By arranging this concert, NoTAM hopes to gather and create experiences about the Internet as a medium for electronic art mediation. Contextual changes of this kind might have an impact on how musical parameters and interaction are perceived. This new perpective is necessary in the development of familiarity with the new media.

    The concert contains three pieces performed by three groups of audio-visual instrumentalists communicating over the Internet. Host is Jaroslaw Kapuscinski.

    Mélange à trois
    Shinji Kanki (Japan - Finland)

    • Dobroslawa Siudmak (PL), violin
    • Max Savikangas (SF), viola
    • Paulin Skoglund Voss (N), cello

    Nanawatai
    Håkon Berge (Norway)

    • SISU (N)
    • Maciek Walczak (PL), graphics and sound
    • Uljas Pulkkis (SF), graphics and sound

    AV-Quintet plus many
    Maciej Walczak (Poland)

    • Bjørn Askefoss (N), graphics and sound
    • Uljas Pulkkis (SF), graphics and sound
    • Grazyna Walczak (PL), graphics and sound
    • Slawomir Ochotny (PL), graphics and sound
    • Maciej Walczak (PL), graphics and sound

    Technicians in Oslo:
    Sound: Tom Tannaes
    Computer equipment supplied by USIT
    Computer engineering: Ragnar Bendiksen, Eirik Svendsen, Kjetil Berge
    Studio: Knowledge channel/Media Culture: Arild Boman, Tone Vingen, Jon Eivind Hallen, Arve Nordland

    Paulin Skoglund Voss

    (1971) was born in Karlstad, Sweden. Her cello studies with Professor Aage Kvalbein started at the State Academy of Music in Oslo when she was 16 years old, when she became a member of "Young String Players". Her studies were continued with Natasha Bronsky at the Barrat Due Institute, and she also holds a degree in Chamber Music from Trøndelag Music Conservatory. She is currently part of the Kristiansand anbds Trondheim Symphony Orchestras and has recorded with Trondheimssolistene and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. She maintains a freelance career throughout Scandinavia.


    Håkon Berge

    was born on the 22nd of April 1954, in the coastal town of Stavanger. He studied instrumental education at the Rogaland Conservatory of Music from 1978 to 1981, and composition at The Norwegian State Academy of Music from 1981, graduating with a degree in composition in 1986.

    Berge is best known for his work in musical drama. From 1974, at the age of 20, he was involved with the dynamic team working with Ketil Bang Hansen, whose work in the 70's and 80's took place at the Rogaland Teater, Den Nationale Scene and Nationaltheateret. Within this group of productions his music for the Rogaland Theatre production of Peer Gynt in 1978 was especially noted. As a freelance theatre musician, Berge has worked as musical director, composer and orchestra conductor for all the major Norwegian theatres, and has composed music for over 70 performances.

    In 1987-88 Berge participated in the television production "VOX", a series of music programs in which central topics from the Norwegian music scene were explored. In addition to the music and musico-political issues addressed, the programs, with their emphasis upon experimental editing, were noted for their distinctive use of the television medium. Two of the programs, one on the composer Olav Anton Thommessen and the other on Music and Electronics, were nominated for the Amanda Prize. Another program from the series, on Sound and the Sound- Environment, won an award at the short film festival in Trondheim in 1987.

    Håkon Berge's theatre background and his work related to television productions led to the creation of the television opera "Gagarin" in 1991. The idea of the opera is intrinsically related to the television medium. The point of departure is one of the first major international events to be broadcast in Norway- The Soviet Cosmonaut Jurij Gagarin's first mission into outer space. Parallel to the mission, the piece follows Gagarin's last tragic flight, including glimpses of his childhood and original footage from his life. The opera was well-received, with Berge's ability to adjust to the visual medium being specifically recognized. This production too received an Amanda-nomination within the category Television-Drama.

    Håkon Berge has, in addition to his extensive work for the theatre, received commissions from the Society of Norwegian Composers, The Society of Norwegian Writers, The ULTIMA Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Norwegian Broadcasting and the Norwegian State Opera.

    Since 1991 Håkon Berge has been Chairman of the Society of Norwegian Composers and a board-member of TONO, the Norwegian Performing Rights Society.

    - Howard Gamble, August 1995.


    "Nanawatai", 1995

    The idea for "Nanawatai" came from a theatre play first performed in Bergen in 1984. The script for the play is written by the American William Mastrimone. I wrote the music for the performance for two percussionists and electronics. "Nanawatai" is the Afghan word for mercy or peace, or similar to the Norwegian "grid", which means that when an enemy has been conquered, he can ask for mercy - grid - "nanawatai" - and the victor is obligated to spare his life.

    The percussion piece "Nanawatai" reconsiders elements from teh theatre play, but is a new composition based on the same rhythmical and timbral material. It is not program muisc, but hopefully it transforms some of the energy with which the play overflowed.

    - Håkon Berge


    SISU

    is a dynamic percussion trio from Oslo, consisting of Rolf Lennart Stensø, Marius Søbye and Tomas Nilsson. This trio expemplifies the "Oslo sound", which at its best is characterized by a fresh and non-dogmatic to both timbral space and interpretation. SISU moves quite naturally between different musical genres - one night they can be found performing in the opera, the next night in an experimental theatre, just in time to make their date as house band for a talkshow on TV.

    We live in the century of timbral colors, where composers have an immense palate of sounds to both draw upon and create, through unconventional instruments, found sounding objects, and music technology. Some of the timbres in "Nanawatai" come from spent artillery cartridges, and they have been further manipulated electronically to fit into the interactive situation set up through Walcak's computer program for graphic manipulation.


    Bjørn Askefoss(N), graphics and sound

    Bjørn Askefoss was born in 1956, in Kristansand S at the south coast of Norway. His formal studies include Art Academy and Art history as well as Engineering and Naturescienses He has been working with site specific installations through-out the nineties consequently combining objects, sounds and visuality into universal as well as traditional Electronic based Art.

    Currently he is working on combining synthetic sound, photo and steel objects orchestrated as spatial tendences, or esthetically incarnated expressions.

    Click here for full CV


    Maciej Walczak

    Born 1963, Lodz, Poland. I have studied at the Lodz Music Academy in the viola class. Currently I am studying the Composition and New Media at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik und Dartellende Kunst in Stuttgart.

    My multimedia performances are carried out through computers and are based on the programmes of my autorship. What interests me the most in multimedia activities is the proportionately new group of phenomena resulting of the following areas: sounds, images, algorythms, and their interaction with humans.

    And now, a short story about my presence in the "World of Multimedia": WHO-HOW project is an attempt to add the Internet to a group of media which I have been using until now. The main event of the WHO-HOW project is the Internet Multimedia Concert, when I will present my audio-visual piece entitled "AV-Quintet plus many."

    The Internet is a creature characterized by versatility, large number and complexity of elements. The state of permanent interactivity between the Internet and the external world results in the permenent actualizing of the "image of the external world" in the Internet. It is thus a "reflection", where information flow functions as light, and the resulting image is transforming the object it depicts. So, as in relation to our "real world" we speak about Nature, we may use this word referring to the virtual world of the Internet, however artificial. "AV-Quintet plus many" feeds on this Nature. And since all elements of this Nature, to a larger or smaller extent, have been created thanks to human activity, I add "plus many" to the title. The quintet made of the audio-visual instrumentalists is created on the bases of the materials taken form the Internet. The additional source of materials are works-entries in the the Multimedia Miniature Competition HYDE PARK, also organized in the Internet (here) and on view at Multimedia Miniature Gallery. There are going to be three audio-visual instrumentalists playing in Warsaw, one in Helsinki, and one in Oslo. They will communicate through the Internet.

    "AV-Quintet plus many" is an experimental piece. Its premiere performance will be at the same time the possibility to check the possibilities to carry out audio-visual concerts by multiple instrumentalists playing in numerous places int he world simultaneously, on many stages at the same time and using the phenomena forming the "Nature" of the Internet.


    Shinji Kanki

    Born 1953 in Japan. Studied music composition in Hiroshima, Tokyo, Stockholm, Paris and Berlin. Lives in Helsinki, Finland since 1988. The planner and the director of Music Research Lab at the Sibelius Academy. Most of his works are devoted to experimental field. Other works for computer and electro-acoustic music, chamber music, orchestra and also for contemporary dance and film/video.

    Program note for Mélange à trois


    Uljas Pulkkis (SF), graphics and sound

    Uljas Pulkkis was born in Helsinki in 1975. He graduated from high-school -94. During the period -94-97 he took private composing lessons with Tapani Länsiö and at the same time he also studied mathematics and musicology at the Helsinki university. In the spring -97 he started to study at the Sibelius-Academy under the guidance of composer Tapani Länsiö. He has received two composing prizes; a honorary mention in Kuopio-composing contest for young composers and the second prize in a nation-wide UusSävel-contest for composers at any age. The Pro-Musica foundation admitted him a scholarship in 1997 for supporting his work as a composer.


    Max Savikangas (SF), violin

    Max Savikangas (born in 1969) has studied music theory (advanced studies in theory and analysis of electro-acoustic music), composition and viola (diploma in 1997) in the Sibelius Academy during the years 1990 - 1998. He will receive the Master of Music degree in October 1998.

    Savikangas has composed both instrumental and electro-acoustic music. He has specialized in performing contemporary viola music and also willingly takes part in multilateral music/art/dance/performance/happening/landscape projects.

    Contact via email: msavikan@siba.fi


    Dobroslawa Siudmak (PL), violin

    Born 20. 05.78 in Wroclaw, Poland. Studies at the third year at the Frederick Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw under professor £awrynowicz. Prizes: 1995 - II Prize at the I Groblicz Family International Violin Competition in Cracow. 1997 - III Prize at the VII International Violin Competition in Closter Schontall, Germany. 1998 - Grand Prix and two Special Prizes at Interacademic International Chamber Music Competition in the category of String Quartet. Orchestra concerts: Zielona Góra, Wroclaw, Cracow, Gdañsk, Rzeszow, Warsaw Recitals in Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria i Austria She is performing as a chamber musician with OPUS string quartet.


    Jaroslaw Kapuscinski (PL)

    Born in Warsaw in 1964, graduated in composition under Wlodzimierz Kotonski and piano under Bronislawa Kawalla abd Szabolcs Esztenyi from the Warsaw Academy of Music. During his stay at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts in Canada in 1988, he turned to computer and video art animation in search for some uniform audio-visual language of expression. In 1993-95 he studied audio-visual composition at the University of California in San Diego and was given a PhD in 1996.

    His works were presented at audio-visual and music festivals in many countries. At the International Video Festival in Locarno (1993) he won main prize for Catch the Tiger! in the category of performance. Principal works: Impromptu for tape (1986), Jotayu for piano and tape (1987), Sonata in the Woods for singing cellist (1988), Mass for soprano, alto and chamber ensemble (1989), Chagalliana for violin, synthesiser and tape (1990), Affective Sketches for symphony orchestra (1991), Mondrian Variations - video (1992), A Glass of water and video show (1993), Catch the Tiger! for amplified piano and video show (1993), Square One for conga, Marilyn Monroe's voice and video show (1994), Japatul for drum and video show (1995), Mudras for voice, piano and video (1996).