In this essay, Māra Traumane guides readers through the diverse, interdisciplinary practice of the Riga-based collective Workshop for the Restoration of Unfelt Feelings (NSRD), which operated from the end of the 1970s until 1989. NSRD was involved in the avant-garde music scene as well as in architecture, and their activities ranged from concerts and the production of record albums to performances, writing, and video art.
Since around 1977 when Gilbert and Lila Silverman began to develop their Fluxus Collection, Jon Hendricks has played a central role in fostering the formation of that renowned collection that bears their names.
John Cage and David Tudor visited Japan in October 1962 at the invitation of the Sogetsu Art Center (SAC). Over the course of the month they gave seven concerts in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Sapporo, causing a sensation that would become known as “the John Cage shock.”
Although postwar Japanese avant-garde art is considered to have ended in the year 1970, Julian Ross contends that projection installations in the 1970s took on many of its characteristics, namely, an engagement with the concepts of “environment,” “intermedia,” and “display.”
In addition to autonomous pieces of music, the Experimental Studio at the Polish Radio in Warsaw produced incidental music for radio broadcasts and soundtracks for movies and TV.
Listen to 23 music compositions created at Polish Radio Experimental Studio by both the foreign and local composers. Starting with Kotoński’s Study, the first autonomous piece of music for tape produced at PRES in 1959, the presented selection leads through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
In the second half of an extended interview with Tone Yasunao for post, the composer, artist, and writer discusses the trajectory of his work from graphic scores in the 1960s to his recent work with digital media.
Producing sound effects for radio, film, and television propagated new trends in audio art. Whereas concerts of autonomous music organized by Polish Radio attracted audiences of a few dozen people, popular new movies pulled in far larger crowds.
A galaxy of published materials related to PRES
Eugeniusz Rudnik—a lifelong sound engineer of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio—speaks about the early years of Polish electroacoustic music, about his distrust of both musical scores and the deceptive idea of musical and artistic progress, and about the fine line between sound engineer and composer.
This text was originally published under the theme “Polish Radio Experimental Studio: A Close Look”. The theme was developed in partnership with Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (MSŁ). It was edited by Magdalena Moskalewicz, MoMA with Daniel Muzyczuk, MSŁ. The original content items in this theme can be found here. Depending on the type of recording, the whole apparatus changes like a…
Just as alchemists in the Middle Ages were the masters of arcane knowledge, so the core members of the Studio—the sound engineers—were masters of new technology in music.
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