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SOUND OFF 1995
IS IT REALLY SOUND OFF?
* 1980s inconspicuously changed into 1990s. Inconspicuously yet with a sound. With an unhidden yet technically refined sound, aesthetically modulated, and interestingly structured. Satie's concept of musique d'ameublement, Duchamp's "secret sound". Cage's symbiosis of sound and silence framed by their gaining equal position in a framework of an open artwork, as well as his unbelievably precise prognosis of the upcoming orientation of musical experiments, "closed groove" of Parisian concretists, Stockhausen's unclosed Momentform, Conlon Nancarrow's player piano, live electronics of 1970s, as well as the revival of the sampling technique in 1980s gain, in modified modes, their own justified expression also in the last decade of this milenium. A few examples reminded us of the unlimited and inscrutabilli inventive possibilities of "making tricks" with sound are Frank Zappa's Synclavier Barking Pumpkin Digital Gratification Consort, John Zorn's game pieces as well as the polystylisti
* Also the structural relations between sound, image and motion are being realized in the radically new multimedia form. Sound slowly becomes an organic part of instalations and video-art' form of its "visualization" use the most recent technology "digitalization", laser, etc.). Also the most recent technology hit - virtual reality - can't be complete without sound. Moreover, its function is not reduced to the status of a secondary medium participating in the process of simulation only by its ontologically predetermined communication predisposition. In fact, with an VR-glove musical instruments can even be played and sampled. Possibilities that can be thus gained transcend the most courageous ideas in the creation and transmission of sound. Thus defying the most powerful fear about its future.
* It is not by chance, that the works of all previously mentioned artists are so often and visibly balanced with humour. Partly this is due to the ongoing process of transethnic, transcultural, and transreligious fusion. What is due this process iss caused by the sneh_media explosion freed from the most innocent prejudices, enabling artists to gain unimaginable distance from reflected "postmodern" reality.
* What is art like at the threshold of the new millenium? Is it multimedia? Interactive? Eclectic? Non-metaphysically balanced? All these characteristics can surely be applied but instead of formulating more phrases it is better to offer some possible answers as presented as in the debut of SOUND OFF. And we hope it will become an annual event - SOUND OFF.
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