The Art of Listening | OPEN ART III | Ionian University | curator Yorgis Sakellariou
The event “The Art of Listening” includes sound projects implemented under the Artisti Lab 2022 of OPEN ART program, a Lifelong Learning program of the Ionian University. The works were curated by George Sakellariou, composer of experimental and electroacoustic music, official guest of OPEN ART in the framework of Artist Lab 2022. The Artist Lab 2022 program was made in collaboration with the Athens Digital Arts Festival. https://openart.avarts.ionio.gr/
Melan Istion ( = Black Sales )
Melan Istion (Μέλαν Ἰστίον = Black Sales), has been constructed by filed recordings from the area of Sounion. The composition explores the connection between Greek Mythology and Music. Melan Istion is inspired by the myth of King Aegeus who commits suicide. He fell from the Temple of Poseidon, because he believed that his son, Theseus was dead. The first section is an allegory about the first meeting between Aegeus and Theseus. The initial “struggle” of sounds demonstrates the difficulties in their relationship but the evolution of sound demonstrates the Aegeus’ recognition and eventually love for his son.The second section describes the agony of Aegeus while waiting for his son to return form Crete, until the moment he commits suicide, thinking that his son is dead. According to the myth Theseus set off with a black sail, promising to his father, Aegeus, that if successful kill Minotaur, he would return with a white sail. Theseus forgot to put up the white sails instead of the black ones, so Aegeus believes he was dead. The Third section is composed of the original recording of the sea and wing around the Temple of Poseidon, without any processing.
Angelos Karelias
Angelos Karelias is a post-graduated student at the Music Department of UOA. He also studies the classical guitar at NCA. He has obtained the Degree of Advanced Music Theory. His artistic practise comprises algorithmic and electroacoustic compositions and real-time computer music involving acoustic instruments. This year Angelos is writing his thesis for gestural controllers and how they can work as musical instruments. He was a member of Leme, Music Department’s Live Electronic Music Ensemble.
Amorgos in transition
The work raises the issue of the acoustic change of the soundscape of a place in a transition from one cultural era to another – a transition that is reflected in the frequency content. The work sets in contrast “sound naturalism” – the a priori separation between “sound” and “noise” – with a broader perception of noise in the context of a poetic ontology. Amorgos was chosen as the place where the recordings took place, as a place that preserves in the 21st century the characteristics of a pre-industrial society. The relatively abrupt reconstruction and development of the island’s infrastructure is reflected in this work, mixed with the “natural” sounds of the island. The work sets in dialogue the sound of the pre-industrial age with the sound of the industrial age and the digital age, elements that exist and are intense in the few, corresponding places that have not undergone such a transition, thus composing a poetic ” symphony “of the eras of humanity.
Kostis Gardikis
Kostis Gardikis was born and works in Athens. He has studied classical guitar, harmony, composition and vocals. He has a degree in pharmacy, MSc and doctorate in nanotechnology from the University of Athens, Department of Pharmacy and works as a musician and researcher in the field of natural product innovation. Under the moniker “Dance with Invisible Partners” he composes records and performs sound design, composition and production for theater, cinema and visual poetry while performing live performances of dark electronic pop either solo or as a quartet. His works have been presented live in Greece, France, Italy, England, Switzerland, Malta, Lebanon, Serbia and Japan. He is also a founding member, composer, sound designer and producer of the experimental group “lokatola”, with which he released in 2020 the album “monotonia roth” from the label “A Man out of a Man” and the album “Nekyia” from Same Difference Music in 2022.
Water Drop
Water Drop As the minimum element that maintains our daily and uninterrupted contact with the natural. Contact needed for survival. Necessary and intertwined with water is its flow. Drinking water, water clear and clean is the flowing water. Water in the form of ice is water that temperature conditions forced to lose its flow and expects the transformation to continue its way. The drop is the water retained, is limited and lost its momentum. Water in standby mode, trapped in its artificial means of transport, tubes. Through the united and networked tubes, it is transported and flowed into a controlled flow state. Sometimes, however, escapes and creates with its repeated sound. The sound water work consists of water recording inside a home and an external natural space, in the Mountain of Chortiatis winter. In an ice and flow state. Water in its daily necessary use. Water in its natural metamorphosis. The sound of the drop sounds throughout without maintaining a specific pace. The rhythm of the drop is not identified with time, but it is attempted to be attributed as a flow of indefinite.
Katerina Karavasileiou
She grew up in Amygdalonas of Kavala. Studies in sculpture at the Department οf Fine and Applied Arts at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Before that she had completed the specialty of illustrator – cartoonist at the Cultural IEK of Thessaloniki and attended audiovisual media courses at the “Iris” workshop. She has experimented with drawing, ceramic clay, construction and materials in space as well as video art. She participated in group exhibitions and festivals. She has worked as a child and adult art teacher, among other things. She lives in Thessaloniki.
Footsteps – The Iron Project
Quick steps or slow. On the ground, in the mud or in the snow. Bold steps … towards the unknown. We are not alone. The sounds accompany us. Sounds of the Universe and the planets. The ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras spoke of the harmony of spheres. The spinning planets produce musical sounds that, because of their frequencies, we do not perceive. Sharp sounds, which we cause from the exploitation of the earth’s resources but also of space’s. One of them, the iron, * is the sixth most abundant element in the universe, formed after a series of chain reactions in supernova stars. When they erupt, their contents diffuse and reach the earth with meteorites. Iron meteorites are the most important form of formation and cause of metallic iron on the earth’s surface. At the same time, iron is an element that is essential for all organisms as it participates in basic biological functions, such as photosynthesis and respiration. Man – host – although he belongs to nature, benefits from it without any return. He enjoys and at the same time suffers from his own achievements. The opportunity for purification – redemption, however, is before him. His decision … will he be baptised again? This time with a new identity. As a kind and bright human being.
Rene Nikolaou
Rene Nikolaou is a Greece based composer. She has been awarded by the National Academy of Music of the State of Colorado, USA with the title “Finalist of the International Music Award for Excellence in Composition” in the years 2010 and 2011. Her compositions includes works for piano and other solo instruments, choral music, symphonic music, string quartet and also chamber orchestra works and electroacoustic music . She’s engaged with the film scoring of the movies “The Next Day” and “The Face Of The Ash”. Her discography includes the cd/book entitled “Synaesthesia” which contains a collection of works for solo piano and duets for piano and cello by “Cambia Publishing”. She also participates in the CD Gimel (2018) with her work “Miriam” for alto flute, in “Lament for Theodore Antoniou” (2020) for solo flute and with the “String Quartet no. 1» (2022) produced by “Phasma Music Foundation”. In November 2019 she presented the work INTO THE DEEP for alto saxophone – violin and piano composed by request of the Thessaloniki Concert Hall in collaboration with Aristotle University. Papagrigoriou-Nakas published the score of “YRIA – Suite for two guitars”, composed for the ALEA III festival of Boston University.
The open windows
The door opens to a utopic word. Human intervention by technical and natural means. An open window with sounds and images provoking the random and the scheduled. The random walk that always leads to the right place. For you to understand there is no mistake. All there is, the moment you interpret the sound of the sea in a single world or an image you loved though didn’t touch. Then comes the moment you hear a machine trying to open a new window . At the bottom of the earth. To bring back order and oxygen that God gave us. The two windows are talking .Stating two situations thought to beat imprisonment. One by the use of violence and technical means , the other using no effort. Same values, different circumstances. The door closes. The return to the real world. Walking…
Nektarios Pachiadakis
Nektarios Pachiadakis is Greek and lives in Crete. He is restless and unconventional ,qualities found in his art, that is not limited to painting . He is also a musician and a poet having released two record works and a poetry collection so far. However painting is the field that helps him most to be expressed. He is a member of the Chamber of Fine Arts of Greece since 2010 having participated in various exhibitions and got really good reviews. Currently he is attending Visual and Applied Arts in Aristotelian University where he Immediately attracted the interest of the senior professors and excellent degrees. In his paintings there is a constant search for childlike simplicity in viewing the word together with the need of emerging the subconscious either self or collective. Sometimes he seems to be fighting rationalism and reality seeking for the truth beneath the surface. Strong brushstrokes, solid paints, vivid colours characterize the majority of his works making the identity of the creator easily recognizable.
Contacto
The soundscape “Contacto” seeks to represent a summer night in nature. The deeper goal is to achieve harmony, so that man can redefine through familiar, often archetypal sounds, his connection with the environment, but also with himself. Sometimes processed and sometimes unprocessed sounds of crickets, night birds, animals moving in space, fruits that fall to the ground from time to time, in combination with the melodic sound of metal aluminum plates, compose the collage of this particular soundscape, expecting to open through sound a channel, so that the listener can connect experientially through sounds of memory with nature and himself.
Nikos Koliousis
Nikos Koliousis has been working with sound since 2002. Born in Greece, studied music technology and sound engineering in Athens. Taken part in various music projects as sound designer, recording and mixing engineer in Greece, Netherlands and Chile. He is producing music and making sound design for theatre plays, installations, video, giving creative experiential workshops and making handmade musical instruments. He now lives and works in Greece.
General Strike
Wednesday, April 6 2022, center of Athens. People on the streets to participate in the demonstration of the General Strike. Through a four-channel audio recorder, the voices that resonate in the surrounding streets are gathered, united and opposed to each other and with the sounds of the environment. Slogans and small moments of the protesters as the listeners wander among them.
Eleni Kavouki
Eleni Kavouki is currently based in Athens, Greece, and is involved in exploring and recording urban narratives. She is a graduate of the Film School of AUTH and has worked mainly with sound in productions for film, television, theater and installations.
Dreamscape
Dreams represent unconscious desires. During dreams, signals from the brain and body are interpreted. They consolidate and process information gathered during the daytime. They reflect the unconscious function in a psychoanalytic way. Dreams are a state of consciousness in the absence of sleep that occurs instantaneously. Images and sounds that are imprinted in the subconscious, return to our memory through the dream. A journey through space and time. From the inaction of the body to the action of the mind. Action of the present – elaboration of the past – preparation for the future. The recordings took place in an industrial building’s basement at Valaoritou str., Thessaloniki, January 2022.
Giorgos Karamanlis
George Karamanlis a.k.a empty is a young Sound Artist. He was born in 1998 and grew up in Thessaloniki. He has been involved in music since childhood and has classical music education. He studied Music Technology and Production and for the last five years has been exploring multiple aspects of sound as a Sound Designer, Composer, Field Recorder and Sound Engineer. He blends and combines his knowledge of classical music with that of electronics. Also he works as a sound designer for animations, composer and experiments with audiovisual performances. While in the last year he has been working on electro-acoustic soundscapes and audiovisual installations. His sound is characterized by drone sounds, complex atmospheres, field recordings, urban and natural soundscapes.
Water transitions
This work explores the sound spaces that cross the waters of a river as it flows towards its estuary. Recordings from points near a river have been used as transitions as well as recordings from a fixed point made with a hydrophone.
Alexandros Hadjitimotheou
Alexandros Chatzitimotheou is a graduate of the Department of Music Studies of the Ionian University where he studies composition of instrumental and vocal music. His works have been presented at the Municipal theater of Corfu, the Ionian Academy and the Museum of Asian Art of Corfu. In June 2022, his work ‘Riverphonics’ will be presented at the annual ‘Soundpedro’ festival at the Angels Gate Cultural Center in Los Angeles. His work is influenced by Maurice Merleau Ponty’s book Phenomenology of Perception.
The Forgotten Victims of Art
The artwork addresses the issue of using farm animals in art. Farm animals are used in art in an oppressive way and become objects of exploitation by humans, having always as a result their murder. This happens either because it is desirable to record it in the context of the work itself, or because after the artistic exploitation their fate will again be what society has predetermined, that is, death for the satisfaction of human sensory pleasure, taste. This perverted tradition of art is refuted in this particular artwork, as it is the soundscape of Vrouva Farm Animal Sanctuary for rescued non-human animals. It contains the voices and sounds of farm animals that have been rescued from the aforementioned fate and are free and safe in a protected environment. At the same time, they coexist with those species that society accepts as the most important, dogs and cats, thus revealing that in the context of the sanctuary each person is treated fairly and morally, without discrimination from humans.
Michalis Kounelakis
Michalis Kounelakis is a sound artist, experimental electronic musician and sound engineer. He has graduated in Sound Engineering and Music Technology at SAE Athens. He attended the Electronic Music, Philosophy and Aesthetics Lab with M. Koutsomichalis (with the former teaching staff of CMRC). He has participated in Elementi 8: EKRAN – HEVRExINTERMEDIA (Kraków, 2020) with the sound installation “μV?•R?’’’μ«Z¶¶¶?U’μj?”©J?UT•*T©”H”¥U»AD¶i¶” and his audiovisual project “Cyber-Proxemics”, in collaboration with Lia Mori, has participated in Tiny/Massive (Winter Lights Festival, 2019). Other participations of his include the Art Practice and Research Program ARTIST LAB 2022 (Open Art and Ionian University), the DIY Instrument Making & Hacking (Onassis Stegi, 2019) and Transmedia Labworks (Greek National Opera, 2018) during which he and his team created the interactive audio visual installation “Liminal”.
The beast
The context of the reasoning, in which is based the conformation of this specific field recording, is the productive violence of the records. This project aims to create a fragmental environment of information about the characteristics of a silent environment: an Active Urban Planning Zone, Kissos, close to Thessaloniki that appears as a non-place, as a long process of continuous disagreements about the way that urban development deployed it, led to the pause of the construction and decided than is a reforestable site. The silence of this place enforced me to record the particular resonances of objects there. This was the reason why the majority of themes of the sound records are based on intentional gestures on the objects that we mentioned before, focusing at the same time at the intention to shape a hasty sound character of the landscape, The title of this project aims to symbolically guide a narration, which is close to the wandering an enigmatic figure in an endless dream of a forced and debilitating life.
Thanassis Sampaziotis
Thanassis Sampaziotis was born in 1992 at Kalamata, Greece and grew up in a small town of Greece, Kyparissia. He entered the university the fall of 2012, at the department of School of Visual and Applied Arts, faculty of fine arts, AUTH and specially at the fifth lab of painting. He graduated in the fall of 2017. The year of 2019 he enters the interdepartmental master, “Art and Public sphere”, of the departments of political sciences and visual and applied arts. Thanassis is also a musician and part of various bands. In this field he is involved in the creative part, the concerts and also the discography. He lives, works and is active as an artist in the city of Thessaloniki.
Patterns Observation Through Wandering
Through the process of wandering – observation and finding sound patterns and music through the communication of birds, as also focusing in specific patterns, produced by biophonical and geophonical sounds, more specific the relation between the complexity of a group of birds singing with the percussive sound the rain impact makes on to objects came the realization of the music of nature in the urban landscape. After consistent and widely observation of the sound patterns that are occurred by birds, there was a recognition that the sounds of the urban environment, after extended and many hours of carefully listening, gradually they are transforming to a continuous frequency or background noise that fills in the soundscape in collaboration with biophonical and other sounds. Therefore the anthropophonical sounds, controlled or chaotic and incoherent, they co-exist with the music of nature – biophonical and geophonical sounds of the urban landscape, contributing to the creation of a continuous and complex frequency pattern.
Robi Ehiwe
Robi Ehiwe is a DJ and producer from Thessaloniki, Greece, active for over a decade. He has passed through different sound crossroads, stimulated by a wide range of musical influences, he has participated in many compilations by various artists and also released his personal solo albums. Through the years he has created the music and the sound design for several Art Videos and performances. To date, his sound could be characterized as electronic, as his sets are comprised of electro, breakbeats, experimental techno and many more.
Skepsis
The work explores the tendency of modern human to put in order the amount of anarchic information we receive every day and to make some sense out of it. The human body is increasingly involved in incoherent patterns, i.e. the incoherence of physical and verbal behavior, emotions and actions, society and the environment. Are we heading on to a mutated function of the human body? The work is in progress and tries to comment with humor on the social and individual ‘schizophrenia’ of the time. Different lists were chosen to cover and symbolize our socio-political and cultural life as well as our relationship with nature. The apparent irrelevance of words creates a wave of paradoxical, ironic and poetic reality. The work ends with a close processing of the sounds made by the human body when expressed verbally reminiscent of jungle sounds.
Tzeni Argyriou
Tzeni Argyriou (b. 1977, Kavala, GR) She is a graduate of the State School of Dance, Athens, a scholar from Onassis Foundation, New York and the co artistic director and funding member of amorphy.org. For more than 15 years her interest in engaging the performing arts with new technologies and other artistic genres, generating choreographic artworks, multimedia installations as well as in situ actions. Collaboration is an essential part of her creative process and many works has been co-created with other artists. Selected works: Phrasis, Αποθέματα:Inventory, ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟ, Stigmiographies, Face to Phase, Untitled, Memorandum etc. has been presented such as: Onassis Cultural Centre (GR), Athens and Epidaurus Festival (GR), Festival Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), Kalamata International Dance Festival(GR), Benaki Museum (GR), MIR Festival (GR), Arc For Dance Festival (GR), Judson Church at Movement Research (U.S.A.). She has been an invited artist in residency from international art institutions and has received support from Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, The non Profit Organization NEON, Duncan Dance Research Center. www.tzeniargyriou.coma
