johansons.info

My piece INVERS (2006) will be played at the concert in Geneva, organized by composer and friend Daniel Zea.
The whole program is as follows:

Mario Lorenzo (Argentine)
(création) pour hautbois et électronique

Daniel Zea (Colombie)
(création) pour contrebasse et éléctronique

Dragos Tara (Suisse)
(création) pour hautbois, violon, guitare, contrebasse et électronique

Oriol Saladriguez (Espagne)
Muro pour guitare seule

Voldemars Johansons (Letonie)
INVERS pour bande magnétique à 4 pistes

These days I’m involved with experimental theatre and performance project “Eyes Fluttering in Kneecaps”, a production of Laboratory of Stage Arts. I’m playing with sounds and objects and really enjoy working in the friendly and creative atmosphere created by the international team consisting of soprano Skaidra Jancaite (Lithuania), Simona Orinska (Latvia) Marko Donnarumma (Italy), Modris Tenisons (Latvia), Līga Stibe (Latvia), Viktors Jansons (Latvia).

johansons.info is an online presentation of the work of Voldemars Johansons. Composer and artist Voldemars Johansons works with audio/data in forms of composition, installation and performance, interfacing mediums in hybrid forms. His work explores acoustics and signal processing, examining aspects of spatiality, physicality and interaction in context of real and virtual environments and their intersections. Occasionally he creates sound for theater and film.

His work has been presented internationally in contexts of Architectural biennial “NEXT” in Venice, ArtGENDA (de) Ruhrtriennale (de), DEAF festival (nl), WAVES (lv), <>TAG gallery (nl), Pixelache (fi), STEIM (nl), Point Éphémère (fr), Forest of Sound (lv) and elsewhere.

contact: voldemars [insert-at-sign] johansons.info

My thesis paper at the Royal Conservatoire, “Information Structures for Organization of Sonic Events” is awailable from the download section on the site of Institute for Sonology (direct link here).

The installation is a waveform sculpture projected on the surface of water by sonic vibration. As a commentary on the process of climate change, the wave patterns are derived from meteorological data acquired during extreme storms of recent years in Europe. The combination of three materials: air, water and sound simulates a chaotic ecosystem where recorded wind intensity and direction patterns are transferred by waves of sound.

During the recent years I have lived in a city by the Northern See. In the autumn and winter, few times a year, strong storms occur. A stream of air particles - wind - rushes and swirls with incredible speed and power, fluctuating in unpredictable force and intensity patterns. It caries dark clouds and forces waves to wash the sea out of it’s coasts, hits upon buildings and produces a terrifying acoustic landscape.

Climate is described as a chaotic system which can be documented using non-linear dynamics and strange attractors; yet no computing device, however capable, has so far been able to predict and interpret long-term weather conditions. Storms and winds have grown stronger over the past years, both in Latvia and elsewhere in the world, indicating climate change. Different indicators show that the world’s climate is changing – the melting of Arctic ice, the positive North Atlantic Oscillation index of the past decades, and other signs show a dynamic process of change, conventionally called global warming or the greenhouse effect. One of the more noticeable manifestations of change is the increasing number and scale of natural disasters and storms that wreak devastation all over the world every year. In January 2005 the inhabitants of Latvia were also caught unprepared by Hurricane Ervin, a storm of unseen strength, which toppled trees, downed power lines and changed the coastline of the Gulf of Riga.

In nature, wind is generated by the contrast in air pressure between adjoining atmospheric areas. A sharp contrast creates strong winds that grow into storms. The changing intensity of wind currents suggests a similarity to sound waves (sound is a change in air pressure). A recorded wind waveform is a microscopic component indicative of an entire global ecosystem in which all events are connected through interaction and feedback relationships. As a part of a non-linear dynamic system, wind waveform depicts chaotic, but not random or predictable qualities.

Four channel computer, recording available upon request

Program Notes:
“A journey of electronic sound through the rational description of space: a world as represented by numbers. Composition of curves, surfaces and volumes is in a state of constant flux that modulates the dynamic landscape of kinetic vectors and spatial configuration.The work inspired by writings of Otto Rössler, a physicist recognized for his work in chaos research, who suggests the discipline of Endophysics that explains our world of space-time as an operational interface to a larger reality beyond the capability of human consciousness.

“IF” is a composition of “information objects”, parametric representations of algorithmically generated geometric shapes. The piece explores the notion of space as a metaphor for organization of information by way of tempo-spatial arrangement and layering of complex parametric constellations. Temporal evolution is expressed as motion: transformation of parametric data in mathematical space.
IF was composed at the Institute of Sonology as part of the research initiative “Information Structures for Organization of Sonic Events”. Paper available online at:
http://www.koncon.nl/public_site/220/Sononieuw/NL/downloads.html

The piece was realized with QuantaSonic composition environment (http://quantasonic.info), developed by Voldemars Johansons and Tom Tlalim.”

Four channel tape, recording available upon request

Program Notes:
“Invers observes the choice of duality between two possible states within a binary system: high and low, signal/no signal. A pulse-wave representing these two states is used to construct the primary sound material as well as its modulations, the rhythmical, temporal and dynamic structure that composes the chaotic architecture. The binary principle inherent to digital devices is realised with utterly analogue tools.”

This is one of the renderings we did in the beginning of the year.