As a part of the PEEK research project Spirits in complexity — Making kin with experimental music systems.
> Funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [Grant DOI 10.55776/AR821]
Photo: Zlata Zhidkova
Zlata Zhidkova
"sound of the mountain" is a performance for metal, body and audio feedback. It explores the physicality of the sound through interaction between the performer and the sounding object - the metal plate. Both engage in a conversation with each other on equal terms. The performer goes through different modes of communication with the plate and appeals to the sound material of the metal “mountain” by listening, touching and voicing. Here, every gesture, every movement, every change of sound prompts reaction from both participants whose presence equally infuences the fow of the interaction. The sound is generated within the metal plate that is excited by audio feedback and the performer.
PERFORMANCES EXHIBITION TALK
Photo: Aad Hoogendoorn
Jasna Veličković | The Opera of Things
Inspired by the concept of the “Internet of Things,” Opera of Things extends the idea of “voice” to
everyday electronic objects by transforming their electromagnetic fields into sound.
Opera of Things exists in two forms: as a three-part sound installation and as a live music-theatre
performance.
Three-Part Sound Installation
At set intervals, the installation performs three short “interventions” within the exhibition space, each
referencing a traditional operatic element:
Aria – Beauty 3.2 Volts; Duet – Diva and the Beast; Quartet – Ophelia
The “voices” in these works emerge from the exhibited objects themselves—primarily two groups of
power adapters and the Velicon—inviting audiences to experience a poetic interplay between technology,
sound, and presence.
Commissioned by CBK Rotterdam.Financially supported by The Performing Arts Fund NL.
jasnavelickovic.com
Photo: Janno Bergmann
Simon Whetham | deconstructed radio #3
From field recording and amplifying found objects to repurposing pieces of obsolescent technology, Simon Whetham discovers new value in the ignored and the worthless. Recent works reanimate discarded devices in erratic and random ways that truly give them a second, more free life, unbound by their original use and function.
For Klangmanifeste he has developed the sculptural piece "Deconstructed Radio #3" utilising a transistor radio from the soviet-era in Estonia that blasts out white noise sporadically.
www.simonwhetham.co.uk
Photo: Kristof Georgen
Kristof Georgen
In Homer’s tales, Odysseus sailed with his companions past the island of the Sirens. To protect his comrades from the Sirens’ captivating song, he sealed their ears with melted wax. He himself had his body tied to the mast of the ship in order to face the situation and at the same time protect himself from death.
A completely different approach was taken by Orpheus when he sailed with the Argo past the island group. Orpheus, poet and musician, used his skilled playing on the lyre to respond musically to the impending danger — a kind of “music competition” on the open sea between a legendary speedboat and the singing from the island.
Themes of music from these myths have repeatedly played a role in my sound works, most recently in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Joyce breaks with many classical attributions of music, its reception, and performance practice.
Within all these contexts, the idea of a wax flute emerged — as a symbol of music-making rather than of "not listening." It is both instrument and object, and at the same time a metaphor for transience. Cast from wax, it represents both music and form, and also the ephemeral and fragile. Imagination too is fleeting, and sound, tone — it sounds and fades.
The wax flute, as an object, is both translucent and opaque; it is vulnerable, depending on temperature and use.
The flute was made of white casting wax and is based on the two-part form of the school recorder from my childhood in 1973.
www.kristof-georgen.de
Photo: Volkmar Klien
Volkmar Klien | Form & Fulfillment
Four putti hang, limp and formless, next to each other from the wall.
They are slightly enlarged silicone casts of the guardian angel who watched over the artist's childhood and that of his brothers on the wall of his children's room. Equipped with pumps, sensors, valves, and digital control units, the putti breathe in and out, rise and sink.
Breathed by their mechanical lungs, the angels rise; very slowly, one after the other. One by one, they swell and, filled with air pressure, push against gravity. Their cheeks puff out together, and after a moment of fulfillment, the valves open. Slowly and in a controlled manner, the air, the form and fullness, escapes; very quietly, but still clearly audible, hissing and whistling.
Together, the putti sing, with their last breaths, a verse from the antiphon of the 'Nunc Dimittis': 'Be our salvation, O Lord, while we watch; keep us while we sleep, [..] that we may wake in peace.'
One after another, the whispering angels collapse, only to finally hang from the wall again, limp and powerless, completely at the mercy of gravity. Silence returns until they return to their normal state. A few minutes later, the pumps begin moving again, slowly filling the heavenly choir with their breath once more.
www.volkmarklien.com
Photo: Peter Paul Aufreiter
Evamaria Müller
Evamaria Müller's soundscapes continuously explore new compositional approaches to examine the complex composition (and relationship to) our environment through field recordings and sound experiments with found objects.
In her walk-in soundscape, hidden voices are highlighted through narrative fragmentation into experiential layers of sound. The situational composition is based on attentive listening to our environment and the “chunking” of this listening experience. The structures of biological, anthropogenic and geophysical processes, broken down into individual “chunks” and reassembled, encounter each other in their tactile translation in space. The recursive layering creates a living soundscape in which listening itself becomes an act of excavation.
www.evamariamueller.net
Photo: Sigrid Schneider
Peter Ablinger | Weiss/Weisslich 31f, membranes, dripping water (2019)
Weiss/Weisslich 31f: Membrane, Drops (from the series Weiss/Weisslich 31: Membrane, Rain) was conceived by Peter Ablinger as a concert installation and can be experienced as a sound installation in the exhibition, realized by the Klangmanifeste team. We will also play and interpret the installation as part of a performance. We want to listen to Peter Ablinger, interact with his work, and honor him as a friend and artist, both actively performing and actively perceiving.
With kind thanks to Zeitvertrieb
ablinger.mur.at
PERFORMANCES EXHIBITION TALK
Photo: Karl Salzmann
Aura, Fetish, and Apparatus | Talk with Karl Salzmann and Astrid Schwarz Karl Salzmann is a sound artist, curator, and artistic researcher. His artistic practice encompasses sound and noise in performances, conceptual works, and installations. Salzmann's work explores, among other things, the relationships between sound and material, people, and context, site-specific conditions, as well as the historical references and sociocultural implications of sound as a connecting medium. He works and teaches as a senior scientist at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he heads the ÆSR Lab – Applied/Experimental Sound Research Laboratory. Salzmann has been artistic director of Kunstraum Perg since 2025 and was co-director of the exhibition space for sound and process art “Zentrale” in Vienna from 2016 to 2019. His works have been exhibited internationally (including Warsaw Autumn, ACFNY New York) and have been awarded the Erste Bank Art Prize (2017) and the State Scholarship for Media Art (2019). Salzmann graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna with a degree in Digital Art in 2013 and completed his doctoral project in artistic research at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in 2024, in which he investigated the materiality of sound using the record player as a research device. Recent publications include "SCRATCHING. To Start from Scratch as an Artistic Research Method" (Springer) and the audio paper "Petromusicality" in JSS - Journal for Sonic Studies.
Astrid Schwarz has been working for ORF Radio (Fm4, Ö1) since 2003. She is also a composer and studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Anton Bruckner University Linz. For Ö1 she creates programs such as Zeit-Ton, Spielräume and Diagonal and is a producer of the Musik-Radiokolleg. She composes film music, most recently for Bernadette Weigel's documentary “Last of the Wild” and Ebba Sinzinger's “Das PrinzPod Geflecht” (AT). With her self-welded sound generators and instruments she investigates the materiality of an instrument, its instrumentalization and deals with the topic of composition as an interface, as does her quartet “Steel Girls”. Her compositions have been performed at various festivals such as ars electronica and wien modern. She has received the Theodor Körner Prize twice and the Austrian State Scholarship for Composition in 2022.
www.astridschwarz.com
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