THOMAS KöNER PERFORMANCE AT LOVEBYTES 05
[16-04-05]

A presentation of NUUK, the winner of the ARS Electronica Golden Nica 2004. Fast-forwarding through 6 months of webcam pictures from Greenland and Finland, Köner adds soundscapes akin to the crashing of ice or the wave patterns of snow, to produce an immersive voyage of glacial slowness, reversal or even standstill.

Thomas Köner's phenomenal track record speaks for itself, with his recent work earning him international praise including the New Media Prize at the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema, the prestigious 'Golden Nica' for Digital Musics at Prix Ars Electronica 2004, and the Tiger Cub Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival 2005.
Album release: NUUK CD & DVD, Mille Plateaux Media, September 2004

Thomas Köner
"I didn't know about lovebytes before, but I'm very pleased to find out about it. I arrived two hours ago from Milan, I was doing a show there in a football stadium. They transformed the building itself into a public space for one night and there were some installations and things going on.

From the performance tonight the audience should experience…time, notice time as fluidic, a substance that you can form, that's shapeable. The time is also connected to a space, which is rather defined here, but still there is a visual part that refers to the space as a sensation of experiencing space. There is an image that is also a space. I'm open to change things but the timing should be perfect"

www.koener.de
www.daikan.de/photodownload.html


THOMAS KöNER at Lovebytes
Stills of images gradually changing through performance


KöNER performing at Lovebytes 05


THOMAS KöNER at Lovebytes

James Phaly, Doncaster
"That was really mint, I loved the low frequanes, different noises melting into each other, just the rumble of it was really pleasing. When it was breaking off as well, that was really amazing. Visuals were really good but there were no cars on the street and I wondered where he'd got all the sounds from because he ovdioauly puicked them out of the air really carefully."

Ian Gallimore, Sheffield
"That was really good. I was really concentrating, looking for detail. There were some points were you couldn't actually tell whether it was the cinema shaking or whether it was an actual sound!"

Sam Groom, Printmaker, Sheffield
"Speechless!"

Andrew Murray, Learning Support Worker, Glasgow
"I didn't know what to expect, I was familiar with his work from years ago as a Techno artist (under Thomas Köner and under Portorix, Chain Reaction label, Berlin) more than anything else. I wouldn't say music, but as far as the sound went it was great, I was really impressed by the visuals as well. Particularly the imagery at the beginning. the coldness and sparseness of it really lends itself to that kind of music, cold and faceless."

Penny, Fine Art student, Sheffield
"We're just discussing, was there a need for images in the piece? I think the two worked well together, they were quite inseparable."

Ben, Fine Art student, Sheffield
"Sound is about sound and the images detract, the visual stimulation dictates how you interpret the sound. Francisco Lopez yesterday was all about the sound - it was so sensory and nothing else, but sitting here today was a cinematic experience, but the image was completely irrelevant, I felt
it was there for the sake of it, for something to look at but I didn't want to look at it so I just zoned out."
Nancy, studying
Computing Visualization course, Sheffield
"I came to see Tomas Köner's film, it must have taken ages to make. It was a very slow build up and the more you watched it the more little things you noticed. I liked the way it faded and the sound got very intense and you picked up little things. The people at times when it changes from the Glacier scene to the city scene. The hour went by really quickly, I don't really know where it went, I was expecting more scenes but those two went by so quickly, yet it was really progressive! I really enjoyed it."

Andy, Sheffield
"I enjoyed the piece but I found that the pictures didn't really evoke a
sense of the pasture of the space and time and I think he should use time
lapse photography to really evoke that, if he is going for a long period of
time, condensed into a short period of film. I felt that with the dense bass
sounds, he was trying to get a volume-ness experience of the glacial thing
of Greenland or wherever he was filming. I didn't think the DV 'out of
focus' images really achieved that. With the shop lights coming on and off
it did get the sense of the pasture of time but not with the amplification that
its possible to get with the film techniques available to him. I was on his
side, there's something really gutsy about it, but I don't know if he
completely achieved it."

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