(NON)OBSOLETE MEDIA

(NON)OBSOLETE MEDIA is a six-month project in which phonon~ has joined forces with the Ústí nad Labem city Archive, where, among other items, an extensive collection of shellac gramophone records is hidden. The project is structured in several layers: digitization of analogue media, music composition, live performances and theoretical lectures. Artists from the Czech and German art scene are invited to participate in the project. Both internationally established artists as well as locally active ones, namely in Ústí nad Labem and Dresden.

Three events – on 30.11, 6.12 and 13.12 – are the public output of the project. During the events there will be presented original compositions created on the basis of archived and digitized sound recordings. They will present their work in the format of live playing and acousmatic compositions in quadraphonic sound: Marie Čtveráčková, Jan Macháček, Iñaki Rocha Echevarria, Jan Krombholz, Moisés Horta Valenzuela, Jan Burian, Vojtěch Groot, Antje Meichsner, Oliver Torr and Polina Khatsenka.

Audio performances are accompanied by talks & presentations: a presentation of highlights from the collection’s original owner PhDr. Vladimir Kaiser, a lecture on the development of the multichannel audio by Polina Khatsenka and a lecture on the digitization and archiving of analog media (shellac records, wax cylinders, tape recordings) by Filip Šír.

In addition to the live presentations by the invited artists, a compilation of the compositions has been created and will be officially launched at the closing event on Tuesday, 13th of December. The compilation is the second release on our newly established label, which can be found at → bandcamp profile.

All events take place at the House of Arts Ústí nad Labem. The project is financially supported by the Statutory City of Ústí nad Labem.

phonon~ association would like to thank Petr Karlíček, the director of the Archive of the city of Ústí nad Labem, for the exceptional opportunity and cooperation.

Thanks also go to the House of Arts in Ústí nad Labem for providing space for the public presentation of the project’s outputs.

středa 30.11 18:00, Dům umění Ústí nad Labem

18 Přednáška: PhDr. Vladimír Kaiser (zakladatel) – historie sbírky

19-21 Performance: Vojtěch Groot (CZ), Marie Čtveráčková (CZ), Iñaki Rochá Echevarria (PHL/DE), Jan Burian (CZ), Oliver Torr (CZ)

speaker/artists

Vladimír Kaiser

~ presentation is in czech

PhDr. Vladimír Kaiser, born 1954 in Ústí nad Labem, 1974-1979 studied at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, from 1979 he joined the District Archive in Ústí nad Labem, 1984 he was appointed its director, from 1986 the archive changed to the Archive of the City of Ústí nad Labem.

In 1984, he established a collection of audio documents in the archive, specialising in shellac records from 1898-1965. The collection of about 21,000 is catalogued and publicly accessible.

Between 2003 and 2015 he went on several St. James pilgrimages, was the first Ústician to walk from Ústí nad Labem to Santiago de Compostela from 2003 to 2008, and published his experiences in the books Pole plné hvězd (2009) a Můj pan táta svatý Jakub (2019).

In 1986 he collaborated with Rainer E, Lotz on the LP Jazz and Hot Dance in Czechoslovakia 1910-1949 Harlequin (E)HQ2019.

Extensive publishing activity


Vojtěch Groot

Vojta Groot (Dataphase) – a czech artist & producer, currently studying in Ústí nad Labem. He approaches music from a self-thought angle by building his own synthesizers, programming music devices and so on.

Vojta is currently completing his BA degree at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University, faculty of art and design, Time-based Media department.

dataphase.bandcamp.com


Marie Čtveráčková

Marie Čtveráčková aka Mary C aka Andrea Beton, sound artist, curator, DJ, organiser and co-founder of Synth Library Prague community space for sharing, learning, discussions and experiments not only in the field of electronic music and sound in general. Previously she worked as a host and a producer of a radio show focused mainly on rap and electronic music of African diaspora in general presented on Czech Radio’s youth station Radio Wave. Under her producer moniker Andrea Beton she contributed to Liptov compilation by Punctum Tapes.

Together with Martin Tvrdy she started a platform called Kreaton dedicated to sharing new ways of making music and introducing new instruments not only to kids. Currently they present a series of interactive lectures for schools focused on listening, current electronic music and new instruments. She collaborated with Goethe Institut, Shape Platform or Palac Akropolis as a curator and held lectures or workshops at festivals like Heroines of Sounds in Berlin, Construction in Dnipro, Ment in Ljubljana, Electric Spring in Vienna or Nuits Sonores in Lyon an collaborated with project Futuropolis dedicated to transformative pegagogy. She is a member of eastbloc antifascist sound alliance, with Synth Library she joined initiative Feminist Art Institutions and a work group Degrowth in Culture, that formulated an open letter to Ministry of Culture about sustainability and care in arts.

She co-founded a collective of women and non-binary artists in sound and electronic music called Trigger. In their first project they published a magazine dedicated to introducing many great women in sound and having a discussion on systems of power not only in the field of sound and sound technology.

synthlibrary.cz
soundcloud.com/maryc
instagram.com/sugarcubist


Iñaki Rochá Echevarria

~ self-made music, analog electronics, fine arts, visuals

Iñaki Rocha Echevarria (Manila, * 1978) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Chemnitz, Germany. He has been exhibiting as a painter since 2002, among others in Manila, Miami, New York, Barcelona, Munich and Washington DC. Being involved in experimental art and sound sculpting, Iñaki constructs his own instruments and visual analogue projectors.

He is active solo with his project Convs and the Ovumat and he is part of the band Telepanico. Iñaki co-organises the label EX:IN (Chemnitz, Germany) together with Chris Münster. 


Jan Burian

Jan Burian is music composer and sound designer who collaborates with various filmmakers (P. Koutecký, V. Švankmajer, M. Mareček) and theater artists from the Czech Republic and abroad (Min Tanaka, Peter Schumann, Petr Nikl, Paco Decina etc.). For the National Film Archives he has composed and recorded music for the complete restored filmography of the first Czech filmmaker Jan Kříženecký, which has received the FOCAL International Award in 2020.

Until 2020, he collaborated with the Archa Theatre on many international theater and educational projects of a social nature, such as the performance Ordinary People with the Chinese independent dance ensemble Living Dance Studio Beijing, which was also featured in the main program of Festival d’Avignon.

He has been working long term with therapist Marie Madeira and created music accompanying her books. Jan leads workshops of his own Art of Hearing method, sound design and creative approach to electronic musical instruments (ZVUK, Archa International Summer School, DAMU, konzervatoř Duncan Centre etc.) He is a founding member of the bands Kyklos Galaktikos (rap/hip hop/experimental) and tyto alba (electroacoustic/experimental).

linktr.ee/zneni


Oliver Torr

Oliver Torr is a Europe based composer, sound designer and sound artist. Since early age, he has been pursuing various activities revolving around sound, improvisation, art and music. He also has had a rich history of instrument building, working at Berlin’s Patch Point, Prague’s Noise.Kitchen, self releasing MAX devices, etc. He has also been active in gallery environments, the performance scene, and has made music and sound design for various films and video art pieces. 

Olivers bands, projects and artists he has worked for include: Duo with Dirty Electronics, SARC (w/Elvin Brandhi & HEXEN), Black Tar Jesus, TraumaTorr (w/Trauma), GTA Soundsystem, Sunnbrella, Katarzia, OGJ (Ondrej Merta)/Torr and he has collaborated and written music for many different artists. He has self released a lot of music on his bandcamp, but has also released on many European labels.

O has exhibited artist works at: Mocvara Gallery Zagreb, EUC Brussels, National Gallery Prague, 123 Gallery, Prague Quadrennial, Karpuchina Gallery, 17 Ashfield Road London, GHMP, Greenhouse Berlin, Galerie Emila Filly and other various off-site venues.

olivertorr.bandcamp.com
shapeplatform.eu/artist/oliver-torr


úterý 6.12 18:00, Dům umění Ústí nad Labem

18 Přednáška: Polina Khatsenka – prostorový zvuk jako médium

19-21 Performance: Moisés Horta Valenzuela (MEX/DE), Antje Meichsner (DE), Jan Krombholz (CZ), Polina Khatsenka (BY/CZ), Jan Macháček (CZ)

speaker/artists

Polina Khatsenka

~ lecture on spatial audio in english

Polina Khatsenka is an audiovisual artist, sound designer and sonic curator from Minsk, Belarus, based in Usti nad Labem, Czech republic. She is devoting her work to various aspects of sound with a focus on audio performance, site-specific installations and composing. Polina is currently getting her Master degree at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Usti nad Labem, time-based media studio under supervision of Daniel Hanzlik and Pavel Mrkus.

Starting the work with spatial audio in 2018 during exchange in HSDusseldorf, Polina continued her research in Kunstuniversität Linz, where she leads a “Silence. Pause. Quiet.” course from 2021, at a Co.Lab Acoustic Ecology established by Peter Androsch and Gitti Vasicek. Together with phonon~ crew, where she is one of the founding members, Polina organises events, mediating experimental electronic, electroacoustic music and sound art in quadraphonic and octophonic PA.

soundcloud.com/mudaki
mudaki.bandcamp.com
works.io/polina-khatsenka


Moisés Horta Valenzuela

Moisés Horta Valenzuela AKA hexorcismos (México, 1988) is a sound artist and electronic musician from Tijuana, México working in the fields of computer music and the history and politics of emerging technologies. His practice attempts to disrupt dichotomies with new radical juxtapositions, such as utopia with dystopia and folk traditions with capitalist modernity.

As hexorcismos, he crafts an uncanny link between ancient and contemporary sound technologies so as to address the politics of colonization, occupation and contemporary alchemy. Prehispanic sound artefacts from ancient México, Deep Neural Networks, wearable brain-computer interfaces and hand-crafted electronic instruments are critically merged together to situate the listener in a teknoXamanistic ritual of rhythmical and mnemonic noise.

Whether it be on dancefloors, in interactive immersive sound installations, or in open source workshops about AI and Machine Learning and discursive programmes; his work has been presented at Ars Electronica, Linz (2020), MUTEK AI Art Lab Montréal (2020), MUTEK México (2012), Monom 4D Sound Berlin (2019), CTM Festival Music Makers Hacklab Berlin (2018), Rum/Klang Galerie Denmark (2018) and ElektronMusikStudion Stockholm (2017), among others.

moiseshorta.audio
hexorcismos.bandcamp.com/music


Jan Krombholz

Jan Krombholz is an audiovisual artist, DJ and teacher based in the Ústí nad Labem region. His work focuses mainly on site specific (sound) installations, group A/V performances (phonon~ crew, Auxig) and spatial aspects of sound. Currently, as part of his doctoral research, he focuses on the implementation of the medium of sound in art education.

works.io/jan-krombholz
auxig.net


Antje Meichsner

Antje Meichsner / Shannon Soundquist is a sound artist and radio producer. She holds degrees in art history, psychology, communication studies, and studied media art with Carsten Nicolai / Alva Noto, currently with Nevin Aladağ. She works conceptually with sound, text, graphics and typography. 

Her live sets are cinematic, dark, noisy, non-tonal and conceptual. The sound works are based on the de- and reconstruction of body sounds and speech material that poetically revolves around the subject’s condition in society. Her works are both installation / radio play and performative. Her research question on sound is: How can body sounds and speech be morphed into abstract electronic sounds and vice versa? What does the boundary of understanding and meaning feel like?

antjemeichsner.jimdofree.com
soundcloud.com/shannon_soundquist


Jan Macháček

Jan Macháček (aka Ancestral Vision) is a Prague-based producer, DJ, sound designer & co-founder of hybrid electronics label and radio show Unizone.

His music is a deep melting pot of hybridised club forms, self-collected field recordings and both alien and organic textural sound design. Glitchy percussions amalgamate with heavy drones, resonating breakbeats, liquid textures, sampled choirs or advanced vocal processing. It is therefore not surprising that he loves bold emotional melodies and soothing soundscapes the same way as rusty drones and jaw-breaking kicks. All of these elements are traceable in both his production and mixes.

Ancestral Vision is often shifting gears between genres, rhythms, tempos and moods, sometimes even within a single track. Even though he has been focused in recent years on self-releasing of singles, his works could be also found in the discographies of labels like Club Late Music, JEROME, DESTITUTE, Oramics, Red for Colourblind, hyperlink or Unizone.

He debuted with his live set at Lunchmeat Festival in September 2022, where he did audiovisual collaboration with visual artists realitycongress & h5io6i54k.

ancestralvisi0n.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/ancestralvision
open.spotify.com/artist
music.apple.com/us/artist/ancestral-vision


úterý 13.12 18:00, Dům umění Ústí nad Labem

18 Přednáška: Filip Šír – Proč je důležité býti zvukovým archeologem aneb co vše lze ještě zachránit

speaker

Filip Šír

~ lecture in czech

Filip Šír, DiS. is the coordinator for digitization of audio documents in the Digitization and New Media Department of the National Museum. Since 2012, he has been focusing on a comprehensive solution for the issue of audio documents, from the principles of sound document care to the methodology of their digitization. He is a member of various professional societies, such as the prestigious International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA). 

In 2016, he received the INFORUM 2016 Prize (awarded for the Virtual National Phonotheque) as the most significant and best Czech product, service or act associated with electronic information sources with significance for the Czech Republic within the Virtual National Sound Fund team. In 2017, together with Gabriel Gössel, he was awarded the ARSC Certificate of Merit for his contribution to historical research for ‘Recorded Sound in Czech Lands’. 

In 2018, he presented at Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University and at New York University. He also conducted a two-day workshop at Fonoteca Nacional de México. At the moment, he is the principal investigator leading the project New Phonograph: listening to the history of sound, and also research into sound sources stemming from Czech emigration to the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

nm.cz/sir-filip-dis
Recorded Sound in Czech Lands, 1900-1946