Co-Presented by MONOM and MIRA Festival, OFFSET is an audio visual installation made ‘on site’ at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest by Hanno Leichtmann with video art by Toby Cornish.
THE SOUND
The work contains the subtitle ‘music for sampler, looper, electronic percussion and moog bass’. All ten sections of the piece contain more or less the same musical ingredients: various patterns of hi-hats, snares and toms, also pads, a bassline and sometimes processed vocals. All musical events are processed by the means of CV and offset devices targeting loopers, drum samplers and a synth and are then layered - but none of the tracks are really in sync. They ‘OFFSET’ - so the listeners ear and brain attempts to put them in a beat or rhythmical scheme — but fails as this process is changed every 30 seconds or so.
Nevertheless there is a certain core that ties all sounds together. While most of the sounds have more or less fixed places in the sonic ‘cave’ some sounds wander around in the space. The music itself reminds one of the sounds of early 90s club music as well as on minimalistic lofi tape loop experiments.
Some sections contain „letraset sound“. This is the sound that is generated by the filmprojector when interpreting rubbed down letraset particles onto the soundtrack as „music“.
OFFSET will be released via Christian Vogel's label Endless Process on 1st August.
THE VIDEO
Multiple layers of letters, numbers and punctuation marks create rhythmic structures in a state of flux that collide and synchronise themselves with the separate soundtrack.
Made by rubbing down Letraset and Letratone directly onto clear 16mm filmstrips, the film consists of individual 144 frame loops each made up of vowels, consonants, numbers, punctuation, symbols, circles and half-tone dot patterns. The filmstrips were transferred onto a digital camea and repeatedly reworked as the loops ran through a film projector to build up progressively darker layers. The results were then combined in different sections which ebb and flow as the lengths of the sound sections and image loops differ, continually producing new audio visual combinations.
OFFSET with the video Rubdown incorporated was originally commissioned for the Letra/tone Festival in Berlin and is presented here in a new re-worked version.
SCHEDULE & TICKETS
The installation will be on a continuous loop from 13:00 - 21:00 on Sept 15 . Guests are welcome to enter MONOM quietly at any point and stay as long as they would like.
Tickets are 8€.
Pre-sales available here.
HANNO LEICHTMANN
Hanno Leichtmann is a sound artist, music producer and curator living and working in Berlin.
Originally coming from improvised music as percussionist / drummer, Leichtmann devoted himself since 1998 to the electronic music. With his electronic project Static he published several albums and toured throughout the world. In 2011 he released the "lost" soundtrack for Christoph Schlingensief's last film African Twintowers with contributions from Sir Henry and an Indian music ensemble. With the trio Groupshow he set the Andy Warhol classic Empire several times. From 2008 he curated several festivals and club series such as Letra / Tone, Syn / Cussion and Grand Jeté. Leichtmann has been working with sound archives since 2013. For his last work, Nouvelles Aventures, he received a work and research grant from the city of Berlin in the field of new music / sound art and a residency at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2018. He is part of the trio Groupshow with Jan Jelinek and Andrew Pekler, and the trio Denseland with David Moss and Hannes Strobl. He composed the soundtrack for Sasha Waltzs Allee der Kosmonauten and recently remixed her entire soundtrack archive to the 8 channel installation SWG25Y. He has played in many important festivals such as, CTM berlin, Unsound Krakow, New York & Minsk, Mutek Montreal and Mexico City, ICMC Havana and more.
TOBY CORNISH
Toby Cornish is a video artist, film-maker and designer, founding member of Jutojo, based in Berlin.
Born and educated in London, he moved to Berlin in 1998 to work on experimental films, video and slide installations in museums and galleries, abstract music videos, building on an analogue film-based background where process and materials always play an important part in the final work.
Individually and part of Jutojo or in collaboration with Johannes Braun, Sophie Clements, Phillip Sollmann / Efdemin, his work has been shown at various international film and music festivals, museums and venues, including the Berlin Biennale, Neue National Galerie, Oberhausen, Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House, London as well as Planetariums in Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires.
SPATIAL SOUND INSTITUTE
The Spatial Sound Institute is a research and development centre for spatial sound technologies and practices based in Budapest, Hungary.
Since its opening in October 2015, the Institute hosts a multidisciplinary program cultivating spatial sound as an emerging area of study. Housed over 3 floors of the AQB arts complex on the banks of the river Danube, the facility is centered around a large-scale 4DSOUND studio used for artist residencies, educational workshops, and regular public events.
The Institute also maintains a historical archive of works created in 4DSOUND over the past decade, with projects and publications from over a hundred contributors in the fields of music, technology, architecture and media arts.
www.spatialsoundinstitute.com
MIRA Digital Arts Festival
MIRA is a digital arts festival based on three interconnected areas: exhibition, divulgation and education, and is held annually in Barcelona (since 2011). Focused on the intersection between art and digital culture, the festival features a programme comprised of audiovisual shows in both traditional and fulldome formats, digital art installations, screenings, conferences and workshops.
MIRA wants to bring the audience closer to several realms of artistic creativity through an event with two main objectives: to function as a platform for new creators as well as a showcase for world-renowned artists and to create unique immersive experiences through technological innovation and the interlacing of live music and visuals.
www.mirafestival.com
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