Hestbak

Hestbak was formed in 2003. The band released the album “Gratin” in 2004, “Mjolk” in 2005 and the album, “Airwaves”, in 2007.. Hestbak has performed in Reykjavik, Seydisfjordur, Chicago, Berlin og New York. The band plays progressive music and seeks its influence from different directions. The band members are all active in the Icelandic music scene as well as taking part in international music projects. All band members have backgrounds in rock and classical music but use Hestbak as a vehicle for their creative output. The band Hestbak includes Áki Ásgeirsson, Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, Ingi Garðar Erlendsson, Jesper Pedersen and Páll Ivan Pálsson.

RafSpuni – ElImpro

Listamannakomplex, Skipholti 11-13, 21st of May, 20:00

Markmið Spuna er að stuðla að almennum spuna. Alltaf. – Aim of Spuni is to encourage general improvisation. Always.

Fjölbreyttur spuni frá fjölbreyttu fólki frá fjölbreyttum löndum. – Diverse impro from diverse people from diverse countries.

Dagskrá er auglýst á staðnum. – Program will be announced on site.

Steina Vasulka

Hafnarhúsið, Reykjavík Art Museum, 19th of May, 21:00

Violin Power

When I with my husband Woody rambled into video in 1969, we already owned an audio tape recorder. Audio and video in our view was always a parallel, interwoven art material. The eighties were ripe with rumors that the Japanese were collaborating with American software engineers on a unifying interface where a controller, typically a keyboard, could be connected to play another instrument. The name of this phenomena was Musical Instrument Digital Interface or MIDI. Eventually MIDI could interface anything to everything, including our videocassette tape recorder, and in the early nineties we connected my acoustic violin to a “pitch to MIDI” device. It was fun, but limited fun because I could move the tape only a few meters, back and forth or faster and slower. If I however had a laser disc player and MIDI violin, I could with a stroke of the bow jump to various locations, somewhat akin to life editing as a performance.  After performing this way for a few years, I landed in 1996 a co-directorship at STEIM (the studio for electro-instrumental music) in Amsterdam, which in those years was very involved in interfacing MIDI to acoustic instruments. When I arrived, there already was a MIDI/VIDEO software being written by Tom Demeyer, initially named Image/ine and later IMX. In addition to random access, speed and direction, this software gave me a plethora of video effects and memory locations. The clips in my performances are selected as much for the sound as video contend, and are a mix between prepared and improvised play.

MC Broko

OPEN ARTIST
“a linux distribution for artist”
presentation and music performance
by MC Broko

A linux distribution of Florian Stöffelmayer based on ubuntu. It tries to combine free software into a suite for creative people. Driven by the fact that there are so many cool applications out there, but most people do not know them, openArtist tries to be a complete package of creative software, combined with a heavily customized and optimized user experience.

MC Broko
a czech musician, at the moment living and volunteering in Graz – Austria .He was used to play with DIY hardcore/punk bands and
after leaving the country started his journey of getting into composing and recording music and video with mainly open source software .Since summer on the way with his experimental one man shows.

http://mcbroko.net/

Egill Sæbjörnsson

Reykjavik Art Museum, Hafnarhúsið, 19th of May, 21:00

Five Bottles

Installation, Ellen de Bruijne, Amsterdam
Drinking glass, glass bowl, bottle of Icelandic cod oil, candle,
pedestal, single-channel video projection, sound
Dimensions variable
Duration: 7:10 min

Glass objects and a candle are placed on a pedestal. A video beam hits the objects straight on and casts their shadows onto the wall behind. The outlines of the objects and the shadow of the smoke from the burning candle interact with an animated shadow of an imaginary ball, which dances from one object to the other. Like a flea, it jumps and flies from one object to the next. As it lands inside a bottle or touches the glass bowl we hear a sound of something knocking against the glass.

more info: http://egills.de