Open Ear in Cardiff

On June 13th 2008, Open Ear hosted a free one night only event of experimental work in the ATRiuM Theatre at the University of Glamorgan’s newly built ATRiuM, Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, Cardiff, Wales (http://cci.glam.ac.uk/) which was curated by myself. The event presented a series of interdisciplinary performances and projections by various sound and visual artists / groups working across the areas of art, music, media and new technologies within live performance / projected contexts under an open theme.

What did this mean?

There was no imposed theme instead artists were asked to present time-based works based on their themes, their continuing research, as an event which was intended to explore diversity and interdisciplinary nature of audio-visual arts. Proposed performances / projected works could be new or pre-existing works, improvised, dynamically generated (such as software art) or pre-composed, abstract or figurative, individual or collaborative, experimental, site specific and much, much more. The only constraints stated that proposals were required to be:

1. time-based (remember this is a audience based event in a theatre)
2. and ether audio-visual, audio only or visual only work (selection preference was given to works which are audio-visual).

Above: Stills of all the performances. Click image to view more.

Videos of the performances are available here.

The line-up for the evening was as follows:

Performances:

• Ampersand & Mitsuka (http://www.ampersand.tv/)
• Malte Steiner (http://www.block4.com/)
• Richard Bowers, Ian Watson, Nic Finch & Jon Ruddick (http://www.richardbowers.co.uk/, http://www.myspace.com/phantomheadrecordings, http://www.chameleonic-design.com/, http://www.jacuzzi-junta.org/)
• Paul Adams (http://www.mrpauladams.com/)
• Garrett Lynch (http://www.asquare.org/)
• Georg Boenn
• Matt Wright (http://www.matt-wright.co.uk/)
• Rob Smith & Ben Challis

Projections:

• Energie! by Thorsten Fleisch & Jens Thiele (http://www.fleischfilm.com/)
• Future Memories by Scott Kildall (http://www.kildall.com/)
• Emanations by Brian DeLevie & Isshaela Ingham (http://www.briandelevie.com/)
• Try Hard Johnny! by Valentina Besegher & Alessandro Massobrio (http://www.besegher.com/, http://www.flushingdevice.it/)
• Archisonics: Vertigo by John Kannenberg (http://www.johnkannenberg.com/)
• Drishti II by Jen-Kuang Chang

The Venue

The University of Glamorgan’s newly built ATRiuM in Cardiff, Wales opened in 2007 and houses the Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries which comprises of Art & Design, Media & Communication and Drama & Music. Situated in central Cardiff, Wales, this specially-designed building contains cutting edge technology and facilities including industry-standard studios, a theatre and cinema.

Open Ear, audio-visual events and performances are supported by The University of Glamorgan, ATRiuM, Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries, Cardiff, Wales.

Open Ear

Open Ear, formed in 2006, is a loose collaborative group of like minded individuals creating audio-visual art and organising live events within club, gallery, open air or site specific venues. Our principal interests include collaboration, live performance, generative audio-visual work, hybridised art, DIY soundart, circuit-bending and networks.