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Catastrophic Structures: listening to the hum of distant machinery

Audiovisual Installation



'Catastrophic Structures: listening to the hum of distant machinery' is the first presentation of Numina Gneisspecker’s long-term audiovisual research into catastrophic structures and their immanent slow violence. Numina Gneisspecker developed a new multi-channel audiovisual installation to draw ”attention to catastrophic acts that are low in instant spectacle but high in long-term effects” (Nixon).

Zooming in on the harbours of Antwerp and Rotterdam, the two largest gateways into Europe’s economies, they find concrete beaches stacked with containers, ships filled with fossil fuels and many other elements fuelling our societies and consequential destruction. Petrochemical installations, (nuclear) power plants, distribution centres pass by while the main narrator of this installation, a trucker, tries to find some apocalyptic hope in this highly automated, yet inhospitable landscape. His warm and personal voice counterbalances his distant and inert surroundings. Can we ”rediscover the earth amongst its decomposition” (Kohso), he wonders.

The first presentation of 'Catastrophic Structures: listening to the hum of distant machinery' took place March, 2024 at V2_ in Rotterdam. In september 2024 the work will be presented at LTK4 in Cologne (DE).

Credits
Voice: Adam Galach
Polish translation: Misia Halwa
Cinematography: Casper Brink
Catastrophic Structures is generously supported by Stimuleringsfonds and Nederlands Filmfonds.

redforest.zone



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WATCHTOWER (2024)

Series of sound installations



With Johannes Bellinkx I developed a series of site specific sound installations near Fredrikstad (NO). By listening intensely to the landscape and in a later stage recording it, I created seven multi-channel compositions that can be considered dialogues with the landscape. A landscape that consists of a waste processing site next to a fjord. During the stroll along the installation the spectator is invited to lean into unconventional perspectives and listen to sounds that defy human borders.

Opening on the 23rd of May, 2024 and constantly running until 26 September, 2024 more info on the Østfold Internasjonale Teater website.

Listen to a stereo impression of the WATER station:









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Radical Murmur
(2022)

Sonic Essay



RADICAL MURMUR is a three-part sonic essay on the political possibilities of sound. We live in an age dominated by images and language. What do we learn about ourselves and the world when we close our eyes and open our ears? RADICAL MURMUR is the full English version of the bi-lingual sonic essay RADICAAL GEROEZEMOES, that was earlier published in rekto:verso and Gonzo (circus). We listen and talked with: Justin Bennett, Evelien van den Broek, Peter Cusack, Mint Park, Davide Tidoni and Salomé Voegelin.

RADICAL MURMUR is a production by TRASHLINIE. TRASHLINIE is Sjoerd Leijten and Roel Griffioen. RADICAL MURMUR was made in collaboration with rekto:verso, Gonzo (circus) and Collateral.





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A Rational World (2022)

Tape Release





A RATIONAL WORLD weaves field recordings, improvised music and climate activist statements into a fierce, joyful and poetic call to arms in times of ecological collapse. The music was created during the making of the experimental short film ANSAGE ENDE and was recorded inside an old barn on the farm of Gjalt Tjeerdsma in Beetsterzwaag, Friesland (NL). Both the film and this release dwell on the question how to live and fight in an ever more rapidly warming world.

“The seas are rising and so are we!”

This release features exclusive art work by artist Che Go Eun. The Limited Edition Cassette has its own exclusive design by the artist and was riso printed at Afreux (afreux.be).

REVIEWS
A CLOSER LISTEN by Maya Merberg

(...) “A Rational World” is a masterpiece of a wakeup call. Haunting and riotous, it demands the listener’s attention. And though it elucidates the severity of our crisis, it is not without hope. At one point a spirited mob chants, “The seas are rising and so are we!” For all the chilling impartiality that exists, passion prevails.

VITAL WEEKLY 1339 by Frans de Waard

(...) You could think of this as a radio play had the issue not been genuine. Yet this message doesn't stand in the way of the music; there is much to enjoy there. I enjoyed this oddball mix of loopy electronics, picking up voices, drums, and recorders, set against the real thing. Sometimes on the verge of breaking down, traditionally improvised and the next moment scratching and peeping in true electro-acoustic music fashion. Altogether a fascinating and robust statement!


credits released May 23, 2022

The music was recorded at the farm of Gjalt Tjeerdsma in Beetsterzwaag. Field recordings were made during the Code Rood blockade of the NAM (NL), at the Hambacher Forest (DE) and in Friesland (NL). All material was recorded in 2018 for ANSAGE ENDE, an award-winning short film by Sjoerd Leijten and Stijn Verhoeff.

Recorders: Verena Barié Drums and synths: Gerri Jäger Electronics: Sjoerd Leijten Recording engineer: Malu Peeters Field recordings: Sjoerd Leijten, Malu Peeters, Stijn Verhoeff Editing: Sjoerd Leijten, Malu Peeters, Stijn Verhoeff Mastering: Sjoerd Leijten Cover art: Che Go Eun (chegocheck.cargo.site) Riso printed at Afreux (afreux.be) Released by NUMINA TAPES in 2022



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Music for Traders (2022)

Generative Audiovisual Composition



MUSIC FOR TRADERS is a performative web-based audiovisual installation consisting of real-time generative 3D visuals and audio. The work revolves around an infinitely generative feedback loop: audio signals feed into the generation of images and image analysis feeds back into the audio production. Once someone interacts with it or signals are fed into it, its natural unpredictability turns the installation into a chaos engine.

These compositions are the result of our exploration and experimentation with this mercurial machine. In this ongoing process we attempt to discover how even within the anarchic wilderness caused by its volatility, we can tune and shape its nature and character.



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Interpersonal Biofeedback Apparatus Encoding Cardiac Fluctuations (2021)

Interactive music composition



This interactive installation by artist Coralie Vogelaar examines our urge to exert control over our body. Changes in HRV directly impact on the music composition by Sjoerd Leijten, created in programming environment SuperCollider, that resonates via transducers through ceramic organ like sculptures. The installation was exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam as part of the Prix de Rome.




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As we there are
(2020)

Performance



The duo RAINBOWPEEL 475.13 - consisting of visual artist Mariana Lanari and composer Sjoerd Leijten - create performances, music and installations based on fragments of Finnegans Wake. The book takes the form of a dream, written in a dream language, breaking the rules of grammar and spelling in a prose mixed with musical forms constructed with onomatopoeic qualities. RAINBOWPEEL 475.13 use voice, DIY software, acoustic instruments, synthesizers and field recordings leading to open networks of possibilities and a faithfully unfaithful renarration. The computer code behind the setup enables to control and sample on-the-fly, yet also delivers unexpected artifacts, sounds and structures.

'As we there are' is a performance re-narrating chapter II.2 from Finnegans Wake. It was performed in toitoiDrome, Antwerp and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven on the occassion of James Joyce's birthday on the 2nd of February, 2020.

RAINBOWPEEL 475.13 website - by Remco van Bladel

Watch 'Supernoctural' by RAINBOWPEEL 475.13 down here.

Listen to the track 'End here, us then, finnagain' by RAINBOWPEEL 475.13:









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Ansage Ende (2019)

Film



Climate activist film by Stijn Verhoeff and Sjoerd Leijten.

The experimental short film ANSAGE ENDE is an artistic reflection on being engaged with the world. Combining fiction and documentary, music and text, this hybrid film calls for a collective and activist approach to the climate crisis.

The visually stunning ANSAGE ENDE opens with an imaginative journey through an empty landscape where water meets land. Two characters walk through the mud, away from the viewer, into an open yet unknown future. They fantasize about what our rapidly developing world might bring and question their personal participation in this possible future. Slowly the film moves away from the imaginary into the real. Climate destruction becomes ghastly visible: huge machines in a brown coal mine eat up the soil, searching for energy and profit. Policemen and women enable sawers to cut down the neighbouring forest for the expansion of the mine. Young activists occupy the trees, trying to stop the destruction of this primeval forest.

An experimental musical score strengthens the joyful militancy of the activists and leads the narrative of the film to a third location: an old barn. Here, surrounded by animals and farm life, three musicians play music; their tunes travel to the many corners of the farm. With subverting fragments of text mixed through the music, they call for more radical action and hint at overthrowing the economic elite.

A short, but poignant sci-fi excursion ends ANSAGE ENDE, shedding dystopic light on our shared future, while a megaphone choir suggests a collective uprising: “The seas are rising and so are we!”

Watch the film down here Password: ende

Listen to the audio trailer of the upcoming 'A Rational World' release here:



Best Experimental Award, Rome Independent Cinema Festival

Climate Award, Cinema Verde, International Environmental Film and Arts Festival, Florida

DCP, 22 minutes, 2019 Dutch, German and English with English subtitles

CREW Cinematography - Casper Brink Edit - Jasper de Bruin and Stijn Verhoeff Sound - Sjoerd Leijten and Malu Peeters Music - Verena Barie, Gerri Jäger, Sjoerd Leijten Editing, mixing and mastering - Sjoerd Leijten and Malu Peeters Titles - Karoline Swiezynski Production - Gneisspecker

WAD Actors - Daan Alkemade and Dries Alkemade Acting coach - Sanne Nouws Text - Stijn Verhoeff Translation subtitles - Chris Meighan Catering - Kristina Benjocki

HAMBACH Voice - Sandra Schultz (Deutschlandfunk) Translation subtitles - Karoline Swiezynskii Police - Nordrhein-Westfalen Polizei Tree squatters - Hambacher Forst ‘Hambi’ activists

BEETSTERZWAAG Farm owner - Gjalt Tjeerdsma Flutes - Verena Barie Drums - Gerri Jäger Electronics - Sjoerd Leijten Voice - Andreas Malm (from the lecture Learning to Fight in a Warming World) Catering - Kristina Benjocki Animals - the unheard witnesses

2143 megaphone choir – Jo Caimo megaphone choir – Inne Eysermans megaphone choir – Vesna Faassen megaphone choir – Sjoerd Leijten

Supported by Mondriaan Fonds, AFK and Kunsthuis SYB

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Sigils (2019)

performance, installation



Sigils is a project of digital artist / filmmaker Alexander Mangel and musician / composer Sjoerd Leijten, in which they develop an audiovisual instrument that operates as an autonomous feedback loop. At De Ruimte and In De Ruimte we gave our first demonstration of the system, using audio programming environment SuperCollider and game engine Unity. Moving Sigils is made possible by the Creative Industry Stimulation Fund.





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Seinsters (2018)

installation, 36 minute long audio work



At the highest point of West-Terschelling, in and around the abandoned ‘Seinhuisje’, Olle Kruijt, Sjoerd Leijten and Stijn Verhoeff developed the site-specific audio installation Seinsters. Featuring in an ‘expedition’, with 14 other artworks at Oerol, they created a multi-layered and immersive gesamtkunstwerk. Told by two ‘Seinsters’, Ghosts of the Ether, and coming from all cracks and corners of the abandoned house, Seinsters takes the audience on an imaginary audio journey around the island of Terschelling. North of the island the listeners encounter a gas drilling platform, where a sudden explosion smashes the platform in pieces and sends its workers into the sea. Southwards, bird island Griend pops up (where the artists spend three days, see this video), while in the meantime live radio signals intervene with the stories told and oil drums come to live through resonating speakers.
The experience is influenced by the weather and its surroundings; wind makes the fences squeak, rain forces visitors to come closer the house, sunshine casts a lightening spell on the at times gloomy at times serene audio work.

The project was commisioned by Oerol and Natuurmonumenten and started off with a 3 day residency on the bird island Griend. A video report from Omrop Fryslân can be seen down here.

Site-specific, 8 channel audio installation with megaphones, resonance speakers, oil drums, plastic buckets, and more.

With the voices of Jeanne-Marie Knops and Caroline Ruigrok.

Text in Dutch, 36 minutes loop.

Listen to a recording of the installation down here:





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De toekomst ligt in zee (2018)

Three Channel Audio Installation, One hour radio work


De toekomst ligt in zee is a dreamy and poetic trip through an imaginative landscape. Atmospheric sounds fill the gallery, at times imaginative, at times raw and harsh. Various voices (female, male, soft, sharp) rise up from the landscape. Three stories are told, a fourth voice brings the stories together. Like paintings-in-time the stories come to life. Like in a film the listener travels to and through places she or he has not yet been before.

Specifically for the outdoor audio exhibition Lûd at Rijsterbos, we attuned, together with För Künkel, our audio work De toekomst ligt in zee. The site specific installation features in an exhibition with artists Uri Aran, Cecilia Bengtsson, Cilia Erens, Dora García / Jan Mech, Bouke Groen, Voebe de Gruyter, Florian Hecker, Edwin van der Heide, Saskia Janssen, Laura Maes, Matt Mullican, Jan Ruerd Oosterhaven, Falke Pisano, Ramon van de Werken and Peter Zegveld.

Audio work - initiated by Stijn Verhoeff - and made in collaboration with Malu Peeters. In the fall of 2016 the work - curated by Vincent van Velsen - premiered at Galerie van Gelder in Amsterdam as a three channel sound installation. In the summer of 2018 the work was exhibited inside a 'jachtkansel' as part of the Lûd sound art festival.

With the voices of Roberta Petzoldt, Maarten Pieterson, Caroline Ruijgrok, Yvo Sprey and Stijn Verhoeff.

Listen the piece here:





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BEACON (2017)

Installation, Performance



The aether is full of radiomagnetic waves. Wifi, mobile telephony, radio stations, yet also the electromagnetic waves of distant comets float through the air around us. BEACON is an installation performance in which the aether is scanned for all kinds of signals. The found signals are channeled into an ongoing cosmic composition.

The beacon consists of three compartments with speakers, raspberries, software defined radios and antennae. Software is developed in telecommunication environment GNURadio and audio programming language SuperCollider. A controller has been made from melted plastic to control parameters like the tuning frequency, the band width and the demodulation type. In the top of the beacon there is an AM transmitter, which enables the beacon to receive radio waves, manipulate them and then send the distorted waves back into the aether.

Beacon is a project by Sjoerd Leijten and Olle Kruijt, who collaborated earlier on the audiovisual bicycle project Volle Band and scooter radio play Dus Niet Brommen.



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Removing the Entrance
(2016)

Composition, Performance



A sound performance by audiovisual collective Volle Band parasiting on the composition 'The Entrance' by Robert Ashley. The piece was created for six radio's, two sound bicycles and church organ (the church organ performing the piece by Robert Ashley). The performance took place during dusk: from 17:06 to 18:06 on the 6th of February. The audience was seated in the 'high choir' of the Old Church, only able to hear the performance and not see the sound producing objects.

A recording of the piece can be listened to down here:



Volle Band is an audiovisual performance collective centered around bicycles. The urban environment is explored through guerilla sound performances. Squares, bridges, streets, all kinds of public spaces can be occupied and turned into a stage. In this manner the numina – the spirit presiding over a place – is temporarily altered. A parallel world in which the space and the sound suddenly start to combine their energy by creating a fictive landscape.


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Convoi Exceptionnel (2014)

Expedition



"Volle Band's media bicycles will escort you through the outskirts of Amsterdam. Pacifist bicycle crusaders going into nearby, unknown territory while performing strange rituals. The rituals during this bike procession consist of a cello beatbox performance by Harald – cello man – Austbø, a duet between Jo Caimo's ensemble and Volle Band's sound bicycles, a recitation-while-riding-a-bike by Didier Jansen and an intense, experimental film screening by Jeffrey Babcock. So jump on your bike and join the convoy!"

Volle Band is an audiovisual performance collective centered around bicycles. The urban environment is explored through guerilla sound performances. Squares, bridges, streets, all kinds of public spaces can be occupied and turned into a stage. In this manner the numina – the spirit presiding over a place – is temporarily altered. A parallel world in which the space and the sound suddenly start to combine their energy by creating a fictive landscape.





Dus niet brommen (2013)

Scooter expedition



Als ware toergidsen namen jongeren het publiek achterop hun eigen scooter of brommer. Vooraf werd een route uitgestippeld langs favoriete hangplekken in de oude binnenstad. Plekken waar toeristen of andere bezoekers van de stad normaal gesproken niet komen, en zeker niet op zo’n verafschuwde, al dan niet, opgevoerde brommer.

De jongeren namen als Dordtse gastheer/vrouw, wildvreemde bezoekers achterop. Over en weer een redelijk intieme ervaring. Want jezelf overleveren aan een scooterjongere, niet wetende waar je naartoe gaat, jezelf vastgrijpend in de bocht of op de rotonde, dat levert een intense ervaring op. Het Amsterdamse kunstcollectief Volle Band werd gevraagd een hoorspel te ontwikkelen voor de scootertour. Zij maakten een surrealistische, opzwepende soundscape, waarbij allerlei verkeersgeboden en andere gebodsborden in de openbare ruimte het terugkerend element waren. Vandaar ook de titel ‘Dus Niet Brommen’. Deze expeditie reed juist wél door steegjes en over het grind. En de deelnemende scooters waren meer dan irritante, scheurende dingen. Volle Band maakte er muziekinstrumenten van. ‘Dus niet brommen’ was een commissie van Noordkaap en werd uitgevoerd op het Urban Explorers Festival in Dordrecht en tijdens Liminal Consortium vanuit Extra City in Antwerpen.