – folklore and traditions echoing through the hills, catching in the wind, blowing through the forest…’

mobius ii seeks to capture a stillness – a soulfulness which Norwegian players carry in their playing. They remember where they come from. Coming from an acousmatic background, with a strong interest in Scandinavian soundworlds I am interested in creating new musics negotiating issues of nostalgia – situating old music/unusual instruments in a newly composed context. ‘mobius music’ as a series of works explores these notions which recur across the mobius cycle.

Dedicated to Cato Lagnes who introduced me to Britt Pernille Froholm. While composing this work I felt moved also to make a second dedication to the young politicians of Utoya. The opening is centred around environmental recordings made close to Utoya island evoking the peace, beauty and inspiration still to be found there. The fiddle captures the strong folk heritage of Norway – finding solidarity with those lost souls.

Natasha Barrett – Kernel Expansion (2009)

This piece contains three interconnected sections and addresses the essence of sound in its rich multiplicity, exposing the “kernel” or heart of some specific sound sources; from outdoors, from inside, from realities, dreams and imaginations.

Kernel Expansion was commission by, and realised in the studios of ZKM, with additional support from the Norwegian Cultural Council. The work is spatialised in a hybrid ambisonics format. Some source materials were recorded with a ‘b-format’ microphone, other materials were synthesised in higher-order ambisonics (high precision spatial audio). The work was premiered over ZKM’s 43-loudspeaker Klangdome concert system.

Anders Vinjar – Nytt bestillingsverk for 3D-diffusjon (urpremiere)

With support from Arts Council Norway, NOTAM has commissioned a new multichannel work by Anders Vinjar. The work has been realised through collaboration with the CeReNeM department of the University of Huddersfield.

The yet to be titled work focuses on the concept of triple point, which is a thermodynamic state where materials hold unusual properties. Water can simultaneously behave like ice, liquids as gas, and the most miniscule influences can make the water immediately turn from gas to ice or vice versa. Typically, the phenomenon takes place in places inaccessible to humans, such as underneath large glaciers or on ocean floors.

The musical piece is an attempt to utilise sound and space to give the listener a physical experience of being directly lined to the musical objects. When the usic’s aggregate states change, similar changes are meant to occur in the listener. When the music moves, the listener is also moved.

This is the first work where Vinjar has utilised ambisonics techniques in all parts of the process – coding, forming and decoding. The work is also the first in a series of works which all will further investigate ambisonics technology and 3D sound, and work with related issues.

• November 27
• December 4
• December 6
• December 11
• December 13

Ableton Live is a loop-based music sequenser. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing and arranging. This course goes through the software’s functionality in dealing with audio and MIDI, both for stage performance and studio.

For people who are familiar with Max/MSP, and who wish to learn Ableton Live in connection with the package Max for Live, this course is a good opportunity to get to know the program.

The course will be taught by Hans Frønes, who has a background as a jazz guitarist and an electronic musician. The course will be taught in Norwegian.

• Ableton Live website

Registrering til Innføringskurs i Ableton Live - live

By: Kate Pendry and Ståle Stenslie
Where: Dramatikkens Hus
Date: September 21 & 22, 7 p.m.

Can technology influence and explore stage text? Or does the technology fall into place when the text is finished, and is it the case that text needs developed technology to reach further?

Kate Pendry and Ståle Stenslie invites us to their new concept Voice Catcher. In a meeting with Stenslie’s newly constructed machine, Pendry will test interactively what is happening to her as a dramaturgist and actress; Will she be able to cooperate with the technology in a way that makes us forget it’s there and discover/remember the magical and special aspects of what has inspired her storytelling?

The cantral object in the performance is a bronze-colored sphere which is the instrument that Pendry plays with. She conjures and manipulates sounds in surround by running her hands around the sphere’s surface. The sensors i this sphere is implemented at NOTAM and programmed by Thom Johansen.

Kate Pendry is an actress who addresses political and taboo-ridden societal phenomena and holds them up for discussion without prejudice, being of the opinion that art should not contribute to general contentment. Pendry questions whether people could be victims of societal structures. She has worked with technology in a variety of ways in her performances for 20 years, and has worked with Stenslie for an equal amount of time.

Ståle Stenslie is a professor and a curator who develops sensory technologies and experimental tools for novel forms of artistic expression.

The development of Voice Catcher is supported by Dramatikkens hus, Arts Council Norway and NOTAM.

The aim of this course is to provide a thorough review of the software, so that the participants after the course participation can produce their own solutions in Max/MSP.

The course is aimed at those with normal basic knowledge in music.

This course provides basic training in programming in Max/MSP, as well as an understanding of digital sound modelling. The participants will achieve an understanding of working with sound and interaction design, and this will be useful for people who work with sound, composition, visual arts, interaction design, and video.

The tool used in the course will be Max/MSP from Cycling ’74. The course’s primary focus is the technical mastery of this tool.

Jitter is a supplement that provides the opportunity to work with graphics and video work. We will not review the Jitter in this course, but the course will provide enough necessary knowledge in Max for later use of Jitter.

The course consists mainly of a series of exercises to be submitted. The exercises will provide both a technical and a theoretical study. The technical solutions covers various fields, including signal processing, synthesis, algorithms and user interface.

Participants should expect to spend a hundred hours working with the course. The reason for the large amount of work is that the program has such a high degree of complexity that a simple review will only scratch the surface.

Participants are recommended to progress at a rate of their own choice within a timeframe of 10 weeks. All necessary materials are available for download online. The course’s supervisor will be available for questions, answers and comments. Course assignments must be submitted electronically via email, and will be evaluated and commented on an ongoing basis.

This page shows an example of how language and content are formed.

With its human and hyper-human actors this performance moves in between of those blurred boundaries that seem to separate body and image, man and machine, the inner and outer beauty and the grotesque. Questions of how the desirable body is presented as well as how we relate to the tabooed body and its awkwardness, its loathsomeness, is confronted here in a generous, auditive and visual composition. What are our ideas of body and beauty and how are they changed, shaped and filtered? With what do we receive this multiple body that meets us and what are the laws of that gaze that rests on what it desires?

NOTAM’s Hans Wilmers has been involved in this production and delivered sonsor technology for the performance, which will premiere at Black Box Theater on September 12 as part of Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. The performance will be shown every eveing at 9 p.m. utnil September 15.

By: Mia Habib & Timo Kreuser
Performer, choreographer & concept: Mia Habib
Composition & concept: Timo Kreuser
Sound design: Wilm Thoben
Dramaturgist & producer: Ida-Elisabeth Larsen
Producer: Martin Døving
Light sculpture: FELD studio for digital crafts
Produced by: Mia Habib Productions
Co-production: Black Box Teater, THE TRACKWORKERS , NOTAM, Elektronisches Studio TU Berlin, FG Audiokommunikation
Supported by: Norsk Kulturråd, Fond for Utøvende Kunstnere and AHAB SHIPPING CO.productions
In residency: Dansarena NORD and Black Box Teater.

• Ultima program notes
• About the production on Black Box Theater’s web site

The course requires no prior knowledge of Pro Tools. It will, however, also be useful to people who have worked with Pro Tools earlier and who would like to expand their knowledge of the program, and who would like an introduction to new functionality in version 10.

We will also give a review of the hardware in NOTAM’s studios, and additionally we will look at different portable recording devices and recording techniques.

If you have any questions about the course, please contact Cato Langnes, tel. 22 35 80 64, or email catola@notam02.no.

• Participants: 10
• Duration: 5 days, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
• Date: October 15 – 19, 2012
• Teacher: Cato Langnes
• Price: NOK 3,000

Completing the course qualifies you as a NOTAM user with access to our studios.