The Morning Line - Vienna

The Morning Line was conceived as an interdisciplinary platform structure by Matthew Ritchie, where artists, architects, engineers, physicists and musicians would each contribute their own specialized information to create a new form; a mutable structure, with multiple expressions and narratives intertwining in its physical structure, projected video and innovative spatialized sound environments. Saturated with over fifty speakers, The Morning Line is using a unique interactive ambisonic sound system, conceived by the Music Research Centre of York University. As a result, the scope of the structure itself and its novel spatialization software suggested a new form of music written especially for this new kind of instrument. T-B A21 has commissioned an international group of composers whose work lies beyond the boundaries and the programming of traditional concert halls, to open up this forum to experimentation with different approaches and points of departures: from following the artistic concept of The Morning Line and developing a program of overlapping scores that musically parallel the fractal scaling of the architecture; to creating self sufficient works that treat the structure as an autonomous form of novel performance space and are diffused as autonomous works.

For the presentation of The Morning Line in Vienna guest sound curator Franz Pomassl invited Alexej Borisov (Russia), Tommi Grönlund & Petteri Nisunen (Finland), Christian Fennesz (Austria), Carsten Nicolai (Germany), Zsolt Olejnik (Hungary), Finnbogi Petursson (Iceland), Terre Thaemlitz (USA), Zavoloka (Ukraine) to conceive new acoustic works, commissioned by T-B A21. These new compositions were presented as world premieres in Vienna during the Sound Festival that followed the opening on the 7th of June and ran until the 11th of June. In addition, a symposium with an alternating series of panels, lectures and conversations not only addressed the program of new commissions in Vienna curated by Franz Pomassl by focusing on the participants’ practices but also refered to key aspects of the project and the relationship between sound, architecture, contemporary art and science in general.

The new compositions were added to the existing archive of music and soundscapes selected by the previous guest curators Florian Hecker, Bryce Dessner, Russell Haswell and Melih Fereli, Kamran İnce, and Cihat Aşkın (ITU – MIAM, Centre for Advanced Studies in Music, Istanbul). These include collaborative works by Bryce Dessner with David Sheppard and Evan Ziporyn, and Mark Fell with Roc Jiménez de Cisneros, Jonsi & Alex, and Ghostigital, and solo compositions by Bruce Gilbert, Florian Hecker, Lee Ranaldo, Chris Watson, Thom Willems, Erdem Helvacıoğlu, Cevdet Erek, Batuhan Bozkurt, and Mehmet Can Özer, Jana Winderen, Peter Zinovieff, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Yasunao Tone.

The Morning Line - Vienna
Kurator: Franz Pomassl

Künstler: Matthew Ritchie, Alexej Borisov, Grönlund / Nisunen, Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Zsolt Olejnik, Finnbogi Petursson, Terre Thaemlitz, Zavoloka