New Music and Media Experimental Word Special Sound Design Radio Broadcasting: Ex Tempore (+) Internet: radioART

The Experimental Studio of the Slovak Radio has been established in 1965. Ever since the studio continuously works on various projects of new music and an experimental drama and radiophonics; prepares multimedia projects and educational programs and stays focused on special sound performances as well. Experimental Studio regularly produces programs Ex Tempore and Ex Tempore Plus and broadcasts them on the Radio Devin frequency (a branch of Slovak Radio dedicated to the art and culture). The Studio also coordinates an Internet project called „radioART“, focused on both radio art, new music and media.
EXS possesses four fully equipped recording rooms, one studio and the audio archives. It collaborates with all the artistic sections and technical departments of Slovak Radio.
Thanks to its activities and performances, the EXS has become well known as an important and regular contributor to many cultural and artistic activities and events equally in local and international context. Many of its sound productions are considered to be a treasured part of Slovak Radio’s best of collection.

To Make the Vision Come True...
According to the example shown by the Warsaw’s Studio in Poland and thanks to a pressure created by the active new generation of Slovak composers in the sixties, there has been established an independent creative unit at Slovak Radio orientated towards a new music in all its variations. Since the very beginning the Studio collaborates with alternative and avant-garde artists and groups - for instance a group called Hudba dneška/Music of Today (led by Ladislav Kupkovič, a contemporary Slovak composer). In 1967, the first autonomous electroacoustic composition in Slovakia, The Orthogenesis was created, which became in the same time the first stereophonic recording ever realized in Slovak Radio (its author, Jozef Malovec was honored by the prize of Dartmouth College, USA and later on, in 1968 the composition was released as the LP-recording, too).

The Studio often introduces and helps to accept new technologies enriching radio’s practice (for instance the first stereophonic track in 1967). In 1968 the first quadraphonic record of The Orthogenesis was created, afterwards presented on the international festival of experimental music in Florence, Italy.
Thanks to continuous development and improvement of multichannel soundtrack techniques a large amount of valuable music and verbal projects has been created; for instance in 1979 it was Plač/The Cry, the first Slovak radio opera, or drama The Demon, The Wind, etc.

New Music and Avant-Garde
The Studio was meticulously working on the field of new music and inviting the artists from former Eastern-European block to create various electroacoustic compositions.
The outcomes and achievements of Bratislava’s Experimental Studio of Slovak Radio are considered to be a certain kind of inspiring example to Slovak contemporary composers. Therefore, its influence on public opinion and preferences within contemporary music production is not marginal.
Similar radio studios have been established in Pilsen, Czech Republic and in Budapest and Sofia, too. The EXS has also significantly influenced a certain generation of German composers coming from former DDR.

International Contexts
In the seventies The Studio took part in many common projects with film producers and stage artists. The Japanese company NHS was interested in the work of EXS and in 1973 broadcasts a three-hours-lasting program about the EXS and its achievements.
The electroacoustic music was performed and presented on many international forums and it also has been awarded various important prizes (e.g. Prix Italia, Bourges, Varese, Boswile, Darthmout College...). Similar success has been reached on international events organized by local radios such as Prix Brno (an international contest of verbal and musical radio productions) and Prix Folklorique de Radio Bratislava (an international contest of folk music recordings, running 1973-1987).

To Enlarge the Horizon...
So far as specific orientation towards a sole creation of musical programs did not completely satisfy the ambitions and requirements mirrored in radio programming structure, the EXS decided to extend its activities to the field of artistic verbal productions and later on to the area of special sound design (e.g. remastering of old soundtracks, recording of jingles and mastering of CDs via production of multi-channel DVD tracks).

Intercultural Achievements
The EXS takes part in preparation and organization of various artistic projects and international seminars and sessions-for instance, the seminars of New Music in Smolenice, Slovakia (in years 1969-1971), later replaced by IFEM 92 and IFEM 94 (International Forum of Electro acoustic Music - an international seminar).

So far, The Studio has released 250 minutes of its experimental music, dividing it onto 4 CDs. For more information about the EXS, please, do not hesitate to visit our Internet project radioART page - http://www.radioart.sk
Older documents and tracks are available in the archives of Slovak Radio or as well through radioART-web page on Internet.

The List of Crucial Employees and Contributors of the Studio
(Years 1965-2003; in alphabetical order):
Ján Backstuber * Róbert Bartoš * Juraj Ďuriš * Peter Janík * Peter Kolman * Víťazoslav Kubička * Stanislav Kaclík * Jozef Malovec * Miroslav Masica * Richard Sabo * Ernest Walzel * Andrej Zmeček * Marek Žoffaj

Contact: exs@slovakradio.sk Mýtna 1, P.O. Box 55 817 55 Bratislava 15 Slovak Republic tel.: 00421-2-57273 498; Studio 00421-7-57273 -ext.296, 297, 298, 299