During the course of 2009 it has become clear that NOTAM will enter into a collaboration with the Warsaw Autumn festival. The collaboration is being planned as a long-term project lasting several years, with exchanges on many levels. The collaboration has been facilitated through MIC – Music Information Centre Norway, and we are glad to pick up where we left off ten years ago, when NOTAM arranged an internet concert – WHO HOW WOH – with Warsaw Autumn and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. The concert should be considered experimental and was a structured exploration of interaction types for all the three institutions involved. The concert in Warsaw took place at Fredryc Chopin University of Music.

In September this year, NOTAM was visited by two young Polish composers: Karol Nepelski and Paulina Zalubska. In collaboration with NOTAM's Cato Langnes (sound engineering) and Asbjørn Blokkum Flø (programming of Max/MSP patches), they have begun working on a piece where bodily sounds constitue the raw material, and where the piece will be performed by an actor with the aid of real time signal processing. The piece will be premiered in Krakow in November this year.

In 2010, NOTAM will arrange one, two or possibly three concerts in Warsaw during the festival, and also produce several sound installations. The installaions will be exhibited in Warsaw's centre for contemporary art, the Ujazdowski palace, and the concerts will be performed at locations well suited the musical material, which is planned to encompass the range from sinfoniettas to contemporary noise oriented music. The purpose is to demonstrate the span of what is happening on the Norwegian scene, blend it with relevant Polish repertoire and create mutual interest.

Additionally, NOTAM will be responsible for an international symposium with the working title "The Current and Future of Technology-Based Music", which will tackle the challenges and demands for new orientation facing this field due to the last 10-15 years' development of technology, mediation and aesthetics. A bilingual collection of texts will be developed on the back of this symposium, and it will be distributed internationally.

The project will be financed mainly by the Norwegian-Polish Development Fund, with additional contributions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Oslo, the Norwegian Embassy in Warsaw and NOTAM's budget.

A similar long-term collaborative project is being planned between NOTAM, MIC and the Huddersfield contemporary music festival. This will be formalized within the next few months.

Contacts:
Hilde Holbæk-Hanssen (MIC)
Jøran Rudi (NOTAM)