“I don’t separate ‘Sound Art’ from ‘music’. I am one person; my ideas come from the same place.” 

- Alvin Lucier.

On Thursday 28 April the Stedelijk Museum and Non-fiction present Hear it! – a playlist for the Stedelijk Museum, with works by Dick Raaymakers, Alvin Lucier, Mark Bain, Pierre Bastien, La Monte Young and Gert-Jan Prins, and performances by Paul Panhuysen, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Alog, Gabriel Lester, Claron McFadden and many others.

When? April 28, 2011, from 19:30 – 23:00 hrs
Location: Temporary Stedelijk 2, Auditorium, museum café and galleries
Entrance: Valid museum ticket
Language: English
Reservation: Reservation is mandatory

A playlist for the museum
Hear It! is presenting a playlist of these different types of work with sound, and is presenting different generations of musicians and artists who work with sound in their own way. This evening does not aim to provide a historical cross-section of sound in the arts, but is a personal playlist of works from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum and performances by (international) artists and musicians who are exploring the limits of the building and sound. The evening was organised intuitively by listening carefully to the building, the collection and the public, and is possibly most comparable to the way in which a DJ works, or to the musical experience you have with Soundcloud and Spotify. That is why there is a mixed succession of a Siren, a Norwegian DIY band, a Gregorian choir and the public which assumes the role of composer and performer, amongst others.

The sound of now, since 1952
It is now almost 60 years since director Willem Sandberg embraced music in the Stedelijk with his famous series ‘The Music of Now’ in 1952. Sandberg’s view was that the museum should provide room for other art forms than visual art as well, including contemporary music. Since then contemporary music has assumed many different forms and is described in various ways: as experimental music, sound art, sound performances, sound sculptures and audio culture. Some musicians call themselves ‘artists’ and some artworks are characterised as being ‘musical’. It is not always completely clear, but what is evident is that there is great deal happening at the point where the visual arts, music and sound come together.

Performances by
Aardvarck (NL) / Alog (NO) / Nathalie Bruys (NL) / Carl Michael von Hausswolff (SE) / Allard van Hoorn (NL) / Brandon LaBelle (USA) / Gabriel Lester (NL) / Claron McFadden (USA/NL) / Paul Panhuysen (NL) / Sarah van Sonsbeeck (NL)  / Schola Cantorum Amsterdam (NL)

Works by
Mark Bain (USA/NL) / Pierre Bastien (FR) / John Cage (USA) / Alvin Lucier (USA) / Gert-Jan Prins (NL) / Dick Raaymakers (NL) / La Monte Young (USA)

Introduction by: Harold Schellinx / Juha van ‘t Zelfde

Programme: Michiel van Iersel & Juha van ‘t Zelfde (Non-fiction)

Advisors: Bart Rutten, Margriet Schavemaker and Hendrik Folkerts (all Stedelijk Museum)

Research: Adelá Foldynová and Pieter Willems

Live blog: VPRO Dorst

Partners: BeamSystems, Nalden, CitizenM and Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht

Viral Radio on Nalden.net

Friday 8 January 2010 will be the first Viral Radio of the new decade. In the new year, the Amsterdam vehicle for well tempered drum machines will investigate the musical identities of 6 cities that are part of the viral networks of experimental bass and beat music creation and distribution.

Theses cities are: 1. Amsterdam (January); 2. Glasgow (March); 3. Bristol (May); 4. London (August); 5. Sydney (October); 6. Los Angeles (December).

On the Amsterdam Edition local wonderboys of bleep hop Zwart Licht will perform live, with the support of their producers FS Green and Sir OJ. Viral Radio veteran Aardvarck – DNA testing should one day prove the theory he is the father of the Gaslamp Killer – will join hosts Juha & Cinnaman to cover the spectrum of bleeps and bass in Amsterdam.

Viral Radio will continue to do regular events in the months in between, and radio shows every two weeks on VPRO’s 3voor12, bringing the next level in computated acoustic stimulants.

For the January edition of Time Out (magazine) Amsterdam our office for cultural innovation Non-fiction was asked to give a vision of the city in the year 2020, together with KesselsKramer, LAgroup, Concrete and Benthem Crouwel. Since we discard the idea of a blueprint for the city of the future and strongly believe in the power of co-creation and collaboration, we invited a few dozen of people we know and/or admire to to speculate on the future of the city (of Amsterdam). By juxtaposing perspectives from both in- and outsiders and by combining utopian visions, critical reflections, personal fantasies and (more) mundane thoughts, we wanted to provide a kaleidoscopic view of the future of the Dutch capital.

We had been given a two-page spread (basically two A4 pages) to present our vision of the future and in order to maximise the number of ideas we invited our friends and colleagues across the globe to answer a simple question: “What will you be doing in Amsterdam in 2020?”, in 140 characters. A Twitter-message from the future. As we are moving into the next decade, Twitter is at the very front of communications innovations, and gathering all these tweets into a tweetdeck gives a recognizable and playful collaborative vision of the city (of Amsterdam) in 10 years.

The final result (thanks to our buddies at Vandejong) is a densely packed information-grid, giving an overview of 36 seemingly unrelated opinions and doom scenarios. But upon closer inspection fascinating patterns appear: our participants think that Amsterdam eventually will merge into a bigger metropolitan area, that it will suffer severe flooding, that the historic city centre will become an abandoned open-air museum and that the outskirts will become the new hubs of urban vitality and (re-)development.

In contrast, there are also people who hold a unique believe that by 2020 the city will be either connected to Utrecht by a high speed electro-magnet train, will still lack a new art museum or subway line, or simply will be and stay the ‘same old, same old’.

The magazine just hit the stores, so check it out or contact us if you wish to receive a copy! And please join us for the ‘2020 vision’ event at De Verdieping on Thursday 28 January at 8 pm in collaboration with Time Out Amsterdam, bringing together the contributors and other visionaries to discuss the propability of our predictions…

We wish to thank all the contributors and the people who are still sending us their submissions. We are very happy with the outcome of this collaborative effort. In the new year we will continu this ‘crowdsourced’ investigation into the future potentials and failures of a complex city.

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We are in the last day of our Time Out Amsterdam Future City tweet aggregation, and have been enthused by the imaginative, witty and sometimes harsh messages from the future. Artist Aaron Koblin hopped off the 5 minute electro-magnet train from Utrecht, transcontinental VURB founder Ben Cerveny printed 30 bikes and discovered that the floating polder Almere III had been altered by the residents (again), and ubicompuman Adam Greenfield is upset he needs to pay 100k to get into Europe.

The answers to our question “What are you doing in Amsterdam in 2020?” are coming from all sides of the planet, from Winy Maas and Friedrich Von Borries to Radna Rumping and Nalden. You are still welcome to join us in building our collaborative Twitteropolis. But hurry, our deadline is Monday morning. So according to you, what is happening in Amsterdam in 2020?

If often happens you need a truck full of sentences to explain your excitement to someone. On rare occasions you can succeed with only a handful of words. But only once you need just these three letters: TED. The annual conference on technology, entertainment and design that since 1984 has so succesfully been organised  first in Monterey and now in Long Beach, California, is about riveting talks by remarkable people. The sum of these talks make a living museum of ideas worth spreading, free to the world.

TED has kindly given cities around the planet permission to organise their own TED-like event, called TEDx. TEDx Amsterdam will take place on Friday 20 November. The TEDx team consists of wonderful local talent, all armed with idiosyncratic experience from their respective fields: Jim Stolze (president and commander in chief), Marian Spier (vice-president and motor) and Monique van Dusseldorp (programme director and creative genius). And it is with great joy and even greater confusion I can announce they have invited me to become creative director of this event. This means I will be responsible for the complete TEDx experience in Amsterdam, on and offline, making it a unique Amsterdam adventure. Luckily, I won’t be doing this alone.  There are more people involved, like our good friend Nalden, whom I will mention as things develop.

Have a look at all the wonderful presentations at TED.com to get in the mood. As always, if you want to get involved or if you have great ideas, please get in touch with us or leave a comment below. Here are three of my favourite presentations, by Freeman Dyson, Hans Rosling and Malcolm Gladwell:

Gerri and Raphael are Knalpot

A quick message about our plans for tonight, and while I am at it for tomorrow too. A first ever Rednose Distrikt night at the Bimhuis with our friends Aardvarck and Steven de Peven. These Hunter Thompson DJs will be joined by mini-Korg sensation Dorian Concept and low-powered motorized noise band Knalpot.

The night starts at 11 pm, and tickets are a mere 10 euros. Feed your hype at nalden.net and see you tonight.

Tomorrow, Saturday 28 February, Warp Records multimoniker Mark Pritchard will release his Harmonic 313 debut album at OT313. The Australian must battle with the darkest force any soundsystem has ever encounterd, Mr. Kevin ‘Bug‘ Martin. This means sonic warfare. In the evening there’s a little instore drink-and-headbut at Rush Hour, with live radio by Future Vintage.

If you don’t make it to the Bimhuis, keep in mind that Trouw will officially open tonight.