An outcome of the Italians Do It Better, a breeding ground of champions much acclaimed by both the press and the public, the Chromatics shine well beyond the ’In’ aura that surrounds them. Since the impeccable producer, Johnny Jewel (Glass Candy), joined them, this group previously in the Punk movement, has become a synthetic Pop pure bred. Arrangement sublimely reduced to the bare minimum, the angelic voice of the delicious Ruth Radalet, a daring and successful version of « Running up that hill » by Kate Bush… The Chromatics can dare to try anything which includes seducing as one, all Rock, Electro and Pop amateurs. (Text : Olivier Kerdudo / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.myspace.com/chromaticsmusics

We had noticed Flying Lotus within the Plug Research label, a reference for Californian producers of abstract smoky Hip Hop. The last album released by Warp revealed him to the European public. As he is Alice Coltrane’s nephew, Flying Lotus definitely knows where his cosmic and spiritual inspiration comes from. Yet it is closer to Jay Dilla that one can find the origins of his music. As did the late producer, he enjoys knowingly moulding his displaced rhythms onto a background of sounds with psychedelic tones. (Photo : DR / Text : Olivier Kerdudo / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.myspace.com/flyinglotus

Previously known under the name - Chris Clark - it is not only the deletion of his first name that has gained him notoriety : his regular album releases with Warp and his wild stage shows have also endowed Clark with the status of a natural descendant of the Squarepusher and Luke Vibert generation. Yet he shouldn’t be placed in the electronica category, as he pulls you more easily onto the dance floor rather than flat out on the sofa… (Photo : DR / Text : Olivier Kerdudo / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.myspace.com/throttleclark

www.laurentgarnier.com

www.myspace.com/battantbattant

September 2007, Vasarely Foundation. Astonishing projection of « Synken », a visual trip co-signed OST (music) et Transforma (a group from Berlin known for their work with Apparat and their leaning for graphic odyssey).

At the same time Chloé’s first album « The Waiting Room » was released, a sensitive and determined DJ, always ready to mix into her melting-pot a very wide culture of music with implacable « minimalist » tried out in clubs across the Rhine, after the Pulp episode.

The music that Chloé patiently produced is an ambitious puzzle, a slide into techno land made by an artist who knows how to inject here and there experimental and rock punctuations (of ashes, obviously, in line with the album cover inspired by Peter Saville). A techno underplay lovingly entied to be split apart all the more easily by pulsations, falsely timid voices and brass instruments with obssesive motifs. It is the encounter between these two worlds that Seconde Nature is offering you : Chloé will plunge « The Waiting Room » into the twisted and yet sometimes luminous imagery of Transforma. An exclusive audiovisual experience with an scent of the obvious...(Photo : Marco Dos Santos / Text : Benoît Hické / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.dj-chloe.com
www.transforma.de

Robert Henke is an electronic music player from Berlin inspired by technological odysseys and new ways of envisaging the creation of sound. Well-known for the albums he released with Chain Reaction (Maurizio’s label) his compositions and all his other projects are developing a purified techno interlude of a very « dub » feeling, very popular on the German underground. He has over the past ten years with the Monolake structure followed a very interesting direction that has led him into contemporary art and multimedia performances (of which « Atom » was shown at the Centre Pompidou last April). At the Cité du Livre, plunged in the shadows over the levers of his diabolical machine (Monodeck) he will give us a condensed presentation of his work, experimental and buzzing with obsessive rhythms. (Photo : DR / Text : Benoît Hické / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.myspace.com/monolakemusic

For her comeback Miss Kittin has decided to do exactly what she wants. On her album « Batbox » released on her own label and made just as she intended it to be, we can rediscover her love for the electro-pop of the 80’s, Chicago house and the urban rhythms of Booty Music. Micro always close at hand, once again she murmurs her Gothic tales and other memories of improbable parties. And she won’t stop there as she plays behind her turntables turning round a set as eclectic as she likes them to be. (Photo : DR / Text : Olivier Kerdudo / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.myspace.com/kittinmusic

With a career that has really taken off over recent months : Sarah Goldfarb lines up sets throughout Europe and new releases (with own house label Roman, Photo and with the German’s Treibstoff). Yet this artist makes no concessions and is following a direction that leads through minimal syncopations and unrelenting techno. Ah... and one last thing ! Don’t expect to find either a young DJ of Slavic charm and generous curves, or a seventy-year old New Yorker high on amphetamines … (Photo : DR / Text : Olivier Kerdudo / Translation : Caroline Newman)

www.myspace.com/sarahgoldfarblog

Nicolas Provost is a Belgian artist who, over the past ten years, has tested every single genre of cinema, and remains completely unclassifiable today. After a period spent at the School of Fine arts in Gand he developed a passion for video art and cinema in Norway and Denmark where he worked as an illustrator and artistic director. He returned to Brussels in 1999 to produce films crossing experimental work with fiction, yet has never ceased to question his favourite subjects - identity (that of the stranger or foreigner) and cinema ( as a material and an aesthetic form) - which he continues to pull in all directions. Invited to the most prestigious festivals (Sundance, Rotterdam, Clermont-Ferrand), his films are all very musical and different (« Papillon d’amour » (Butterfly of love), a sign of love for Kurosawa to a piece by Köhn) and full of a sometimes political poetry ("Exoticore", « The Divers » and « Plot Point »). Nicolas Provost is currently preparing his first full-length fiction film «L’envahisseur » (The invader), the perfect opportunity for us to accompany his reflection on ten years of experimental work. (Photo : Suspension ©Nicolas Provost / Text : Benoît Hické / Translation : Caroline Newman).

The film selection : Induction (10‘, 2006) / Exoticore (27’, 2004) / I Hate This Town ! (2’, 2002) / Oh Dear (1’, 2004) / Plot Point (15’, 2007) / Gravity (6’, 2007) / Suspension (4’, 2007) / The Divers (7’, 2006) / Papillon d’amour (4’, 2003) / Bataille (7’, 2003).

Thanks to Katerina Tselou (Argos).

www.nicolasprovost.tk

Undefinable Karry Kamal Karry interferes with the frontiers between genres, elaborates complex encounters between material, sound and the body in movement. In a world where we would like to be everywhere at once, a technological world that escapes our control and in which the virtual is gradually taking up more and more space, the body often seems threatened. Yet the body is central to the work of this young creator who offers us a form of « unlocking of the senses » through this fascinating artistic and aesthetic experience. (photo : Ralph Louzon / Text : Mathieu Vabre / Translation : Caroline Newman)

Design and choreography: Karry Kamal Karry
Dancer : Yoshifumi Wako
Film / video : Ralph Louzon
Set and lighting design : Karry Kamal Karry
Spatialization Mix (?) and Multi Diffusion: Nicolas Cante
Lighting : Xavier Guille
Production : K3MK Compagny
Coproduction : Théâtre du Lierre, Paris - Festival Dance Box, Osaka

Unusual tactile and sound experience, Pause is made up of five hamacs linked together, where the spectator’s body becomes a resonating structure sculpted by continually evolving sound. By using 70 vibrating loudspeakers placed directly on the skin on different parts of the body, the sound transmitted combines touch and listening. Lying down with ear plugs, electronic sounds emerge, the body vibrates, vibrations gently caress the shoulders, hips, fingers and behind the knees, massaging and teasing the senses and ears. (Text by Mathieu Vabre / Translation : Caroline Newman)

Sound creation and design : Lynn Pook and Julien Clauss
Production : Dédale association, Ars Numerica.
This project received support from the Ministry of Culture, Ars Numérica, HFG-Karlsruhe and Kulturamt Karlsruhe.

www.lynnpook.de

In Second Life, the Locus Sonus Laboratory created a visual extension of the Cité du Livre in Aix-en-Provence for the Seconde Nature festival.

The idea is to use the virtual world in a network to experiment with synthetic acoustic spaces and the exchanges possible between the real world and the virtual world using sound as the main vector.

The avatars invited to go to “l’Ile Cultures digitales” in Second Life manipulate the sound objects available for them. The results of their actions are spatialized in the physical space in Aix whereas the atmosphere of sound of the site is streamed back into the virtual space.

http://nujus.net/ locussonus

Interactive and sensitive musical plants.

Scenocosme creates moments of encounters and exchanges, immerses the spectators in dreamy spaces through sensitive experiences with the body. Akousmaflore is a small garden made up of musical plants that react to our gestures and gentle contacts. Each plant is aroused by the slightest warm, human contact to produce its own language of sound. This plant language thus functions through touch. Our warm and electric aura, invisible to the naked eye affects the plants’ foliage and creates the experience of an environment that reacts to its very own existence. Thus when the spectators stroke or gently touch them they begin to sing. As they have become sensitive musical instruments, they offer us the possibility to compose a floral orchestration. (Photo : Akousmaflore ©Scenocosme / Text : Mathieu Vabre / Translation : Caroline Newman)

http://www.scenocosme.com

In 2006 Arts-Terres initiated a project that sought to cross the different senses, attempting to explore new forms of mixed perception (visual, vibratory, tactile..). The group of artists working on this project thus revealed their desire to play on a precarious equilibrium, the demands made upon the body and in particular experimented on the senses in a direct and immediately accessible manner.

The central part of the installation is a platform floating on water and equiped with captors that detect its position. The changes in the angle of the platform caused by the presence of a visitor are interpreted by software and translated into light and vibration (vibrating platform, infra-bass and light projections onto the inner panels of the installation)

With Peter Sinclair (Sound artist, performer), Olivier Zol (Composer, performer), Cyrille C. de Laleu (Multi-media artist) and Laure Arnal (Multi-media artist working in the visual arts)

Translation by Caroline Newman

www.arts-terres.org

[PAM] Perpetual Art Machine was founded in New York in January 2006 by the artists Chris Borkowski, M. Aaron Miller, Raphaele Shirley and Lee Wells in collaboration with SCOPE.

Since its first installation at the Contemporary Art Show in New York in March 2006, the [PAM] has continued to develop via its Web site into a free and open community of over 900 artists from more than 50 countries and has at least 1000 pieces of video art on line.

Developed as a form of itinerate video installation, Perpetual Art Machine proposes a collection of some of the most exciting work produced by emerging artists that the public can then select from the database.

Text by Mathieu Vabre, Translation by Caroline Newman

www.perpetualartmachine.com

This selection enables us to discover different artwork which all have in common the town, urbanism and design. The choice made depends above all on a curiosity that combines digital interventions (video mix/photo, 2D animation, 3D, etc.) and privileges, as is often the case at The Cube, the relationship between sound and image.

Ultimately here, the poetry of an instant, whether sombre or full of hope, questions the relationship between Man and his environment.

Choice made by Carine le Malet, event organizer at The Cube.

www.lesiteducube.com

Today, artists and people working to promote cultural events have appropriated technology’s “message”. They try to articulate local missions around global thought, to participate locally in the writing of a global world.

The aim of this encounter is to try to measure the changes in scale and how to reach across these two dimensions. Projects open to new forms of co-operation and horizontal co-productions will be examined and transversal approaches to esthetics as well as to methodology will be presented.

Professional meetings biographies (pdf)

ARPAN, a regional association of professionals working in art and digital culture, invites you to attend their annual general assembly to discuss the initial progress recently made towards working together on a regional level. This desire to federate projects and developments aims both to analyse the structures, finance and the dynamics of associations’ work in progress and to instigate transversal propositions consistent with local government policy concerning culture in our sector of activity.

At a time when the world operates on an interconnected and global level and as the region is clearly aware of these issues, this meeting invites people working in associations, entrepreneurs, representatives from local governament authorities to work together to think and take this world one step further. After this meeting we invite the professionals present to discover the multi-media artworks shown within this festival and to discuss the question of how esthetics are introduced and how various forms of digital technology are shown and perceived.

For several years now Seconde Nature has worked and analysed the accessibility of digital art work. This aim to show, communicate and develop public awareness is articulated around a program of courses for professionals that our association leads in collaboration with ZINC ECM at the Friche La Belle de Mai.