Radiotopia . Rupert Huber & Various Artists
staubgold 34
2002. cd
The release of the Radiotopia album, compiled and edited by Rupert Huber (Tosca), is the third collaboration between the Austrian Ars Electronica Center and the Staubgold label, after Alexander Balanescu's "Lume Lume" (staubgold 16) and Vladislav Delay's "Naima" (staubgold 23). Participating artists include Alexander Balanescu, Rupert Huber, Andres Bosshard, Lukas Ligeti, Sam Auinger, Bruce Odland, Isabella Bordoni, Lorenzo Brusci and many more.
This cd documents the fascinating Radiotopia sound/network project as presented during the open air Klangpark Ars Electronica festival. The center of Radiotopia was the global sound network database designed by August Black and Norbert Math. It was a simultaneous storage bank of freely accessible sound material that transcended time, location, cultural and geographical borders. Anyone with access to the Internet was able to join in. This sound network database (with a total of over 500 submissions) was the basis of the material that the international artists invited to the festival worked with.
“To explain what this Radiotopia project is about is certainly not an easy thing. (…) Basically it comes down to a large database of sound on the internet, which Rupert Huber (of Tosca) plundered freely to built sound collages to be transmitted on the radio and the internet, together with people performing live music. (…) There is a strong element of collage in these results. Pianos play, vague electronic sounds, people talking, violins. (…) It's an anarchist, free thing here.”(Vital Weekly)
“This cd serves up an edited chronicle of the Radiotopia project presented during the open air Klangpark as part of the 2002 Ars Electronica Festival. An on-site/online event, it involved live artists, contributing artists from other locations (linked over telephone or the Internet), and Internet surfers pitching in source material from a specially designed website. The cd has been compiled by Rupert Huber in a form that stands somewhere between a selection of highlights and a more faithful (as in representative) breakdown of the many phases of this five-day event. (…) The music throughout the album is made of tiny shards of sound - the shards the artists used and those Huber kept and rearranged.” (François Couture, All Music Guide)