The Austrians again… well it feels a bit strange to take part on such a big international Festival and meet artists from your country everywhere… I think about 10% of the artists participating at FILE Festival are Austrians somehow – even if the most of them have chosen to live somewhere else. Like Erich Berger who is living in Helsinki and Peter Votava who is living in Berlin. Well, i guess such Festivals are anyway not that kind of patriotic or nationalistic events like football games or ski worldcups ;-) But the international context of such Festivals and the country next to your name reminds you about your origins, even if the new media art scene feels like a family from outer space. If you have such a lot of common interests and ideas like in such a community, distances and borders just dont exist. I wish everybody could feel the same !
But actually i wanted to write about the Heart Chamber Orchestra, who got the second prize in the electronic sonority category at the FILE PRIX LUX Award. And as i liked the performance very much – i have to tell you, that they really deserve it.
Also known as the audiovisual collective Terminalbeach they upgraded there work by adding a whole live playing orchestra. Sounds like a challenge. Right, but the way they are working with the orchestra is fantastic. They connect each of the musicians with heart rate monitors in order to work with their inner metronom and transform this data into a fantastic performance. But listen to their explanations and interesting details yourself:
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