Metamechanics blog is dedicated to post-mechanistic ideas, free thinking and creative imagination.
Metamechanics explores innovative non mechanistic concepts and approaches in art, science, philosophy, technology and other fields of human activitiy.
Metamechanics is a strategy of creative thinking for the future world of rapid and radical change which is already here but we are not ready to face and accept it yet.
It's another low/no budget project I've made together with my long time collaborator Boštjan Drinovec.For some 15 years we collaborate on our sonic sculptures, experimenting, looking for materials and mechanisms, assembling, finding things out...or not. It's a creative play of sculptor and metamechanic, an attempt to create a public sonic sculpture which attracts people with it's shape and form, fire their imagination and invite them to transform it into an instrument.
Opening performance was held on the exhibition garden of ZDSLU, Ljubljana in September 2015. I used some pickups, effects and a looper to make Retrophonics play in it's very own manner. And that's how it sounds...
After succesfull collaboration on a short movie One Hundred
Dogs, Jan Cvitkovič invited me again to make compositions for his project
Children Of Adam And Eve, staged in National Theatre Nova Gorica. Shortly after
begining of rehersals he asked me to join them with efektor. It was intense,
focused, strict, upredictable and exciting.I have to react very precisely, follow the rhythm of silences, words and
gestures. So different experience from following musicians or playing on click.
The play started to grow from Jan's text, dedicated actors become alive and
words were slowly transforming into voices. My compositions were following them
and becoming together with them. You never go so far as when you don't know
where you're going. That's the principle of creativity and principle of human
history. We all are children of Adam and Eve, walking through time, following
ideas, falling into history.
We were invited to perform live on TV Slovenia for a production called Arrhythmic Concert, so we took a chance and do our best in their studios. TV crew was very supportive, they even invited some audience to the studio which gave us good push during performance. There are two videos, so check it out!
Past autumn I was invited again to make a performance for
International Festival Of Electronic Arts in Maribor, Slovenia. I was glad that
organizers make some space for more analogue/mechanical/electro approaches in
their programme so I took a chance to introduce less known but very meaningful
manifesto of great slovenian avantgarde poet Srečko Kosovel, titled 'To
Mechanics!'
Manifesto,
which Kosovel wrote in July 1925, a year before his death at 22, begins: »Mechanics cannot die because it has no
soul. Paradox is incomprehensible to mechanics because it transcends mechanical
laws. Paradox is a leap from mechanics into life. Paradox is alive as an electricity. But electricity is not mechanical.
Electricity is an element. SO DON'T BE MECHANICAL, BE ELECTRICAL!«
As a
metamechanic I am deeply intrigued by this visionary text and it's meaning in
digital age. But more about that after July this year, when Federmeister's
special performance will took place on his Bukovje Base farm to dignify 90th
anniversary of creation of the manifesto.
One of
the compositions I include into the performance was also 'Fail Better' which I
dedicated to another visionary deeply connected to electricity – Nikola Tesla.
It was performed for the first time and I used qoutes from his interviews as a
text. This time in Slovene. English version will follow as a studio track...
Stay tuned...
I was
invited to prepare a solo performance with two 3D printers for MFRU – KIBLIX 2013
(International Festival of Computer Art) organized in Maribor by Kibla.
Initiator of the project was curator Jože Slaček and Jan Sterniša joined as 3D
printer operator.
The project capitalizes on the
acoustics typical of plastic wire
3D printing processes. Two printers will be printing two different objects,
causing different sound effects, but due to the typical repetitive movements
there is a chance of occasional synchronicity. The rhythmic background is
enhanced by my performance on efektor. The entire performance is topped off by
a video projection
consisting of 3D animations and a live captured recording.
The story of 3D printing began
in 1986 with the invention of stereolitography, which uses thermal lasers to
manufacture individual forms from raw materials. This gave rise to the
development of 3D printer models that represent modern-day desktop printers or
“personal factories”. Today, 3D printers are the technology that anticipates
some of future’s greatest changes. The expectations are immense: manufacturing
of clothes, medicine, food and even human organs. The scheduled program will
shed some light on the possibilities of 3D technologies and their creative use.
Videos
and more information about authors are available on:
I'm a philosopher by education, drummer by
my heart and renegade by my profession.
I come to tell you a story.
Story about events which had to happen,
that we meet each other here tonight...«
These
are the opening lines from Renegade, musical stereodrama for a man and a
machine. But as prof. Spielmann said, many important events had to happen
before he could take overthe stage and told us
his story.
Past
two years I've felt a strong urge to express some of my metamechanical ideas.
As we know from McLuhan on »The medium is the message«, so I had to find my own
way how to do it. I've already wrote some texts about metamechanics, had some
lectures and made a short documentary for TV Slovenia, but I was still looking
for a new form to present my ideas to the public.
Past
June I've moved to Bukovje area near Laško in a small family house we had for
more than 30 years. It is a place where the road ends, but also a place where the
only frontier of becoming of your spirit is your imagination. I had to be alone
to made an inner space in myself where my becoming could resonate strong enough
to become real.
I've
arranged an improvised recording studio and rehersal room in a garage. For next
three months during summer I've composed the rest of the music and prepared
myself for live performance, merging elements of drama, concert and ritual with
techical help of my mostly selfmade gear.
Professor
Franz Spiellman, a renegade who left modern society and found his new home,
life and it's meaning on a junkyard, researching a trash and making strange
machines out of it.He call them
'meaning generators', machines which aim is not a highly efficient production
of material things but production of pure meaning.
Renegade
is a visionary who recognized an infinite potential of the trash:
»Trash is dark side of modern world. Banned
and forgotten world beyond Narcissus mirror.
Trash is omnipotence – universal material of the future. The only limitation of potency of trash, final frontier of its recombining possibilities is only our
knowledge and imagination.«
And
last but not least: Renegade is the pioneer and teacher for the future
generations which will have to cope with problems they got from us as the only
gift.
I'm
pleased to announce the release of album Metafonik I've made with The Stroj collective. It will
be our fourth album in 16 years of our creative existance and resistance.
Name
'The Stroj' comes from Slovene word ‘stroj’ which means 'a machine’. Pronounced
as 'stroy', together with ‘the’, the phrase sounds as ‘destroy’, so The Stroj
is a pun with two meanings: machine and destruction.
I
have gathered The Stroj in 1997 in Laško, Slovenia. Originally The Stroj was a percussive
band, consisting of eight members who used plastic and metal waste barrels,
discarded machine parts and various working tools to make our own musical
language. Distinctive percussive compositions, mechanically structured rhythms
and industrial sounding instruments
marked our early musical work. Music from that period can be found on albums
Ventilator (1999) and Gremo! (2002). When artist and musician Aleksij Kobal
joined the collective, the group's music became enriched by original wind and
string instruments, as recorded on the album Cona/The Zone (2006). All three
albums were produced by Aldo Ivančič (Borghesia, Bast), who had an
important influence on distinctive sound during this period. Until now, more
than 30 musicians and performers collaborated with us and became a part ofThe Stroj story.
You can find more info about The Stroj collective here: www.thestroj.com
On our new album Metafonik we
are developing the concept of material music, based mostly on heavy
percussions, further with new electro mechanical instruments, electronics and
computer. My vision of metamechanical music forced me to upgrade our
instrumental arsenal with instruments from all eras of human creative history:
most basic accoustic percussions and strings, electro mechanical inventions
from past century as coils and piezo pickups and modern electronic devices
which allows us to play live using field recordings and samples and manipulate
them almost without limits.
Here's
the video for our first single, released Animation of sound which appears several times
in second part of the video is called cymatics. It is a physical phenomena
which arises when small particles of fine powders or liquids are exposed to
mechanical vibrations. For this video I used strong loudspeaker as mechanical
driver and fine metal powder and silver dust as medium. So what you see are
real sound effects of the composition on matter.
