EBU Ars Acustica - Palma Online discussion
Prix Palma Ars Acustica 2021 - our choice
1) „Ars Mundi“ by Adriana Kramarić and Marija Pečnik Kvesić (KR)
2) „Sun-drenched“ by Staš Vrenko (SI)
3) „Das Doppelzimmer. Innen / Außen“ by Ulrich Lampen (SWR)
4) „The Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting“ by Olga Kokcharova (CH)
5) „Iskre“ by Dušan Petrović (SRB)
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Prix Palma Ars Acustica is a prize awarded annually by the Ars Acustica Group, an association of radio art programs and freelance radio producers within the European Broadcasting Union EBU. Members can each submit a new production; the jury meets at the annual meeting of the EBU Ars Acustica Group, and the Palma Ars Acustica is endowed with 2,000 Euros. The winning piece is broadcast by all participating radio programs and thus receives wide distribution in Europe. This year, the piece "Ivry-sur-Seine" by the British artist Iain Chambers has been awarded – in this issue of Kunstradio, we present further submissions that have grabbed the attention of the Kunstradio editorial team. Hans Groiss, Anna Soucek and Elisabeth Zimmermann have listened through the 18 submissions, studied the verbal information about them, and finally made their assessments in a joint editorial jury meeting.
„Ars Mundi“ by Adriana Kramarić and Marija Pečnik Kvesić 
„Ars Mundi“ in full Length at the Croatian Radio Our original idea was to spend for some time with various artists while they create their works, to observe and listen to the process of creation, record how the creative activity of human hands “sounds.” We did not question or evaluate the final result, nor did we witness it. We were observers and listeners of the process of creation and we created a new work from the material we obtained. Whether it was music, painting, sculpture or applied art – the creation itself or its interpretation – we have seen all the complexity of the process of communication between the artists and their works and the various techniques they applied when they created. In order to be able to channel their inspiration, artists have to be relentless manual workers, craftsmen, and have to have just a touch of a philosopher in them. By recording sound images created by this dialogue between the imagined and the willed, the possible idea and its transformation into a form accessible to the human senses, we followed the transformation of the materials and the way in which that matter matched the will of the artist in order to make their idea manifest. (A.K.) „Sun-drenched“ by Staš Vrenko 
The condensation of fragments and recordings is tracing the boundaries of field recording, plunderphonics, engaging in and creating electronic instruments and sound design. The complementing and intervening of recordings open up the possibility for diverse audio material, of simultaneously being documentary and musical, even if it is usually not perceived as such. The principles of re-amping and recording, add their own acoustics to the material, such as sounds of various surfaces recorded with contact microphones, vinyl record manipulation, DIY modular synthesizer and others that usually don’t have it. Field recordings, as real acoustic spaces, become subject to certain strategies of sound design and other media manipulations. Such 'equalization’, which deals with all the recordings from a standpoint of the final reduction to the vibrations of the speaker membrane, complicates the relationship between contingency, that is usually ascribed to found sound and field recordings, and desire and composition, which are usually associated with the creation of electronic and composed music. „Das Doppelzimmer“ by Ulrich Lampen 
„Das Doppelzimmer in voller Länge bei SWR“ Multi-award winning German writer and director of radio dramas Ulrich Lampen lives in the French city of Strasbourg. In his vox populi collage he explores the Alsatian town, the seat of the European Parlament, with his microphone. With him he always carries Charles Baudelaire’s prose poem „La Chambre Double“ – „Das zwiefache Zimmer“ from the volume of poems „Le Spleen de Paris“ published after the writer’s death in 1869. Baudelaire marks the beginning of modern poetry that revolves around the experience of life in the big cities: noise, crowds, technology and the vanishing of the individual into anonymity. In „Petits Poèmes en prose“ he showed both the ugly and the beautiful face of a life in a modern, capitalistic society whose centre at the time was Paris. In the 21st century this experience has become almost universal. But what happens in times of enforced silence, in times of social and spiritual isolation – regardless of whether they’ve been brought on by a pandemic or a political emergency? And what does being locked in do to us? On the surface Ulrich Lampen has composed an acoustic journal in the time of Corona, a journal in which the prose poem, field recordings and on-interviews penetrate each other poetically. Correspondences arise, experiences and references are widened allowing new insights. And so the audio piece takes the listener into a fertile, sometimes threatening, sometimes liberating limbo hovering above a reflection of interior and external worlds – in both French and German. Speech like sound, sound becomes speech. „The Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting“ by Olga Kokcharova 
"Since the advent of recording and transmission devices, sounds have become increasingly separated from their original context. They can be multiplied indefinitely until they never disappear again. Taking the theme of the wind as inspiration and basic material, the piece sketches a snapshot of this infinite tumult. The movement of air in the Earth's atmosphere can only be heard by rubbing against the roughness of the landscape, revealing its shapes, volumes and textures. He intervenes on the natural trajectories of sound by drawing new geometries through space. Omnipresent, elusive, it is a balancing force that invites us to take unexpected trajectories, to infinity." „Iskre“ („Funken“) by Dušan Petrović A musical form of the electronic suite based on the change of personal sparks, experiential moments of the past or thought fictions. Attitudes appear without a pause (Attacca): • Came from space • Childhood • The machine • Nightmare • Thinking • Repetition • Fight • Spy • Light • With God The musical tools that were used to build this musical form are certainly from the field of electroacoustic music: computer, synthesizers, samples or sampled sounds, concrete sounds, effects, acoustic instruments. The dramaturgy of the work is initiated by a change of contrasting attitudes. The contrast is achieved with different tempos, sound colors, orchestration, rhythm, but also themes in their minimalist form. The work was realized with the most modern electronic means and digital technology. Links: Palma Ars Acustica 2021 - Teil 1 EBU Ars Acustica Gruppe |
