You are kindly invited to the sound event Whispering Bowls by Boštjan Perovšek, the first event of the MIGAV music cycle this season, which will take place on Thursday, 7 April 2022 at 8 p.m. at MMC KIBLA.

POSTER (PDF)
FLYER (PDF)

The project Whispering Bowls deals with the sonic perception of the relationship between the artificial and the natural, between the real and the fictional, and between the freedom of the individual and the control or limitation of this freedom. For the realization, Perovšek uses recorded archival texts, recorded texts based on a text generator, electroacoustic text processing, conversion of the alphabetic material of the texts into MIDI character notation and collection of movement data of individuals converted into MIDI notation. The texts (electro acoustically processed and converted to MIDI) are joined by music based on a concept/score that takes into account the vibrational signals of the spiders' activity.

The project's guiding principle is captured in the thought: »Understanding the known is expected, not understanding the known is possible.« In this context, texts are both sound streams and carriers of messages, which lose their credibility when taken out of context. They therefore remain only in the field of acoustics. The interweaving of archival texts (real recordings by the intelligence services of the former Yugoslavia, but without revealing the identity of the individuals! – source: Archives of the Republic of Slovenia) with sounds and music based on spiders' activity symbolically represents the web in which the individuals of the contemporary world are trapped, unconsciously leaving a trace of their activities on the Internet and their movements in the real world. We associate this web with the total control that corporations, and then states, are trying to establish as a normal element of the social system. If in one element of this project we are almost nostalgically recreating the (symbolically acoustic) surveillance apparatus of the last century, which was based on physical tracking and espionage, in another element we are touching on today's surveillance system.

The main “protagonists” of the project are:
•    The time-frozen secret recordings of the intelligence services of the former Yugoslavia in the role of the surveillance apparatus of the last century
•    Volunteers who knowingly leak information about their movements recorded by their phones
•    Spiders who do not know that everything they did in front of microphones is also intended for sound art
•    And the composer as a data manipulator

The sound event is realized in the form of a quadrophonic, spatially shaped sound projection. On stage is a musician who, in the manner of a manipulator, like a chef taking ingredients from different bowls that are known to be able to conjure up a unique dish each time, shapes the final sonic space.

Performance:
Concept, composition and sound realization by Boštjan Perovšek
Expert support by Dr. Roland Mühlethaler
Original sound material of spiders: Dr. Roland Mühlethaler, Studio Tomás Saraceno, Boštjan Perovšek
Data processing: GPS tracks, which allow the control of the movement of individual persons, were mapped into a MIDI audio format with the help of deep neural networks. The sonification of movements of the selected persons was enabled by: Laboratory for Computer Vision, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Science, University of Ljubljana.

Boštjan Perovšek (1956) is a musician, composer and designer of sound spaces. He composes experimental, electroacoustic music. His specialty is creating bio-acoustic music based on the sounds of animals, especially insects. He also plays with the bands SAETA, Jata C and Bio Industrial Acvoustica, impro. One of the most important areas of his work is the fusion of science and art. He also creates music for film, theatre, performances and multimedia installations. He is also known for creating soundscapes for public events, museums and galleries.

http://www.perovsek.si/

Admission is free. You can attend the event in accordance with the NIPH recommendations.

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Production: ACE KIBLA
Co-organization: X-OP Association for Contemporary Art, CODE BLUE Association
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, Municipality of Maribor

Photo: Gregor Salobir