Andreas Mniestris, Marianna Strapatsaki, Nikos Kokkalis, Simona Sarchi
AKOUSMATA is the series of events presented each year by the Laboratory of Electroacoustic Music Research and Applications (EPHMEE), in collaboration with the Performing Arts Research Lab (PEARL), as part of the Audiovisual Arts Festival of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts at the Ionian University.
This program is a presentation of works by Andreas Mniestris created in collaboration with Marianna Strapatsaki, Nikos Kokkalis, and Simona Sarchi.
“The idea behind this program was, on the one hand, to present a selection of works from my compositional practice related to video art, and on the other, to highlight the creative collaboration between the Laboratory of Electroacoustic Music Research and Applications (EPHMEE) and the Department of AudioVisual Arts, since its early days, which also marked the beginning of the Audiovisual Arts Festival as an initiative of Marianna Strapatsaki and her colleagues at the time. Thus, I selected two characteristic instances from my ongoing collaboration with her, one older and the most recent one. This was a good opportunity to also include the result of my excellent collaboration with Nikos Kokkalis, which has not yet been presented in Corfu in its eight-channel version. Finally, this program concludes with one of my collaborations with Simona Sarchi.” — A.Mn.
PROGRAM
Collaboration with Marianna Strapatsaki
Collaboration with Nikos Kokkalis
Collaboration with Simona Sarchi
Detailed Program
Flight of Life
Video installation by Marianna Strapatsaki
Marianna Strapatsaki: Concept and Direction Giorgos Nikopoulos: animation/editing/3D
This audiovisual composition was presented as part of the contemporary art exhibition The Butterfly Effect, curated by Kostas Prapoglou and hosted at the historic “Petalouda” textile factory in Athens in 2023. The work highlights humanity’s inner need for change, transformation, and growth, linking the butterfly to symbols of the soul and evolution.
Invisible Places – Endless White
Video installation by Marianna Strapatsaki
Marianna Strapatsaki: Concept and Direction Katharina Thalbach: actress Tania Tsiridou: editing and special effects Lefteris Pavlopoulos: cinematography
Invisible Places – Endless White (2009) is a large-scale three-stream video installation (for this concert, the three streams are presented on a single screen as a unified horizontal triptych). The work is the third part of a the trilogy (titled Birth – Life – Death) which began twenty years earlier, in 1989.
The dominant elements are air and light, while death is treated not as disappearance but as a transformation of the level of existence. Biological death is presented as the metamorphosis of human spiritual consciousness; therefore, death becomes a return to the original source: light.
At the center is a woman dressed in white, portrayed by German actress Katharina Thalbach. Beginning with a close focus on her face, the video presents a sequence of emotional and physical states — labor pains, pleasure, anger, and grief — while the adjacent screens display images connecting these human passions with cycles of life and death in the animal and plant kingdoms, as well as geological and meteorological phenomena.
The work was premiered in Strasbourg in March 2009 at the European Exchange Center “Apollonia,” and later it was presented in Marseille European Capital of Culture 2013 as the official participation of Greece to the celebration of “50 Years of Video Art”; also it has been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete and the Museum of Modern Greek Art in Rhodes. A copy of the work belongs to the collection of the National Museum of Contemporary Art.
Brainrinth
Video installation by Nikos Kokkalis
Nikos Kokkalis: Concept and Direction Stefanos Papadas: image processing, animation
This work is an installation consisting of eight video streams projected in a specially designed visual space including a surround-sound audio reproduction eystem. The visual material is presented as a horizontal arrangement of the eight video streams.
The visual material is based on (mostly brain) MRI scans and a collection of images of enormous variety and deliberate thematic randomness. The generative idea behind the visual component was the cycle of cognitive function on the ontogenetic level, from the prenatal stage to death, and the impact of perception on mental structures and psychological states.
The title Brainrinth reflects the idea of a brain-labyrinth: an unimaginably complex network processing vast amounts of information, from which survival conditions emerge by means of meaning production mechanisms, in a cycle that begins and ends in the “simplicity” of nonexistence.
The sonic dimension of this work was created is essentially a transformation of the visual information into sound, a sort of ‘sonification’ based however on a mapping so subjective that ultimately renders the use of this term questionable. A multitude of allegorical and juxtaposed elements are densely employed throughout the piece, functioning as explanations for the images, justifications for the transformations of the visual material, and playful interactions between the sonic and visual dimensions of this work, suggesting layers of meaning that imply (if all goes well) parallel narrative realities.
Naturae/Continua – Part II
Video installation by Simona Sarchi
Simona Sarchi: Concept, photography, image processing, animation
Naturae/Continua is a working title of a tripartite audiovisual work in progress. Presented here is its second part.
The work is loosely connected to a text translated by T. H. Huxley and published as “Nature: Aphorisms by Goethe” in the first issue of the journal Nature (Vol. 1, Issue 1, 4 November 1869):
“Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her: powerless to separate ourselves from her, and powerless to penetrate beyond her... She is ever shaping new forms... Everything is new, and yet nought but the old... We live in her midst and know her not...” (spoken in italian in this piece)
BIOGRAPHIES
Marianna Strapatsaki
Marianna Strapatsaki began her studies at the Athenian Technological Institute in Athens in Interior Architecture. With a five-year scholarship from the Academy of Athens, she continued her studies in Paris at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, earning a diploma in painting and a certificate in drawing. She also studied at the École du Louvre (Art History certificate) and at the Sorbonne University, Paris I (Licence in Visual Arts).
Since 1980, she has been a pioneer of video art in Greece, focusing on video installations that integrate painting, sculpture, and video. From 2004 to 2014, she was a founding member, professor, and chair of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts at the Ionian University. In 2005, she served as visiting professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts.
Her current work emphasizes the coexistence of moving image, sound, and digital technology in art, the dialogue between contemporary digital art and past cultures, and the presentation of large-scale digital works in public spaces through projection mapping.
She has held 43 solo exhibitions and participated in 80 group exhibitions internationally. She lives and works in Athens.
Nikos Kokkalis
Nikos Kokkalis studied at the School of Fine Arts of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (1984–1989) in the painting studios of D. Kontos and V. Dimitreas. Between 1993 and 1995, he was a postgraduate scholar of the Greek State Scholarships Foundation under the supervision of N. Kessanlis.
In 2006, together with M. Koskina, he founded the OKKO group, aiming to raise civic awareness through art. In 2016, he received his doctorate from the Department of Audio and Visual Arts at the Ionian University. Since 2017, he has taught at the same department.
He has presented eight solo exhibitions, 30 group exhibitions, and over 25 stage designs. His work moves between installation and performance art, focusing on the poetic trace of human existence within specific spaces and moments. He lives and works in Corfu.
Simona Sarchi
Simona Sarchi was born in Milan, grew up in Iran, Rome, and Milan, and lives in Greece. She studied graphic design, illustration, and photography at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED). She has worked as a photographer and carried out numerous ethnographic reportages in the Middle East, North Africa, Southern Italy, and many other places. She currently works as a graphic designer.
Andreas Mniestris
Andreas Mniestris composes acousmatic music, most of the times. He is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Music Studies at the Ionian University, where he has taught electroacoustic music composition and served as director of EPHMEE (Laboratory of Electroacoustic Music Research and Applications) and the postgraduate program “Sonic Arts and Technologies.”
He is a founding member of the Hellenic Association of Electroacoustic Music Composers and the Hellenic Society for Acoustic Ecology.
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