Nik Nowak’s Panzer (2011) is a sound system made from metal frame of garbage container which works on the principle of hydraulics. It is made in the manner of Jamaican sound systems but places itself in contemporary sound research that problematize sound as the mean of manipulation and control of the crowds in contemporary society. The project is thus a crossroad of contemporary theoretical research in the field of sound, sound art, popular culture and scientific research in the field of military technologies. Panzer works as mobile sound system which through the form of intervention in public spaces reflects Jamaican musical culture from 70′s that is highly present in modern club culture and in electronic dance music. Panzer is an excellent example of coexistence of different concepts in contemporary sound art and in popular culture. The work was premiered at Todays Art festival 2012 and later on CTM in Berlin.

Nik Nowak is younger German artist, who lives and works in Berlin. Between 2001-2007 he studied Fine Arts at Universität der Künste (UdK) and finsished his master degree by prof. Lotar Baumgartner. Later on he studied also in Shanhgai and New York City. In his work Nowak is entering the traces of electornic music in the contemporary art environment, in the field of sculptures that has in Germany more than thirty years of tradition under the term Klangkünste. In wider context we can place his work in sound art. He is most interested in mobile, moving sound sculptures, which at the same time operate as mobile sound systems with which he is penetrating gallery spaces, clubs and public spaces in the form of sonic intervetions. He has so far present his work in Den Haag, moscow, Berlin, Hamburg, Wien and Shanghai.

www.motamuseum.com
www.artisttalk.eu

That sound sculpture designed by the french visual and sound artist Cecile Babiole , to render the sound of electricity audible and spread it over to the ambient space. The Artist Talk provides furthermore insight into a short Performance by Cecile Babiole. Bzzz! serves as a commentary on the history of technology and a tribute to unprocessed, unassembled analog sound: the raw sound of electricity.

On April 16th, Look, up in the sky! a mini-symposium with Honor Harger (art director Lighthouse, Brighton) and James Bridle (artist, publisher and technologist)) on art and drones in the age of ubiquitous technology will be held at BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels. The symposium’s debate will be opened by Bram Crevits, curator of the exhibition ‘Drones/Birds : Princes of Ubiquity’, and moderated by Michel van Dartel (V2_Institute for unstable Media).

The first series of The Digital Now, entitled ‘Drones / Birds: Princes of Ubiquity’, is inspired by the way birds are reflecting our contemporary relation with technology. For this, inspiration is drawn from the New Aesthetic with a focus on the ways we experience our digital condition: always on, always there. Drones or UAV’s (Unmanned Arial Vehicles) have been related to this New Aesthetic debate ever since it started. The New Aesthetic has been a remarkable and often intense debate for about two years now, spread across platforms, groups, scenes, blogs, catalogues, sprint-books and festivals in off- and online worlds.

‘Drones / Birds: Princes of Ubiquity’ taps into the debate of an increasing autonomous technology, connected to a machinic vision, the post-human and the New Aesthetic. Core to the exhibition are digital artifacts and instances of the computational or digital in nature.

The exhibition is curated by Bram Crevits (BE) and will present work by internationally acclaimed artists such as David Bowen (US), Theo Burt (UK), Paolo Cirio (IT),  Marcus Coates (UK),Christoph De Boeck & Patricia Portela (BE/PT), Dries Depoorter (BE), HC Gilje (NO), Esther Polak & Ivar van Bekkum (NL), Erica Scourti (GR), Addie Wagenknecht (US) and Zimoun (CH).

In the 2nd part of her talk, Sabine Himmelsbach, the artistic director of the HeK (http://www.haus-ek.org), presents the concept of the exhibition Sensing Place. Mediatizing the Urban Landscape focussing on new ways of interaction with urban space filled with streams of data and increasingly percieved through technology. She discusses chosen works from the exhibition (by Timo Arnall, Jorn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen, SENSEable City Lab, Christina Kubisch and Ursula Damm) that in different ways deal with information and communication layers of the contemporary city by making them visible, audible or by turning them into algorithmic processes allowing new ways of seeing and experiencing urban landscape.

Selected materials focus on the urban landscape and deal with the social use of sensing technology, trying to make information sphere visible, audible or even make an effort

" (…) to find a new artistic expression that go beyond the typical visualisation of data (…) It is a precognitive way od seeing."

Winner of several international competitions, he won the Prix Claude Arrieu SACEM in 2002 and was in residence at the Academy of the Arts of Berlin in 2003 and 2004. His works and performances are broadcast in key places devoted to contemporary sound arts in France, Europe, Canada, China, Japan and Taiwan and the United States.
His works are partly published by Editions Jobert and are the subject of several CD and video recordings.