shut up and listen! 2011
Interdisciplinary Festival for Music and Sound Art
December 10th, 2011, 22.00
Oliver Schneller (DE)
Polis - 8-Channel Soundscape Composition (2008-09)
Polis
This work is originally a sound installation spread over eight loud speakers created for the exhibition «Taswir
– Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity» conceptualized and curated by Dr. Almut Bruckstein and
preseted in te Gropius Bau Berlin from 2009-2010. The acoustic material consists exclusively of audio
recordings produced in four different cities: Cairo, Beirut, Jeruslem and Istanbul. In each city I took
extensive random walks over the course of three days, recording hundreds of sounds along the way in order
to assemble a kind of «acoustic portrait» of each city. During these walks I kept a log of the exact times and
locations of the recorded sounds. Back in the studio in Berlin I edited the recordings and superimposed the
four layers, ordering the recorded material roughly according to the times they were taken. At each «cut» in
the material I added a brief reverberation in order to acoustically identify the edit points. I balanced the
volume levels according to the density and volume of each sound texture, occasionally letting one city step
into the foreground, another time two or three cities, or at times having all four layers produce a dense but
richly individualised polyphony. The central idea of the installation was to produce the illusion of being able
to be at four places at once - to listen to four geographically separate locations simultaneously.
Festival contributions by Oliver Schneller in cooperation with the "Tracing Migrations" Project of ha'atelier -
Werkstatt für Philosophie und Kunst Berlin.
http://www.ha-atelier.de
Oliver Schneller
Oliver Schneller was born in Cologne and studied composition at Columbia University in New York where he
completed his doctorate in composition with Tristan Murail in 2002. From 2002-2004 he worked in Paris as a
“compositeur en recherche” at IRCAM/Centre Pompidou. The focus of Oliver Schneller’s compositional work
lies in the creation of networks between musical instruments, architectural spaces and live computer
processing. Often his works include spatial parameters such as particular combinations of instruments and
loud speakers distributed throughout the performance space. His works have been presented at numerous
international music festivals. He is the founder of the «Tracing Migrations» Project which documents and
supports the work of emerging composers and sound artsist from the Arab world. Schneller has held
residencies at Cincinnati Conservatory, Takefu Festival, ZKM Karlsruhe, Experimentalstudio des SWR Freiburg
and is the recipient of the 2010 Siemens Award for Composition, the Fromm Prize (Harvard University), 2
ASCAP Awards, and fellowships from the Tanglewood Music Center, Columbia University and the German
Academy in Rome Villa Massimo.
http://www.oliverschneller.net
ABOUT PROGRAMME SUAL AWARD PRESS IMPRESSUM SUAL HOME
– Pictorial Mappings of Islam and Modernity» conceptualized and curated by Dr. Almut Bruckstein and
preseted in te Gropius Bau Berlin from 2009-2010. The acoustic material consists exclusively of audio
recordings produced in four different cities: Cairo, Beirut, Jeruslem and Istanbul. In each city I took
extensive random walks over the course of three days, recording hundreds of sounds along the way in order
to assemble a kind of «acoustic portrait» of each city. During these walks I kept a log of the exact times and
locations of the recorded sounds. Back in the studio in Berlin I edited the recordings and superimposed the
four layers, ordering the recorded material roughly according to the times they were taken. At each «cut» in
the material I added a brief reverberation in order to acoustically identify the edit points. I balanced the
volume levels according to the density and volume of each sound texture, occasionally letting one city step
into the foreground, another time two or three cities, or at times having all four layers produce a dense but
richly individualised polyphony. The central idea of the installation was to produce the illusion of being able
to be at four places at once - to listen to four geographically separate locations simultaneously.
Festival contributions by Oliver Schneller in cooperation with the "Tracing Migrations" Project of ha'atelier -
Werkstatt für Philosophie und Kunst Berlin.
http://www.ha-atelier.de
Oliver Schneller
Oliver Schneller was born in Cologne and studied composition at Columbia University in New York where he
completed his doctorate in composition with Tristan Murail in 2002. From 2002-2004 he worked in Paris as a
“compositeur en recherche” at IRCAM/Centre Pompidou. The focus of Oliver Schneller’s compositional work
lies in the creation of networks between musical instruments, architectural spaces and live computer
processing. Often his works include spatial parameters such as particular combinations of instruments and
loud speakers distributed throughout the performance space. His works have been presented at numerous
international music festivals. He is the founder of the «Tracing Migrations» Project which documents and
supports the work of emerging composers and sound artsist from the Arab world. Schneller has held
residencies at Cincinnati Conservatory, Takefu Festival, ZKM Karlsruhe, Experimentalstudio des SWR Freiburg
and is the recipient of the 2010 Siemens Award for Composition, the Fromm Prize (Harvard University), 2
ASCAP Awards, and fellowships from the Tanglewood Music Center, Columbia University and the German
Academy in Rome Villa Massimo.
http://www.oliverschneller.net
ABOUT PROGRAMME SUAL AWARD PRESS IMPRESSUM SUAL HOME