Seven days of original musical approaches, unheard(-of) sounds, multimedia projects and premieres brought by NEXT Festival will be complemented by a host of educational activities for the professional and wider public. One of these will be a series of mixed creative workshops and a live performance by THE next MARCHING ARTS band! 

Want to join? Register here. Limited capacity! In the remote/connected/online part (19-21/11) you will learn to use the peer-to-peer app Sonobus, and play music remotely together with low latency at full sound quality. We will make an audio score, to be used the week later (26-28/11) on location in Bratislava for further building layers on, and to perform live as a finissage concert for the NEXT festival (28/11).

As an exercise in embodied music, we update the good old concept of the fanfare/marching band/fanfáry/harsonaszó: playing while walking, presumably outdoors. Any small handheld objects that produce sound will do: battery operated electronics, resonating objects, your voice… We will use some megaphones and small amplifiers, but also bring your own wearable amplification if possible. And comfortable shoes. If the weather allows we will walk/play the concert outdoors.

Preferred walking speed: about 2.0 metres per second (7.2 km/h or 2m/s) modulated by time to destination, motivation, and metabolic efficiency. Let’s move!

Level: Beginner to Expert and Professional
Age and Gender: All
Skills: Be interested in experimenting together with sound and movement.

Dates & Times 

Series 1 – Online:
Daily FRIDAY 19/11 till SUNDAY 21/11, 12.00-13.00
– Concepts and ideas of THE next MARCHING ARTS band!
– Sonobus app tutorial (any platform including tablets and smartphones)
– Small jam sessions online
– Realisation of a number of sound files to work with the following week

Series 2 – Online:
FRIDAY 26/11, 15.00-18.00
SATURDAY 27/11, 13.00-16.00
SUNDAY 28/11, 13.00-16.00 + Performance for a live audience at 16.00
– Concepts and ideas of THE next MARCHING ARTS band!
– Roundup of all technology digital and analog
– How to make music while walking
– Rehearsing the performance/concert: pieces and choreography
– Performing the NEXT Sunday!

Gívan Belá
Probably born 1720 in Belgium. After studying literature and linguistics, a little philosophy and sculpting, he made a radical switch to computer music in the middle of the 1980s, and a little later into generative visualisation. Involved in experimental media art in its many different forms since 1990. Between 2005 and 2009 he lived in Bratislava, where he began to work under the name of Gívan Belá. Between 2005 and 2015 he was artistic director of the ecological-technological artspace OKNO in Brussels. Meantime he set up KRA (Kravín Rural Arts), a facility in the remote hills of Vysočina (CZ) where he invites international and local residents to work on an experimental eco-artistic-technological and social program within a new cultural view of a changed countryside today.

Michal Mitro
Post-medial tendencies, sculpturality and visuality are defining pillars of Michal Mitro’s practice. The outputs of his artistic research often take a hybrid artScience shape. Topics that resonate often in his works explore present and future states of our planet, politico-economic societal constellations and relationship between human and non-human. He has exhibited and performed in Czechia, Slovakia and across Europe. Besides being an active art practitioner, he is also part of STELLA – Somatic Tech Lab – that maps convergences of technologies and movement-based arts. He also curates ssesi.space online and in Brno.

Supported using public funding by the Slovak Arts Council, International Visegrad Fund and Foundation of the City of Bratislava.