Thursday, December 8th, 2016, 20.30
Bernhard Gál
Ur-Ur — Audiogenealogy
[Bernhard Gál: Ur-Ur]
Ur-Ur — Audiogenealogy
Ur-Ur is the first audible result of an ongoing artistic exploration based on genealogical research. Family trees are turned into sound structures, kinships experienced as acoustic, and thus temporal and spatial relations. Depending on the occasion, texts, visual as well as theatrical or other extra-musical elements may be incorporated. At SUAL 2016, I’d like to present selected sound miniatures, each of them putting one of my ‘great-great-grandfathers’ into focus. The resulting pieces comprise all direct relatives who lived during the time span of the respective central person, as far as known. Each individual life is represented by a specific single tone resp. frequency shift, each generation being assigned a certain octave. Leading from great-grandparents to great-grandchildren, each composition spans about 200 years and seven octaves which also cover a great portion of the human hearing range. Like life itself, these compositions resemble each other in their general layout. However, in detail they reveal most diverse characteristics, when taking a closer look (listen). And just as in real life, various interferences may occur between single tones, leading to more and less harmonious constellations.
[Bernhard Gál]
Bernhard Gál
Austrian artist, composer and musicologist Bernhard Gál is equally at home within the domains of contemporary music, installation art and media art. As of now, Gál has created around 80 sound installations and intermedia art projects, combining sound, light, objects, as well as architectural concepts and video projections into multidimensional and prevalently site-specific art works. He also composes for acoustic instruments and electro-acoustic music. As a laptop musician, Gál has performed extensively on five continents, and worked with numerous musicians of the electronic and improvised music scenes. Since 2006, Gál has also been the creative head behind ‘shut up and listen!’ - Interdisciplinary Festival for Music and Sound Art, in Vienna. Between 2006 and 2007 he taught sound art at the University of Arts in Berlin. From 2010-13 Gál held a research position at the Paris Lodron University Salzburg, in conjunction with the interdisciplinary doctoral college ‘Art and the Public’. Currently he is working on a PhD concerning sound installation art. His work has been made available on ca. 30 audio publications and documented with various catalogue books and DVDs. In 2015, his book and DVD-Video Zwischenbrücken, Sound Installations and Intermedia Art 2005–2015 was published by edition sp ce.