NIGHTLINE
STWST Main Venue
Saturday Night, 23:00

© LíviaSá

Fauna is a live improvisation in a quadraphonic system with a set of custom-made instruments and re-purposed technologies used to process field recordings, incorporating body movements and the live exploration of intricate material textures.

The composition unfolds in three movements, each movement distinguished by the nature of its featured instrument: Lobatus, Araña, then Polvo. Lobatus initiates a dialogue between the resonant frequencies of the venue's materials and the audience’s bodies. Araña amplifies, and spatializes, the electromagnetic activity of an array of electronic devices already present in the space. Polvo deconstructs my archive of field recordings into granular dust particles through a uniquely-designed DJ table.

These instruments are inherently site-specific; in addition to interacting differently with the resonance frequency of each performance venue, they also react to light and produce different sounds depending on the ambient light conditions. Each new performance environment provides insights which contribute not only to the ongoing development of the instruments, but to a continuous refinement of the relationships between myself, the instruments, and the performance space.

Merche Blasco will also be present at NOPE SOUND PERFORMANCES AND TALK.

Merche Blasco is a multimedia artist and composer based in New York, and currently living in Berlin.
She designs and builds imprecise technological assemblages that catalyze embodied forms of live electroacoustic composition and new modes of listening. Through her constructed devices, Merche attempts to establish a more horizontal relationship with other entities, distancing herself from parameters of precision, power, and control. As an alternative form of performance, she engineers collaborative spaces with instruments that are given their own agency, in compositions where her body and the live exploration of organic materials are central elements. Her work also increasingly focuses on designing participatory sound performances in public spaces to connect strangers and their surroundings through collective music-making and listening.
Merche has presented her performances and installations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Shed, CTM Festival, MaerzMusik , Sonar Festival, La Biennale di Venezia, NIME conferences, Tsonami International Sound Art Festival in Chile, The High Line in New York, SONIC Festival, Mapping Festival (Geneva), Queens Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago de Chile, among others. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, El Pais Semanal, and The Wire magazine.
Merche was a DAAD Music & Sound Fellow in 2022-2023.

This project is part of the Tangible Music Club - a pilot co-operation of the Tangible Music Lab and the Stadtwerkstatt. The Tangible Music Club aims to establish a network for sonic arts in Linz and to address the trend towards self-built electronic musical instruments and music controllers in the contemporary music and club scenes. The expertise of the Lab, the artists and the Stadtwerkstatt will be used to present projects and jointly promote new presentation formats for new soundscapes.

About Tangible Music Club and the cooperation between the Tangible Music Lab and Stadtwerkstatt: The Tangible Music Lab is an artistic research group at the Institute for Media at the University of Art and Design Linz. The interdisciplinary team experiments with the physical aspects of musical human-machine interaction. The Stadtwerkstatt / STWST has been an autonomous structure since 1979 and works in the areas of New Art Contexts, STWST Club and operates media channels and various public areas. In recent years in particular, STWST has promoted the concept of an anti-white cube.