Milan Guštar and Slávo Krekovič: Audiovisual performance

Milan Guštar and Slávo Krekovič: Audiovisual performance is taking place as a part of the accompanying programme of the exhibitions Symbionts 2.0 and Beyond the Sound and on the occasion of Brno Art Week 2024.

SLÁVO KREKOVIČ: UNCANNY CANYON LIVE
Slávo Krekovič will present live material developing the material of the current album Uncanny Canyon, whose concept is based on a simple idea: imagine an improvising algorithmic virtual orchestra. Traditional and extended playing techniques are used freely outside of any particular style - and human playability. There are also no real musicians involved; instead of a conductor, there's just someone writing code to produce sounds and intervening when necessary (in a way that could mostly be described as "live coding" in SuperCollider language) instead of theatrical gestures. The result is a sometimes monumental pathos that is lightened by unexpected musical cuts. The human and generative machine processes are indistinguishable and intertwine in a strange loop.
https://krekovic.info
https://slavokrekovic.bandcamp.com

MILAN GUŠTAR: 210 AND OTHER COMPOSITIONS FOR TONE GENERATORS
Around 1999, I was thinking about what would happen if the note outlines in a score were tilted and all the notes then had to rise or fall, depending on how they progressed across the note lines. At first I wanted to create a few short pieces using this principle, then I began to systematically explore the whole thing from single notes to simple harmonies to thousands of simultaneous sounds. I also tried ever-changing rhythmic structures, smooth and never-ending tempo changes, or harmonies that change continuously. In the process, I've gone from the short pieces I originally intended to much longer pieces, some of which can last for many hours.
Eventually a series of studies called Flex emerged, each based on one or a few principles or structures, described by a simple algorithm, prescription or graph. They are also united by the economy of the resources used, the use of simple sounds, and formal purity. Most of them can be well represented graphically - the cycle includes algorithmically generated graphics that serve as scores. The individual movements can be performed separately, can be used as building material to create more complex pieces, or can be used in compositions using only their principles.
In 1999 it was too difficult to realize the prepared compositions with sufficient precision and in good sound quality. For several years the cycle remained only in concept, occasionally I returned to it, added new parts, and those that I considered to exceed the limits of the cycle of studies were discarded over the years and became independent compositions.
After 2005, I began to "materialize" the selected studies and compositions using the Csound program, and later added animated graphic scores, spectrograms, and other visual components to some of them. For several of them, I created a software environment in SuperCollider that allows live performance.
Composition 210 was created while looking for ways to generate different types of noise by composing a large number of simple tones. The name refers to the number of sound generators used. 1024 simultaneous tones with a sinusoidal waveform, whose frequencies form a geometric sequence, create noise with a spectrum similar to that of pink noise. The perfect order thus paradoxically becomes the source of chaotic harmony.

Entrance fee 50 CZK (only at the venue)