SHINY TOYS is a festival for time-based experimental culture in the Ruhr region. It combines experimental music, performance, light art and expanded cinema to create an interdisciplinary panopticon of the avant-garde art scene. Local and international musicians and artists are invited to enliven, perform and transform the beat and rhythm of our time with their performances, installations and audiovisual concerts. In doing so, they experiment at the interfaces of analogue and digital technologies and explore their principles of representation. Participants include:

Felix Kubin:

Kubin's music is imbued with an enthusiasm for disharmonious pop, industrial noise and 20th-century avant-garde music. Since 1998, he has released a number of albums with different conceptual approaches and played at over 100 electronic music festivals, including Sonar, Transmediale, Unsound, Performa, Wien Modern, Présences Électroniques and Ars Electronica. In 2010, he appeared on the cover of the British music magazine WIRE. He enjoys moving between high and pop culture, clubs and concert halls, as he is primarily concerned with shifting contexts and expectations.

Tomoko Sauvage:

Sauvage is a Japanese composer and artist based in Paris, best known for her long-standing musical and performative practice with her self-developed instruments made of water, ceramics and electronics. Her work focuses on the tactile materiality of vibrating objects and the use of chance as a compositional method. Sauvage has performed at the Barbican Centre, Palais de Tokyo, MaerzMusik, Musée d'art moderne de Paris, Manifesta 13, Roskilde Festival and RIBOCA, among others. Her installation and video works have been presented by the Sharjah Art Foundation, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and the Maison Tavel, among others.

Tintin Patrone & Song-Yi / THIS IS SPARTA!

At the heart of the performance is a dialogue between a musician and a small electric wheelchair – both an autonomous kinetic performer and an extension of the body. Oscillating between music, choreography and robotics, the project – presented with the support of Vienna-based Korean-German performance artist and dancer Susanne Songi Griem – explores the intersections between therapy and pop culture.

Tintin Patrone is a German-Filipino sound and performance artist. She is fascinated by exploring the connections between music, art, sound and experimental forms of expression. Her artistic work revolves around sound as a cultural system and the way in which personal and social relationships are established through it. Through her engagement with robots and artificial intelligence in her artistic practice, Tintin Patrone questions established notions of human subjectivity and physical presence. As a musician, she has performed at festivals such as Skaņu Mežs (LV), Intonal (SE), Meakusma (BE), Unsafe&Sound (AT) and Lacking Sound Fest (TW). She specialises in minimalist sound works and drone-based solo performances, influenced by her studies in microtonality and interspecies communication. With the trombone as her main instrument, complemented by modulation devices, she carefully crafts long-lasting soundscapes that invite contemplative listening.

Further event dates: www.shinytoys.eu

A collaboration between the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, the Theater an der Ruhr, Makroscope e.V. and mex – intermedial and experimental music projects Dortmund.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the Neue Künste Ruhr funding programme.