Marko Ciciliani - composer and audiovisual artist
Stefano D'Alessio - music, media-art, visuals
Frederik De Bleser - designer / developer / researcher in interactive media
Tuur Marinus - visual artist, dance
Constantinos Miltiades - architect, computational designer
Kurt Van Belleghem - curator visual arts St Lucas Antwerp
Angélique Willkie - performer, singer, dramaturge, pedagogue
Coaches
Marko Ciciliani - composer and audiovisual artist
Marko Ciciliani is a composer, audiovisual artist and researcher based in Austria. The focus of his work lies in the combination of instruments and electronics, often in audiovisual contexts. Light- or laserdesigns are frequently an integral part of his compositions. More recently he also included live-video in his works, by making the manipulation of images part of an extended instrument design. The artistic combination of sound and light was also the topic of his PhD research that he completed at Brunel University London in 2010.
It is characteristic of Ciciliani’s compositions that sound is not only understood as abstract material but as a culturally shaped idiom. The exploration of a sound’s communicative potential is as much in the foreground of his work as its objective sonic quality.
Ciciliani’s work is characterized by a conceptual approach in which aspects of classical composition, sound- and media-studies play tightly together.
The different “genres” in which Ciciliani’s music can be heard and seen, are reflecting his manifold artistic activities. His music has been performed in more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. It has been programmed by festivals and concert series of alternative experimental music like Experimental Intermedia/NYC, Club Transmediale/Berlin, SuperDeluxe/Tokyo or the NowNow Series/Sydney; just as much as by festivals for post-avantgarde music as Wien Modern, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Zagreb Biennale, Maerzmusik and many more.
In 2005 Ciciliani founded the group Bakin Zub, an ensemble comprising a small group of distinguished musicians with a focus on the use of technology. In the work for Bakin Zub Ciciliani places an emphasis on the combination of instrumental writing, live-electronics and light, laser or video designs. Since the foundation of the group, Ciciliani has composed four program-length works for this combination, the most recent ones being "Heterotopolis" which was co-produced by the ZKM and premiered as part of the ARD Hörspieltage 2012, and "Suicidal Self Portraits", premiered in April 2014 at the „Forum Neue Musik Deutschlandfunk“ in Cologne.
In 2009 Marko Ciciliani was recipient of the prestigious Villa Aurora Stipend, a three-month artists residency in Los Angeles. Also in 2009 he was composer-in-residence of the 14th Composers Forum in Mittersill/Austria. He received numerous project-residencies at STEIM, ESS, ICST and ZKM. In 2014 Ciciliani has taught at the “Summer Courses for Contemporary Music Darmstadt” where he also presented a portrait concert. He also often appears as a presenter on international conferences on computer music and media art as ICMC, SMC, ICLI, Sonorities and others.
Since October 2014, Ciciliani is full professor for computer music composition and sound design at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics – IEM – of the Arts University in Graz/Austria.
Stefano D'Alessio - music, media-art, visuals
MAI Instructor
Stefano D’Alessio (1987 Italy) is a New Media artist and composer, lives and works in Vienna (Austria). He creates interactive performances and installations, combining visuals, sound, physical computing and performance through programming.
His research addresses the digitization of the human in new technologies, virtual representations of the “real” and the distortions and perceptive amplifications caused by them. His work involves the human body as a subject for analyzing, coding, and decoding processes of the real/physical, into digital/abstract, questioning the ephemeral limits between machine and body, artificial intelligence and consciousness.
With a degree in Visual Art and Theatre at the IUAV University of Venice, Stefano D’Alessio is regularly teaching new media for interactive arts with Klaus Obermaier, at bachelor, master, and post-graduate master courses at the IUAV University and at the Linz University of Arts.
Since 2010 he regularly collaborates with Martina Menegon and Klaus Obermaier on different art projects, furthermore he realized music and interactive visuals for various artists, musicians, choreographers and theatre directors.
- - cargocollective.com/stefanodalessio
Tuur Marinus - visual artist, dance
Tuur Marinus was born in Antwerp in 1981. He studied visual arts at the KdG Hogeschool (Antwerp) before starting to train as a dancer/choreographer at P.A.R.T.S. (2004 - 2008).
After finishing P.A.R.T.S. he created the dance performance “Dominos and Butterflies”, with the Brussels based dance collective Busy Rocks, and performed it in ao Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, France and Switzerland. Since then he has made (ao) the performances “Still Animals”, “3on3”, “Cyclop Project” and “The Workshop”.
Recently he made an installation version of “Still Animals”, which has been shown in musea, public spaces and theatres.
Tuur Marinus also worked as a dancer for ao Vincent Dunoyer, Theater Zuidpool and They Are Here.
Tom Pauwels - guitarist Ictus
Tom Pauwels (Bornem, Belgium, 1974) studied classical guitar in Brussels, Köln and Münster with Albert Sundermann, Hubert Käppel and Reinbert Evers respectively.
In 1995, during his studies at the Brussels Conservatory, he was involved in the founding of Black Jackets Company, a Brussels collective of composers and performers. Ever since these early experiments he has been active in the field of contemporary music, both on classical and electric guitar. From 1999 until 2001 he was a regular member of Champ D’Action, the Antwerp-based ensemble for experimental music. From 2002 to 2016 he has worked as a co-artistic leader for the new music ensemble ICTUS (Brussels). Project-wise, he performs with the London based Plus-Minus ensemble. He has recorded works by Craenen, Lachenmann, Shlomowitz, Van Eycken, Guiraud, Trapani and for Cyprès (Ictus) works by Oehring, Harada, Romitelli and Aperghis.
After a five year research project on new music for guitar he became a ‘Laureate of the Orpheus Institute’ with the thesis ‘De Echo van ‘t Saluut’. Since 2002 he has been in charge of teaching new music for guitar at the Conservatory of Gent where he has developed an advanced master program with emphasis on contemporary chamber music in collaboration with the Spectra ensemble and Ictus. This program is designed for musicians wishing to combine further specialization in performing contemporary solo & chamber music with developing their professional career (more info HERE). Since 2010 is teaching guitar at the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt.
His broad interest in performance has recently led to collaborations with choreographers as Xavier Le Roy (see ‘Mouvements für Lachenmann), Maud Le Pladec (see ‘Professor’ and 'Poetry') and Andros Zins-Browne (The Funerals)
Kurt Van Belleghem - curator visual arts St Lucas Antwerp
Kurt Vanbelleghem works as an independent curator and publisher in the field of contemporary art and design. He focuses primarily on establishing synergy between both disciplines, with the relevance to society being central. Since 2010 he has also been a curator of Sint Lucas Antwerp, where he coordinates extracurriculum projects for students and alumni.
Wim Henderickx - composer
Wim Henderickx is a Flemish composer, based in Antwerp. He studied compositon and percussion at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp and sonology at Ircam in Paris and at the Conservatoire of Music in The Hague.
COMPOSITIONS
Many of his works are influenced by oriental music and philosophy. He wrote works for opera, music theatre, orchestra, choirs, windband and chamber music. Electronics are often an important feature in his music. Following a journey around India and Nepal he composed the Tantric Cycle. Commissioned by the Queen Elisabeth Competition, he composed Canzone for voice and piano, for the semi finals of the 2008 edition. In October 2016 Blossomings for choir, trumpet and electronics premiered at LSO St Luke's in London with the BBC Singers, Marco Blaauw (trumpet) and Martyn Brabbins (conductor). Requiem was commissioned by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen in 2017, a collaboration with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
He has been Composer in Residence at Muziektheater Transparant since 1996 and he joined the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra as Artist in Residence in 2013.
FULL CDs
The 3 Ragas were recorded in 1999 with the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Grant Llewellyn. The CD Tejas & Other Orchestral Works was released by the same orchestra in 2011 and was conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The full CDs Disappearing in Light (2011) and Triptych (2015) were developed in collaboration with the HERMESensemble & Jorrit Tamminga (electronics).
The latest Double CD was released by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in 2016, containing Symphony No.1, Groove! and the solo + orchestral version of Empty Mind I.
PUBLISHER
Wim Henderickx's scores are published by Norsk Musikforlag in Oslo, Norway.
TEACHING
Wim Henderickx is professor of composition at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp: www.ap.be and at the Conservatoire in Amsterdam: www.conservatoriumvanamsterdam.nl. He is also the main coach on the annual SoundMIne Summer Composition Course for young composers, which is organised by Musica, Impulse Centre for Music.
AWARDS
He received numerous awards, such as the Prize for Contemporary Music Flanders-Québec in 1993. In 2006 he was nominated for the Flanders Culture Prizes and in 2011 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Lier (BE), his birthplace. He was appointed as a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (KVAB) for Science and the Arts in 2015.
Frederik De Bleser - designer / developer / researcher in interactive media
Frederik De Bleser is a PhD researcher and professor at the Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. His research focuses on the link between art and technology, developing free software tools for generative design and data visualisation. He co-founded the Experimental Media Research Group (EMRG) in 2004. He coordinates the Studio Data bachelor program and teaches in the technology lab in the master.
Using NodeBox as a tool he has organised data visualisation workshops in France, Italy, Finland, Poland, Lithuania and Canada. His open-source work is included in tools and applications reaching millions of people.
He has worked commercially creating visualisations for one of the largest Belgian newspapers and an interactive art installation for the Research Foundation Flanders. In his free time he is a coach for Hack Your Future, organizing and teaching web development to refugees. He lives with his wife and two children near Antwerp.
Angélique Willkie - performer, singer, dramaturge, pedagogue
A multidisciplinary artist and graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, Angélique Willkie pursued a career in Europe over 25 years, where she performed with dance companies and independent projects throughout Europe, most notably Alain Platel/Les Ballets C. de la B., Jan Lauwers/Needcompany, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Helena Waldmann and as a singer with the Belgian world-music group Zap Mama, bands Arno, dEUS, 7Dub, DAAU, Ez3kiel, and Zita Swoon Group, with jazz vocalist David Linx and contemporary composers Walter Hus, Kaat De Windt and Fabrizio Cassol.
Performer, singer, dramaturge and pedagogue, Angélique has been among the more sought-after contemporary technique teachers on the European professional circuit, teaching companies, schools and festivals including ImpulsTanz (Vienna), Henny Jurriens Stichting (Amsterdam), SEAD (Salzburg), Wim Vandekeybus/Ultima Vez (Brussels), Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique (Montreal) among others. She spent eight years at École Supérieure des Arts du Cirque (ESAC) in Brussels as a teacher and dramaturgical advisor to the students as well as Pedagogical Coordinator of the school under Gérard Fasoli, current director of the Centre national des arts du cirque (CNAC) in France.
Her dramaturgical work has included projects in dance-, music- and circus-theatre with artists as varied as Belgian theatre director/choreographer Isabella Soupart, French trapezist Mélissa Von Vépy and Dutch choreographers Arno Schuitemaker and Pia Meuthen/PanamaPictures. An ongoing collaboration of over 10 years, Angélique and Pia have actively explored approaches to incorporating circus disciplines into dance-theatre productions, developing a hybrid aesthetic and movement language that is fully anchored in both art forms.
Now based in Montreal and actively involved in the professional dance community as teacher, mentor, performer and dramaturg, Angélique has contributed to the work of choreographers Lara Kramer, Mélanie Demers, Frédérick Gravel, Clara Furey and Helen Simard among others.
Assistant Professor in the Department of Contemporary Dance at Montreal’s Concordia University and co-director of LePARC, the performing arts research cluster of Concordia’s Milieux Institute of Arts, Culture and Technology, her current research interests are firmly anchored in interdisciplinary artistic creation with a specific focus on decolonized and expanded dramaturgies and, more specifically, on the dramaturgy of the performer.
Constantinos Miltiades - architect, computational designer
Constantinos Miltiadis is an architect, also programmer, researcher, media artist and occasional curator. His work is experimental and interdisciplinary, aiming to expand the scope of architecture and its aesthetics. He has studied architecture at NTU-Athens, and philosophy and computation at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design at ETH Zurich. Since 2015 he is assistant professor at the Institute of Architecture and Media of TU Graz. His work has been presented in art exhibitions, seminars, published in academic conferences as well as by international press, and received awards in international competitions. He has taught creative programming and experimental computation in undergraduate and post-graduate levels, as well as in conferences and festivals. At IAM he founded the Virtual Spaces Master Studio in order to introduce experimental VR design in architecture education. Among other initiatives, he is founder and curator of the IAM Open Lecture Series, and co-founder of the experimental electronic music event series ◯. Currently, he is on a sabbatical studying Computer Music at the Institute of Electronic Music of the University of Music and Performing Arts of Graz.
Constantinos’ work can be found on studioany.com