Olivia Block creates original sound compositions for concerts, site-specific multi-speaker installations, live cinema, and performance. Her compositions often include field recordings, electronic sounds, and chamber instruments.
Her solo performances include partially improvised pieces for inside piano, electronics, and objects. Through amplification techniques, she brings out timbral qualities of metal, wood and other materials. Block also creates multimedia works for sounds and video.
Block’s surround-sound installations and concerts emphasize the physical frameworks of spaces through their acoustic qualities. All of her sound work reflects her interests in site specificity, “room sounds,” ethnographic sensory practices, and the utilization of found materials.
During her visit to EMS Oliva Block will also perform at Fylkingen on 16 October as part of ROOM40 Openframe.
More information and tickets: http://www.tickster.com/sv/events/lk9mbtncg222gdg/2015-10-16/room40-lawrence-english-olivia-block
Block has performed, premiered and exhibited her work throughout Europe, America, and Japan in tours in festivals including Incubate (Tilburg), Festival del Bosque Germinal (Mexico City), Sonic Light (Amsterdam), Kontraste (Krems), Dissonanze (Rome), Archipel (Geneva) Angelica (Bologna), Sunoni per il Popolo (Montreal), and many others. Additionally, she has presented work at the ICA (London), MCA (Chicago), La Biennale di Venezia 52nd International Festival of Contemporary Music, The Kitchen (NYC), ISSUE Project Room and Experimental Intermedia (Brooklyn).
Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park in Chicago, Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room in Chicago, and at the Echoes Through the Mountains exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Her forthcoming installation, Sonambient Pavilion, featuring the sounds of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures, will open in November 2015 at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millenium Park, as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Her sound piece, Aberration of Light, is currently released on NNA records.