From September 7-11, 2002 a group of international sound and video artists gathered in an abandoned factory in Opava, a working class town near the eastern border of the Czech Republic. The aim was to allow the artists to freely develop projects or installations on the top two floors of the former fabric factory. The event was coordinated by Martin Klimes with the assistance of Jennifer Defelice.
A spontaneous visit by colleague Julian Rohrhuber from Hamburg provided a oppourtunity for myself and Jan Dufek to get a workshop in SuperCollider. In two days the code work was established for the ‘OpavaSynth” patch, a real-time sampler and processor which loads live sounds into buffers which in turn can be sampled from and passed through filters. For the Wednesday night public presentation we ran the OpavaSynth on three computers and used live and recorded sounds for source material.
Borscht first then Laptopy Musicky
Ales and Ladin prepare for September 11
Preparations for filling the space with sound
Proper breakfast fuels an industrious day
Social realist housing provided a suitable backdrop for the factory
The event was topped off with a sound installation exhibition at the Opava Dom Umeni. Sound sculptor, instrument maker and musician Michael Delia invited Julian Rohrhuber and myself to join in and affect sounds from his audible cooking performance with our patch called “Opava Synth”.
Rohrhuber and jgrzinich in the mix…
food preparation with musical chairs
Michael Delia cooks up a sonic delicacy.
