Time only happens once. Time is precious because it cannot be reproduced. Time is irrevocable. We try to make good use of time, but maybe time tries to make good use of us. What would happen if you tried to escape from the clutches of time? Or if you let yourself be led by a structure that allows you to lose yourself in time?

Participate in a walking tour created from a concept by Jacqueline Schoemakers. Participants receive a topographic map and have to do their utmost to follow the straight line that is drawn on it. The tour starts at the Paradiso, but where it ends is anybody’s guess. There is no meaningful movement from A to B in this walk; there is no urgency to get anywhere. You can enjoy the walk at any time during the day or night, even after the festival – and it is best experienced alone. At 17:30 each day during the festival there is a get together to exchange thoughts about Time Travelled and Time Lost with others who have done the walk.

A map for Time Travelled and Time Lost and an information leaflet can be obtained at the festival desk. Informal get together each festival day at 17:30 in De Balie. Start is at Paradiso.

When the most radical ideas from physics, philosophy and technology are pushed to their limits, and when music is informed by these ideas, what is then the conception of time and timing in music we arrive at?

With Michael Pisaro (US) and Keith Fullerton Whitman (US).

Michael Pisaro
Some Questions about the Existence of Time

Physicist Julian Barbour has posited a physical world in which time as we know it does not exist. Can we think music without time? This talk will attempt to carry this process a bit further by thinking about some recent work stemming from the Wandelweiser group.

Keith Fullerton Whitman
In conversation

Programming allows for a different approach to time in music composition. Practical and theoretical aspects of composing with process, generative sound and image, building systems for music, and performing live with such systems, will be thoroughly dissected in this panel.

With Thomas Patteson (US), Mark Fell (UK), Joe Gilmore (UK) and Juliana Borinski (BR/FR).

Thomas Patteson
The Time of Roland Kayn’s Cybernetic Music

Thomas Patteson explores the legacy of Roland Kayn (1933–2011) with a focus on the distinctive sense of time engendered by his music. Kayn developed a unique approach to electronic sound that he named cybernetic music. He envisioned the role of the composer as a designer of the technological conditions for the emergence of sonic phenomena that should be literally beyond imagination.

Mark Fell, Joe Gilmore & Juliana Borinski
Presentation & conversation

Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore speak about how they work with process-based and generative methods of composition, and how this informs ‘time’ and ‘rhythm’ in their work. Juliana Borinski contributes a photographic perspective on process-based methods.

Human perspectives on time have not always been the same. Since the advent of Modernity and the introduction of new technologies – first mechanical, later electronic – we have come to celebrate speed, innovation and ‘the new’. In this panel two researchers will investigate the myth of the new, the culture of speed and stress, and explore new approaches to the history of culture and technology.

With David Edgerton (UK) and Enda Duffy (IE).

David Edgerton
The Shock of the Old

Music is a wonderful example of the mixing of the old and the new – new music on old instruments, and vice-versa, the long life and the rehabilitation of the old – from period instruments to vinyl discs. In this music is a microcosm of the human world. Yet when we think of science, technology, and the modern, we resort to crude stage theories in which the new supplants the old, is radically more powerful than the old, and renders the old merely of antiquarian interest. We need to understand the modern technological world in less naively ideological ways, and get to grips with its materiality in richer ways.

Enda Duffy
High Energy: Soma, Techne, Stress

A talk about the history of stress. Coined only in the 1930s, ‘stress’ is perhaps the modern medical term which has become most pervasive as a description of our relation to the material world, yet it has never really been theorised outside physiology and psychology. Continuing issues raised in The Speed Handbook (2009) regarding adrenaline, Duffy discerns in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century a scientific project to rethink organic life in terms of rates of motility and mobility – as a mechanism for the generation, dispersal and conservation of energy (of which ‘speed’ is one component). This invariably allies issues of human and animal energy to issues of affect and emotion.

Immerse yourself in a subtle drone, which after a while opens the portal to a different space, with Catherine Christer Hennix + The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage. Hennix’s post-minimal drones elaborate on La Monte Young’s concepts and attempt to halt our experience of time. The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage will play three concerts, which are meticulously adapted for the performance space. The group gathers a week in advance to prepare and develop the composition. All the musicians are at the forefront of contemporary music, exploring micro-tonality, just intonation and the space of sound.

‘As deep and heavy as the 1960’s recordings of La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music, but full of Hennix’ own musical and mathematical genius.’ – Marcus Boon

The Choras(s)an Time-Court Mirage consists of: Catherine Christer Hennix(US/SE),  Amelia Cuni (IT),  Franz Hautzinger (AT),  Paul Schwingenschlögl(AT),  Hillary Jeffery (UK) and  Robin Hayward (UK).

There is limited seating in the SMART Project Space. If you have a passepartout, please reserve a ticket for the performance you would like to attend at: reservations@sonicacts.com.

The longest string instrument of the world will be installed in the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ. On Saturday night Ellen Fullman will perform on her Long String Instrument, in a duet with Okkyung Lee on cello.

Natural Time is dedicated to biological rhythms, human speed, the cycles of stars and planets, the sounds that nature creates around us, and the natural time that human hands impose on musical instruments. Keith Fullerton Whitman composed Natural Rhythms for Sonic Acts and the Kontraste Festival. It sounds like free jazz in an electronic gaming arcade. The performance Knowing When by Joel Ryan and Spanish pianist Agustí Fernàndez is an exercise in split-second timing. The innovative post-breakbeat duo Icarus closes the evening with a brand new work. Preceding these musical excursions: explorations of time in experimental films by Robert Breer, Norman McLaren and René Jodoin.

Robert Breer
Blazes
(1961, 3’00, 16 mm, stereo)

100 basic images switching positions over 4000 frames. One continuous explosion. Painter, film- maker, creator of kinetic sculptures and muto- scopes, Robert Breer (US) became known for his experimental animation.

Norman McLaren
Synchromy
(1971, 7’27, 16 mm, colour)

Vibrantly coloured stripes, bars, rectangles and squares. The synthetic soundtrack has been incorporated in the image track of the film so that what we see is what we hear.

René Jodoin
Rectangle and Rectangles
(1984, 8’29, 35 mm)

A didactic film in disguise. Jodoin programmed a computer to co-ordinate a highly complex operation involving an electronic beam of light, colour filters and a camera. This animation film, without words, is designed to expose the power of the cinematic medium, and to illustrate the abstract nature of time.

The films are screened 21:00–21:20.