TECHNOPOIESIS was a concert that took place 12-13 May 2023 at Fylkingen, Stockholm, the world’s oldest artist-run venue for new music and intermedia art. A selection of performances by Mark Buckeridge, John Macormac + Robin Price, Muiredach O’Riain and Quantum Foam—were presented to echo Fylkingen’s retrospective quest to engage with topics between Art and Technology in the late 1960s, rejuvenated with today’s concern by searching for forms of poetic tensions and possibilities in the machine age.
1. Quantum Foam, Everything but Signal
Electroacoustic composition using only sounds from the internet infrastructure and digital media
2. Mark Buckeridge, Untitled
A lyric-based improvisation performance using voice and piano
3. John Macormac + Robin Price, Rule Driven
Collaborative performance including a drum kit prepared with contact microphones triggering synthesised sounds in real-time, as well as improvisation with modular synthesisers. Informed by mathematics, geometry and the natural world, each component enacts a set of carefully formulated, self-determined rules.
4. Muiredach O’Riain, The Well Trained Algorithm 23 x 1
Generative AI composition, trained with seminal works of J. S. Bach and La Monte Young, “The Well Tempered Clavier” (TWTC) and “The Well Tuned Piano” (TWTP), and performed with guitar sending synthesised sounds beyond traditional and human-centred intonation.
Live sound engineer: Sade Kasiri
Audio mixing: Edy Fung
Quantum Foam is Edy Fung’s project that explores noise and information transmission from de-anthropocentric perspectives, through machine interpretations of sonic and material memories.
(Organiser)
Mark Buckeridge (b. 1991, Ireland) is an artist working in performance, moving images, installation and sound. Buckeridge graduated with an MFA in Fine Art from Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam in 2019. He is the co-founder of the arts organisation Muine Bheag Arts.
John Macormac lives and works in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied Fine Art, graduating from the University of Ulster with an MFA in 2015 and a BA in 2003. Macormac’s art practice is multidisciplinary, embracing performance, installation and drawing. He is interested in exploring pattern and rhythm through mathematics, geometry, structure and environment; currently with a focus on processes involving self-determined rules. His practice is process-led, rigorous, repetitive, systematic and labour intensive and his works carefully consider factors such as time, action, choice and human agency.
Robin Price is an artist-inventor, trans-disciplinary physicist, musician and cat enthusiast. He holds an MPhys in Theoretical Physics from the University of Wales, Swansea and a PhD in Composition and Creative Practice from Queen’s University, Belfast. He uses electronics, algorithms, code, glitches and hacked objects to push at the boundaries of what is technologically and ecologically possible, permissible and ethical. His approach is playful, experimental and publicly engaged.
Muiredach O’Riain is an Irish electroacoustic composer, currently pursuing a master’s degree at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. His music examines the intersection of human and machine intelligence, where his passion for musical exploration meets his academic background in computer science.
Tracklist:
(Live recording)
1. Quantum Foam, Everything but Signal
2. Mark Buckeridge, Untitled
3. John Macormac + Robin Price, Rule Driven
4. Muiredach O’Riain, The Well Trained Algorithm: 23 x 1
