Oscillation ::: Mayday Radio Marathon - festival 2020

Performer, composer and vocalist Myriam Van Imschoot speaks about her recent work, and her fascination for the voice in its most pristine forms. She comments on audio excerpts of some of her last performances.

With the support of the Flemish Community (Culturele Activiteiten Premie)

Myriam Van Imschoot ::: Radio Transmission

Daphne Oram (1925−2003) was a com­pos­er and one of the cen­tral fig­ures of ear­ly British elec­troa­coustic music. She was involved in the found­ing of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (1958−1998), devel­oped the pho­to­elec­tric ​“drawn sound” syn­the­siz­er Oramics, and left many impor­tant com­po­si­tions. This talk high­lights her most cre­ative peri­od, from set­ting up her own record­ing stu­dio in Kent in the end of the 1950s, to the con­struc­tion of the Oramics Machine and the pub­lish­ing of her book An Individual Note: Of Music, Sound and Electronics, towards the end of the 1970s.

In the frame of Oscillation Festival 2021 ::: Tuned Circuits
http://www.oscillation-festival.be/2021/

Anna Steiden ::: Tuned Visions: The British Electronic Music Pioneer Daphne Oram

Can we hear the cos­mos in music? Would music be its beat­ing heart? 
This talk is an explo­ration of the sur­pris­ing links between the his­to­ry of Western music and the his­to­ry of astron­o­my, all with­in a broad­er ques­tion about of our human ​“need for the cos­mos”. The talk tracks and sam­ples music from ancient rit­u­als to the pop­u­lar music of the moment, includ­ing jazz, ambi­ent and var­i­ous types of so-called ​“clas­si­cal” music. (Talk in French)

In the frame of Oscillation Festival 2021 ::: Tuned Circuits
http://www.oscillation-festival.be/2021/

Pierre Deruisseau ::: Un Cosmos Musical

A talk about Gruska’s dive into mycol­o­gy — his ear­ly years of for­ag­ing for mush­rooms with his grand­par­ents, cook­ing para­sol mush­rooms in the forests of Bratislava, grow­ing oys­ter mush­rooms on waste, lab­o­ra­to­ry work, med­i­c­i­nal mush­rooms and more.

In the frame of Oscillation Festival 2021 ::: Tuned Circuits
http://www.oscillation-festival.be/2021/

Jonas Gruska ::: Fungal Paths

The project Agripuncture / Sore Spot Songs is inspired by tra­di­tions of post­war vic­to­ry gar­dens, Vedic mantras, and botan­i­cal heal­ing. During per­for­ma­tive ​“Agripuncture” work­shops, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Esther Mugambi and Raoul Carrer invite local guests to feel the sore spots in our city and think how can we col­lec­tive­ly care for them.
Transposing the neigh­bour­hood map on to the rooftop gar­den of Q‑O2, they talk and sing songs old and new about expe­ri­ences of the Canal zone while walk­ing amongst a sen­so­r­i­al array of ground­cov­ers and med­i­c­i­nal plants.

In the frame of Oscillation Festival 2021 ::: Tuned Circuits
http://www.oscillation-festival.be/2021/

Sarah van Lamsweerde, Esther Mugambi & Raoul Carrer ::: Agripuncture / Sore Spot Songs

What are you lis­ten­ing for? to? ​‘Listening Past’ is a performance<>lecture secret­ly serv­ing as an ali­bi tap­ping those always as-yet-unknown lines to sig­nal that the future leaks. Fixed, homoge­nous time assumes a standard(ized) pro­gres­sive flow where what is next always comes after what is before. But, will there not have been count­less moments of achronic­i­ty when signs of antic­i­pa­tion can be (mis)heard in reverse (à la Pierre Menard & Bayard)?
To access the pro­gram note in French, Dutch and English that accom­pa­nied this talk, go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukDoaZwKfxw&feature=youtu.be

In the frame of Oscillation Festival 2021 ::: Tuned Circuits
http://www.oscillation-festival.be/2021/

Lendl Barcelos ::: Listening Past

"Incendies" is a piece that sings the jolts of a world on battery.
Just as we watch a fire with fascination, its beauty and its destructive force at the same time, one can listen to analog signals enriched with saturations and give birth to the space created inside a stereophony. Or meditate on the carbon footprint of the same action. 

And for your information: the number of megafires will increase by 30% by 2050 (according to a report by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) which also denounces noise pollution in cities as a growing danger to public health). 


"Incendies" was first commisonned by Archipel Festival in Geneva in 2024 for its acousmonium concerts. The piece is based on analog signals, recorded over and over through various circuits (filters mostly) in order to create subtles stereo differences, mouvements and depthes. The music breath to its own puslation, always slightly off-the-grid, saturations and hisses act on the the expressive and dramatic level.

The LP version is mostely based on the Archipel concert, and contain a discreet layer of the space and accousmonium acoustic, as in d'incise's “electronic” work, the loudspaker is always considered as the ultimate instument carrying the music. The live version can be deployed from two to any numbers of speakers, expanding the stero field with a focus on asymetries.


d'incise, sound explorer, used to pretend to have no perticular instrument, using whatever can be considered as such, softwares, recordings, objects, percussions, harmonium, etc. However he has lately re-focused on analog electronic sources, carefully sampling and re-assembling them as solo concert proposal for loudspeakers.

He's interested in radicalism, reductionnism, repetitions and conceptual approaches, building specific set-up for each new occasion & context, in solo, groups or thought for others.
He tends to extract the most tiny details of the elements, appreciates slowness and obsessive explorations of simple processes.

With Cyril Bondi and since many years he's behind the Insub.'s activites (label, large orchestra, and more). Tresque is his other alias, when the music turns dancefloor oriented. He's also one of the founding member of the band La Tène. Not many people use his real name, Laurent Peter. He's currently living between Brussels (mostly) and Geneva (still a bit). 

Release : february 2025
LP & digital on : La République des Granges + Insub.records

http://www.dincise.net/

d'incise / Incendies (excerpt)

We once again relayed large chunks of this year's Oscillation Festival live performances occurring in Brussels over the s&S radio stream which took place 1-4 May 2025. In the hours leading up to the Oscillation relay switchover on 2 May, we live-mixed our own 'unofficial' contribution in keeping with this year's theme: 'The Weather', direct from the s&S meteorological monitoring outpost, which we're sharing here for your enjoyment. We were coincidentally experiencing a rather heavy, turbulent storm while we were transmitting from here in Wellington, some of which you hear buried in the mix. Enjoy!

s&S Radio - Aethergrams - 2 May 2025 [live-mix]

Vai Doer

Two interviews with people working in and thinking about informational access, autonomous publishing, contagious education. Sean Dockray is an artist and initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms, The Public School and Aaaaarg, both of which use sharing technologies to propose models of learning and accessing information parallel or alternative to institutional education. Brooke Palmieri is a historian, publisher, and rare book antiquarian. In their 2013-2017 PhD, Compelling Reading: The Circulation of Quaker Texts, Palmieri details a relation between Quaker methods of text distribution (crucially tied to the early printing presses) and metaphors of the plague, used to describe a spread of information seen by the Church as uncontrolled, contagious and potentially deadly. At stake in both interviews is the possibility of a (potentially insurgent) public defined by the ways that it transmits texts.

Henry Andersen is an artist and organiser living and working in Brussels. He produces performances, objects, sound-files and printed matter. Henry is part of the artistic team at Q-O2. Since 2016, he is one half of the semi-fictional reading group Slow Reading Club, with Bryana Fritz.
http://aaaaarg.fail/
https://monoskop.org/The_Public_School
https://www.campbooks.biz/

Henry Andersen ::: Contagious Publics—Interviews with Sean Dockray & Brooke Palmieri

Wave Debris takes place during sunset, a collaborative performance at-a-distance which modulates the frequencies emitted by the sun at this time. Taking as a starting point Elisabeth Alexander’s research in the field of radio astronomy, Diana Duta and Julia E Dyck attempt to illuminate other phenomena which are always present yet not always perceived; phenomena that mediate, disclose and dissolve; that dust. The modulated frequencies are blended with field recordings, feedback and several readings of Ron Siliman’s Sunset Debris (2014).

Diana Duta works with visual, aural, and nearly-verbal language through performance, sound composition, and writing. Her work relies gently on the translation and re-interpretation of existing materials for generating new meaning. Duta’s most recent project 'Jambes' is a recording studio commissioning new work by artists interested in experimenting with sound and voice.
Julia E Dyck is a Canadian sound artist and radio producer working in performance, composition, installation, and transmission. She’s interested in the possible relations between the body, consciousness, and technology.	
http://dianaduta.com/
http://jaaambes.be/
http://juliaedyck.com/

Diana Duta & Julia E Dyck ::: Wave Debris (excerpt)

THE KITCHEN explores the kitchen as a space for cleaning, cooking and a playground for performance by adding objects and instructions to play each particular object. This piece was performed in the morning by Liew Niyomkarn and myself.
GOOD FOOD IS GOOD MOOD / WHAT’S GOOD / GOOD explores marketing slogans or taglines on cooking through dictation software and speech recognition. The generated text is voiced and altered in pitch and speed by various text-to-speech software. Related to the newly proposed subjects, the text are layered with field recordings and music. 

Antwerp-based sound artist and musician Inne Eysermans creates musical performances and spatial compositions, often in combination with text and/or (moving) image. Her works encompass synthesis, resampling techniques, field recordings, found sounds, objects and generative approaches to text.
https://soundcloud.com/inneeysermans/

Inne Eysermans ::: AND SALT TO TASTE (excerpt)

Ecological Fiction is a sound-navigated story told through different times and environments. It is the tale of an animated, vibrating object that exploded because of stress-ridden capitalism. Some of its pieces are shattered to ancient time, in a mythical landscape where the Chinese Monk Shen Fu, and blessed animals have lived for over a century. The story focuses on the intersection between nature, power and humanity.

Liew Niyomkarn is a sound artist and musician based in Antwerp. Liew's work primarily focuses on sound synthesis, field recording, and storytelling through sound and text. Liew's work engages in collective knowledge and expresses the natural behaviour of sound through synthetic elements alongside found objects. Liew seeks to discover another way of being/living in association with the environment.
https://liewniyomkarn.com/

Liew Niyomkarn ::: Ecological Fiction (excerpt)

This hour is dedicated to the cult of connection; allowing listeners, through an initiation rite, to connect to the invisible forces of radio waves. The dance of the spirit will give rise to disembodiment in order to reach the land of voices and travel in a space parallel to our perceptions.

Jonathan Frigeri is a sound artist, radio producer, sound collagist, and electronic musician. As a sound artist he is mainly interested in revealing hidden sonic layers of reality, to open spaces of imagination. In his work for radio he incorporates the creative process, the radio device and the space between the transmitter and the receiver, emphasising the space in between; between here and there.
http://jfz.zonoff.net/jfz/

Jonathan Frigeri ::: The Cult of Connection (excerpt)

The second edition of Oscillation festival will take place as a 3-day radio marathon over the first weekend in May, in resonance with the International Day of Workers. In the absence of project funding, the format of radio offered us a possibility to nonetheless continue the festival and to use it as a framework to reflect on the notion of value in art and cultural organisation beyond the monetary. Radio has always been a favourite tool of autonomous, DIY and experimental practice; offering low-cost means of reaching people, diverse forms of expression, and new tools for thinking community, audience, and access. We want this year’s festival to be a practical experiment in balancing responsible collaboration with an urgency to make space for things to happen.

Oscillation Mayday Radio Marathon ::: Jingle

Hear / Sound impressions inspired by Haikus

With a mix of live made concrete sounds, archival online sounds, instruments and voice, we trail the haikus through different moods.

What I miss most during this strange period is making music with others, travelling for it and sharing it. My focus is pretty limited these days, and haikus are like little candies. Full of images (and thus sounds), short, but savory.

Travelling to long ago times, real or imagined places, in dreams or short stories. Making sense and non sense, only to create a poetic sound environment that tickles the imagination.

Noise, words, ears.

Join in my escape of our current times and tune in together.

CREDITS:

Concept, music, foley, voice: Pak Yan Lau
Harp, foley, whispering: Vera Cavallin
Foley, voice, Italian haikus: Lucia Palladino
Foley, Voice narrator: Henry Andersen
Presenting: Caroline Profanter
Sound: Ludo Engels

Haikus used in PART I and II, taken from:

– Basho The Complete Haiku / Matsuo Basho / translated by Jane Reichhold / Publisher: Kodansha International
– http://www.graceguts.com/haiku-and-senryu/music-and-sound-haiku
– https://tenthousandhaiku.com/ by Calvin Olsen
- Archival soundsource from BBC Archive: dragonfly, all kind of ringtones phones, Arabic crowd, Hong Kong street market, Rainforest night

Haikus used in Part III written by Lucia Palladino

 
With the support of Flemish Community Activation Fund.

Pak Yan Lau ::: Add wings to a pepper to make a dragonfly

Q-O2 is a Brussels based workspace for experimental contemporary music and sound art. Q-O2 develops projects in collaboration with national and international artists and arts organizations, hosts artists in-residence, and holds performances and concerts. 
http://www.q-o2.be

Henry Andersen ::: Contagious Publics—Interviews with Sean Dockray & Brooke Palmieri

Q-O2

Related tracks