Damián Gorandi • Hauptmeier | Recker
3D Audio Concert of the series swim / July 6, 2024
Damián Gorandi & Diana Syrse Valdes
Damián Gorandi is a contemporary composer and professor of composition. He was born in Argentina in 1991. He studied composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in Stefano Gervasoni’s class and at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (Strasbourg), electroacoustic music at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar, and attended the CURSUS IRCAM in composition and computer music in Paris. He earned the title of Professor of Composition at the Alberto Ginastera Conservatory (Argentina). He has collaborated with numerous instrumental ensembles, and his music is regularly performed at renowned festivals worldwide. He has won many international awards and also serves as a juror for numerous contemporary composition competitions. As a professor, he teaches composition courses at the Haute École des Arts de Berne and works as a professor of computer music and orchestration at the Conservatory of Beauvais.
Concert ~ Acousmatic compositions of the New Complexity create new spheres through layered diffusion between acoustic instruments and multichannel processing.
Under the title “Distorted Landscapes,” composer Damián Gorandi presents some of his acousmatic pieces. “It is not music of the present; it comes from a very distant past and a future yet to be invented,” he describes. Contemporary new media and elements of ancient cultures merge sonically: Composer and performer Diana Syrse Valdes accompanies Gorandi live, engaging in a dialogue with her voice and traditional Latin American instruments alongside the electronic sounds—creating an immersive conversation between primal and digital worlds that questions the relationship between humans and new technologies. Gorandi often reflects in his work on cultures and cosmogonies, considering (ancient, mystical) explanations of how the world and cosmos were created, seeking answers to contemporary questions. In the tension between the artificial present and ancient cultural concepts arise the titular “distorted landscapes.” During his residency at ZiMMT, Gorandi arranges special spatial editions of his works.
Hauptmeier|Recker
Since 2009, composers Martin Recker (*1991) and Paul Hauptmeier (*1993) have worked together as an artist duo in the field of sound and multimedia art. They studied composition together with Robin Minard and Maximilian Marcoll at the FRANZ LISZT University of Music Weimar, as well as at the University of California San Diego with Katharina Rosenberger, Natacha Diels, and Miller Puckette (Paul Hauptmeier), and at the Sibelius Academy Helsinki with Marianne Decoster-Taivalkoski (Martin Recker). In addition to work for theater and opera, live electronics, radio, and electroacoustic music, their focus is on sound installations in public spaces. They are co-founders and board members of ZiMMT. There, they conduct research on spatial audio and organize workshops, panels, concerts, and exhibitions on the topic. Since October 2022, they share a position as artistic staff at Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany, where they teach sound art in the Time-Based Art program.
Concert ~ electroacoustic set with spatial multichannel sound synthesis and modular synthesizers, conceived as three-dimensional from the start. The movement of sound in space is an integral part of the performance; the space becomes the instrument.
“What exactly it will become reveals itself in the moment,” say Paul Hauptmeier and Martin Recker. As the artist duo Hauptmeier|Recker, they perform a structured live improvisation within the swim (spatial works and immersive music) series — an electroacoustic, experimental set that touches on a variety of genres, from contemporary classical music to electronic club music. Their setup consists of modular synthesizers, computers, and various controllers. They use software they have been developing themselves for many years to play intuitively live on 3D systems. They work with spatial multichannel sound synthesis and conceive their works three-dimensionally from the outset. The movement of sound in space is an integral part of the performance; the space becomes the instrument.
swim 2024
Fifteen very different local and international artists are part of swim. Their works range from intricately composed electroacoustic pieces to experimental approaches rooted in the aesthetics of club music. swim merges diverse sound worlds and lets radical approaches to music production and performance challenge conventional ideas. What is a live performance? Which technical means are used, and how do they expand musical expression? What happens to the role of the audience when it immerses itself in virtual sound worlds during an immersive performance?
Even ideas of what an instrument is are deconstructed, and familiar instruments are used in unusual ways.
During three-day microresidencies, musicians can develop their works on site using 3D audio technology and try out new approaches. All concerts will be live-streamed in high-quality binaural audio — for a spatial experience both on site and everywhere else.
