Viola Yip • Michael Akstaller
3D Audio Concert of the swim Series / March 11, 2023
Viola Yip
Viola Yip is a composer, performer, sound artist, and instrument builder. She invents new instruments that explore the complex and dynamic relationships between media, materiality, musical bodies, and space through electricity and electronics, thereby introducing a new physicality into electronic music.
Her recent performances have taken place at venues including the Hong Kong Arts Center, the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University, Issue Project Room (NYC), Art Club of Chicago, Cycling ’74 Expo, University of Huddersfield, Sonic Arts Research Center at Queen’s University Belfast, QO-2 (Brussels), Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Cologne, Radialsystem Berlin, Pinakothek der Moderne (Munich), and the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe.
She recently received an honorable mention at the Giga-Hertz Prize 2021 at ZKM Karlsruhe. She was also a grantee of the Villa Waldberta artist residency in Munich and held a residency at the studios for electroacoustic music of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
Michael Akstaller
Michael Akstaller (b. 1992) studied Fine Arts, Media Theory, and Engineering. In 2017, together with Jan St. Werner, he initiated the Class for Dynamic Acoustic Research at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg, which has operated as an independent collective since 2021.
He has collaborated with artists such as Alexandra Pirici (Terraform, 2020), Ulrike Ottinger (Cosmos Ottinger, 2021), and Mouse on Mars (2021), and has participated in exhibitions including the 6th Ural Biennale, Nature and State (State Art Gallery Baden-Baden), and Spatial Jitter (Kunstbau Munich).
Michael Akstaller’s artistic work explores the relationships between sound, space, perception, and movement. He researches methods of expanding spatial perception through directional sound sources and the propagation of sound in flowing water.
Through his interdisciplinary and collaborative work with artists and scientists from various fields, he has developed independent curatorial formats—such as the Raststätte Frankenwald residency, and Sometimes you just have to give it your attention…, a residency inviting non-European sound researchers to engage with the cultural heritage of Nazi Germany.
swim 2023
