23.02.06 Sonic Acts XI, The Anthology of Computer Art.
Sonic Acts opens on the 23rd February at the Paradiso and De Balie in Amsterdam. It's an international festival that investigates the use of sounds and images in the digital arts. After a decade of editions, and among them the one in 2001 and 2005) this year theme is Computer Art, that is actually mutating in thousands of different paths thanks to the possibilities of personal intervention on software and hardware, even if at the same time it is rooted to the beginning of the social cybernetics. So it's no accident that the conferences are opened by the Jasia Reichardt keynote. She curated in 1968 the historical exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity at the ICA in London, one of the very first attempts to investigate the transforming possibilities of the real through the technologies. The history and the developments of computer art are intertwined to the sound/image relationship, and that's evident only retracing its history (it'd be worth to take a look at the book Visual Music). The same controversial concepts of 'hypermedia', 'intermedia' and 'multimedia' were initially related to the procedural connection between sound and visual, that is still totally open. The interdependence amongst the ocular / auditive aspects and their eventual hierarchical relationships (audio being reliant on video and vice versa) are part of the tight presentation program with guests as Ben Fry and Casey Reas, Golan Levin, Joan Leandre, Arjen Mulder and many performances as the one by Granular Synthesis. A dense dvd has been purposefully produced.