LAUNCH OPTION berlin at B ü roFriedrich OPEN ARCH

Sun Jul 13 03:49:47 CEST 2003

LAUNCH OPTION berlin at BüroFriedrich OPEN ARCH

Opsound | Rocket Shop
Miles Chalcraft
Dan Belasco Rogers

22 - 26 Juli 2003

http://www.opsound.org/launch.html
contact: info at rocketshop.de
contact: launch at opsound.org

Artists and Musicians Remix and Remap Berlin at BüroFriedrich

As summer tourists are making their way through Berlin with guidebooks in
hand, LAUNCH OPTION berlin offers alternate models for exploring the city
which are guaranteed to hold new discoveries even for Berliners who know the
city inside and out. In a 5-day festival of live performances, exhibitions
and events at BüroFriedrich from 22 to 26 July, 2003 Opsound, Miles
Chalcraft, Dan Belasco Rogers and range of guest performers will create a
landscape of sights and sounds  an audible, aerial, diagrammatic ³map² of
Berlin and its human networks.

Berlin Sounds! Rocket Launches! GPS Mapping!

LAUNCH OPTION berlin is a test site and data gathering center, a 5-day event
devoted to discovering, collecting, playing, remixing and listening to the
sounds & noises of Berlin and to exploring the urban landscape through a
range of visualization technologies. The aim is to investigate the city in a
manner, which mirrors scientific information gathering but which is
emphasizes the personal nature of discovery and urban experience. Artists
and guests will be collecting sounds, aerial footage and GPS-generated maps,
which will then be processed, reused or remixed in the mission control
center at BüroFriedrich. Visitors are invited to review the ³findings² and
listen to live performances in the exhibition space.

Schedule of performances and events:

http://www.opsound.org/opsound/events/launchsched.html

Berlin Sound  ShareWare

Opsound, a project by the New York artist Sal Randolph, creates a temporary
gift economy of sounds inspired by Berlin, a network of exchange modeled
after the free software and open source software communities. Through an
open call, musicians and sound artists are invited to submit their sounds to
the Opsound Internet pool and/or perform live at BüroFriedrich. All sounds
are welcome ‹ from field recordings of Oranienstrasse to the music of
underground punk bands, techno tracks and experimental audio files lurking
on hard drives. Opsound wants to know what Berlin sounds like: Berlin real,
Berlin virtual, Berlin dreamt and desired. Sounds, samples and recordings
from the Opsound pool will be used and sampled by LAUNCH OPTION berlin DJs
and sound artists in live performances and additional sound pool
submissions. Visitors to the gallery listening salon and Opsound pool
(www.opsound.org) alike are encouraged to contribute, listen and take away
sound tracks for their personal use or listening pleasure.

Through Opsound LAUNCH OPTION berlin not only creates a free marketplace
music and sound; but through the exchange of sounds, meetings between
artists and ³discoveries² of the listeners, the social infrastructure
associated with the Berlin soundscape is activated. New pathways for
information, collaborations and networks are generated; this creative
process forms the basis of Randolph¹s interest in social architecture as an
art form. 

Remapping Berlin

Throughout LAUNCH OPTION berlin the artists Miles Chalcraft and Dan Belasco
Rogers will actively pursue the mapping and imaging the city in conjunction
with the developing compilation of sounds. With daily launches of his
specially designed hobby rockets equipped with video cameras, Miles
Chalcraft will document selected areas of the city from the air. Footage of
each launch performed at an undisclosed time and location will be exhibited
at Büro Friedrich on the following day. Chalcraft will use BüroFriedrich as
his flight center and rocket maintenance area. With his personal GPS
equipment Dan Belasco Rogers will continue mapping of his daily routes
throughout the city and will use BüroFriedrich as his point of departure and
processing center. His maps and routes will be available for viewing in the
gallery and on the Internet. Chalcraft¹s launches and Belasco¹s walks will
be documented in field recordings, which will be added to the Opsound pool.

Both Chalcraft and Rogers have personalized and adapted specific
technologies to reflect their individual urban experience. Belasco¹s maps
function as daily cartographic journal entries or drawings of the paths
taken on his daily route through Berlin. The lines of the GPS-generated maps
sketch but do not perfectly correspond to the layout of streets and official
thoroughfares of the city. Miles Chalcraft¹s rockets function as tiny,
quasi-private monuments to a specific site and place. The small video probe
generates often impressionistic and painterly images of seemingly ordinary
sites and remote locations.

Remixing the Landscape

Through the use of a range of technologies from digital recordings to hobby
rockets  LAUNCH OPTION berlin takes samples from various aspects of the
Berlin geography and reworks them into visual and audio compositions. The
sound permeating the exhibition will serve as an enviroment for the images
of the city, and the images will create new associations for the sound. The
result of such recombinations and layerings may not be a concretely
recognizable “map³ of the city but will convey the associative cartography
of different personal routes and stops in the process of traversing the
urban landscape.

ROCKET SOUND:

LAUNCH OPTION berlin is powered by Rocket Shop.

In conjunction with OPEN LAUNCH berlin Rocket Shop will launch ROCKET SOUND
 a largely virtual label hosted on the Internet  with a limited edition CD
of selected sounds collected over the course of the event.

Sound Pool and Performances:

Submit sounds to the Opsound pool!

http://www.opsound.org/launch.html

Or register for a live performance!

launch at opsound.org

Events:

22 July 6:00 pm  Opening Party | Listening Salon

23 July 7:00 pm  Holger Schulze (soundxchange) talks with Sal Randolph,
Miles Chalcraft and Dan Belasco Rogers

24 July 7:00 pm  BüroFriedrich¹s ³Are You Crazy² artist talk series

25 July 8:00 pm  Evening performances

26 July 8:00 pm  Closing party and performances

Selected Performers

Kelly Davis (US), AREDEE aka LUMP (CH), The Return of the Think Thing Vol 7
(G), Aaron Specter (US), G-LAB (LI) Milena Iossifova (US), Akuvideo (G/RU),
Jason Patton (AUS), The Lynx on Pluto (G), Ecologycal Sound Corpse (BUL),
Stanza (UK), Adam Linson (G)

Links

LAUNCH OPTION berlin
http://www.opsound.org/launch.html

Sal Randolph / Opsound
Opsound: http://www.opsound.org
Highlala: http://www.highlala.com
Free Words: http://www.freewords.org
Free Biennial: http://www.freebiennial.org
Free Manifesta: http://www.freemanifesta.org
Psygeocon: http://www.glowlab.com/psygeocon/pgc_index.html

Miles Chalcraft
http://www.trampoline.org.uk/heaven-earth
http://www.trampoline-berlin.de/makrolab/index.html

Dan Belasco Rogers
http://www.planbperformance.net/dan/mapping.htm

BüroFriedrich 
http://www.buerofriedrich.org

Rocket Shop
http://www.rocketshop.net