Electroacoustic opera featuring Kathy Alberici, Taigen Kawabe, Markus Popp & Dylan Carlson, 2015

The central concept of Miscontinuum Album explores misconceptions of time and memory, inspired by unique acoustic phenomena derived through digital phasing and musical time stretching techniques. There is an aura of doom that pervades the work. Much of the album’s evocative nature comes from the interplay of Werner’s electronics with Alberici and Kawabe’s voices and the contrast between those organic and inorganic elements. Popp, a longtime collaborator with Werner in Microstoria, wrote the libretti, which are presented in five distinct scenes and recited redolently by Carlson. The surreal plot involves a progressive distinction of time as a force rather than a structuring system, where an individual who can shift consciously between states within that force. The high concepts and unusual creative partners combine for an album that is uncommonly emotionally resonant.

Miscontinuum was first performed as a part of Werner’s Asymmetric Studio series in Munich on June 18^th, 2013, and also featured video by Werner and Karl Kliem and stage design by Christina del Yelmo & Sonia Gomez Villar. It was broadcast by Bayerischer Rundfunk BR2 public radio. The striking visual elements, flowing dresses and impressionistic masses of color, make appearances on the album’s art, and will be presented in new forms in the coming months. The first revised version of Miscontinuum featuring live video by Zoya Bassi premiered at the St Luke’s Church in London on Feb 8th 2015. The second performance was shown at Volksbühne Berlin on April 5th 2015.

http://thrilljockey.com/thrill/JanSt-Werner/Miscontinuum-Album

http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=17292

http://www.volksbuehne-berlin.de/praxis/hoeren_miscontinuum/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02j3dnt

Radio Version BR2 Radio

Kunstverein Muenchen, June 18th 2013

Created by Jan St. Werner and Karl Kliem, this series of audio-visual compositions of constantly and subtly shifting antidromic sounds and images experiments visually and acoustically with Gestalt principles from the field of cognitive psychology, and triggers sensory irritation in the recipient.

Composed of 60 frames per second, the visual component of the “Rotationsstudien” uses complementary contrasts, sudden bursts of colour, and shifts from bright- to darkness to generate spatial effects that simultaneously give rise to new assemblages and undermine the viewer’s sense of reality. Same as the images, the installation’s sound component is completely digital in origin, and by means of granular resonance shifts, stereo movements, and phase changes prompts phantom perceptions. Every visitor listens to and sees a different installation. “Rotationsstudien” is a generative piece of abstract extended cinema, that runs for days without repetition.

CTM Festival 2015: http://www.ctm-festival.de/festival-2015/transfer/rotationsstudien/

Rotationsstudien, Sequenzen 20—5