ATallMirror (review)

Music for Humans: International Computer Music Conference 2000 "Gateways to Creativity". Berlin, Germany, 27 August-1 September 2000

This year's International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), one of the most important events in contemporary electroacoustic music, took place in Berlin from 27 August to 1 September 2000. Some 500 contributors, musicians, and researchers from all over the world presented and discussed their works and ideas. There were over 140 lectures, papers, presentations, and podium discussions in different locations around the region of Potsdamer Platz: the Berlin Philharmonic building, the State Library, the New National Gallery and the National Art Gallery, and various other cultural buildings. The music program of 20 concerts took place at the Matthäuskirche, the Akademie der Künste, and the Podewil Center for Contemporary Art.

The ICMC events received a friendly, sometimes delighted echo in the culture of Berlin. The city houses a growing and very active group of artists using electronics in their pieces and is a regular host to major festivals and concerts of electronic, electroacoustic, and all kinds of contemporary art-music events. Berlin has, in my opinion, a leading position worldwide in its sustained and growing receptivity to contemporary sonic art.

The ICMC organizers--Conference Chair Peter Castine, Music Chair Martin Supper, and Papers Chair Ioannis Zannos--are to be commended for their organization and presentation of the heterogeneous materials submitted, and for coordinating the entire program, including the ICMC concerts. Overall, there was a fluent and relaxed stream of information and events flowing through the whole conference. The event was very ambitious, perhaps a bit too much so; the press release statement that the aim of ICMC 2000 was for "public understanding about the role of new media in daily life and to provoke people to reflect consciously on modern culture" was perhaps more of an ideal than a reality. Nevertheless, the conference imparted a true sense of contemporary currents and was conducted with sincerity and rigor.

The symposia further consolidated the status and importance of electronic music, whose history spans some sixty or more years. Electronic music is today an institution and a genre, no longer a mere technical or aesthetic revolution, as it was once perceived. Rather, it encompasses information and different approaches to topics of contemporary relevance, and is able to be received as such. For this reason, the conference witnessed no great avant-gardist sensationalism or scandal. Instead, new aspects and developments of computer music unfolded in a kind of continuity. This held true both for the conference and the musical performances proper.

Because of the high quality of the Proceedings documentation (available from the International Computer Music Association, ISBN 0-9667927-2-6), I prefer to concentrate my review on the highlights of the concerts. The music program consisted of two or three concerts per day (20 in all), five sound installations at different locations, and--new this year to the conference--a so-called "Off-ICMC." More about this later. The music chair, Martin Supper, is head of the Electronic Studio of Berlin University of the Arts. He conducted the selection jury and created the form and order of every concert. He, in agreement with the Music Jury, also chose the pieces for the ICMC 2000 compact disc. This excellent collection contains pieces by Horacio Vaggione (France), Cort Lippe (USA), Marc Ainger (USA), Agostino di Scipio (Italy), Richard Nance (USA), and Gerhard Eckel (Austria) and Vincent Royer (France).

The concert pieces and installations were selected by an international jury: Alex Arteaga (Spain), Elsa Justel (Argentina), Robin Minard (Canada), and Volker Straebel (Germany). They chose approximately 60 works from over 600 submissions. In addition to these choices was the incorporation, through invitation, of three historical works to broaden the scope and musical texture of the concerts. Gottfried Michael Koenig's filigreed Intermezzo (1985-1991), for ensemble, was performed on the Thursday evening. During intermissions all through the conference, Iannis Xenakis's famous Concret...