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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260510T193000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260510T220000
DTSTAMP:20260501T181732
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SUMMARY:Opening Concert
DESCRIPTION:Program Overview\nIntroduction \nAlexander Schubert – SCANNERS (2013)\nfor string quintet\, choreography\, and electronics (12 min) \nNicole Brady – Ricochet (World Premiere 2026)\nfor chamber orchestra (10 min) \nAnthony Paul De Ritis – Filters (2015 / 2026)\nfor alto saxophone\, string orchestra\, and live electronics (10 min) \nIntermission (25 min) \nAigerim Seilova / Steffen Lohrey – Breath Mechanics (World Premiere 2026)\nfor two soprano saxophones\, string ensemble\, and live electronics (10 min) \nClarence Barlow – Im Januar am Nil (1985)\nfor ensemble (approx. 25 min) \nShort break (10 min) \nClosing & Conference Information (15 min) \n  \nPerformers\nEnsemble Resonanz – strings\nAsya Fateyeva – saxophone\nVlatko Kučan – saxophone\nJohn Eckhardt – double bass\nDulguun Chinchuluun – piano\nLin Chen – percussion \nConductor\nFriederike Scheunchen \nFind out more about the musicians playing at ICMC HAMBURG 2026 here.  \n  \nAbout the pieces\nAlexander Schubert: SCANNERS (2013)\nfor string quintet\, choreography\, and electronics \nThe piece SCANNERS copes with the physical qualities of instrumentalists in electro-acoustic music. It is a choreographed composition\, that takes movement as important as sound. The string ensemble turns into a performing machine. The main focus is on the movement of scanning – as well in the interaction of bow and instrument when producing sound as also in purely artificial gestures. There is no difference between musically necessary or choerographically determined mouvement. The piece can be seen as a comment on the relationship of man to digital content: the direct consequences of action can’t be explained by simple cause and effect principles any more\, the musicians become puppets or at least a part of a complex machine. At the same time the piece offers a special focus on the highly specialized genre of the string orchestra: the mechanizing emphasizes the accuracy of the interpreter and the elegance of the traditional movement\, here being staged independently from the production of sound.\nScanners belongs to a series of compositions that deal with physicality\, as there is e.g. Point Ones with interactive conductor or LaPlace Tiger with a sensor-wired drummer. \nAbout the composer\nAlexander Schubert (1979) studied bioinformatics\, multimedia composition. He’s a professor at the Musikhochschule Hamburg. Schubert’s interest explores the border between the acoustic and electronic world. In music composition\, immersive installation and staged pieces he examines the interplay between the digital and the analogue. He creates pieces that realize test settings or interaction spaces that question modes of perception and representation. Continuing topics in this field are authenticity and virtuality. The influence and framing of digital media on aesthetic views and communication is researched in a post-digital perspective. Recent research topics in his works were virtual reality\, artificial intelligence and online-mediated artworks. Schubert is a founding member of ensembles such as “Decoder“. His works have been performed more than 700 times in the last few years by numerous ensembles in over 30 countries. \n  \nNicole Brady: Ricochet (World Premiere 2026)\nfor chamber orchestra and live electronics \nRicochet explores the idea of deviation from an expected path after an initial impact\, leading to new directions. Inspired by the ricochet bowing technique\, this concept unfolds both physically and metaphorically within the ensemble.\nA responsive electronic system listens to the orchestra and generates a parallel sonic layer. Energetic passages produce scattered\, percussive textures\, while quieter material leads to dense\, sustained sound fields. The system alternates between listening and generative modes\, interacting closely with the performers.\nSubtle references to composers such as Couperin\, Ravel\, and Mozart connect historical material with contemporary sound\, while the electronics act as an additional\, autonomous voice within the ensemble. \nAbout the composer\nNicole Brady is an award-winning composer and creative director whose work spans concert music\, immersive installation\, and video game franchises including Final Fantasy\, Tekken\, and Valkyria Chronicles. Her work has been honoured by the Peabody Awards and IndieCade\, and her immersive sound album Lost Palace was released with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Recent commissions and performances include the Omega Ensemble\, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra\, Flinders Quartet\, and Lyris Quartet. As creative director of WLDR studio\, her immersive multisensory works have reached over 20\,000 participants across Illuminate Adelaide and Spier Light Art Festival. Nicole is a researcher at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and recipient of the Director’s Award for Exceptional Doctoral Research. \n  \nAnthony Paul De Ritis: Filters (2015 / 2026)\nfor alto saxophone\, string orchestra\, and live electronics \nOriginally composed for alto saxophone and electronic playback\, Filters explores the layering and spatial diffusion of sound. Recorded saxophone material creates a “second” voice\, blending with the live soloist into a unified\, resonant field.\nIn this version for saxophone\, string orchestra\, and multi-channel electronics\, the ensemble extends these layers\, producing a rich interplay between live instruments and their electronically mediated “shadows.”\nThe solo saxophone remains at the expressive center\, while the surrounding textures generate depth\, movement\, and an immersive spatial experience. \nAbout the composer\nDescribed as a “genuinely American composer” (Gramophone)\, “a bit of a visionary” (Audiophile Audition)\, and “bracingly imaginative” (The Boston Globe)\, Anthony Paul De Ritis has received performances around the world\, including at Lincoln Center\, Beijing’s Yugong Yishan\, Seoul’s KT Art Hall\, the Italian Pavilion at the 2015 World Expo in Milan\, and UNESCO headquarters in Paris. \nDe Ritis’s 2012 release “Devolution” by the GRAMMY® Award-winning Boston Modern Orchestra Project\, featuring Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky as soloist\, was described as a “tour de force” (Gramophone); and his “Pop Concerto” (2017) featuring Eliot Fisk was lauded as “a major issue of American music\,” (Classical CD Review) and his “Electroacoustic Music – In Memoriam: David Wessel” (2018) was cited as among the “Best of 2018” in the electronic music category (Sequenza 21). \nHe holds a Ph.D. from the University of California\, Berkeley\, and is Professor at Northeastern University\, where he co-founded the music technology program. \n  \nAigerim Seilova and Steffen Lohrey: Breath Mechanics (World Premiere 2026)\nfor two soprano saxophones\, string ensemble\, and live electronics \nThis work is a composition for two soprano saxophones\, string ensemble (4.4.4.2)\, and 8.1 live electronics\, submitted for the ICMC Special Call 1: Ensemble Resonanz . The piece serves as a spectral dialogue with Clarence Barlow’s Im Januar am Nil\, adopting his strategies of timbral fusion and hocketing but transposing them into the age of Machine Learning. The central material is derived from “ChordsNest\,” a multiphonics palette extension for MaxScore\, which is repurposed here as a training set for a neural network. The compositional core is an “AI Translation Error” in which the model was tasked with reconstructing the cylindrical bore spectra of the digital archive using the conical bore of the live saxophones and the acoustic textures of the string ensemble. \nThe resulting score is a transcription of the AI’s “hallucinations\,” where the ensemble physically replicates the digital artifacts of the style transfer process. The 8.1 electronics mediate this through a dual-role feedback loop. They function first as a synthesized “externalized memory” of the source spectra and secondly as a live inferencing engine that generates “retrospective hypotheses” by attempting to recover source-states from the acoustic performance. This architecture stages a recursive friction between the explicitly presented digital archive and the machine’s error-prone attempt to reconstruct it through physical sound. \nAbout the composers\nHamburg-based composer Aigerim Seilova integrates acoustics\, electronics\, and interactive media. A doctoral researcher at HfMT Hamburg\, her works are performed by Ensemble Modern and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra at festivals like Tanglewood and Chelsea Music Festival. Awards include the Hindemith Prize\, Leonard Bernstein Fellowship\, and Radio France Prize. She serves as Deputy Chair of the DKV Hamburg\, promoting contemporary music and interdisciplinary exchange. \nBorn in Gießen in 1987\, Steffen Lohrey studied Digital Media with a focus on sound in Darmstadt and Multimedia Composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama (HfMT Hamburg). His work exists at the intersection of composition\, installation\, and code. He has been involved in a wide range of projects\, including Picadero with the Haa Collective (presented at venues such as Deltebre Dansa and the Fusion Festival)\, Crawlers with Alexander Schubert (ZKM Karlsruhe)\, and Shibboleth by Aigerim Seilova at HfMT Hamburg. His work and collaborations have been featured at Blurred Edges\, the Teatre Principal Terrassa\, and the GREC Festival\, among others. In addition\, Steffen Lohrey works as an audio engineer and sound designer in Hamburg. \n  \nClarence Barlow: Im Januar am Nil (1984)\nfor 2 soprano saxophones (1st+clarinet\, bass clarinet)\, 4 violins\, 2 celli\, double bass\, piano\, percussion  \nIm Januar am Nil was written in 1981 for Ensemble Köln – the instrumentation: two soprano saxophones\, percussion (five Japanese temple bells\, a Korean gong\, a crotale\, a cymbal\, a side drum and a bass drum)\, a piano\, four violins\, two cellos and a double-bass. In 1984 the completely revised piece was premiered in Paris by Ensemble Itineraire.\nThrough the piece runs a constantly repeated melody\, increasing both in length and density – new tones appear in the expanding gaps\, first in a purely auxiliary function\, but gradually harmonically rivalling the older tones. A single note at the start develops into a flowing melody moving from transparent tonality through multitonality to a dense self-destructive atonality.\nAt first the melody is played almost inaudibly by the bass clarinet\, amplified by overtones heard as natural harmonics in the strings: the resultant timbre is phonetic\, based on a Fourier analysis of German sentences (as for instance the title itself) containing only harmonic spectra\, namely liquids\, nasals and semi-vowels. Ideally these “scored Fourier-synthesized” words should be comprehensible\, but an ensemble of seven strings can only be approximative. After a few minutes of bass clarinet and strings\, the piano enters in an explicit rendition of the melody\, developing it as described above and timbrally coloured by “hocketing” soprano saxophones. The double bass now also explicitly plays the melody without further developing it – in a “frozen” state it is contrasted with the piano part and slows down during further repetitions due to its increasing length. \nAbout the composer\nClarence Barlow (1945–2023) was a composer and pioneer of computer music\, born into the English-speaking minority of Calcutta (now Kolkata)\, India. He received his early education there\, studying piano\, music theory\, and natural sciences\, and began composing at the age of twelve. After graduating in science from the University of Calcutta in 1965\, he worked as a conductor and teacher of music theory at the Calcutta School of Music.\nIn 1968\, Barlow moved to Cologne\, where he studied composition and electronic music at the Hochschule für Musik\, alongside studies at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. During this period\, he began using computers as a compositional tool\, becoming one of the early figures to explore algorithmic and computer-assisted composition.\nFrom the 1980s onward\, Barlow played a central role in shaping the field of computer music. He was closely associated with the Darmstadt Summer Courses\, where he directed computer music activities for over a decade\, and was a co-founder of GIMIK (Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln). He also held numerous academic positions across Europe\, including at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague\, where he served as Professor of Composition and Sonology and later as Artistic Director of the Institute of Sonology.\nFrom 2006 until his retirement\, Barlow was Corwin Professor of Composition at the University of California\, Santa Barbara. His work is characterized by a unique synthesis of mathematical rigor\, cultural hybridity\, and innovative approaches to musical structure\, making him one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music. \n 
URL:http://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/opening-concert/
LOCATION:Elphilharmonie Hamburg\, Recital Hall\, Platz der Deutschen Einheit\, Hamburg\, 20457\, Germany
CATEGORIES:10-05,Concert,Music,Special Event
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260510T220000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260510T233000
DTSTAMP:20260501T181732
CREATED:20260421T125335Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260423T165418Z
UID:10000071-1778450400-1778455800@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:Reception
DESCRIPTION:Following the opening concert\, concert attendees registered to the ICMC HAMBURG 2026 are warmly invited to a reception in the Recital Hall Foyer for an opportunity to meet fellow artists\, researchers\, and conference participants in an inspiring setting overlooking Hamburg’s harbor.   \n 
URL:http://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/reception/
LOCATION:Elbphilharmonie Hamburg\, Recital Hall Foyer\, Platz der Deutschen Einheit\, Hamburg\, 20457\, Germany
CATEGORIES:10-05,Special Event
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260513T183000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260513T210000
DTSTAMP:20260501T181732
CREATED:20260421T195653Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260422T082616Z
UID:10000087-1778697000-1778706000@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:Banquet
DESCRIPTION:Photo: Richard Stoehr\n  \nOn Wednesday\, May 13\, 2026\, the ICMC HAMBURG 2026 Banquet will take place at the exceptional Speicher am Kaufhauskanal – one of Harburg’s most atmospheric historic venues. This beautifully restored 19th-century half-timbered building\, originally built in 1827\, blends architectural charm with state-of-the-art event and culinary infrastructure\, creating a truly memorable setting. \nGuests can look forward to an elegant evening in a unique riverside location in Hamburg-Harburg\, where historic character meets contemporary comfort. Following the banquet\, a club concert will round off the night – open to all conference participants and perfect for continuing the conversations and connections in a more relaxed\, musical atmosphere. \nPlease note that availability is limited to 100 banquet tickets. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBanquet tickets: 85 € \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRegistration für thr ICMC Hamburg 2026 Banquet via Converia  \n\n\n  \n\n\nPhoto: Jasmin-Marla-Dichant
URL:http://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/banquet/
LOCATION:Speicher am Kaufhauskanal\, Blohmstraße 22\, Hamburg\, 21079\, Germany
CATEGORIES:13-05,Special Event
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260513T213000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260513T233000
DTSTAMP:20260501T181732
CREATED:20260421T162148Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260422T121025Z
UID:10000088-1778707800-1778715000@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:Club Concert 3C
DESCRIPTION:Concert 3C is an exploration of the boundaries of collective improvisation and creative technology. The SPIIC Ensemble of the HfMT Hamburg presents a program in which the audience has a say\, algorithms extend historical works\, and artificial intelligence reinterprets human movement as a “hallucination.”\nIn the industrial atmosphere of the Speicher am Kaufhauskanal\, acoustic instruments merge with live coding\, neural synthesis\, and interactive notation. \n  \nProgram Overview\nLiquid tensioning\nFernando Egido \nSinophony for Clarence\nJuan Arturo Parra Cancino \nChimerique\nJonathan Wilson \nNEBULA\nEnrique Tomás and Moisés Horta Valenzuela \nplastique\nSe-Lien Chuang and Andreas Weixler \nShamanic Protocol\nOscar Corpo \nA Walk in Polygon Field\nRob Canning \nDEPRECATED\nDenis Polec Vocal \n  \nAbout the pieces & artists\nFernando Egido: Liquid tensioning\nLiquid Tensioning is a work for violin and double clarinet\, live notation\, live generative system\, live electronics\, and attendees’ participation (category: Improvised work for ensemble and electronics (SPIIC+ Ensemble)). Liquid tensioning is a Collaborative and interactive work in which the work is real time created by the self-evaluation of the work. The attendees will evaluate the work via a web app\, and the musical generative system will change according to the evaluation in real time. The Musicians will receive notes via a live notation system on their mobile phones. The title of the works refers to the model of tensioning provided by the generative system based on a musical tensioning that is not related to the properties of the musical material. This work belongs to a series of works in which the composer creates a self-referential musical generative system based on the real-time evaluation of the work. The main musical material of this work is its evaluation. The work duration is about 10 minutes. \nAbout the artist\nHe studied composition with José Luis de Delás at the School of Music of the University of Alcalá de Henares and received musical training in workshops with composers\, analysts\, and interpreters around the LIEM or the GCAC. He studied Computer Music with Emiliano del Cerro.\nHe has published several papers at international conferences.\nHis works have been performed at festivals such as ICMC 2025-2024-2023\, Bled international festival\, SMC Conference Graz\, Convergence Festival\, Ars electronica Linz\, Atemporánea Festival\, AIMC 2022 conference\, EVO 2021\, OUA Electroacoustic Music Festival 2020\, ISMIR 2020 in Montreal. The Seoul International Electroacoustic Music Festival 2019\, the ACMC 2019 conference in Melbourne\, SID 2015 conference in New York\, Venice Vending Machine III\, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival\, JIEN in the Auditory 400\, La hora acúsmatica\, SMASH Festival\, Encontres Festival in Palma of Majorca\, and ACA. \n  \nJuan Arturo Parra Cancino: Sinophony for Clarence\nSynophonie for Clarence is an ensemble and live electronics work inspired by the formal and sonic principles of Clarence Barlow’s Sinophony I (1970)\, his first electronic composition. Rather than functioning as an arrangement or transcription\, this piece operates as an instrumental extension of Barlow’s electronic sound world\, translating and reactivating its core materials through acoustic performance and real-time electronic processes. \nThe work seeks to bring into the physical space of performance elements that\, in Sinophony I\, exist only in fixed media: continuous tones\, slow harmonic transformations\, beating frequencies\, and the perceptual tension between purity and instability. These characteristics are reimagined here as a living\, performative situation\, where instrumental sound and electronics merge into a single\, evolving spectral body. \nSynophonie for Clarence builds on methods developed by Juan Parra Cancino to extract performative salients from early electronic works—elements that can be embodied\, negotiated\, and reshaped by performers in real time. Through this approach\, the piece revisits historical electronic material not as an object to be preserved unchanged\, but as a dynamic field for exploration\, experimentation\, and renewed artistic engagement. The aim is not reconstruction\, but continuation: to recover underlying processes and extend their implications into contemporary performance practice. \nBy situating acoustic instruments\, live electronics\, and spatialized sound within a shared listening ecology\, the work foregrounds collective tuning\, timbral fusion\, and emergent beating phenomena as central musical forces. The ensemble functions less as a group of independent voices than as a composite oscillator\, shaped by subtle interactions and shared attention. \nThis piece is conceived as a tribute to Clarence Barlow—composer\, educator\, and friend—honoring both his pioneering contributions to electronic music and his enduring influence on ways of thinking about sound\, structure\, and musical intelligence. \nAbout the artist\nJuan Parra Cancino studied Composition at the Catholic University of Chile and Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague\, where he completed a Master’s degree in electronic music. He received a PhD from Leiden University in 2014 on performance practice in computer music. A guitarist trained in Robert Fripp’s Guitar Craft\, he has worked extensively in live electronics. He is a researcher at the Orpheus Institute and Regional Director for Europe of the International Computer Music Association (2022–26). \n  \nJonathan Wilson: Chimerique\n“Chimerique” is about the interaction of music and language. Written and premiered in 2017\, this composition is for an ensemble featuring improvisation\, narration\, and electronics. It was realized in a collaboration with poet and translator Patricia Hartland by incorporating her English translation of “Ravines of Early Morning” by Raphael Confiant into a musical setting. The title is taken from a word in this text. It is French for “chimerical\,” and it can be defined as 1: something that takes delight in illusions\, or 2: something that is utopian\, or unreal. The narrator forms associations with this word through various phrases and passages that relate to the part of the story in which the description of “chimerique” is elaborated. Throughout this performance\, the performers listen and react to the text spoken by the narrator (and electronics). They are accompanied by electronics that consist of fixed media and live electronics from two different patches in Max/MSP using additive synthesis and granular synthesis. The musical instruments are the source material for granular synthesis. The score for this composition uses hybrid musical notation with some traditional notation for pitch and some graphic notation that leads performers subsequently to interpret not only the spoken phrases\, but also the graphic notation in their parts to determine volume\, pitch\, rhythm\, articulation\, and contour\, thereby making improvisation a necessity. The narrator and performers work together to generate a spontaneously formed through-composed work that marries text and music. The form can be described as through-composed in six sections. In the first section the performers respond only to a single phrase. In sections 2-6 the performers respond not only to phrases that delineate each section but also respond to extended narration shifting from descriptions of dreams\, the night\, madness\, illusions\, and at the end the act of dreaming itself. \nAbout the artist\nDr. Jonathan Wilson’s works have been performed at the Ann Arbor Film Festival\, European Media Art Festival\, ICMC\, SICMF\, SEAMUS\, NYCEMF\, MUSELAB\, NSEME\, Napoleon Electronic Music Festival\, Iowa Music Teachers Association State Conference\, and Midwest Composers Symposium. He is the winner of the 2014 Iowa Music Teachers Association Composition Competition. Jonathan has studied composition with Lawrence Fritts\, Josh Levine\, David Gompper\, James Romig\, James Caldwell\, Paul Paccione\, and John Cooper. In addition\, studies in conducting have been taken under Richard Hughey and Mike Fansler. Jonathan is a member of Society of Composers\, Inc.\, SEAMUS\, ICMA\, and the Iowa Composers Forum. \n  \nEnrique Tomás and Moisés Horta Valenzuela: NEBULA\nArtists working with deep-learning audio models often find that exploring their high-dimensional latent spaces requires chance-based\, combinatorial\, or technically complex machine-learning techniques. While these approaches can reveal unexpected possibilities\, they also make it more difficult to deliberately guide the models toward outcomes that are musically meaningful or aligned with specific creative intentions. \nIn this improvisation for solo instrument and two performers on live electronics\, we present an alternative approach to create a more interpretable and musically guided latent space exploration. This approach leverages Principal Component Analysis (PCA) applied to pre-encoded RAVE (Realtime Audio Variational Autoencoder) representations to reorganize the latent data into clusters that can be navigated more deliberately in performance. PCA reorganizes the encoded data into clusters based on shared timbral characteristics\, producing data clouds directly connected to the sonic properties of the source material. By structuring access to the latent space in this way\, our method bridges the gap between open-ended exploration and purposeful control\, offering performers a clearer and more intuitive means of shaping sound. \nTo prepare the improvisation\, and prior to the concert\, the solo instrumentalist provides an eight-minute recording that defines the sonic domain of the performance. This recording is encoded and analyzed\, restricting exploration to regions of the latent space shaped by the performer’s own material and giving the electronic musicians a more focused and musically coherent landscape to navigate. During the live performance\, the solo instrumentalist and the two electronic performers interact within this PCA-organized timbral map. Their trajectories through the latent space—along with the evolving clusters and sonic transformations—are projected in real time\, allowing the audience to see how latent-space navigation corresponds to audible change. \nThe musical materials resulting from this setup combine structured instrumental improvisation with electronically generated textures derived from latent-space navigation. While the overall form is left to real-time decisions between the soloist and the live performers\, the resulting sound world often alternates between rhythmically driven motifs—loosely recalling the interactive dynamics of small jazz ensembles—and more abstract electronic layers shaped through PCA-guided trajectories. These electronic textures\, produced by traversing clustered regions of the latent space\, serve as harmonically and timbrally evolving fields against which the soloist can articulate phrasing\, gesture\, and dynamic contour. The custom-built performance interfaces allow the electronic performers to shape these materials with precision\, enabling a responsive interplay in which acoustic action and machine-learned transformations continually inform one another. \nAbout the artists\nEnrique Tomás (*1981) is a sound artist\, researcher and assistant professor at the Tangible Music Lab who dedicates his time to finding new ways of expression and play with sound\, art and technology. His work explores the intersection between sound art\, computer music\, locative media and human-machine interaction.\nAs an individual artist\, Tomás’ activity is centered around ultranoise.es and focuses on performances and installations with extreme and immersive sounds and environments. He has exhibited and performed in spaces of Ars Electronica\, Sonar\, CTM\, IRCAM\, IEM\, KUMU\, SMAK\, NOVARS\, STEIM\, Steirischer Herbst\, Alte Schmiede\, etc.\, and in galleries and institutions throughout Europe and Latin America. \nMoisés Horta Valenzuela is a self-taught sound artist\, technologist\, musician\, and researcher from Tijuana\, Mexico\, based in Berlin. His work spans computer music\, neural audio synthesis\, conversational AI\, and the politics of emerging technologies\, approached through a critical lens that connects ancestral knowledge with contemporary digital culture. He has presented work internationally at Ars Electronica\, NeurIPS ML for Creativity & Design\, MUTEK México\, MUTEK AI Art Lab Montréal\, Transart Festival\, CTM Festival\, Elektron Musik Studion\, and the Sound and Music Computing Conference\, among others. \n  \nSe-Lien Chuang and Andreas Weixler: plastique\ninteractive audiovisual comprovisation for e-quitar\, green leaves & i-hands – GLISS – Green Leaves Imaginary Scenic Score\nDuration: ca. 8 min \nAbout the artists\nAndreas Weixler\, born 1963 in Graz\, Austria\, is a composer for computer music with an emphasis in\nintermedia realtime processing. He is teaching at the mdw Vienna\, InterfaceCulture in Linz and serves associate university professor at the CMS – computer music studio of Anton Bruckner\nUniversity in Linz where he initiated the intermedia concert hall the Sonic Lab.\nStudies of contemporary composition at KUG in Graz\, Austria with diploma by\nBeat Furrer\, completed by international projects and residencies. \nSe-Lien Chuang is a composer born in Taiwan in 1965 and based in Austria since 1991. Her work focuses on contemporary instrumental composition and improvisation\, computer music\, and audiovisual interactivity. She has presented works and lectures internationally in Europe\, Asia\, and the Americas at events such as ICMC\, ISEA\, and NIME. From 2016 to 2019\, she taught for the Computer Music Studio at Bruckner University Linz. Since 1996\, she has co-run Atelier Avant Austria\, specializing in audiovisual interactive systems\, real-time processing and computer music. \n  \nOscar Corpo: Shamanic Protocol\nShamanic Protocol is an online sound ritual performed by a partially damaged virtual entity. Its memory is an incomplete and corrupted archive\, composed of residual sonic materials related to shamanic rituals\, music therapy\, sound-based healing practices\, and data derived from musical epigenetics. Reshaped by the available data and the presence of connected users\, these fragments are reprocessed and reorganised each time the system is accessed\, generating a sonic ritual that follows a recognisable structure yet never manifests in the same way twice.
The sound ritual has no declared purpose: it remains unclear whether the entity performs the rite as an attempt to repair itself\, an act of archive restoration\, a process meant to affect human listeners\, or simply because this process constitutes its way of operating. The variability of the outcome may suggest either a gradual recovery or a progressive deterioration of the system. The resulting sonic output exists in a space between therapeutic effect\, system malfunction\, and autonomous algorithmic process. The shifts between fragile calm\, overload\, interruption\, and recovery reveal the instability of the system that generates it. No clear boundary is drawn between healing\, malfunction\, or expression: these states coexist and remain indistinguishable within the process.
The rite can be experienced as a purely electronic process\, or human performers\, in any instrumental or vocal configuration\, may take part in its enactment. Musicians are invited to participate in the ritual rather than interpret a fixed musical text. Guided by an open\, interpretative score\, performers do not execute predefined material but engage in the ritual itself\, interacting with the electronic layer by listening\, responding\, and aligning their gestures with the evolving sonic environment. The notation offers indications of behaviour\, density\, register\, and gesture rather than prescribed material; in this way\, performers take part in the rite by freely amplifying\, refracting\, and destabilising the entity’s activity. The score prescribes no precise instrumentation or techniques; in this instance\, the ritual is performed with a string ensemble alongside soprano saxophone\, bass clarinet\, piano\, and percussion.
Performers do not guide the system\, nor do they follow it; instead\, they remain in a state of attentive coexistence with its unfolding behaviour. Each performance is therefore situated\, shaped by specific conditions\, configurations\, and presences.\nThe process does not call for interpretation: repair and damage are no longer separable; function and meaning no longer distinguishable. \nAbout the artist\nOscar Corpo (born 8 April 1997\, Naples\, Italy) is an Italian composer based in Hamburg. He studied Composition and Multimedia Composition in Naples\, and is now a PhD candidate at the HfMT Hamburg\, focusing on AI and collective improvisation with Ensemble 404. His work spans electronic\, instrumental\, vocal\, improvisation\, and music theatre. He has collaborated with Alexander Schubert\, Berliner Philharmoniker\, La Biennale di Venezia\, and Lux Nova Duo\, among others. \n  \nRob Canning: A Walk in Polygon Field\nA Walk in Polygon Field is a graphic score environment for controlled improvisation\, composed for 1–4 instrumentalists with electronics and surround diffusion. Three polygons—pentagon\, hexagon\, heptagon—rotate at different rates\, producing polymetric phase relationships (5-against-6-against-7). Performers activate objects orbiting these shapes\, interpreting compound visual motion as sonic material. An outer ring generates OSC data driving spatial processing.\nThe score defines states\, behaviours\, and constraints; performers negotiate what these structures sound like. Each polygon side represents a discrete performance state—pitch region\, articulation\, texture—but specific mappings remain open. Musicians enter and withdraw from a shared texture whose density and pacing emerge from collective decision-making.\nAuthored entirely in SVG\, the work embeds performance semantics directly into visual element identifiers\, executed by a browser-based runtime on networked tablets. This approach\, detailed in the accompanying paper “Scores That Run: Graphic Notation with Embedded Performance Semantics\,” demonstrates how open web standards support animated notation without specialised infrastructure. Each performance traces a different route—music negotiated through shared encounter with a moving score. \nFull Guide to Interpretation\, Programme Notes and supporting materials including Supercollider live electronics patch are available online: \nhttps://robcanning.github.io/oscilla/compositions/polygonfield2026/ \nAbout the artist\nRob Canning (Dublin\, 1974) is a composer\, improviser\, and creative technologist whose work explores animated notation\, improvisation\, and the dynamics of networked musical systems. He holds a PhD in composition from Goldsmiths\, University of London\, where his research examined distributed authorship in computer-assisted music. A long-time advocate of Free and Open Source Software\, he develops Oscilla\, an open-source platform for animated graphic notation and networked performance. \n  \nDenis Polec: DEPRECATED  \nDEPRECATED establishes a recursive feedback loop between a biological subject and a cluster of interpretative algorithms. The work investigates the friction between human indeterminacy and machine determinism. \nThe Setup A lone performer occupies the center of the stage\, stripped of traditional instrumentation. Facing them is a “panopticon” of sensors: computer vision cameras and open microphones. The human subject oscillates between legible behavior and “abnormal” states—engaging in erratic gestures\, non-semantic vocalizations\, and visceral spasms designed to evade learned pattern recognition. \nThe Process Simultaneously\, three isolated AI instances dissect this input in real-time. Unable to process the chaotic reality of the “Now\,” the systems hallucinate: Computer Vision misinterprets trauma as choreography; a Large Language Model forces these errors into a coherent narrative; and Neural Audio Synthesis re-synthesizes the fabrication into sterilized perfection. \nAbout the artist\nDenis Polec operates at the intersection of sound art and algorithmic criticism. His practice rejects the notion of human-machine collaboration\, focusing instead on the friction\, latency\, and inherent violence of predictive systems. Polec constructs adversarial performance systems that expose the limitations of neural networks when confronted with the chaotic reality of the biological body. \n 
URL:http://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/club-concert-3c/
LOCATION:Speicher am Kaufhauskanal\, Blohmstraße 22\, Hamburg\, 21079\, Germany
CATEGORIES:13-05,Club Concert,Music,Special Event
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260514T193000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260514T210000
DTSTAMP:20260501T181732
CREATED:20260421T194433Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260427T191951Z
UID:10000199-1778787000-1778792400@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:Fixed-Media Cinema Screening
DESCRIPTION:Program Overview\nThe Man in the Mangroves counts to Sleep (15:07 min) \nJames A. Moorer et al. \nMotif for Ono (4:28 min) \nJingyu Luo \nUsher (10:31 min) \nJeffrey T.V. \nMachinarium (9:15)\nJoão Pedro Oliveira\n \nItera (7:33 min)\nDeniz Caglarcan\n \nWithin the light cone lies fate ordained (9:24 min)\nHaozhe Tan\n \nPyrography II (6:16 min) \nLi Pengyun and Guo Jingfan\n \nSpectrestate (8:21 min) \nJustyna Tobera\n \n  \nAbout the pieces & artists\nJames A. Moorer et al.: The Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep \nThe Man in the Mangroves Counts to Sleep is the first of its kind: a speech-synthesized opera novella\, based on an original poem. It is an innovative work that merges poetry\, music and animation\, embracing the vocal and musical elements of an opera with the narrative thrust of a short novel. The narrator’s digitized voice has been transformed through computer techniques into a variety of musical forms. The film is unique for its totally synthetic score\, generated mathematically using computer speech synthesis technology. The poem and music are brought to life through animation that reveals layers of meaning in both poem and score.  \nThe movie recounts the inner monologue of a homeless mathematician living in a Key West mangrove swamp. As he surveys his current circumstances\, “The Man” reflects on his past\, his struggles\, and his yearning. The movie originated from the poem of the same name by Tallahassee\, Florida poet Donna Decker. The poem dramatizes her experience meeting “The Man” in a Key West\, Florida homeless encampment.  \nAbout the artist\nJames A. (Andy) Moorer – Producer/Director/Original Score – An internationally known figure in digital audio and computer music\, Moorer is the winner of an Emmy® Award and an Academy Award® “for his pioneering work in the design of digital signal processin and its application to audio editing for film.” He is also the creator of the THX1 Deep Note sound—THX’s sonic logo\, heard in thousands of movie theaters around the world.  \nThe Man in the Mangrove Counts to Sleep builds on Moorer’s pioneering work in computer music and more specifically in the use of computer speech synthesis for music. As an MIT and Stanfordtrained engineer\, Moorer’s innovations include advances in the technology used for these compositional purposes. Many of these advances have become routine today in the world of electronic music.  \n  \nJingyu Luo: Motif for Ono\nThis is an analysis of a creative project using bellplay~. I utilized its transcribe()\, pitchmelodia()\, query()\, larm()\, buildcorpus()\, samplebpf()\, pitchmelodia() functions\, and soon\, processed the audio using mathematical logic to use it as the original material for music creation. The philosophical methodology of Motif for Ono is based on YokoOno’s  “Discourse” form\, combining power and knowledge. Jingyu Luo’s video music piece “Motif for Ono” performs at three music festivals\, namely EMM 2026\, MOXsonic2026\, and NYCEMF 2026\, as well as at three international or national electronic music conferences\, including ICMC 2026\, SEAMUS 2026\, and CCF 2025. \nAbout the artist\nJingyu Luo is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in composition at the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) of the University of Cincinnati. He has studied with Mara Helmuth and Michael Fiday. Previously\, he obtained a Master of Music (MM) in composition from the Hartt School of Music. He graduated from the Department of Music at Shandong Normal University with a bachelor’s degree in musicology. He composes for concert performances\, theatrical soundtracks\, film and television commercials\, and large-scale public events. Additionally\, he has been involved in the music planning and execution of large-scale cultural events in China\, such as the “Beyond” music festival and the National Day celebration for ten thousand people. His artistic achievements have been recognized. In 2024\, he won an award in the remix category of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Modern Music Performance. The same year\, his arrangement work was shortlisted for the final of the 38th “Jiangnanhua” Singing Competition in Ma’anshan City. In 2018\, he won the bronze medal in the “Banjo Band” Competition.  \n  \nJeffrey T.V.: Usher\nUsher is a new soundtrack for the 1928 silent film The Fall of the House of Usher\, co-directed by J.S. Watson and Melville Webber and based on the 1839 short story by Edgar Allen Poe. The primary goal of this electronic score was to enhance both the dramatic content of the film and emphasize the surrealist imagery laden throughout. Through the use of modular synthesizers\, this resulted in a piece existing between filmscore and audio-visual composition. \nAbout the artist\nJeffrey T.V. is a New England-based electroacoustic composer and classically trained vocalist. His compositional output primarily deals in combining generative sound withimprovised response through combinations of electronic and acoustical instruments\, with a special interest in modular synthesizers. His music has been featured at Electronic Music Midwest\, SEAMUS\, NYCEMF\, ICMC\, Salisbury University\, Bucknell University\, the University of Kentucky Art Museums\, and other venues across the United States.  \n  \nJoão Pedro Oliveira: Machinarium\nMachinarium unfolds as a journey through an imaginary city of machines\, where mechanisms seem to think and structures begin to breathe. Layers of image and sound interlock like gears\, evoking a world in which the boundary between living organism and industrial artifact becomes uncertain.  \nAbout the artist\nComposer João Pedro Oliveira holds the Corwin Endowed Chair in Composition for the University of California at Santa Barbara. He studied organ performance\, composition\, and architecture in Lisbon. He completed a Ph.D. in Music at the University of New York at Stony Brook. His music includes opera\, orchestral compositions\, chamber music\, electroacoustic music\, and experimental video. He has received over 70 international prizes and awards for his works\, including the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023\, the Bourges Magisterium Prize\, and the Giga-Hertz Special Award\, among others. His music is played all over the world. He taught at Aveiro University (Portugal) and Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil). His publications include several articles in journals and a book on 20th century music theory.  \n  \nDeniz Caglarcan: Itera\nItera is an audiovisual work that explores the evolving relationship between gesture and texture through iterative transformation. Built upon AI-generated visuals and parametric fractal structures\, the piece constructs a dynamic world where sound and image continuously reshape one another. Drawing its name from iteration\, Iterareveals a process in which each repetition diverges—transforming and unfolding into new visual and sonic forms. A formal dichotomy underlies the visual composition\, where parametricism and AI-driven aesthetics contrast continuity with abrupt disruption. The result is a constantly shifting mechanism that invites the viewer into the liminal spaces between each transformation.   \nAbout the artist\nDeniz Çağlarcan is an Istanbul-born\, Santa Barbara–based composer\, violist\, and conductor working across sound\, image\, and technology. He combines acousticinstruments\, electronics\, and interactive visuals to build immersive spatial-audio environments with interdisciplinary teams. His work spans concert music\, electroacoustic/audiovisual pieces\, installations\, and film/game scores. He holds the following degrees\, MM in Viola (CMU)\, MA in Composition (Bilkent)\, MS in Media Arts and Technology and\, PhD in Composition at UC Santa Barbara.  \n  \nHaozhe Tan: Within the light cone lies fate ordained\nLight\, the creator of time and space\, records the fate of this world in countless moments it passes through. Arrogance destroys a world\, fades it\, and makes it slowlydisappear. To God\, destroying you is merely humming a song and watching a star go out like a candle. If beyond the cone of light lies a void that even existence cannotreach\, then within the cone of light lies destiny itself.  \nAbout the artist\nHaozhe Tan\, born in November 2003\, is a sound artist\, visual artist\, and member of the Chinese Musicians Association. His works often use vocals and abstract visualelements to express his reflections on life and his contemplation of the soul. His works have been selected for numerous prestigious music festivals and competitionsworldwide\, including the 2025 ICMC Boston\, 2025 MA/IN fest (Italy)\, 2024 ICMC Seoul\, 2024/2025 NYCEMF (USA)\, 2024 Hangzhou International Electronic Music Festival (China)\, First Prize at the 2024 Sibelius International Composition Competition (Finland)\, 2024 Shanghai International Digital Art Exhibition (China)\, 2023/2022 NCDA (China)\, and Second Prize at the 2022 China Computer Music Competition (China). In July 2025\, he was selected for the Synthetis 2025 Composition Masterclass\, where he studied composition and electronic music under Stefan Prins\, Oscar Bianchi\, Dai Fujikura\, and Pawel Hendrich\, and performed his work at Radziejowice.  \n  \nLi Pengyun and Guo Jingfan: Pyrography II\nPyrography\, known as ‘fire needle embroidery’ in ancient times and also referred to as ‘fire brush painting’ or ‘burn painting\,’ is an extremely precious and rare form of art in ancient China. It involves using a heated branding iron to create burn marks on objects to form the artwork. Pyrography not only employs techniques found in traditional Chinese painting\, such as outlining\, shading\, dotting\, coloring\, smudging\, and white sketching\, but it also achieves rich layers and tonal variations through burning\, resulting in a strong sense of three-dimensionality resembling sepia sketches and lithographs. As a result\, pyrography not only maintains the national style of traditional painting but also achieves the meticulous realism seen in Western art\, giving it a unique artistic charm and providing viewers with a rustic and elegant\, yet endlessly nostalgic artistic experience.   \nThe composition samples the special playing techniques of Chinese plucked instruments such as the guzheng and pipa\, transforming them into different forms of sound through techniques such as transposition and time stretching. By contrasting different stages\, it portrays the process of pyrography while showcasing the unique allure of Chinese traditional culture.”   \nThe video segment employs abstract graphics of sparks flying during pyrography\, complemented by abstract Chinese pyrography elements as the background\, to depict the process and details of pyrography.   \nAbout the artists\nLi Pengyun\, Professor at the Composition Department of Wuhan Conservatory of Music\, Supervisor for Master’s Degree Candidates\, and Vice Dean of the Popular Music College. Member of the Electronic Music Society of the Chinese Musicians Association( EMAC. Main workes include “lotus in wire”\, “Breathe like lily” (composed for bass bamboo flute and max/MSP)\, “Sprouting “(composed for two pickups and realtime effects)\, “Under the cover “(composed for one percussionist and max/MSP)\, “Shennongjia in ink paintings” (composed for bass bamboo flute and live electronic music). His major theoretical works include “From studio to stage — form of performance of electronic music and its features” and so on.  \nGuo Jingfan \n  \nJustyna Tobera: Spectrestate \nThe piece Spectrestate was created as a reflection on my personal experience of double vision\, a consequence of years of inadequate treatment of my eyesight. My eyes simultaneously register two images\, but my brain cannot merge them into a coherent perception. Every second\, I must decide which image to trust\, reconstructing reality in a way that is invisible to most people. This experience makes my body and brain constantly negotiate their relationship — movement\, gestures\, and reactions must be consciously synchronized with the image my brain cannot automatically integrate. In Spectrestate\, I translate this subjective perception into the language of sound and image. Every gesture\, sonic texture\, and visual layer reflects the instability and multilayered nature of my perception. The audiovisual composition becomes a space where sound and image coexist and transform each other\, allowing the audience to experience a f ractured reality in a direct and sensory way. The work is both a personal study of perception and a philosophical reflection on the nature of seeing and sensing. The questions I pose are: Can the eye be a reliable witness? How does the body interact with the brain when sensory signals conflict? How can we experience a reality that is layered\, unstable\, and yet generative? Spectrestate invites the audience into a space where audiovisual reality is fluid\, shattered and dynamic. Sound and image become tools for reflection\, enabling an exploration of subjective and multidimensional perception.  \nAbout the artist\nJustyna Tobera is a composer and performer working at the intersection of sound\, movement\, and immersive media. In her artistic practice\, she explores the body’s relationship with space\, material\, and resonance\, treating sound not only as an audible phenomenon but also as a tactile\, spatial\, and ecological experience expanded through technology.\nHer work investigates the physicality of instruments and the sonic potential of the body\, focusing on how gesture\, touch\, and embodied movement shape and transform sound. Instruments and digital tools become porous environments— extensions of the body and vessels of vibration—where silence\, friction\, and speculative gestures are as integral as pitch and rhythm.   \nJustyna Tobera often integrates VR\, ambisonics\, sensors\, and custom-built interfaces\, merging acoustic materiality with immersive architectures. She works with live electronics (Max/MSP) and interactive systems in which the body functions as both source and modulator of sound. Her interest in speculative and interactive contexts is further supported by creative coding\, including work with environments such as Godot.\nCurrently\, she is continuing her research during an internship at the Electroacoustic Studio at IEM Graz. Tobera’s works have been presented at contemporary music festivals in Poland and abroad\, including the USA\, Slovenia\, Austria\, Denmark\, Italy\, Lithuania\, and Hungary. Her current research focuses on speculative approaches to sound and technology.  \n 
URL:http://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/cinema/
LOCATION:Metropolis @ Planet Harburg\, Herbert-und-Greta-Wehner-Platz\, Hamburg\, 21073\, Germany
CATEGORIES:14-05,Special Event
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260516T233000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260516T233000
DTSTAMP:20260501T181732
CREATED:20260422T110907Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260423T124640Z
UID:10000225-1778974200-1778974200@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:After Party
DESCRIPTION:Join us in celebrating this year’s ICMC in Hamburg! Following the final club concert\, there will be an after party with DJs playing at Stellwerk Hamburg.
URL:http://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/after-party/
LOCATION:Stellwerk Hamburg\, Hannoversche Straße 85\, Hamburg\, 21079\, Germany
CATEGORIES:16-05,Special Event
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR