Ars Acustica - Listening to the future!
Erik Mikael Karlsson, EBU Ars Acustica Coordinator, 2005-2009
In an era where technological advances such as surround-sound, telecommunications and digital interactivity have been put at the disposal of artists, producers and broadcasters, the EBU Ars Acustica Group makes it its main mission to bring new, thrilling and exciting listening experiences to the audience - listening experiences pointing towards the future.
The Ars Acustica Group within the European Broadcasting Union promotes, initiates and coordinates activities concerning radio art and sound art. New and young generations of listeners are continuously discovering the radio as an artistic platform and medium. The EBU Ars Acustica Group wants to bring all listeners an art form that moves to the heartbeat of our future and uses modern technology, interactivity and advanced media art to bring extraordinary listening sensations to a European audience. All around the world, radio art and sound art are becoming increasingly and rapidly popular. Today, djs, artists, composers and musicians of different genres have made this a natural and necessary art form in our modern society - creating a vibrant and exciting world of sound, music and interaction. Radio art and sound art are no longer just narrow and experimental forms of art - they are in a broader sense ever changing forms of expression that attract new listeners in search of progressive and creative inventiveness in public broadcasting - a place for the artistic spirit.
We have a heritage in radio art and sound art to be proud of. Radio art and sound art form an important chapter in our common cultural history, and the EBU Ars Acustica Group wants to share this common acoustical heritage with listeners by disseminating information about the history of radio and sound art as well as broadcasting famous works from our history. The EBU Ars Acustica Group will continue to give listeners new and exciting experiences in the fantastic world of public broadcasting - we will always be listening to the future!
The history of the EBU Ars Acustica Group
The EBU Ars Acustica Group was founded in 1989 at the EBU Radio Drama Conference in Florence, Italy. The group consists of editors and producers of radio art and sound art at public broadcasting corporations within the European Broadcasting Union.
The EBU Ars Acustica Group is a forum for discussion, promotion and production devoted to radio art and sound art within the European Broadcasting Union. The work of the EBU Ars Acustica Group has helped develop European and international meetings, festivals and events for radio such as "Radio Beyond" (London, 1992), "Ciudades Invisibles" (Madrid, 1992), "Wings of Sound" (Helsinki, 1993), "Horizontal Radio" (1995), "Rivers & Bridges" (1996) as well as the "EBU Art's Birthday Party" (2005), which involved simultaneous live broadcasts with sound artists, djs, composers and musicians from a number of European cities via the EBU satellite, telephone lines and the Internet reaching an audience of more than 200 million listeners.
The EBU Ars Acustica Group serves as a node for the exchange of radio art productions, project proposals and the exchange of information about activities and events in media art in different countries. It stimulates and encourages discussion of current trends in theory and practice of radio art and connected fields, and the realization of co-productions between broadcasting corporations. It is strongly convinced of the necessity of an art form reflecting the development of radio and broadcasting in our society.
Chairman/Coordinators of the EBU Ars Acustica Group:
Klaus Schöning (WDR, Germany) 1990-93
Heidi Grundmann (ORF, Austria) 1993-99
José Iges (RNE, Spain) 1999-2005
Erik Mikael Karlsson (SR, Sweden) 2005-2009
Elisabeth Zimmermann (ORF, Austria) 2010-
Ars Acustica group at the annual meeting in Hvar, Croatia, May 2010
