Bernhard Gál lecture and performance

Sound Art Project 'stadtklaenge | klangstaetten', Allgemeiner Konsumverein, Braunschweig; May 7th - June 28th, 2009

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a short-notice guest lecture and performance by Australian sound artist Bernhard Gál after he got in contact with one of my friends to hold a lecture/performance at the St.James music room. Would have loved to advertise it more but unfortunately there was very little time.

I have to say that the lecture was so much better than I had expected. I was waiting for an interesting but perhaps dragging lecture on sound installation, however it was more of a visual journey and explanation of the artist's installations, complete with hints on how to carry out a public-space installation and general details on the implementation of sound.

Site-specific audio-architectural installation in collaboration with Yumi Kori. Minoritenkirche, Krems, Austria, April - June 2005

The above clip is a short video that I took yesterday during the presentation of 'Stadtklaenge' - quite bad quality actually but I was more interested on what he had to say rather than worried about getting it on video :) Performance at the end was nice and atmospheric with a few surprises here and there, such as mingled voices close to the end, and a mysterious accelerating noise somewhere in the middle which felt like such a contrast from the rest of the calm audio piece. 

Overall it was an interesting experience, and even though I was dead tired after work, I enjoyed every minute of it. I hope we have more of this, and I suggest you look Bernhard Gál up if you're interested in sound engineering / sound installation & architecture / general audiovisual installations.