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WGXC Live: Apo33 & Electropixel 12 present The Horspiel Machine (Audio)

Aug 23, 2022

Julian Ottavi and Jenny Pickett of Apo33 & Electropixel 12 present two hours live from WGXC's Acra studio. The first hour will feature The Horspiel Machine with: Ben Owen, Nikki Lindt, Seth Cluett, Heidi Neilson, Amble Skuse, Gaël Segalen, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Solar Return (Pickett/Ottavi), and Dinah Bird + Jean-Philippe Renoult. In the second hour, Ottavi and Pickett will perform their own work live.

The first examples of the use of the radio medium to produce art could be found in the German Hörspiel ('radio play'), a form of radio theatre that mixes documentary, soundscape and electroacoustic music with sound editing techniques. One of the first examples was on 24 October 1924, when Frankfurt Radio broadcast 'Zauberei auf dem Sender: Versuch einer Rundfunkgroteske' [Enchantment on the Air: Attempt at a Radio Grotesque] written and produced by the artistic director Hans Flesch. In this experimental radio play, a broadcast is interrupted by a wizard who causes chaos in the studio in order to hypnotize the listeners with sound illusions." (John Barber) For the festival Electropixel 12, and this live broadcast on Wave Farm Radio: WGXC 90.7-FM, Nantes based artists Jenny Pickett and Julien Ottavi (aka Solar Return) are live in the WGXC Acra studio.

About Electropixel 12
Festival of emerging digital cultures and free electronic practices, Electropixel is part of an international network of electronic arts festivals. The festival opens a singular space allowing the meeting of artists (audiovisual, musicians, visual artists, intermedia, performers, etc.), theorists, programmers, tinkerers, and inventors of all kinds and of the factories of the everyday. For this new edition of the Electropixel festival, we plan to deepen the relationship to the collective and to shared creation through a network of international exchanges. The festival continues to imagine and think about the new modalities of artistic creation during the pandemic and in particular the disintegration of the idea of commonality and sharing. We need to find links in creation, new ways to explore new writing together rather than being isolated, confined, separated. How to build creations that represent multiple and delocalized collectives?
http://apo33.org
http://electropixel.org

About Live with SOLAR RETURN
Nantes based artists Jenny Pickett and Julien Ottavi created Solar Return in 2009. Taking electromagnetic phenomena as a starting point for their audio creations. They have produced various scores for dual audio synths/oscillators/DIY electronics etc…which reflect patterns and electromagnetic events such as solar flares and inner city mobile phone masts, hidden sonic environments as well as the unfathomable audio world of kitchen appliances. Through their performances the duo tunnel deep into the world of frequency, static and sound as a physical experience, where they mix environmental recordings from the cosmos to pylons to Nuclear power plants with Live electronics and various antennas as instruments. Jenny Pickett was the first to perform Live using the huge VLF antenna as an instrument with her performance Cosmic Power Lines at the HAB Galerie / Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes in 2013 and then with Solar Return playing the physical space, the audience and the architecture of the venue through a movement.
https://solarreturn.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/solarreturnmusic