Sonic Acts X Stedelijk: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett by Luke Fowler

The programme for Sunday 26 February is built around the premiere of Luke Fowler’s new film Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait of Martin Bartlett, a co-production by Sonic Acts and Stedelijk Museum. It pays tribute to the work and musical ideas of Martin Bartlett (1939–93), a proudly gay Canadian composer who during the 1970s and 1980s pioneered the use of the ‘microcomputer’.

Bartlett is hardly recognised, never mind canonised, in cultural life. He researched intimate relationships with technology and was particularly interested in handmade electronics where, as he states in one of his performances: ‘the intimacy of handcraftedness softens the technological anonymity creating individual difference making each instrument a topography of uncertainties with which we become acquainted through practice’. Luke Fowler will discuss the film and the legacy of Martin Bartlett with Amy Cimini and Ernst Karel. After the talk there will a concert by Ernst Karel and Luke Fowler will perform live with Richard McMaster who is playing vintage Russians synths.

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Luke Fowler

Luke Fowler is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. He studied printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. He creates cinematic collages that have often been linked to the British Free Cinema movement of the 1950s. His documentary films have explored counter cultural figures including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing and English composer Cornelius Cardew.

Ernst Karel

Ernst Karel makes electroacoustic music and experimental nonfiction sound works for multichannel installation and performance, and collaborates with filmmakers and artists in making audiovisual work. Video with multichannel sound collaborations include Ah humanity! (with Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel) and Single Stream (with Toby Lee and Pawel Wojtasik). Recent nonfiction films on which he has done sound work include The Iron Ministry, Manakamana, and Leviathan, all produced in the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, where he teaches a class in sonic ethnography.

LUKE FOWLER

Electro-Pythagorus: A Portrait 

of Martin Bartlett 

45’, film (world premiere); 21:00 

This film is commissioned by Sonic Acts & Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. With the film Luke Fowler pays tribute to the work and musical ideas of Martin Bartlett (1939–93), a proudly gay Canadian composer who during the 1970s and 1980s pioneered the use of the ‘microcomputer’. Bartlett is hardly recognised, never mind canonised, in cultural life. He researched intimate relationships with technology and was particularly interested in handmade electronics where, as he states in one of his performances: ‘the intimacy of handcraftedness softens the technological anonymity creating individual difference making each instrument a topography of uncertainties with which we become acquainted through practice’. The screening of Electro-Pythagorus is accompanied by a conversation by Amy Cimini, Luke Fowler and Ernst Karel. Luke Fowler (UK) is a fi lmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. He studied printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. 

ERNST KAREL + LUKE FOWLER

Glyphs (Music from Martin's Tape Archive) quadrophonic concert; 22:30 Glyphs is a new work comprised entirely from unreleased and rarely heard reel to reels from the archive of electroacoustic composer Martin Bartlett, which were digitised by Luke Fowler as part of his research process in making Electro-Pythagorus. Ernst Karel (US) makes electroacoustic music and experimental nonfi ction sound works for multichannel installation and performance, and collaborates with fi lmmakers and artists in making audiovisual work.

LUKE FOWLER + RICHARD MCMASTER

The Mechanics of Dissonance AV performance; 23:15 It is the first original film and sound collaboration by the duo Luke Fowler and Richard McMaster. A two screen 16mm fi lm with multi-channel sound, the work centres around a new composition for the Russian ANS synthesiser. Designed between 1937 and 1957 the ANS is one of the most mythical electronic instruments of the 20th century, with only one surviving example left. The fi lm was recorded on location the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture in Moscow. Richard McMaster (UK) lives and works in Glasgow. Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011, his creative output has focused primarily on the creation and production of music through various groups and collaborations.