The STRP Festival 2023 Expo program is complete! All program items are revolving around this year’s theme ‘The Art of Listening’. In this article we will provide you with an overview of all the works presented in the Expo of STRP Festival 2023. For more information about a specific item, simply click on ‘read more’. Enjoy the introductions and see you on the festival!
Alex Brajkovic – Dispersions 0.3
Multimedia artist Alex Brajkovic shows Dispersions 0.3: a multisensory installation that explores the relationship between sound, wind, fog, movement and space, enriching it with new meanings and content. The installation explores the relationship between digital sound and its physical manifestation in space. It invites us to enter a world not controlled by technology, but in balance with nature. How do we listen with more than just our ears? Read more here!
Guillaume Cousin – Le Silence des Particules
When we speak or move, thousands of vortexes exist. Even when things seem quiet, an imaginable amount of unperceivable activity is happening in and around us. Guillaume Cousin's air sculpture, Le Silence des Particules, lets the voice of the invisible elementary particles be heard. The installation makes a movement of air visible, leaving behind rings of smoke. The vortex appears to be alive. The rings are finally not so far from what we are: a pure natural phenomenon. Read more here!
Hakeem Adam – Here Us Out
ACT Award winner Hakeem Adam conducts a collective listening experience with Here Us Out. The work stems from ongoing research on oral knowledge in Ghanaian culture, specifically exploring how methods and techniques from this form of communication can influence digital cultures, practices, and audiences. Using a chorus of voices, this sound installation creates a framework within which visitors can explore different dynamic listening paradigms. Read more here!
Jakob Kudsk Steensen – Liminal Lands
With Liminal Lands, artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen tells a VR journey through unseen landscapes in the Camargue saltwater region of France. These landscapes are constantly in transformation thanks to the crystallizing salt that forms a shimmering cloak over colorful worlds of algae, bacteria, and organisms. In this almost ritualistic experience, people change during their journey, exploring each new world from a different perspective of the landscape. Read more here!
Juan Arturo García – Time Displaced
ACT Award winner Juan Arturo García presents the film installation Time Displaced: a research project and film installation about the IAN-R1 nuclear reactor in Colombia. He sees the geochronology (time labeling rocks, fossils and sediments) undertaken there as a special way of tuning in to the earth. Time Displaced shows different approaches of listening to the earth: from modern scientific techniques to native knowledge and acoustic memories of living with nature in Latin America that have been silenced for centuries. Read more here!
KMRU - Slowed Cities
City sounds have always been an important part of KMRU's deepening soundscapes. This project, Slowed Cities asks the listener to listen inwardly to the city. How do the human and non-human form that city? The piece was composed with sound clips from personal archives of field recordings from Nairobi, Jinja, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris and Montreal. It is a story about the past, present and future of cities, retold. Read more here!
KWAGO – OYAYI
Based on the belief that deep listening is a collective act, KWAGO organises collaborative poetry sessions in a women's prison in the Philippines. As the captives recite poems, KWAGO records their heartbeats. These heartbeats, along with audio recordings of the female prisoners' poems, lullabies -Oyayi- and longings, will echo through the walls of the installation at STRP, which you can experience as a visitor. Read more here!
Leopold Inkapööl - Omniphonium
What if playing an electronic musical instrument could also be a spatial experience? Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Leopold Inkapööl presents Omniphonium: a highly intuitive audio controller that allows the user to play with this spatial dimension of sound. The installation fully immerses its visitors using multiple concealed speakers. By turning the touch-sensitive rings on the instrument individually, you can move the sounds around as you play. Read more here!
MAOTIK & Maarten Vos – Erattic Weather
Digital artist MAOTIK and musician Maarten Vos show the changing climate conditions in an immersive multimedia experience. With Erratic Weather, they extract various sources of weather information from an online database and process them into a visual and surround sound composition. Immerse yourself in the life cycle of swirling phenomena such as a typhoon, hurricane, and tropical cyclone, and experience the destructive power of nature and the need to preserve it. Read more here!
pablo sanz - EARTHING
Artist, composer and researcher pablo sanz created the audio work EARTHING after intensive fieldwork on the island of La Palma (Spain), during the last week of the 85-day eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano. The work encourages the visitor to listen with the earth, by paying attention to the constant reconfiguration of our planet by changing flows of matter and energy in different forms (solid, liquid and gas). Read more here!
Shock Forest Group - Cosmic Radio
Who still listens to the radio? Well, apparently everyone. In 1964, during a study on radio waves, scientists accidentally discovered a mysterious, steady sound. This radiation did not come from Earth, the Sun or our galaxy. It appeared to be cosmic background radiation, the oldest electromagnetic radiation in the universe. And we are still, unconsciously, listening to it. The multi-disciplinary team Shock Forest Group by initiator and electronic music producer Nicolas Jaar will conduct an in-depth investigation into the history, present and future of radio. Read more here!
Spacemakers – What a time to be Alive
Born into a world of ecological disasters, many of us experience an increasing pressure to save the planet. Yet despite our efforts, CO2 emissions continue to increase. It can make raise questions like: “what’s the point of trying if we’re doomed either way?” The VR experience "What a time to be Alive" created by Spacemakers and virtual reality director Iris van der Meule under guidance of STRP, exposes you to feelings that come with experiencing climate doom. The work is located within a Climate Doom Bar, where you can openly talk about your experience with others, have a chat or confess without judgement. Read more here!
Tega Brain & Sam Lavigne - OFFSET
Carbon offsetting is the reduction or removal of emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, created to compensate emissions elsewhere. Although compensating carbon emissions seems to stem from good intentions, it applies a capitalist logic to atmospheric interactions. This logic assumes that all activities on earth can be quantified, abstracted, and exchanged. With this tactic, existing carbon offsetting schemes maintain a status quo rather than address the root causes of climate problems. The hybrid installation OFFSET shows the possibility of an alternative compensation market, quantifying social exchanges and political actions that contribute to radical change. Read more here!
Zeno van den Broek & Robin Koek- Raumklang
What if sound created the space around you, instead of the other way around? Raumklang is a site-specific sound architecture created by composer and artist Zeno van den Broek and sound artist Robin Koek. The installation invites you to experience 4-dimensional objects in space, perceived through hearing. Your perspective and auditory experience constantly change as you make your way around and through these invisible sonic objects. Parallel to the onsite installation there is a website where online visitors can experience the sound architecture 'through the ears' of an onsite visitor. Read more here!
STRP is looking forward to seeing and hearing you at the festival from 13 to 16 April 2023. Keep posted for the Scenario program and locations! For more info and tickets, click here.