Now open at the Science Museum in London, Oramics to Electronica: Revealing Histories of Electronic Music focuses on the work of Daphne Oram, who helped establish the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and invented the Orgaznomics Machine. Her invention was central to the development of British electronic music.

Electronic music is everywhere, from the television that we watch to the music we listen to in clubs and even the ringtones on our mobile phones. But who created these electronic sounds? And how did electronic music develop?

The Oramics Machine is a revolutionary music synthesiser that was created in the 1960s by Daphne Oram. Daphne had a strong passion for both sound and electronics and the vision to combine the two.

It is too fragile to restore to working order, but you can use our new interactive to recreate the sounds that it made.

In October 2011 more exhibits will be added to this core display that will be co-created by people who are working with electronic music today as well as a group of Daphne’s contemporaries.

They will tell the intriguing story of how electronic sound has advanced, changed and was democratised from the 1950s through to the modern era, and they will look at how people envisioned new sounds and pushed the boundaries of what was possible. They will explore how over the years musicians have invented, altered and improved (often cheap) equipment to be able to produce these dreamt-up electronic sounds. And finally they will show how the production of electronic music has moved from purpose-built laboratories to a music studio the size of a laptop.

The exhibition runs through December 1, 2011 and is the first of several shows that will explore the origins of electronic music fully.

Moving Still finds eight accomplished Asian artists – Kim Xu, Aíman, Sheryo, Mr. B, Jolene Lai, Eman Reharno, and Amanda Ang – reinterpreting part of a dialogue or quote from a cinematographic frame into their own works of art.  In addition, film Director Glen Goei, unveils his first ever art installation piece. The group show will take place at Singapore’s VueVue Privée.

Above: Aiman, The Toy That Went Free by Reason of Insanity, exclusively at Vue Privee.

Running June 16 to September 4, 2011.

Vue Privée
20 Cairnhill Road
Singapore 229652

After the jump view Still frame of Klaus Nomi, Cold Song; Purcell’s Opera, Munich Germany, 1982 and more.

“Opening on June 3, 2011, our summer season features two exhibitions: ‘Delicious Fields: Ohio Photographers at Work’ and ‘Terrain,’ a installation by Julianne Swartz. ‘Delicious Fields’ showcases the work of Ohio-based photographers Jodi Boatman, Bruce Checefsky, Joy Christiansen Erb, Mary Fahy, Marcella Hackbardt, Benjamin Montague, Ardine Nelson, Pipo Nguyen-duy, and Jordan Tate.”

Mocacleveland.org.

Today we give you a first look at the upcoming ‘Days’ solo exhibition by American artist Steve Powers, opening this Friday, May 6th, at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen.

“V1 Gallery proudly presents Days a new solo exhibition by Steve Powers (US). In more than 60 new works, created over the past year, Powers engages the complexities of everyday life, in a poetic, reflective, humorous and distinctive tone. From the beginning of his career he has developed a visual language, often works painted with One Shot enamel paint on metal, which is equally fragile and authoritative.

In Days, Powers comments on mundane issues like, always running late, being lonely in a relationship, the trials and rewards of love, a text reads: NOW THAT WE ARE HERE – NOWHERE ELSE MATTERS. Another work dryly states in pale green, pink and yellow letters: I PAID THE LIGHT BILL JUST TO SEE YOUR FACE. Other works comment on the human condition: TO BE HUMAN IS TO BE BLESSED WITH FORGET – or the self-referring work: MY DAY JOB IS TO DRAW CONCLUSIONS.

In many ways Days feels like reading Steve Power’s personal diary. His work seems to remind us, to reflect on our everyday life as both individuals and society. That in our daily encounters with each other, as fellow humans, friends, enemies, lovers or both, the real magic is in the mundane.”

A full artwork preview follows after the jump.

One of the highlights of Berlin’s Gallery Weekend 2011 is for sure the showcase of Chinese artist Ai WeiWei. At the gallery space at neugerriemschneider in Berlin, the artist is showing this week two new pieces of works, entitled ‘Rock’ and ‘Tree’. While the artist is still being detained by Chinese authorities, this exhibition is even more relevant. Amnesty International supporters lined up in front of the gallery, which also put up a massive “Where Is Ai WeiWei” sign on their building.

His two works shown at the gallery were executed using ancient Chinese handcraft traditions. The porcelain stones were made in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen, where porcelain production originates. They surround two trees that have been built from fallen trunks collected in the moutaineous regions of southern China. The tree fragments have been interlocked using a classic Chinese techniques. Together the installation of the works calls to mind a traditional Chinese garden.

The exhibition runs until June 4th, 2011.

Gallery Space at neugerriemschneider
Linienstrasse 155
Berlin
Germany

Photography: Curated Magazine

Many more images of the new Ai WeiWei works follow after the jump.

Parisian concept store colette opened yesterday the latest solo exhibition of artist Erik Parker, entitled “Re-Upped”.

“New York based artist Erik Parker (b. 1968) paints meticulously curated worlds of chaos within his brightly colored, highly saturated canvases. The artist obsessively paints layer upon layer of amorphous shapes, globules and drops pushing each composition to the optical extreme.

Parker’s biomorphic subjects not only reference the hallucinogenic psychedelia of American culture in the 1960’s, but also historical and contemporary socio-political issues. Informed by a variety of sub cultural themes, including music, graffiti and illustration, Parker offers a profound visual experience beyond his intensely layered forms of text and imagery.

Erik Parker was born in Stuttgart, Germany and studied at the University of Austin, Texas then at SUNY Purchase. Parker’s work has been widely published and has earned him several awards. He has exhibited in solo shows in Tokyo, Milan, Manchester, Cologne, New York and Los Angeles, as well as in group shows around the world. It’s here about its first exhibition in Paris, which will also present paintings and drawings on paper. A catalog, published by Honor Fraser, its gallery of Los Angeles, will be put on sale.”

colette
Rue Saint-Honore 213
75001 Paris

Photography: Mathieu Vilasco for Curated Magazine

The full recap follows after the jump.

Last night we attended the opening of “The Recovery of Discovery” exhibition by French artist Cyprien Gaillard at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. What we came to find was surprising, impressive, different and in its message very strong.

“For his exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin Cyprien Gaillard has created a new, large-scale piece, which – whilst departing from a prototype of the monument – completes itself in the process. Similarly to the relocation of the Pergamon Altar, 72,000 bottles of beer of the brand “Efes” have been transported from Turkey to Germany. The cardboard boxes filled with bottles form the even steps of the pyramid. By using the monument – by climbing the sculpture and drinking the beer – its destruction is already initiated. The barbaric removal of single architectural elements that have been transported from their original location to Berlin, embodies both the concept of displacement and a tourist colonialism. Despite the geographic origin of alcohol often being of great importance to the consumer, the provenience seems to become more and more unimportant, as its consumption increases. Along the lines of the gradual destruction of the sculpture the alcohol gradually dispels and destroys both body and mind. The physical hangover is also an architectural one, from which one has to recover.

Equal to a collective amnesia in an active neglect of the sculptural form – lost in the hopeless interaction with the monument – the successive destruction becomes an aesthetic of resistance.”

KW Institute of Contemporary Art
Auguststrasse 69
10117 Berlin

Photography: Curated Magazine

Take a further look after the jump and make sure to pass by soon, or it will be gone!

The Selby will soon be opening his very first gallery art show, hosted by Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. The photography show will open its doors on January 21st and will be open until March 25th.

Jackson Fine Art
3115 E. Shadowlawn Ave
Atlanta Georgia

Make sure to pass by!

Kai and Sunny are just one of the featured artists in Stolen Space’s new group show ‘Never Judge?’, presented in association with ‘Penguin Books’ and running from December 3 to 19, 2010. Artists include: D*FACE, EINE, Hellovon, Kai and Sunny, Shepard Fairey,  WK Interact and many more….

The gallery will be filled with original book covers exclusively created for the show. (Clever title, right?).

StolenSpace Gallery
The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London

Another look at Kai and Sunny’s entry to “Never Judge?”

Opening this weekend at the awesome Part Time Studios (in Fishtown, USA), Small Jawns features work by some of my favorite artists. All have provided small scale works – perfect for holiday shopping – and contribute to expressing a solid range of the current artistic output in Philadelphia. The show is organized by the always amusing webzine McJawn.

Small Jawns
A Small-Works Group Art Show of Local Philly Artists
Part Time Studios
2031 Frankford Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19125
Exhibit runs: 12/03/2010 – 01/02/2010

My good friend Brad Haubrich’s entry to the exhibition is shown above. Representative work from Steven Speir, Adam Smith, Shawn Hileman and JP Flexner, and Hilary White is shown after the jump… where I’ve also placed the full press release.