November 13, 19:00 The State Philharmonia of Armenia An opera for video and voice, 2023–2024 first work-in-progress version, world premiere Video [01:00:00, 4K, 16:9, stereo]: collaborative concept: Katherine Liberovskaya & Phill Niblock video: Katherine Liberovskaya recorded music: Phill Niblock V&LSG, 2015 — for Loré Lixenberg, voice and Guy De Bievre, lap steel guitar Baritonnicholas, 2023 — for Nicholas Isherwood (world premiere) text speakers in video: Loré Lixenberg and Nicholas Isherwood video and audio recording: Katherine Liberovskaya video and audio editing: Katherine Liberovskaya assisted by Hans Tammen sound editing: Hans Tammen video special effects: Anton Khlabov Live singers during performance: Loré Lixenberg, mezzo-soprano Nicholas Isherwood, bass-baritone Produced thanks to the participation of Experimental Intermedia NYC, Harvestworks NYC, CYLAND MediaArtLab Hammettlogue is an experimental opera project for video and voice by Katherine Liberovskaya and Phill Niblock inspired by the minimalist mystery writings of Dashiell Hammett focusing on the spareness of his text. Hammett was Niblock's favorite writer. The project was conceived and started by the artists together in the months before Niblock's passing (January 8th 2024) and has been subsequently completed by Liberovskaya. The five part structure alternates spoken video parts and sung music parts. It features mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg and bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood. Video by Liberovskaya, music by Niblock. BIOS Katherine Liberovskaya is a Canadian intermedia artist based in NYC. Involved in experimental video since the 80's, she has produced numerous single-channel video art pieces, video installations and video performances, as well as works in other media, that have been shown around the world. Since 2001 her work predominantly focuses on the intersection of moving image with sound/music in various both ephemeral and fixed forms (projections, installations, performances), notably through collaborations with many composers and sound artists in improvised live video+sound concert situations where her live visuals seek to create improvisatory "music" for the eyes. For over 22 years she collaborated with composer/intermedia artist Phill Niblock on various live, video and installation projects. Other frequent collaborators include: Dafna Naphtali, Keiko Uenishi, Shelley Hirsch, Barbara Held, Mia Zabelka, Al Margolis (IF,BWANA), David Watson, among many others. In addition to her art work she curates events in experimental video/film, sound/music and A/V performance, notably the yearly Screen Compositions evenings at EI NYC since 2005 and, since 2006 the OptoSonic Tea salons (co-curated with Ursula Scherrer) in NYC and various nomadic locations in North America and Europe as well as on-line during the Covid pandemic. In 2014 she completed a PhD in art practice entitled "Improvisatory Live Visuals: Playing Images Like a Musical Instrument" at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She is currently the artistic director of Experimental Intermedia NYC. Phill Niblock (1933–2024) was an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-60's he created music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world. He made thick, loud drones of music, filled with microtones of instrumental timbres generating many other tones in the performance space.  He said: “What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.” Simultaneously, he presented films / videos looking at the movement of people working. Since 1985, he had been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York — experimentalintermedia.org — where he was an artist/member since 1968. He was the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 and the curator of EI's XI Records label. Phill Niblock's music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode, Matiere Memoire, Room 40, and Touch labels. DVDs of films and music are available on the Extreme label and Von Archive. He had been professor of film, video and photography at The College of Staten Island, the City University of New York. In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious John Cage Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Loré Lixenberg is the leader of The Voice Party, an original mix of a political party and an opera, which ran in the 2019 elections in the United Kingdom, standing also in 2024. The Voice Party is the only party you can't join, it joins you. She has performed worldwide in opera houses, sound installations, galleries, festivals and museums, interpreting the works of composers and artists such as Stockhausen, Ligeti, Oliveros, Dufour, Wishart, Acquaviva, Toop, Earle Brown, Aperghis, Turnage, Birtwistle, Phill Niblock, Isidore Isou, Bernard Heidsieck, Georgina Starr, Bruce Mclean, Stelarc, Imogen Sidworthy, Janice Kerbal... As a maker, she explores participatory practices including the intersection between the digital and analogue worlds and their possibilities to create new operatic forms. Among her works include: Bird, Panic Room (The Singterviews), the real-time opera Prêt à Chanter, the 'opera' dating app SINGLR for "extended vocals" and theVoicePartyOperaBotFarmi[myFuryIsMyMuse] which won the Phonurgianova soundart prize in 2021. She has published the artist's book Memory Maps, the CD ‘The Afternoon of a Phone' as well as numerous DVDs, CDs and vinyls, including the very first recording of Cage's Song Books for the Sub Rosa label. Her recent project NancarrowKaraoke where she transcribed Nancarrow's polyrhythmic and microtonal works for player piano for her own voice was published by the Dutch label De Player.  Nicholas Isherwood made his operatic debut at Covent Garden at the age of 25. He has sung medieval music with Joel Cohen, baroque music with William Christie, romantic music with Zubin Mehta and has worked with composers such as Bussotti, Carter, Crumb, Kagel, Kurtág, Niblock, Scelsi, Stockhausen and Xenakis. He has taught master classes and lectured in venues such as Harvard, Stanford, the CNSM in Paris, the UdK and the Milan Conservatory and is professor of singing in Montbéliard and Rome. He has published several articles and a book, The Techniques of Singing, for Bärenreiter Verlag. He has recorded 70 CDs for labels such as Harmonia Mundi, Erato, Naxos and Stockhausen Verlag. He is the bass and artistic director of Voxnova Italia.

November 15, 19:00 Arno Babajanyan Concert Hall Featuring Anna Clementi, Katherine Liberovskaya, Biliana Voutchkova, Davide Aiden Capobianco Anna Clementi and Katherine Liberovskaya Zound Delta 2, 2023 For voice, electronics and field recordings Anna Clementi, live voice Katherine Liberovskaya, live video Co-composed by Phill Niblock, Anna Clementi & Thomas Stern Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds. Featuring field recordings by Phill Niblock, mezzo-soprano voice by Anna Clementi and electronics and mix by Thomas Stern. Released via Karlrecords (Berlin) in April 2024. Biliana, 2023 For violin and voice Biliana Voutchkova, live violin and live voice Composed by Phill Niblock for and with Biliana Voutchkova PN90. Phill Niblock in 90 Notes and Facts, 2024 For Oboe and Electronics (Max/MSP) Composed by Davide Aiden Capobianco This composition is inspired by Phill Niblock's life and musical legacy, spanning from his birth in 1933 to his passing in 2024. It blends sound and visual elements to create an immersive experience for the audience. The structure revolves around Phill’s 90 years, with each oboe note recorded and looped through Max/MSP, representing a year of his life. As the piece progresses, these notes accumulate into a wall of sound, aiming to reach 95dB or beyond, reflecting Phill’s pioneering approach to music. Projected visuals and text will highlight key moments from Phill's life, offering a multi-sensory tribute that deepens understanding of his artistic journey, with material drawn from Phill Niblock: Working Title and Phill Niblock: Nothing but Working. To ensure accuracy, I have collaborated closely with Phill's partner, Katherine Liberovskaya, and his biographer, Guy De Bièvre, who authored one of the books. By integrating sound and visuals, this composition seeks to honor Phill Niblock's enduring influence on experimental music through an immersive tribute, acknowledging his brief but impactful role as a mentor to me. BIOS Anna Clementi, Italian-Swedish singer, grew up in Rome, where she first studied the flute. There, she also completed acting training before moving to Berlin and meeting the composer Dieter Schnebel, with whom she studied experimental vocal music and experimental music theater at Hochschule der Künste (now UdK Berlin). Katherine Liberovskaya is a Canadian intermedia artist based in NYC. Involved in experimental video since the 80's, she has produced numerous single-channel video art pieces, video installations and video performances, as well as works in other media, that have been shown around the world. Since 2001 her work predominantly focuses on the intersection of moving image with sound/music in various both ephemeral and fixed forms (projections, installations, performances), notably through collaborations with many composers and sound artists in improvised live video+sound concert situations where her live visuals seek to create improvisatory "music" for the eyes. For over 22 years she collaborated with composer/intermedia artist Phill Niblock on various live, video and installation projects. Other frequent collaborators include: Dafna Naphtali, Keiko Uenishi, Shelley Hirsch, Barbara Held, Mia Zabelka, Al Margolis (IF,BWANA), David Watson, among many others. In addition to her art work she curates events in experimental video/film, sound/music and A/V performance, notably the yearly Screen Compositions evenings at EI NYC since 2005 and, since 2006 the OptoSonic Tea salons (co-curated with Ursula Scherrer) in NYC and various nomadic locations in North America and Europe as well as on-line during the Covid pandemic. In 2014 she completed a PhD in art practice entitled "Improvisatory Live Visuals: Playing Images Like a Musical Instrument" at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She is currently the artistic director of Experimental Intermedia NYC. Biliana Voutchkova is a dynamic, thoroughly engaged composer-performer, violinist, interdisciplinary artist, improvisor and curator with a highly individual, unconventional artistic language. Through the prism of listening, her early education in classical music and the years of development as contemporary artist-performer, she explores states of spontaneity and intuitive resonance embodied in her multifaceted activities, focusing on the interconnection between inner world and sound space. Biliana works internationally as a soloist and in collaboration with many renowned artists/ensembles. She is the founder and curator of the DARA String Festival, faculty at the Academy of Arts Bern, SHAPE+ Platform artist for 2022/2023, and recipient of multiple grants and awards (most recently the fellowship at Villa Aurora/Los Angeles). Her music has been released on the labels Unsounds, Another Timbre, Elsewhere, Relative Pitch Records, Confront Recordings, Inexhaustible Editions and Takuroku, amongst others. “...it seems to me your violin breathes slowly to write l-i-f-e - it is courage and feeling coming from within.” —Thomas Millroth Davide Aiden Capobianco is an Italian composer specializing in contemporary concert music and electroacoustic works for solo performers and ensembles. His compositions explore the human experience, pushing musical boundaries to create compelling narratives. Since 2022, he has been a member of the New York Composer Circle (NYCC), dividing his time between Italy and the USA. He works on various projects, including piano tuning, technician services, music instruction, arranging, orchestrating, and score engraving. He also assists composers in realizing their visions, such as supporting Phill Niblock in completing his compositions

November 16, 19:00 “HayArt” Centre Performance, 2024 Cadence Clock: Rhythm of the Streets is an immersive audio-visual experience navigating city streets on a fixed-gear bicycle. By equipping an otherwise minimalistic track bike with sensors, we attempt to augment the viewer's senses to translate the visceral, connected, and synchronized flow of fixed gear cycling through city traffic into perceivable sights and sounds, archiving these feelings. The rider's movements, navigation style and decision making — modulated by the city's traffic patterns, geography, and infrastructure are emphasized through audio-visual synthesis and weaved into a story exploring the rhythm of our city streets, who they are for, and how they can be reclaimed. BIOS Satyarth Mishra Sharma is a researcher, musician, and artist based in Moscow. A member of the experimental music collective Moscow Noise Manufactory. He aims to push the Indian classical instrument tabla to its technological limits with DIY hardware and software. He is also the founder of the visual duo Cactus Juice, which integrates generative live-coding and chaotic physical processes. His musical and artistic practice focuses on combining his two loves of tabla and cycling with otherwordly modulations and feedback loops. He is PhD candidate in machine learning and genetics. Robert Poghosyan is an independent interdisciplinary athlete, artist, musician, and woodworker based in Yerevan. As a cycling activist who blurs the boundaries and pushes for cultural exchange between sports and street contests, he founded Crossroads in Moscow in 2020 as a messenger service and community. Even after ceasing messenger operations, the name stays after with him as an artist identity and a part of street philosophy. He enjoys working with his hands on stages and installations and using his skills to help artists brings their visions to life.

November 16, 20:00 “HayArt” Centre Performance, 2024 Eigengrau is the color you see when you close your eyes. In Eigengrau, Tammen and Hirsch play with spontaneity in form as they respond to each others’ improvisations. Tammen uses his inquisitive approach to musical instruments as objects, and uses transducers to tease out overtones and noises from guitars. Hirsch explores what comes out of the subconscious via live text and writing as she responds to Tammen’s sounds. BIOS Hans Tammen is just another worker in rhythms, frequencies and intensities. He likes to set sounds in motion, and then sit back to watch the movements unfold. Using textures, timbre and dynamics as primary elements, his music is continuously shifting, with different layers floating into the foreground while others disappear. Shelley Hirsch was born and raised in East New York Brooklyn, Vocal Artist, Performer, Composer, Storyteller, Interdisciplinary Artist Shelley Hirsch has been pushing boundaries with her unique vocal art and performance work, drawing on her life experiences, her memory, her vivid imagination for decades.

November 17, 18:30 Yerevan Botanical Garden Performance, 2024 Metáforas para pianos muertos [Metaphors for Dead Pianos] is a long term exploration using old piano parts. Each iteration of the installation/performance is different, however, all share the same logic; searching for nuances and particularities of the objects and generating organic improvisations with the hidden sonorities creating a dialog between the piano parts, the performer, and the space that embrace the installation. In all the versions, custom electronics are fabricated in order to control and manipulate actuators, motors and electromagnets that allows the generation of string vibrations. BIO Hugo Solís García (1976, México) is a Sound Artist focused on the intersection of art, science, and technology. His work has been shown and performed on national and international venues over the last years. He has received grants, prizes, and awards from FONCA, UNAM, TELMEX, MIT, UW, IMEB, 4Culture, Seattle City, among others. Currently, he is a full-time professor at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in the field of Digital Art and Interactive Technologies. He has been member of the “Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte” of México, and is member if the “Sistema Nacional de Investigadores” of México.

November 23, 19:00 “HayArt” Centre Performance, 2024 In 2023, the Serge Modular synthesizer celebrated its 50th anniversary. Originally developed by Serge Tcherepnin in 1973, it is widely considered one of the most powerful and versatile electronic instruments of the analog era. Unlike more well-known companies like Moog and ARP, Tcherepnin wasn’t interested in synthesizers as a tool for simulating traditional instruments (piano, organ, etc) in a cheaper or more portable package. Instead, he focussed on the potential of electronics to create previously unheard sounds and entirely new forms of music. The Serge Modular was deliberately sold without a manual or a traditional keyboard, encouraging experimentation. To celebrate the anniversary, ISSUE Project Room in New York has commissioned Thomas Ankersmit to create new live music exclusively using the Serge Modular (no digital effects or other equipment). After the premiere in 2023, he has toured with the material. Following a recommendation from an American composer Maryanne Amacher, the Serge Modular has been Ankersmit's main instrument since 2006. With this new project, he'll be exploring the boundaries of its capabilities to create an almost organic, musique concrète-like sound world, but he’ll also be going "back to the essentials" with a more purely electric/electronic sound. The music exists in the tension between abstraction and a more cinematic sound: noise, crackle, hiss, pulsation become thunder, fire, rain, heartbeat — with Ankersmit trying to "breathe life" into the electricity. Ankersmit is also in contact with Serge Tcherepnin himself, who lives outside of Paris and has written about his work: “Thomas's concert was spectacular, among the very best things I've ever heard done on a Serge synth. Best thing was, I didn't hear a single bleep or bloop, or filter sweep, or driving sequencer beat. In fact, I heard nothing at all that I could tell was made using one of my synthesizers. That's genius.” BIO Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. He plays the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and collaborates with artists including Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli.His music is released on the Shelter Press, PAN and Touch labels, and combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work, as does a deliberate, creative misuse of the equipment. “Ankersmit constructs a musical world that feels alive and capable of going anywhere, and yet also manages to give the music a strong sense of structured purpose, a degree of compositional control unusual in this area of live performance. It is the fine balance between the sense of chaos that threatens to pull everything apart and the controlled formation of the music into clearly defined sections of differing intensities that raises the work above that of so many of Ankersmit’s contemporaries.” —Richard Pinnell, The Wire

November 24, 19:00 “HayArt” Centre Performance, 2024  stackedplot(x, *args=[SiO2], labels=(Any), colors=colorMode(HSB).desaturated(0.17), baseline='20Hz', data=waveformDataType, **kwargs=[sinθ2=n1n2sinθ1] ), or simply: glass as a graph domain with light and sound as values. BIOS Alexander Bochkov is an engineer, 3D modeler and media artist. Born in 1990 in Orsk, USSR. Founder of the “Reverse Side of the Road” gravel cycling race. Founder of the cycling brand SinX. Participated in such festivals as Chronotope (2021, Vyborg, Russia), CYFEST-14: Ferment (2021, Dartington, UK, Yerevan, Armenia), Emerge 2022: Eating at the Edges (2022, Mesa, Arizona, US), XXII International Image Festival, XENOlandscapes (2023, Bogotá and Manizales, Colombia), Audio Visual performance in The State Philharmonia of Armenia(2024, Yerevan, Armenia). Lives and works in Yerevan, Armenia. Matvei Peshkov is a visual artist, coding enthusiast. Born in 1997 in New York, USA. In 2024, he performed an audiovisual piece at the State Philharmonia of Armenia in Yerevan, Armenia. BIOS Alexander Bochkov is an engineer, 3D modeler and media artist. Born in 1990 in Orsk, USSR. Founder of the “Reverse Side of the Road” gravel cycling race. Founder of the cycling brand SinX. Participated in such festivals as Chronotope (2021, Vyborg, Russia), CYFEST-14: Ferment (2021, Dartington, UK, Yerevan, Armenia), Emerge 2022: Eating at the Edges (2022, Mesa, Arizona, US), XXII International Image Festival, XENOlandscapes (2023, Bogotá and Manizales, Colombia), Audio Visual performance in The State Philharmonia of Armenia(2024, Yerevan, Armenia). Lives and works in Yerevan, Armenia. Matvei Peshkov is a visual artist, coding enthusiast. Born in 1997 in New York, USA. In 2024, he performed an audiovisual piece at the State Philharmonia of Armenia in Yerevan, Armenia.

November 30, 19:00 “HayArt” Centre Performance, 2024 The performance is built around the time-stretching capabilities of sound and the agency of the human voice — raw, untrained, and fragile. The work will include the sounds of processed accordion, vocals, and field recordings. BIO Elina Bolshenkova (Eli!) is a musician and visual artist from Kstovo, Russia. As a musician, she creates electro-acoustic music using various instruments such as accordion, guitar, double bass, clarinet, while her sound art works explore the manipulation of time by creating dense soundscapes. Elina's debut album "Flood Management" was released in 2023 on the London-based label Infant Tree.

December 01, 19:00 “HayArt” Centre Performance, 2024  In the project /broken vows // triple tension / Alexey Grachev attempts to understand infantilism by rediscovering his early work that challenged perceptions of “normalcy” in society. Returning to the stage, he relives youth, seeking the origins of his identity and personal fulfillment, while reconstructing the profound impressions of adolescence. /broken vows/ explores the tension that builds up, echoing the introduction of Nirvana's Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. Utilizing guitars and instruments emblematic of the 90s grunge culture, Grachev in his new guitar performance reflects on his early creativity and identity through performative practices. BIO Alexey Grachev is a media artist, engineer, computer programmer. Graduated from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (Russia). Completed the School for Young Artists program at the Pro Arte Foundation (St. Petersburg, Russia). Grachev is the technical director and chief engineer of CYLAND MediaArtLab. Participant of the World Event Young Artists Festival (2012, Nottingham, UK), CYFEST (numerous times), special project "Urbi et Orbi" at the 6th Moscow Biennale (2015, Russia), "The Creative Machine 2" exhibition at Goldsmiths, University of London (2018, UK), "ID" exhibition parallel to the Venice Biennale (2019, Venice, Italy). Participant of the "Arts Work of the Future" project at the Tate Exchange space (2018, London, UK). He has delivered lectures and workshops in several educational and cultural institutions in Russia and internationally.