ISM Hexadome

The Institute for Sound and Music was proud to present Brian Eno's "Empty Formalism." This was the first installation for the ISM Hexadome and the world premiere of Brian Eno's latest work commissioned for the ISM Hexadome at Gropius Bau in Berlin, in partnership with Berliner Festspiele and their director, Thomas Oberender.

Brian Eno is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, writer, and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop, electronic, and generative music. A self-described "non-musician," Eno has helped to introduce a variety of unique conceptual approaches and recording techniques into contemporary music, advocating a methodology of "theory over practice" throughout his career.

EMPTY FORMALISM


"A few years ago I was at a painting show with a friend of mine. He was critical of the work. He said, 'Well, it's just empty formalism isn't it?' I thought, 'Yes, it is. And actually that's what I like—empty formalism. Like music...'. It's funny that visual art is expected to have some sort of decodable message, to be translatable into words (which is what art critics think their job is), whereas nobody expects that of music. Music has always been a completely abstract art form and nobody minds. It never had a figurative life: there was never a form of music that painted sound-pictures of landscapes or nude torsos or groups of peasants in villages.

Whereas people will say of an abstract painting 'What's it meant to be? What does it mean?' they never ask the same questions about music. Music is what it is, and you either like it or you don't. You don't have to 'understand it'. Nobody ever said of a Roy Orbison song, or a Mozart sonata: 'I don't understand it, I don't know what it's supposed to mean'. It is what it is, and its 'meaning'—whatever that word means—is its effect on you.

This show is a version of empty formalism. By that I mean that the work is closer to the history of music than to the history of painting or sculpture."

After a week long presentation of Empty Formalism, the following weekends displayed live performances and installations from 8 other artistic collaborations.

In March 2019, as part of the forthcoming 'Wunderbar Together' initiative tour of the ISM Hexadome, celebrating a year of German - American friendship, the ISM commissioned a new piece for the Hexadome with electronic music pioneer Suzanne Ciani, in collaboration with visual artist AudeRrose. Suzanne and Aude spent a week in Studio 2 of the Funkhaus in Berlin where the 52 channel sound system, and 6 projection screen 'Floating Hexadome' (a lighter touring version) was assembled. This week long residency resulted in the work 'Under the Electric Sea' which was to be premiered at the Gray Area Festival in San Francisco in July 2019 and became a part of the programme as it travelled on to Montreal and MASS MoCA. Wunderbar Together was funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, implemented by the Goethe-Institut and supported by the Federation of German Industries.

Exclusively for MASS MoCA, the ISM partnered with Brooklyn-based ​Little Cinema. to present ​The Neverending Story​, which marks the second film adapted exclusively for the ISM Hexadome’s 6 screen, 52 speaker cinematic format after ‘Mother’ from Darren Aronosky was presented in Montreal. Viewers experienced a 15 minute ​’shared VR’ journey through Fantasia​, learning how ​"The Nothing is destroying our world".

During the program at MASS MoCA, the ISM launched an immersive education workshop with​ Berklee College of Music​. Students from the Berklee interdisciplinary Arts institute, under the direction of Neil Leonard, had the opportunity to work with and contribute to the perpetual development of the ISM Hexadome. The immersive education workshop offered hands on interaction with the technology, and explored ways in which leading edge immersive formats for fine art can advance cultural engagement now and in the future. The participating students split into two groups, each group with visual and sound artists, and over the course of two days of exploration developed original pieces.

UNDER THE ELECTRIC SEA

Suzanne Ciani is a five-time Grammy award nominated composer, electronic music pioneer, and neo-classical recording artist whose work has been featured in countless commercials, video games, and feature films. Over the course of her 40+ year career, she's released 16 solo albums, including "Seven Waves," "The Velocity of Love," and most recently, her comeback quadraphonic Buchla modular synth performance recording “LIVE Quadraphonic.” She's been recognized as Keyboard Magazine's "New Age Keyboardist of the Year," provided the voice and sounds for Bally's groundbreaking "Xenon" pinball machine, created Coca-Cola’s pop-and-pour sound, designed Atari’s sound logo, played concerts all over the globe, and carved out a niche as one of the most creatively successful female composers in the world. "A Life in Waves", a documentary about Ciani’s life and work, debuted at SXSW and is available to watch on all digital platforms.

AudeRrose is a multi-disciplinary artist working with performance, photography, sound and projection. In the past years she produced a collection of photographic prints using alternative techniques like photograms, chemigram, cyanotype and lumen prints. The result of her work are series of organic motives declined in a serial collection, exploring the expanded possibilities of printing with paper, sun, chemical reactions, revisiting the avant-garde techniques of the pioneers of experimental photography.