MARK FELL / GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER / JESSE OSBORNE-LANTHIER
Presented for the first time in Berlin ‘Mark Fell – Eight Rectangular Waveshapes (2007)’
Mark Fell is a multidisciplinary artist based in Sheffield (UK). After studying experimental film and video art at the local polytechnic he reverted to earlier interests in computational technology, music and synthetic sound. In 1998 he initiated a series of critically acclaimed record releases, featuring both collaborative and solo works, on labels including Mille Plateaux, Line, Editions Mego, Raster Noton and Alku. Fell is widely known for combining popular music styles, such as electronica and techno, with more academic approaches to computer-based composition with a particular emphasis on algorithmic and mathematical systems. His recent musical practice has become increasingly informed by non-Western musics, this is evident in two linked works “Multistablity” and “UL8” which explore a number of unfamiliar timing and tuning systems. Uncut magazine called these “completely mind-blowing” and the Wire magazine said these were “amazing”. As well as recorded works Fell produces installation pieces often using multiple speaker systems. Although well versed in the use of ambisonics, his work in this area is characterised by ‘non-illusion based’ approaches where multiple waveshapes are spatially distributed to form complex synthetic sonic environments. The diversity and importance of Fell’s practice is reflected in the range and scale of international institutions that present his work – from large super clubs such as Berghain (Berlin), to Hong Kong National Film archive and many others. Fell has received commissions from prestigious institutions including Francesca Von Habsburg’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (Vienna) with a premier at Seville Biennale of Art, and the National Ballet of Madrid have performed to his works. He has been recognised by ARS Electronica (Linz) with an Honorary mention in the digital musics category, and was shortlisted for the Quartz award for his contribution to research in digital music. In addition to his creative practice Fell has been involved in a number of academic research projects ranging from computer science to musicology, and as a curator Fell is widely recognised for his contribution to the development of experimental electronic music in Europe.
Grischa Lichtenberger (born 1983) is an electronic music producer, visual and installation artist living in berlin. Grown up in a withdrawn farmhouse near bielefeld (westphalia), his artistic approach developed from surveying the landscape as reference for the condition of art production itself. landscape, in this sense, is understood not only as the picturesque or sublime recreational facility of nature, but as an interaction between the traces of biographical history and the material concreteness of the present surroundings.
The aggressive tone in his sound design has its counterpart in an emotional depth of the musical structure – a hermetic idiosyncrasy of rhythm and melodies that implement a personal handwriting into the arrangement and sculpture of the sound elements. The music aims towards a paradoxic parallelism of introspective moods on the dance floor and unsettling contemplations in an intimate listening situation. Tumbling between funky, highly energetic beats and trembling, concerning melodies, an almost tactile honesty reaches out to the individual listener. technology appears not as the perfect, mathematically defined form, but as an index of failure and error, as a shadow of the spooking despairs and desires of its producer, engraved in the finiteness of the concrete form to be embraced by the attentive.
In 2009, he released his ep »~treibgut« as part of the unun series on raster-noton, followed by his debut album »and iv (inertia)« in 2012. He has played audiovisual live sets in international festivals and realized several commissioned installations on both local and international sites.
http://grischa-lichtenberger.com/
Jesse Osborne-Lanthier is a Berlin-based conceptual electronic musician and visual artist focused on inciting alternative cognitive responses via mixed sonic material. Also working solo as Noir, Lanthier’s collaborative aliases include Femminielli Noir with Bernardino Femminielli and The H with Francesco De Gallo.
Lanthier was raised in Montreal and been active as a sound artist since 2007. His most recent album, Otherwise Insignificant Psyche Debris, is comprised of 22 live recordings from over the last few years and and was released as a cassette via labels Hobo Cult and MIND Records. Focused on the concept of dispositional emotional regulation, the body of work deals with acceptance, avoidance, problem solving, reappraisal, rumination, and suppression. It contains remixes by Grischa Lichtenberger (Raster Noton, Semantica), Vereker (L.I.E.S.), Hobo Cubes (Debacle, Digitalis, Opal Tapes), VNDL (Kvitnu, Hymen), and Robert Lippok (To Rococo Rot, Raster Noton) and is mastered by Vladislav Delay. It acts as the “exaggerated and terminal” follow-up to the collection Athenaeum of Unedited, Superannuated, Incomplete, Unreleased, Intimate Works 2011-2013, an intimate selection of more beat-driven pieces, again taken unedited from the main front-of-house mixing boards at his shows in Montreal, Berlin, Barcelona, and Nottingham. Also released in cassette tape format by Hobo Cult Records, the works cycle from dub-influenced techno to static waves of noise, always textural, and with no trace of simplified, predictable formats. About all of his work he writes, “instead of using a platform or mold of dance music in order to make people move, I might use it to prompt a certain feeling, state, understanding, or aesthetic. I aim to use the tools which are available to me through contemporary music in order to reach a different and individualized end.”