XX Y X + IMA 
IMAfiction portrait #03: Heidi Grundmann / #05: Andrea Sodomka – Screening  
Andrea Sodomka, Norbert Math (alien productions): The power of degree zero is the distributing intelligence
AI-generated text and sound performance
Presentation: Doris Ingrisch
12.11., echoraum Vienna 


 
 


The Degree Zero Power is the Distributive Intelligence is a quote from the libretto of the AI opera “Performing Utopia” by alien productions, which will be premiered as a radio opera commissioned by ORF Kunstradio in 2021. In Performing Utopia, the AI-generated texts are interpreted by human singers and speakers. In The Degree Zero Power is the Distributive Intelligence, the focus is on virtual voices: virtual singers - virtual voices - virtual sounds. 

"What interests me most about working with artificial intelligence is the fuzziness, the mistakes, the imperfections." 
Andrea Sodomka, 2024
alien.mur.at/performing-utopia



IMAfiction Portrait #03 | Heidi Grundmann 
A portrait by Roberto Paci Dalò [2007] 

A portrait of Heidi Grundmann can‘t avoid our two decades of close friendship. A beautiful period full of collaborations, words, laughs, wine, tears, energy, projects, sounds, fights and more. Obviously not simple for me to deal with her history which is also the history of her passionate full support to – at least – three generations of artists dealing with radio, telecommunications, media art, network projects, and more.
Travelling across something like 40 years of private and public life in a sort of permanent electric field, the enormous quantity of data Heidi accumulated, is here literally squeezed in 29 vertigo minutes which include some touching personal memories and a refl ection concerning the situation of women in arts and society. This is, in my opinion, a precious document and I was profoundly happy to have had the opportunity to work together on this portrait. Roberto Paci Dalò


IMAfiction Portrait #05 | Andrea Sodomka
A portrait by Gabriele Mathes [2010]

"What distinguishes Andrea Sodomka, to my mind, is her ability to reinvent herself time after time,
setting out again and again, gauging her own boun-daries. Her oeuvre ranges from painting to radio art, from photography to sound installation, from making inner spaces audible up to filling large rooms with
live electronic sound. 
Her open-minded notion of her own authorship is grounded in the tradition of working in artists’ networks. 'Young artists today take for granted that the idea of authorship is eroding because they grew up with the internet', says Andrea Sodomka. This form of communication and cooperation, which takes into account the internet, was practiced by the networking pioneers Andrea Sodomka and alien productions in their art projects as early as the mid-90s. 
Her music and work cannot simply be pigeonholed under composer or visual artist. But there is a designation that aptly describes the artist Andrea Sodomka. The designation would be researcher, someone who seeks the new without compromise. For her boundaries – also those between genres – mean only one thing: the desire to cross them."
 Gabriele Mathes (Translation *Brainstorm)


Biographies: 

Heidi Grundmann, born in Innsbruck in 1938, lives in Vienna.
As a cultural editor and art critic at ORF radio, Heidi Grundmann founded the KUNSTRADIO-RADIOKUNST programme in 1987, which has been supplemented by KUNSTRADIO ON LINE since 1995. Involved in the development and realisation of innovative telematic radio art projects. Curator of international symposia, events and exhibitions. Texts and lectures on media and radio art. 
Heidi Grundmann 

Andrea Sodomka, bornc1961 in Vienna. 
Studied at the Academy of Applied Arts Vienna and at the Academy of Music, Vienna (Institute of Electroacoustics).
1995-97 curator for Media Art at OK Center of Contemporary Art, Upper Austria.
1996 member of the jury for Prix Ars Electronica 96.
Since 1996 member of the artist's association Wiener Secession.
1997 curator of "Remote Sensations", Ars Electronica 97.
1999 lectures on "Sound Art in the 20th Century", University of Vienna.
2001 lectures on "radio art and radio drama", University of Music, Vienna.
Since 2003 president of Fluss - NÖ. Fotoinitiative.
She works in the fields of intermedia, installation, electronic music, net.art, radio art, video and artistic photography. 
Productions and commisions (selection): wien modern, ARTE, ECAS-European Cities of Advanced Sound Network, Jeunesse musicale, (A), EBU-European Broadcasting Union, RNE Radio Nacional de España, (E), ORF-Kunstradio, ORF-Zeitton, Ars Electronica Festival, (A), musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, (A), Viertelfestival Niederösterreich, (A), OK Offenes Kulturhaus Oberösterreich, (,A), Festival der Regionen, (A), TONSPUR im Museumsquartier Wien, (A), die Ensembles die reihe, (A), Repertorio Zero, (I), early reflections, (CZ) 
Andrea Sodomka

Doris Ingrisch is a cultural scientist, associated at the Institute for Cultural Management and Gender Studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna/ mdw. Her research and publication focuses include art&science&gender, history of science, cultures of knowledge in dialogue, exile/emigration research, qualitative, experimental methods and arts-based research.
Doris Ingrisch