press kit

Mikro Orchestra - band members:

1. Jarosław Kujda lead Game Boy, management and more
2. Paweł Janicki experimental music toys
3. Małgorzata Kujda dark sounds
4. Tomasz Procków video guitarist
5. Mariusz Jura producer

band history:

Interview with Jarek, during which he presents the history of the Micro Orchestra and interesting facts related to our activities.

logo:

download Mikro Orchestra logo (.png format)
download Mikro Orchestra logo (.svg format)

photos:

music software:

• Nanoloop
• Little Sound DJ (LSDJ)
• Korg DS-10
• Electroplankton

visualization software:

• SQuareJockey (SQJ)

hardware:

• Game Boy
• Game Boy Color
• Game Boy Advance
• PlayStation Portable (PSP)
• Nintendo DS
• Nintendo DSi
• Dirtywave M8 tracker
• Pocket Operator
• Clockwork uConsole
• Vorel Maska Spawalnicza
• TherapSid
• Twisted Electrons BlastBeats
• Alesis AirFX
• Onomatone
• Buddha Machine
• FPGBC

synesthesia of sound and image — the band's philosophy and activity:

Mikro Orchestra is a music-and-visual group creating electronics, visualizations and artistic software using hacked retro and zombie-technologies of the entertainment industry along with their own continuously developed programs and instrument-devices. Has been active since 2001, and counts countless concerts and performances – including at major European electronic art festivals such as the WRO Biennale in Wrocław (Poland), Transmediale and Club Transmediale in Berlin (Germany), and Ars Electronica in Linz (Austria). Their work has appeared in radio and television broadcasts on BBC, Arte and Wired, in documentary films about contemporary phenomena in media art, and in book publications within the field of artistic research.

What distinguishes Mikro Orchestra is the synergy and synesthesia of improvised, deconstructed and live-reconstructed sounds and images, irony, controlled aleatoricism and intentionally uncontrolled chaos. The band avoids clichéd showy star moves, favouring an authentic connection with the audience. From pleasant, even idyllic sound-visual landscapes to rough, apocalyptic sonic diversions – Mikro Orchestra gives every form and mood its own distinctive imprint. Within the group this style is sometimes called "punk chiptune" – a term that aptly captures the nature of these events: intense, communal experiences that bring together artistic outsiders, (retro) gamers, hackers and family audiences.

The audiovisual instrumentarium of Mikro Orchestra is a collection of modified and reconstructed retro game consoles (primarily GameBoy), original and underground software running on those devices, and a long list of rare instruments, sequencers and sound processors originating from the world of 8-bit relics of entertainment technology. The group also builds its own devices, combining – like a musical Dr. Frankenstein – pop-junk game controllers (such as the legendary Guitar Hero guitar or SNES pads) with industrial artefacts: welding masks, terminal-like computers, sensors and other seemingly mismatched devices – often regarded as morally obsolete.

In response to a world driven by gadget consumption and the infotainment pulp of the society of the spectacle, Mikro Orchestra proposes an artistic ultra-style and a sabotage-like inversion – the creative takeover and reconfiguration of systemic tools, aimed at at least temporarily reclaiming agency and freeing oneself from the aesthetic violence of consciousness-shaping industries.