BEK, the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, would like to invite local artists to send in a proposal for the commision of a video/artwork, to be produced at BEKand subsequently screened at SCREEN CITY Festival, Stavanger, 25 Oct – 5 Nov 2013. The proposal should be for the production of a new video/artwork, its vital that the work should be presented in public space.
More Information

The object becomes the plane, the light will be given to the darkness, the silence reflects sound.
Overgangen, is an exploration of the distance between black and white, between light and darkness. We close ourselves in, in one of Bergen’s historic chambers and drape the windows.

Systematismens 1. Borg is a tacit construction of historical printing plates used in weed biologist Emil Korsmo (1864-2129) textbooks. Systematism pioneer Korsmo created a new economy in agriculture by classifying and measuring the value of useful and useless plants. The philosopher Steinar Bøyum will guide us through the philosophy behind moving collections and collectors. Throughout the evening, the tree-dimentional will transcend in to the two-dimensional. A silent film will remain. The food will be served within formats.

Rad # 5, Overgangen, will take place in Fortidsminneforeningen, Stranges Stiftelse at Klostergaten 28th in Bergen.
Thursday 6 June at 19.00.

Contributors:
Mari Kvien Brunvoll, Lasse Årikstad, Lona Hansen, Kristin Tårnesvik, Steinar Bøyum, Piya Wanthang, Tolga Balci, Espen Sommer Eide and Anne Marthe Dyvi.

Rad is a series of events created by Anne Marthe Dyvi and Espen Sommer Eide for BEK. Rad is supported by Bergen Kommune.

Time and place:

• Fortidsminneforeningen Stranges Stiftelse - 06/06/2013 19:00

Maia Urstad has been using Projectroom 1 at BEK to rehearse for her concert performance at BLÅ in Oslo. Her composition, Crackle Stories, is part of the Only Connect nyMusikk’s annual festival of adventurous music.

Maia Urstads piece is described as an elegy for FM noise.

As standard radio technology moves from analogue to DAB, a whole world of sound will be lost: the strange yet familiar tuning noise found in the gaps between stations. Sound artist Maia Urstad’s performance is a wireless composition in which she makes a live mix of voices and interference noise from radios around the world and sends it to portable radios held by members of the audience. An elegy for a vanishing region of the sound spectrum.

Time and place:

• BEK - 03/06/2013 to 06/06/2013

Ellen Røed will show the result of her Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme with the exhibition Skyvelære at Galleri 3,14 in Bergen. BEK has supported the project with project space, studio facilities, and with technical assistance for the rigging of the exhibition. The opening is on Thursday 13th June at 19.00

Composed of the words sliding and knowing, the norwegian term Skyvelære means caliper, a device for measuring distance. In the exhibition Skyvelære Ellen Røed is reflecting on devices and procedures that are used in video art and in the natural sciences. She considers various relationships involved in creating representations; field trips, story telling, gathering or capturing of data, measuring, calibrating.

Ellen Røed is a research fellow in fine arts at Bergen Academy of Arts and Design, in The Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme, and this exhibition constitutes the artistic result of her fellowship project.

The exhibition will be opened by Dr. Werner Schmutz, director of Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos / World Radiation Center.

Signe Lidén has collaborated with Ellen Røed on two installations in the show. She will also present a soundpiece in the Parabol serie in the downstairs entrance hall, curated by Lydgalleriet.

The project is supported by Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme, Bergen Kommune and BEK.

Time and place:

• Galleri 3,14 - 13/06/2013 to 11/08/2013

Marcus Davidson has recently done some recordings in our sound studio using the Cubase 7 editor and different microphones such as the Blueberry and the Røde NTG-3.

Marcus explains:

I am currently focusing on music which reflects the sounds of nature.

I’m particularly interested in recordings made by spacecraft of planets, stars and other cosmic features, which I’ve found to be surprisingly musical. Often these recordings sound like Indian drone music, so I am combining them with singing and eastern instruments.

At BEK, I was was able to to record a Darbouka and blend it with the sound of the Vela pulsar. I also recorded a small vocal ensemble which sang my transcription of the sound of the planet Jupiter.

Both recordings went really well and I feel the work has really progressed. Many thanks to BEK also for their expert technical help!

Time and place:

• BEK - 27/05/2013 00:00

The Art Committee will select three projects to be completed by June 2014 / Budget for each art project is kr.76.000, – SUBMISSION DEADLINE 10 June 2013

More info

The presentation is sent electronically as pdf, it should contain maximum 10 pages and not exceed 2Mb
Send the presentation to contact@iolab.no

Søren Andreasen will hold an Arduino workshop at BEK Monday 10. – Friday 14th June. The course is free, join by mailing us.

Beginners and those who need to brush up on the very basics, get a brief introduction to hardware KITs and software Monday 10 and Tuesday 11 June between 16.00 – 21.00

Wednesday 12. – Friday 14. we follow up those who have worked a bit with Arduino before and those who have their own projects they need help to get on with. These three days we start at 10.00 and keep it going until around 17.00

The course is free, but bring your own laptop.
Workshop holder is Søren Andreasen, who is here on a residency from Denmark.

Join by mailing us at bek@bek.no

Spread this information happily on to those you think might be interested.

Time and place:

• BEK - 10/06/2013 to 14/06/2013

Today we’ve installed Cubase 7 at the sound studio. In order to book yourself in at the studio, send an email to booking@bek.no. Enjoy!

BEK, the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts, would like to invite local artists to send in a proposal for the commision of a video/artwork, to be produced at BEK and subsequently screened at SCREEN CITY Festival, Stavanger, 25 Oct – 5 Nov 2013. The proposal should be for the production of a new video/artwork, its vital that the work should be presented in public space.

An integral part of the Proposal is an active engagement with BEK on a basis to create this new work in our studios alongside professional artists, as well as making use of BEK´s audiovisual production equipment such as HD videorecorders, Digital Mirrorreflex (canon 5d) and accesoires, (mobile) Digital Audio recorders and microphones. One of our project rooms will be at your disposal.

Equipment list: http://www.bek.no/pages/equipment?locale=en
The studios: http://bek.no/pages/fascilities?locale=en

-The deadline for the call is on the 15th of June.
-Production period is from 1st of September until the 23rd of October 2013.
-An amount of 50.000 NOK is availabale for production of the artwork, and to cover all the artists expenses for procurements, own fee, renting, transport etc.

The proposal should contain the following:
-A work proposal for Screencity & production period at BEK
-CV and overview of previous works
-Time scedule for the production
-Budget for the production of the Artwork
-link to previous works

The proposal can be sent digital as PDF/Word doc to bek@bek.no with subject “proposal video artwork”

For questions regarding the call and/or BEK´s productionfacilities email marieke@bek.no

More information about Screen City: http://www.screencity.no

BEK is a non-profit organization situated in Bergen, Norway, functioning as a national resource centre for work within the field of arts and new technology.
BEK works with both artistic and scientific research and development and puts into practice an amount of mixed artistic projects. It also practices an educational program that includes courses, workshops, talks and presentations.

Time and place:

• BEK - 22/05/2013 to 15/06/2013

Composer Knut Vaage and librettist Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen’s recently written work Khairos is a modern on & offshore opera about a man with a hyper-sensitivity to sound.

Thorolf Thuestad makes the sound design, and a lot of the sound work is done in BEK’s studio.

Tickets

When the noise from a leaf-blower in Khairos Park drives him mad, he kills the machinist. He must serve his sentence for the crime on an oil platform. Here his exceptional hearing abilities are discovered, making seismic instruments for oil drilling redundant. From then on the already prosperous society of Khairos is able to acquire new, profitable oil wells.

«We have made Khairos the name of a civilisation, a place from our times that profits from both past and future resources. And which perhaps precisely for that reason, goes under,» says librettist Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen. He has collaborated with Knut Vaage previously on the opera Veslefrikk, which in 2010 received a great deal of attention after its premiere at the Den Nye Opera (The New Opera) in Bergen. We are looking forward to exciting results from the seasoned theatre director Kjersti Horn when she and the Norwegian National Opera soloists take the stage of the Second House with Knut Vaage’s new apocalypse of an opera.

Khairos is a commission piece from the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet.

More about the opera here

Interview with Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersen

Critics in Ballade

Time and place:

• Den norske opera - 10/05/2013 to 29/05/2013

‹‹Sound as a global way of telling stories in an emotional language››
The Argentinian artist, Joaquin Cófreces , will give an artist talk at BEK the 16th of may at 3.00 pm.

BEK are happy to announce that Joaquin Cófreces will share work and experience working with sound with us during his stay in Bergen.

Joaquin Cófreces (b.1975) is a sound storyteller within feature, radio art, radio drama, museum installations, field recording, sound art and soundscapes. He comes from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. He has been featured by broadcasters, festivals and galleries around the world (China, Iran, India, France, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Belgium, and now Norway.) He is a dedicated collector of sounds. He sees him self as an intuitive journalist, understands radio like a space of experimentation, sound as a global way of telling stories in an emotional language. His features and radio art pieces were awarded in different festivals: Premio radio sin limites (Buenos Aires 2006), Bienal Internacional de radio (Mexico, 2006 and 2012), Premio abri los ojos (Fm Metro – Buenos Aires 2009) , 8th International radio festival (Iran 2007). 10 th International radio Festival (Iran 2009. Best sound editor. Best innovative program) Phonurgia Nova (radio art – France.2009) Ake Blomstrom award (Ebu – IFC 2010) nominated to the prize Fundacion Nuevo periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI – 2007) honorable mentions: Premio periodistico Rey de España (Spain 2007), Grand Prix of radio (URTI – France 2007), Septima Bienal internacional de radio (Mexico 2008).
During his stay in Norway, he will present his work, Kanus Hinterlassen keine Spuren, at International Feature Conference in Bergen.
BEK will serve a small meal during the presentation. You are welcome!

Time and place:

• BEK - 16/05/2013 15:00

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: An opportunity for a Norwegian artist to create a new piece of moving image work for Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK.

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and NABROAD/Norwegian Collaborative Organisation for Contemporary Art Abroad are pleased to announce a new opportunity for an international artistic collaboration between North East England and Norway through film and moving image.

Supported by Arts Council England and The Royal Norwegian Embassy London, we will award a visual artist based in Norway the opportunity to create a new moving image work to premiere as part of the 9th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, 2013 from 25th – 29th September in Berwick-upon-Tweed, UK.

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is an international celebration of the art of film, set on the border between England and Scotland, and looking out onto the North Sea. NABROAD is a catalyst for international collaboration, based between Norway and the UK, and with strong connections to the North East and Scotland.

Together we will work to select and invite an artist to Berwick, work with the artist to create a new piece of work for the Festival, and to help it tour. The selected proposal will be awarded £2,000 GBP in artist fees, and installation costs will be covered in addition.

http://berwickfilm-artsfest.com/commissions
http://www.nabroad.org/commission—opportunity-2013.html

Musikk i brennpunktet i kveld vil ha et innslag om prosessen frem til ferdig verk. Sjekk ut NRK P2, Musikk i brennpunktet, onsdag 15. mai kl. 21.03 – 22.00.

Operaen Khairos, komponert av Knut Vaage med libretto av Torgeir Rebolledo Pedersens, fremføres for tiden på Den norske opera. Lyddesign er gjort av Thorolf Thuestad ved BEK.

The latest issue of the Computer Music Journal (MIT Press) includes an article on the Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format (SpatDIF) by Nils Peters, Trond Lossius, and Jan Schacher, entitled “The Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format: Principles, Specification, and Examples”.

Here’s the abstract of the paper:

SpatDIF, the Spatial Sound Description Interchange Format, is an ongoing collaborative effort offering a semantic and syntactic specification for storing and transmitting spatial audio scene descriptions. The SpatDIF core is a lightweight minimal solution providing the most essential set of descriptors for spatial sound scenes. Additional descriptors are introduced as extensions, expanding the namespace and scope with respect to authoring, scene description, rendering, and reproduction of spatial sound. A general overview presents the principles informing the specification, as well as the structure and the terminology of the SpatDIF syntax. Two use cases exemplify SpatDIF’s potential for pre-composed pieces as well as interactive installations, and several prototype implementations that have been developed show its real-life utility.

The full paper can be found here. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the SMC conference 2012 where it received a Best Paper Award.

More information on SpatDIF can be found here.

Time and place:

• Computer Music Journal - 11/05/2013 to 20/05/2013

On the Air: Call for sound pieces

MuseRuole is a festival dedicated to experimental music and puts contemporary female musicians and performers at its centre. It is a journey of discovery into the wide world of current musical research, looking for specifically female modes of expression, with its own grammar and personal style. This year (2013) we focus on the theme of radio as a space for musical research and a medium of technological innovation, including notions of sending and receiving in equal measure. MuseRuole – Radio Edition invites female artists, composers and musicians to participate in the ‘virtual jukebox on the air”. To submit, please send us a short composition, field recording or excerpt of a longer work (maximum length: 5 minutes). The selected works will become part of this year’s edition of MuseRuole and will be introduced at Museion – Passage (Museum of modern and contemporary art, Bozen – IT)on 5th June 2013. They will also me made available for download via soundcloud. In addition, they will be played via Radia, an international network of 24 independent stations, on national and local radio stations. Last but not least from 7th-30t June 2013 they will be part of a listening station at the Women’s Museum in Meran, Italy. For more information, please visit the website below.

Deadline: May 17, 2013
http://museruole.tumblr.com/call-en

Ved Kunst- og designhøgskolen i Bergen er det ledig 50 % stilling som verksmeister i elektroniske og digitale media ved Avdeling for kunst. Verksmeisteren har sin arbeidsplass ved datalaboratoriet og lydstudioet i avdelinga, og har ansvaret for den daglege drifta av desse.

More info

BEK has commissioned a new electro-acoustic composition from Anders Vinjar, one of the foremost experts in Norway on OpenMusic and computer-aided composition. The commisioned work will make use of ambisonics coding, shaping and decoding, algorithmic composition, artistic programming and work with 3D sound and spatialization.

BEK also supports Anders in his effort to port Open Music to Linux, and over the next year we are planning several exciting workshops relating to OpenMusic.

Anders Vinjar – web site

Computer-assisted composition in Open Music

In parallel with the development of digital audio processing, there has been a more general move towards a quantification of musical material. When musical material has been quantified, it may be subject to data processing, and computer-aided composition has become a key field within contemporary music practice. Computational tools offers new ways of developing and manipulating different types of compositional material. The result can be expressed and further developed as music notation, or used as input for further processing with various music and audio softwares.

For many composers OpenMusic is the the preferred tool in computer-aided composition. OpenMusic has been developed over many years at IRCAM, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and is used by composers worldwide. Open Music is a visual programming language for music, built on Common Lisp. This combination provides easy access for anyone working with composition without requiring special skills in programming. At the same time OpenMusic is able to cater for those who will move on and develop custom extensions. OpenMusic is flexible and do not enforce any stylistic constraints. It fascilitates simple note editors as well as advanced solutions based on arbitrary suitable programming paradigms such as artificial intelligence and constraint systems. This flexibility makes the tool usable and scalable, and attractive for beginners as well as advanced users. OpenMusic has strong support for the treatment of traditional musical structures in the form of musical editors and high-level functions for music. As users and different types of needs have emerged, OpenMusic has also been used successfully for a wide variety of material – such as photos, text, choreography, spatialisation and much more.

Commissioned, development and workshops

Anders Vinjar is one of the foremost composers in Norway working on computer-aided composition by means of Open Music. BEK and Anders Vinjar have now joined forces in order to strengthen efforts in this field. With funding from Det norske komponistfond we recently commissioned a new work from Anders. The work will make use of ambisonics coding, shaping and decoding, algorithmic composition, artistic programming and work with 3D sound and spatialization. The commissioned work will be finalised in the spring of 2014, and will then be performed at an Avgarde event.

Anders is also currently working on a Linux port of OpenMusic. This development effort is done in collaboration with BEK and in close contact with Jean Bresson at Ircam.

In autumn 2013 we plan an introductory workshop to OpenMusic at BEK targeting composers and others in the Bergen region (and beyond). Further information on this workshop will come later. In the future we also hope to be able to host a specialist workshop where core users and developers of Open Music can meet and exchange ideas and experiences.

Finally we have set up a new mailing list for Norwegian users of OpenMusic. If you want to join in, please sign up here.

So far BEK has received support for this project from Det norske komponistfond and the Municipality of Bergen. We also cooperate with Avgarde on presenting the commissioned work.

Time and place:

• BEK - 09/05/2013 to 01/05/2014

I’M 2 SAD 2 TELL U 2 is a work by Everbabe that was shown at Galleri Bokboden from 22nd of April to 28th of April. BEK has supported the project with equipment.

After a year of holding it together, focused on their future and career, EVERBABE has come to a halt. «I can’t take it anymore» Lolhita says. «Have you ever tried sleeping with a broken heart?.» Over the past months the girls have gradually locked themselves in – not leaving the house, scarcely even the bedroom. From 22nd to 28th of april we offer you a unique view into the tragic private life of these starlets. Free of charge. Every day at Galleri Bokboden from 10 – 22

Time and place:

• Galleri Bokboden - 22/04/2013 to 28/04/2013

Exhibition by Olof Nimar at Tollbodalmenningen 39. Opens Friday 26 April at 18.00. BEK supports the exhibition with equipment.

“The material drifts more viscous as the temperature lowers. Soon it will stop
moving completely. Frozen. Fixed right there and then in the movement that never
occurred. The substance cramped, feels numb. Paralyzed by a sudden attack from
nowhere. Immovable,(…)With a determined method, the cracks didn’t only run in
one or two ways, but in every possible direction.(…) One of these places where
every house looks exactly like the other, and you are guaranteed to get lost. The
facades plunge tightly. (…) Million of years later. (…) The coherent expression led
to unexpected consequences. Our thoughts act just as randomly, still
systematically, as the cracks behaved. (…) Angularly circulating the polygons, just
like the blind man’s cane.”

Olof Nimar (b. 1985) holds an MFA from Malmö Art Academy. Past exhibitions
include group shows at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Dordtyart,
Dordrecht; Lunds Konsthall, Lund; Galleri Arnstedt, Östra Karup; Gallerie HBK,
Braunschweig and others, as well as solo/duo presentations at Galleri Mors
Mössa, Gothenburg; UKS, Oslo; Gallery KHM, Malmö.

Opening Friday 26.04 at 18.00 – 20.00
Opening hours:
27.04 – 05.05
Friday, Saturday and Sunday: 12.00 – 17.00
(or by appointment)

Time and place:

• Tollbodalmenningen 39 - 26/04/2013 to 05/05/2013

Sunday 5 and Monday 6 May, Bergen Improstorband invites you to an instrument building workshop with Johannes Bergmark at BEK. The goal is to create your own instrument to use at concerts on Tuesday 7 May at the Library, Østre and Cafe Opera.

Program:
Sunday 5:
- Workshop from 12.00 – 18.00 at BEK
(C. Sundtsgate 55, øverste etasje)

Monday 6:
- Workshop from 14.00 – 20.00 at BEK

Tuesday 7:
- Concert at Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek 14.00
- Exhibition of instruments and concert at Østre 18.00
- Concert at Cafe Opera 21.00

We need to know how many people are coming and therefore ask for feedback as soon as possible. The workshops Sunday and Monday lasts 6 hours, it is not required to be there all the time but the goal is that everyone make their own instrument to the concerts on Tuesday.

We arrange some material but we encourage everyone to bring things from the list below, or any other thing you think can be used (it’s nice if someone could bring some tools, too)

- Hardwoods – (can be old furnitures etc.)
- Plastic Material
- Cardboard Material
- Paper
- Metal
- Wire, thin and rough, hard and soft
- Rope, wire, string of various kinds
- Pipes of various kinds, length and dimension (the simplest to manage is plastic), conduits and other hoses
- Youghurt cups (f.ex. for youghurt clarinets)
- Balloons
- Sticks
- Steel angles and seizures

This will be fun!

The picture is downloaded from Johannes Begmarks web site

Time and place:

• BEK - 05/05/2013 12:00
• BEK - 06/05/2013 14:00