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Clay by SHOLA (feat. Robyn Glass)

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The Listening Boothhas been created to provide a dedicated space for contemporary sound based art and a platform for experimental music. Traditional art galleries can be problematic spaces for hosting none visual works; however The Listening Booth allows the listener to experience the work in their own time. Along with a downloadable track many of the artists have included listening instructions, for example an artist can specify their work is best experienced at night, in the bath or on a commute. The listener is then able to embrace or ignore these instructions. This allows the artist and the listener to create their ideal gallery space.

The Listening Booth was created by artist Katie Tindle, ‘The Listening Booth reflects how we consume audio culture, through download and streaming. The Internet is the perfect space for a project of this kind because it bypasses the physical limitations of a gallery. It also allows us to play with the definitions of sound art, music and writing. The Listening Booth will host a lot of work that defies or straddles definitions. I felt it was important that the work be available for free so that it can be as widely accessible. By allowing their audience to download their work there’s a very intimate situation created between the artist and their listeners.’

Confirmed contributors include JDA Winslow, McGilvary/White, Eden Mitschenmaker, Taxi for My Uncle, Charles Verni, Nouria Bah.

A 30 minute preview of The Listening Booth was broadcast on Radio Anti during the Art Licks weekend, an arts festival held in October 2015. The preview can be heard here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

Combining a love of music with a passion for colour, Predominant.ly is the brainchild of Netherlands design collective Open Work. It enables music discovery by selecting from the colour spectrum.

Find something that falls outwith your usual musical tastes and explore the site here.

See more projects by Open Work on Central Station here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

This year’s Crossing the Line expands upon the relationship between cinema and visual art into the fields of music and poetry, with world premieres of unique experimental works, installations combined with live performances, and boundary-breaking productions from emerging artists.

Below are summaries of the ten screenings and events that make up this year’s Crossing the Line programme.

Nancy Holt: Sun Tunnels

19 February | CCA
Our Extra-Sensory Selves
Allison Gibbs’ new film is the result of research conducted with the Development Circle for Radical Subjectivity in France which shows participants’ journeys as they attempt to reach a higher state of consciousness. Allison Gibbs will be present for a Q&A after the screening.

20 February | Stereo
Square Legs, Round Bowls
A programme of new works using film to inform musical composition and by visual artists that use musical structures in their film work. The event will include work by Torsten Lauschmann, Rob Churm, Joe Howe, Beatrice Gibson, Richy Carey and Anneke Kampman.

22 February | CCA
Nancy Holt: Sun Tunnels / Revolve
Margaret Tait Award-winner for 2014 Charlotte Prodger will introduce this double-bill of work by pioneering American artist and filmmaker Nancy Holt (1938-2014). Sun Tunnels documents Holt’s eponymous site-specific construction in the Utah desert in 1976. Revolve, meanwhile, uses multiple camera angles and repetitions to modulate Dennis Wheeler’s personal narrative of his battle with leukaemia.

22 February | CCA
Beauty and the Right to the Ugly
This piece is set in the Dutch community centre of ‘t Karregat, Eindhoven, built in 1974 as a social project designed to perpetuate communal styles of living and to transfer ownership of living, working and recreational environments back to users.

23 February | GFT
Margaret Tait Award Screening
Named after acclaimed Scottish experimental filmmaker Margaret Tait, this annual award recognises Scotland-based artists who work within film and moving image in an experimental and innovative way. 2014 award-winner, Charlotte Prodger premieres her work.

24 February | GFT
Margaret Tait Residency: O.K. Rick
The Margaret Tait Residency aims to support and develop emerging Scotland-based artists working within film and moving image. Florrie James participated in the residency in 2014 and will screen her short drama set on a fictional island inspired by both Orkney and Shetland.

25 February | CCA
Reading in the Dark
Exploring the overlaps between language and film, Reading in the Dark is the second instalment of the research project of artist Suzanne van der Lingen, who will present this programme of artist film and video with work from Sarah Forrest, Laure Prouvost, Peter Rose and Gerard Byrne.

Reading In The Dark

AlgoRhythm

26 February | The Art School
AlgoRhythm
A series of collaborative art and music events that bring together practitioners from a variety of creative fields who specialise in the use of technology in their practice.

27 February | CCA
Letters to Max
Letters to Max documents the conversations between Maxim Gvinja, former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Abkhazia, a state which seceded from Georgia during the 1992-93 civil war, and acclaimed French artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire.

28 February | GFT
Sea Without Shore **WORLD PREMIERE**
André Semenza and Fernanda Lippi of the renowned Zikzira Physical Theatre mark their feature debut in Sea Without Shore: a mix of cinematic physical theatre and dance with sound design overseen by the Oscar-winning Glenn Freemantle and a soundtrack by The Hafler Trio.

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

DesignersMX is a project combining Blake Allen and Josh Sullivan’s passion for music with their love of design. Jesse Bunch came on shortly thereafter to make it all work.

A community of designers quickly emerged and made the site a playground for creativity and inspiration.

After a brief hiatus, Blake pitched a rebirth to Hannah Paramore in 2014 and now DesignersMX has the full attention of Blake, Hannah and the folk at Paramore | the digital agency.

A multitude of designers from around the world have shared their playlists along with their own beautifully designed cover artworks.

Sean Weber | DesignersMX

For 80s influenced electronica, check out Sean Weber’s Miami ’87 here. If that’s not your thing, may we suggest you begin with Tobias Van Schneider’s Delirium 2013 which has 13 hours of listening pleasure.

You can browse through a multitude of mixes here and see the designers who have taken part here.

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I recently spent two and a half days in Lyon, France exploring the Nuits Sonores Festival where my film, Cinema City was showing as part of a Glasgow based film programme. Below, are some of my observations.

Since the 1990s, the Confluence quarter of Lyon has undergone a massive redevelopment from its heavily industrial past. Located on a peninsula where the Rhône and Saône meet, what was once a base for the wholesale markets of the city is now an area full of architecturally unique offices, flats and an upscale mall. However quick the change, there are still traces of the old Confluence. It is here that Nuits Sonores began.

Confluence Quarter

Hôtel de Région

For the past ten years, the Confluence quarter has played host to this festival, billing itself as dedicated to “electronic, independent music and digital culture where music, design, graphic arts and architecture are closely related”. Within the last four years, the festival has also added a daytime programme of conferences, workshops, meetings, screenings and showcases geared towards industry professionals called the European Lab.

The European Lab finds itself in the highly-modern Hôtel de Région, a gargantuan building of wood and glass with a stunningly beautiful atrium. Suspended above is an installation created for the festival by Vincent Leroy entitled Auréole Boréale which oscillates gently.

Auréole Boréale by Vincent Leroy

Ultra-modern conference rooms play host to four days of events focusing on cultural policies, social change, culture and the city of tomorrow, media entrepreneurship and new cultural practice, music practice and innovation. It’s a whirlwind of highly-organised and exceedingly well-structured events in different formats featuring speakers from around Europe. Helpfully, there’s simultaneous interpretation for non-French speakers.

I spent day three of the conference learning about cultural incubators, new media and cultural change. The highlight was the talk about cultural European incubators which featured a panel of speakers from France, Serbia, Sweden, Slovakia, and the UK. Learning about how to create opportunities for cultural entrepreneurs and what challenges needed to be faced was exciting. For me, it really reinforced the idea behind the European Lab, “connecting cultural change-makers.”

With guest of the day speakers such as Agnès B., Bruce Sterling, Alain Damasio and Michel Gondry, placed next to industry heavyweights like Nicolas Demorand of Libération and television journalist, John-Paul Lepers, it really felt like these cultural discussions could be a catalyst for something larger.

Conference: Culture within a changing media landscape

I found myself in Lyon as part of another strand that’s become a part of the festival over the past years, the Carte Blanche programme. Nuits Sonores selects a city and creates a programme of music, urban history and art which feature prominently in the festival. Having featured London in 2009 and Manchester in 2005, this year it was Glasgow’s turn.

Halle aux Fleurs

The festival created a cinema in the Halle aux Fleurs, an old flower market which still bears the electric signage required for bidding on lots of flowers in francs. It’s a Brutalist structure from the 1960s brightened up with colourful pops of wallpaper and the sort of furniture that can only be described as granny chic. With a promotional lighting display from Philips, it was a strange mishmash of new and old with a hipster coffee cart thrown in the mix.

Ciné Glasgow in the Halle aux Fleurs

In the slightly more spartan cinema, wireless headsets allowed for free movement throughout the space, giving viewers the chance to clamber up into the former bidding seats, or to remain below and gaze up at the suspended screen.

Ciné Glasgow

The cinema, Ciné Glasgow, featured a continuous screening of different programmes of films about Glasgow including: Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Louise Ann and William Thomson,1965), a Vox Pop from Arte about cultural regeneration, a selection of work from the Glasgow Short Film Festival (curated by Matt Lloyd) and many more (including my own film).

Maison de la Confluence

Across the way from the cinema in La Halle, is the Maison de la Confluence, an outdoor space with a laid-back vibe that played host to many of the music events in the Glasgow programme. In addition to live sets from Optimo, Golden Teacher, Kode9, and Martyn Flyn, there were food trucks, drinks, and loads of pallets for a relaxing lounge in the sun before the evening programmes got underway.

There’s a reason Lyon’s symbol is that of a lion. As I climbed aboard a packed tram full of raucous festival goers heading to the Confluence quarter on the first night of the festival, it became clear that Lyon is a city of lions who roar loudly. It’s not unlike throbbing bass of the main events of Nuits Sonores, which start after ten and stop just before five in the morning.

These events take place at the Ancien Marché de Gros, an old wholesale market and the original base of the festival. The venue is home to three stages and some of the biggest events of Nuits Sonores. Featuring music by Jackmaster, Four Tet, Kraftwerk and more, these night performances are highly in demand with massive crowds of discerning music lovers turning out in full force for several evenings of all-night partying.

Just a few hours from Paris by high-speed train, both Lyon and Nuits Sonores have a lot to offer. With glorious summer weather in May, and a diverse range of events, this festival is certainly one to watch. For more information about Nuits Sonores, check out the festival website.

For more from Madeleine, check out her My Creative Scene about Paris.

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LeithLate14 returns for a fourth year in an expanded format, with a full weekend of art, music, film and spoken word. There are over twenty-five venues with newcomers Collective on Calton Hill, Embassy Gallery, Gayfield Creative Spaces, Vision Mechanics and Coburg House Art Studios joining the mix.

Coburg House Studios

The festival continues its visual art focus with a showcase of Ugandan contemporary art festival KLA ART in two photography installations. There’s also painting, video, sculpture, illustration, photography, collage, printmaking, performance, textiles and jewellery. Don’t miss internationally exhibiting Berlin-based Edinburgh artist Andrew Gilbert’s paintings and sculpture at his Settlement Projects charity shop installation.

Monument to Andrew the Zulu Queen – Andrew Gilbert

LeithLate are also curating a special outdoor exhibition with Leith Walkers which captures the characters of Leith Walk. Take part in the exhibition by having a photo snapped at the LeithLate mobile photo booth.

Leith Walkers

Get around the festival by jumping on the bespoke LeithLate vintage red London bus and enjoy travelling to different venues in style with the occasional live music performance (Saturday only).

Rhubaba Choir

Music continues to play an important role in the festival. Holy Mountain will headline at the Saturday night afterparty venue along with SAY award-nominated Adam Stafford and others. William Douglas and King Creosote will perform on Sunday at the LeithLate Bruncheon. Be sure to check out the Rhubaba choir and the live music at Elvis Shakespeare.

Bruncheon

LeithLate 14 will take place on Saturday 21 June from 5pm-10pm and on Sunday 22 June from 12pm-5pm. For more details see the LeithLate website.

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Over 500 graduating artists, film makers, designers and architects will show work as part of the Edinburgh College of Art’s 2014 Degree Show which is on display until 1 June. You can peruse work online from the schools of art, design, the Reid School of Music, and the architecture and landscape schools on the degree show website. With previous graduates now BAFTA and Turner Prize winners, there’s no time like the present to scope out new talent.

Here are some highlights:

In the sculpture studio are the 16 clay busts of Lionel Ritchie, which are Dylan McCaughtry’s playful response to the music video of the singer’s hit song, Hello. To create the work, he blindfolded himself and made the busts while listening to the 1984 song on repeat.

Elsewhere, Leah Pendleton has filled a studio with multi-coloured worm-like creatures, inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Jack Wrigley has placed several life-size puppets in formal wear around ECA, gazing upon proceedings. Faith Elliott has created a beautiful, glowing miniature universe inside a dark, ramshackle shed.

Painter Sophie Hopkins has taken strips of deliberately ugly wallpaper and made beautiful objects using only its edges. Beverley Hughes has created a tactile, reptilian surface by painstakingly attaching 100,000 individual grains of rice to a canvas.

Several students have produced work that creatively addresses everyday issues. In textiles, Jenny Ellery has worked with unusual materials to produce tactile products for fidgeters. Product designer Henry Collingham has devised a way to create a refrigerator from car parts cheaply available in the developing world.

Other students have created swimming goggles for the visually impaired and bird houses from waste carpet fibre. In Architecture, students show their designs – and some remarkable models – for their plans to transform neighbourhoods in Manchester, the Venetian lagoon and Japan.

Many students have looked to their own families for inspiration. Matilda Craston has brought to life the forgotten poetry of her great-uncle, who died in 1937 aged 17, using graphic design. In Film and Television, Stuart Edwards’ documentary, A Wee Night In, is about his 95 year-old gran finding love with a 90 year-old boyfriend who comes to stay at weekends. Jewellery and Silversmithing student Hazel Thorn has experimented with base and precious metals to create objects that look fragile but are deceptively strong.

Suzanne van der Lingen’s work in the Masters of Contemporary Art section splices together footage from 1950s adventure films set in jungles – such as The African Queen – to question the depiction of women and indigenous cultures.

Last minute preparations for the ECA degree show 2013

The ECA degree show is currently on display until 1 June. For more information see the degree show website.

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For more events, see our Weekly Bulletin here.

Few artists sum up the relentlessly adventurous spirit of Counterflows better than Maya Dunietz. Still in her early 30s, the Tel Aviv-based artist has earned a reputation as a committed experimentalist. While her background is in classical and jazz piano, Dunietz has cast her net widely to take in composition and improvisation, avant-rock, folk, electronic music, performance, theatre and sound installations. She’s performed with leftfield icons such as John Zorn, Mike Patton and Evan Parker, composed for Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram’s Hyperion Ensemble, and is currently working on a piece for a 600-strong female choir.

Her first solo album, which encompasses vocal pieces, ‘broken down piano’ and computer processing, is due in the coming month, while a recording of her free jazz trio with bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble is immanent (this crack London rhythm section are also making a Counterflows appearance, performing with saxophonist Joe McPhee).

Dunietz has performed in Scotland a number of times and in August, will perform in Glasgow’s Old Hairdresser’s with her partner Ilan Volkov (principal guest conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and curator of the international Tectonics festival) as Lover’s Ritual.

At Counterflows, she will be performing two sets: a duo with the remarkable Parisian artist Ghedalia Tazartes, and a recital of the piano music of Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, a 90 year old nun now living in Jerusalem.

How did you first come across the work of  Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou?
Nine years ago my partner, Ilan Volkov, brought home the record of Emahoy’s music (the album by Ethiopiques). We were immediately enchanted by her tender sounds, by this strange piano music that is unlike anything else we had heard and in the same time corresponding with so many things. We read her amazing life story in the liner notes and discovered that she had moved to live in the Ethiopian monastery in Jerusalem in the 80′s. We decided to go and find her. We knocked on her door in the monastery one morning, while she was sitting by the piano composing, as she did every morning between 9 and 1. We formed a special bond from the start, and a friendship grew between us three. We lost touch for a few years, and then six years later Emahoy called me, she was 88 at the time, and asked that Ilan and I come to see her, and help her out with a big project – printing her music in a book so that people around the world can play it.

She’s a fascinating artist. What attracted you to her music?
She’s indeed a fascinating artist. She has such flair and tenderness in her music and is so dedicated to her art. First thing I heard when listening to her recording, is the amazing touch she has on the piano. She is truly a gifted pianist and performer. Her sound is one of a kind , an ‘old school’, beautiful delicate sound. I’ve heard very few pianists play with such a great sound. There’s a very special sense of time in her music; even though she is writing waltzes or sonatas, the ‘accent’ of the music is Ethiopian, the time is constantly stretched and bent, subjective to the present moment, and the melodic lines have these spices that don’t exist in any classical piano repertoire. Something in the phrase goes another way.

Which of her pieces or recordings would you recommend to new listeners?
Well, of course there is the number one hit – ‘Homeless Wonderer’. That would be the first track. Then- ‘Golgotha’, ‘The Gardens of Gethsemane’, ‘Presentiment’, ‘A Mad Man’s Laughter’. You can find them in the Ethiopiques 21 album of Emahoy playing her own compositions, or in a vinyl released by Mississippi Records. And also you can find the notes to 12 of her pieces in the book that we made in 2013, published by the Jerusalem Season of Culture.

Compiling her scores must have been quite a task.
When Emahoy called me and asked us to come over and help, we did not expect this scenario: We came to the monastery, and Emahoy, 88 at the time, handed  me 3 old ragged plastic bags of ‘Air Ethiopia’, containing hundreds of pages of music that she wrote in the past 80 years. The manuscripts from her whole life, including her first ever music book from when she was 6 years old. The scores were in a big mess- a first page of one piece in one bag, the second in the other, the third lost, nothing was in order and the first thing we had to do is try to dig up the papers of each piece according to the scale, melody, and sometimes a date indicated on the page. Also, the manuscripts were written as sketches she wrote to herself, like little memory notes, and not in a clear way so that one can site-read it on the piano. So we had to translate this personal notation system she wrote for herself into a more accurate coherent score that can be understood by anyone. The task of deciding how to refer to time and beat in the scores, was especially challenging, as her playing is not bound to the usual bar division – It’s never simply a 3/4 waltz.

What inspired you to perform these yourself?
I love Emahoy’s music and feel a strong connection to her music and her life story. And being a pianist myself, it was the most natural thing for me.

Do you remain faithful to the scores or do you put your own spin on them?
As I mentioned above, she wrote her music in an unclear way so when we published her book quite a lot of editorial work had to be done. When I play her music I try to follow the structure and the way she plays it, but of course in my own sound.

Last year you performed three concerts of Guèbrou’s music in Jerusalem. How has she responded to the new found attention?
I think it was quite overwhelming for Emahoy to suddenly be surrounded by so many people and so much interest.  She enjoyed the shows immensely and came to all three. she was very touched to hear the music played by different musicians, and given the amazing response she received from so many people, I think it was an important event for her.

It was the first time that these two parts of her life- the church and the music – fell into each other’s arms. The community of her church, where she lived for more than 30 years, came to the concerts and listened to her music, they saw the incredible power and beauty of her art and how it touched so many people.

At Counterflows you’ll also be performing with Ghedalia Tazartes. You recently produced a sound installation based on your performances together. What can we expect this time round?
I made the sound installation out of raw materials from our duo show and other materials that Ghedalia gave me for the installation, as well as recordings of Ghedalia that I made during our duo rehearsals. At Counterflows, Ghedalia and I will be performing our live show together, in which we are both singing and playing.

Are there any other artists you’re particularly looking forward to at Counterflows?
The whole line up looks amazing. I am truly intrigued by each and every performance in the program. I am particularly looking forward to Sarah Kenchington and Joe McPhee.

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Counterflows runs from 4-6 April at various venues throughout Glasgow. For more information see the Counterflows website.

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