not only from an aesthetic point of view “the 192 loudspeaker experience” is a installation you have to see ! the immersive soundexperience u face is unique and highly impressive and takes you out on a journey through soundscapes which not just surround you > they even intrude you ! ok, it looks like a huge battle of material (192 loudspeakers, 12 sub-woofers, 24 x 8channel amplifiers, 192 D/A converters, 2 x Quad G5, 1 Macbook), but after experiencing one of the three pieces you know that it´s worth it.
an interactive soundtable >> connecting people by making music together “…in our world everyone is digitally connected but never talking to each other face to face anymore…” >> bringing electronic music to a broader audience >>
because philips moved it’s production to the east we can be here and celebrate electronic culture. a couple of years ago the monotonic movements of production robots determined the daily rhythm, now it is the bumping sound of techno music which makes the people move in a robotic behaviour. it’s an electronic circus with artbots, installations, cinema, lecture and performances… STRP is actually a quite mainstream event with a slightly taste of a critic approach. there are no deepening philosophical lectures or theoretical input. but that’s not the intention of the festival organizers : “The composition of the programme is based on the principle that STRP should be a low threshold festival, geared to a large audience.” – from this point of view it’s definitely a big success! A lot of people not only during the day-time, but also the shows were sold out every night! thousands of people everywhere… mostly dutch of all ages, baby’s to granny’s – they were all there. the dutch people are really the most friendly and helpful people i’ve ever met: yesterday i even got driven home on the backseat of a bicycle – thx walter ! :-) i really enjoyed the people and atmosphere a lot at the festival!
After a slightly complicated trainsurfingtrip i arrived in Eindhoven, a small beautiful city in the south of Netherlands… if you go to Eindhoven Beukenlaan by train , you’ll see an old Philips Factory… and inside you find STRP, the Festival for Art, Technology and Music. already surprised at the entrance because of the metal-gates guiding the people in lines i was even more puzzled when entering the first zaal, called the brainport zaal… loads of people and sounds and action everywhere… was like entering at a luna park… ok, aaahhh, to much for the beginning… so, what to see first ? i took the festival program and looked for special lectures or performances which i might miss. oh, it’s dutch… do you have a english version ? …no, but look at the overview, it’s international ;-) ok, it wasn’t supposed to be an international festival… at least on the web-page you find all the info in english. even the lectures are in dutch. alright, i know german, so i could get some info’s out of “paradise bij the laptoplight”, a lecture with the topic “next nature“. how nature becomes culture and culture becomes nature. with international speed lectures (english ;-) , so i could understand better). quite informational and critic view about how we try to copy the nature, commercialise it and how all this is becoming nature again. on a broadsheet we got, you could read : “our technological world has become so intricate and uncontrollable that it has become a nature of its own” or “second life is not sustainable”. after that i started to check out the exhibition… wandering around and had lots of fun… in the beginning i was sceptic about the dimension of the festival and the luna park approach, but actually i liked a lot how the people used the interactive works. it was no such shy distance like in other art exhibitions, where people just look, or maybe very carefully touch. the people really use it and even start to invent new ways of playing around. so it’s a hardcore-test for all interactive works here… after a very interesting and intensive exhibition and my exhausting travelling i was to tired to see the music-program, which was a pity, because there was a very good international lineup ! … so i missed modeselektor :-( check out some works from the exhibition >>>
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