The eleven-event agenda of this year's Audio Art Festival includes display and demonstrations/performances of unique sound sculptures - specific bamboo-spipe organs and other sound sculptures developed by Hans van Koovijk and Hans van Eck (Holand). The sound sculptures will be played as instruments in concerts by the trio Cezary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich and Sławomir Kupczak (laptops); by Maćko Korba ensemble (feat. voice and ethnic instruments), and by the trio of Krzysztof Knittel, Tomasz Pruchnicki and Tadeusz Sudnik (feat. saxophone, and analogue and digital electronics). A three-day workshop will be held for aficionados of rare sounds and improvisation to prepare their participation in Audio Art Orkiestra's concert cum jam session for the Festival's finale.




19 December
17:00 Conference Hall
Audio Art Orkiestra - Workshop I, leaders: Jerzy Kornowicz and Ryszard Latecki  
19.00 Laboratory
DRUK!  Hans van Koolwijk - sound sculpture, demonstration and performance
20.00 Laboratory
Phonos ek Mechanes  Cezary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich, Sławomir Kupczak (laptops) Hans van Koolwijk  (bambuso sonoro and other sound sculptures) - concert performance

20 December
17.00 Conference Hall
Audio Art Orkiestra - Workshop II, leader: Mieczysław Litwiński
19.00 Laboratory
TREK! Hans van Koolwijk - sound sculpture, demonstration and performance
20.00 Laboratory
Maćko Korba Milena Machczyńska (vocal), Maciej Cierliński (hurdy gurdy, duduk),
Maciej Kieszkowski (Hutsul drum), Ryszard Latecki (trumpet, harmonium, chains),
Hans van Koolwijk (Bambuso Sonoro and other sound sculptures) - concert performance 

21 December
17.00 Conference Hall
Audio Art Orkiestra - Workshop III, leader: Krzysztof Knittel
19.00 Laboratory
RIET! Hans van Koolwijk - sound sculpture, demonstration and performance
20.00 Laboratory
Niebo gwiaździste Krzysztof Knittel (laptop, sampler), Tadeusz Sudnik (synthi and other electronic media), Tomasz Pruchnicki (saxophone), Hans van Koolwijk (Bambuso Sonoro and other sound sculptures) - concert performance
21.00 Laboratory
Audio Art Orkiestra - concert and jam-session

Hans van Koolwijk's sound sculptures may be seen on 20 and 21 December at the Laboratory in Ujazdowski Castle Centre's opening hours, except when sound checks for concerts are scheduled.


This year Audio Art Festival brings back its demonstrations and concerts to the Laboratory, its traditional venue, now nicely refurbished. This is where sound sculptures made by Dutch artist Hans van Koolwijk will be on display, including his most famous work, Bambuso Sonoro, already extensively exhibited throughout Europe, as well as his newest sound sculpture, Glissandi. Also Bass Boxes, co-developed with Hans van Eck, will be presented. Visitors will wander in the centre of a spatial composition made of these objects, surrounded with a variety of sounds. Every day a performance will be staged featuring the sound sculptures as musical instruments.


Every day the performances will precede concerts: on 19 December by Cezary Duchnowski, Paweł Hendrich and Sławomir Kupczak (laptops); on 20 December by Maćko Korba ensemble (traditional instruments); on 21 December by Krzysztof Knittel, Tomasz Pruchnicki and Tadeusz Sudnik (saxophone and electronic media). For the second part of the show they will be each day joined by Hans van Kolwijk making music with his sculptures. The Festival will facilitate workshops for young people in any age, lovers of known and odd sounds. They will prepare for their joint intuitive production following Audio Art Orkiestra's last concert.

"Audio Art is one of the most vanguard directions in the art of the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Combining its various disciplines it is a contemporary variation of the syncretic art. Audio Art is produced as sound installations, concerts, and performances. Sound is there treated as a material in a specific space and time context. The audience experiences these compositions in a polysensoric way, often itself being positioned in the centre of a spatial and acoustic structure. An Audio Art practitioner is the composer, developer, and performer of own works in one. Audio Art installations often employ advance technologies" - says Marek Chołoniewski, co-founder (together with Krzysztof Knittel) of the Audio Art Festival in Warsaw and artistic director of the Audio Art Festival in Krakow. Audio Art it is a festival based in Warsaw and targeted at yet another generation of audiences. It is a response to changed artistic conventions in the contemporary culture, and a reaction to the young generation's cognitive needs now manifesting as strong as never before. This is a festival for those tired with pushy pop culture and with academic élitism, an acknowledge trademark of the Polish independent art alternative.


Audio Art is a festival of "odd" sounds, audiovisual happening, instrumental theatre, the borderland between "higher" and "lower" art. An encounter of artists, who operate in the zone of pure genres and on the interface of various artistic formulas: sound, sight, and word, tracking sound senses and contexts, using high tech instruments as well as products of own craftsmanship.

Hans van Koolwijk, born 1952, studied at the Royal Academy and at the State Academy of Visual Arts in Holland, an artist, who combines passion for visual and musical arts, author of many installations so far exhibited in Luxemburg, Prague, Amsterdam, Lyon, Warsaw, Ljubljana, and Dresden and many other places.

The sound sculptures co-developer Hans van Koolwijk' creative partner, Hans van Eck, author of Bass Boxes among other works, was born in 1958. He studied electronic music at Sonology Institute in Utrecht, as well as musicology at the Amsterdam University. Besides he studied composition with Daan Manneke. Hans van Eck is composer and co-developer of installations and founder of electronic music ensemble Schreck. He teaches at the department of musical technologies of Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht.

Polish Contemporary Music Association was founded in 1923. It has many-year experience in production of music festivals, concerts, contests, and international composer courses. The Association's major projects so far include the World Music Days festival, and it is regularly involved with the 20th and 21st Century Music Performers Contest, the Kazimierz Serocki International Composition Contest, Audio Art Festival, and Sound Spaces Project. Polish Contemporary Music Associationis a member of the world-wide International Contemporary Music Association.




Media Patrons:
Polish Radio II,
Polish Music Information Centre
www.polmic.pl
 

For further details visit the websites of Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle -
www.csw.art.pl and of Polish Contemporary Music Association - www.ptmw.art.pl
Tickets available from Ujazdowski Castle Centre box office.
The festival projects are financially assisted by the Warsaw City Office's Culture Department, ZAiKS Authors Society, and Gaudeamus Foundation

Contact
Phone (+48 22) 8276981, phone/ fax (+48 22) 8277804
e-mail: audioart.warsaw@epistola.pl, ptmw@epistola.pl

Jerzy Kornowicz - curator, phone (+48) 662 041595
Iwona Kisiel - Festival Office
Małgorzata Kosińska and Ryszard Latecki - Festival Production
Tomasz Barański - Graphic Design
Krystyna Miecznikowska - Finances
NOPROBLEM.PL - technology support

Organisers
Polish Contemporary Music Association
Jacek Rogala - President
Mazowiecka 11
PL 00-052 Warsaw, Poland
phone (+48 22) 8276981,
[phone/fax] (+48 22) 8276981
ptmw@epistola.pl
www.ptmw.art.pl

Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle
Wojciech Krukowski - Director
Aleje Ujazdowskie 6
PL 00-461 Warsaw, Poland
phone (+48 22) 6281271/3,
fax (+ 4822) 6289550
csw@csw.art.pl
www.csw.art.pl