Interview IDKA
Interview by Giorgos Frangiskos
The institute for digital arts is a nonprofit organisation for creative people in Sweden. Located north of Stockholm in the small town Gavle IDKA gathers 200 artists, filmmakers and composers of music. IDKA is four free studios where ideas can come to life and can be realised as digital art in all forms possible. IDKA does concerts and performance art on their own stage Kulturkiosken and exhibitions at their own artgallery. The founder of IDKA Thomas Bjelkeborn and the current manager Viktor Eriksson displays various projects and talk about the past and present at IDKA. For more about IDKA see www.idka.net, (in swedish). The talk is sponsored by Musik Gavleborg, Kultur Fritid Gavle and MIC/STIM.
The IDKA is a home to people into digital arts. How has the digital era changed the way music and film are created?
Massive, everything has changed. These days we are liberated and can do whatever we need to do and get it out there fast. It’s only a matter of how much effort you are willing to put into it, as always. At IDKA we say –GJÖT-, a local expression for doing it right now.
Technology is no more the prerogative of the rich or the computer specialists. Does this make music sound more uniform? Is it difficult to sound different today
To be different is a state of mind, to be part of a social structure is a profound human need and to be noticed is a lifelong task for many. Technological change is part of the ongoing evolution and the spectrum of human activity is forever expanding, and so is music. At the same time everything is same same but different.
This advent of technology has opened up the doors for more people to enter the world of art. How do you think are aesthetics of music affected?
The diversity is getting bigger, it’s an archipelago with more and more complex diffusion and boundaries, where the old and the new coexist in parallel, in opposition, in collaboration and in constant change.
Electroacoustic music appears to speak to the hearts of more limited audiences compared to other contemporary music genres; do you think this is the case? Why is pop electronic music -on the contrary- such a popular culture?
Sometimes too much complexity makes things difficult but anything goes if you’re in the right spot at the right time. Money helps to get the word out but today things are changing fast with the help of the internet. To find a place or an angle to get people to listen is crucial but nothing to take for granted.
Electroacoustic music is used within other art forms, such as video, theater or dance theater. Do you feel that this is maybe where its future lies? Is this a viable way to attract more people to it?
Of course it helps, but being consistent and true to your art always rules.
Live electronics, live improvisation or jamming between electronic musicians, performers and even “laptop orchestras” seem to be becoming more and more popular. Could this bring more people into the this music scene? Are these ‘ensembles’ competing to yours?
People tend to work in projects with other people. Being alone in the studio for several weeks sometimes create a need to collaborate. A duo or an ensemble of live-electronic artists is often more fun to watch and easier to “understand” for the audiences. But of course there will always be needs for more condensed forms of art, so –GJÖT-.
The institute is mainly working with Swedish artists. Is it open to international cooperations? Have you worked with any Greek composers of electronic/contemporary music?
I met the prolific greek composer Ioannis Kalantzis during an international EAM meeting in Krakow in December. He recently sent an e-mail to IDKA about your festival and now we’re here. We hope to play his and other greek composers music at concerts in Sweden and we hope that our visit will be a good start for more collaborations between Greece and Sweden.
Returning to technology, tape music is in a sense more democratic than pop or classical music: You don't need a tremendously expensive studio to compose your music and no huge international record companies are likely to promote your works, so composers from around the world have more equal chances of being heard. Do you find interesting differences between composers in different parts of the world?
Yes and no, sometimes we are solely dwelling within our own tribes and sometimes we differ a lot between countries as well as within countries and in between people. Of course the multitude of differences is interesting, without it we’ll stagnate and disappear as species.
What are the Institute’s main goals and future plans?
To continue to gather people who are creative. Sure we need; more money, more equipment, bigger audiences but the most important thing is to have time to work with artistic projects, to continue to collaborate locally or internationally and to cherish our freedom of expression.
