To hear on Sunday 6 and 13 September 2015, 2pm - 9pm:
Why is why of no stranger
Specially created for the Bassbox loudspeaker installation in the ohrenhoch cellar
(2014, Premiere)
by Stelios Manousakis (Greece)
Stelios Manousakis on 'Why is why of no stranger':
'Why is why of no stranger' is a first-person sound-film without image; It is meant to be experienced as an immersive, spatially distributed acousmatic environment with no beginning and end. The piece is concerned with embodiment, mediated memory, and hyperreality. While its medium is sound, it aims beyond a purely sonic experience. Cinematic motives and modalities are abstracted to create, develop, and destroy fragments of narrative, places, and psychogeographic auras. The film emerges in the visitors’ minds through their ears, as they move through the gallery.
The piece is composed using original sound material recorded from 2008 to 2013 in various locations, in:
USA: Mount Rainier, Washington; Seattle, Washington; Redwood National Forest, California; Humbolt Redwood Forest, California; San Francisco, California; Oahu, Hawaii
Austria: Vienna; Kramsach, Tirol
The Netherlands: The Hague; Scheveningen; Ijmuiden bunkers
Greece: Chrisi Akti, Crete; Kontokynigi, Crete
Special: In-depth text by Stelios Manousakis to his piece 'Why is why of no stranger' in relation to the theme 'Sound activism', which ohrenhoch deals with in 2015. The text is available at 'ohrenhoch'.
Stelios Manousakis (Crete, Greece) is a composer, performer, sound artist, and researcher. He operates across the convergence zones of art, science, and engineering / composition, performance, and installation / the rich tradition of western sonic art and ‘digital-folk’ idioms. His work is visceral yet cerebral, communicating through pure, raw experience while being complex and multilayered. His output extends from music performance – most often with live electronics – to intermedia and sound art installations, to fixed medium pieces and film music. Many of these works merge algorithmic finesse with the expressiveness of improvisation, or the immediacy of audience participation. They are often designed as emergent (eco)systems or organisms, unearthing rich and organic worlds through artistic reinventions of models from complexity science, cybernetics, biology, and network theory. Manousakis' work has been shown in various festivals, venues, and centers across Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. Besides his solo work, he has co-founded several music ensembles, multimedia groups, and most recently the intermedial ‘Modern Body Festival’.