Scary to birds, pleasant to men.
When the grapes ripen in the fall, vineyards often are threatened by immense swarms of birds. The birds, starlings among them, eat considerable amounts of ripe grapes before it's time to harvest.
To save their fruit, winemakers try to scare the birds away, often using acoustical means. Modern systems use sound like the calls of raptors or gunshots. With RAPTORreloaded, we go a step further and incorporate sound art into these acoustic systems.
With RAPTORreloaded, we built a permanent sound installation in public space, which is both useful and artistically challenging. Its first installment took place in the vineyards of Falkenstein, Lower Austria, in the fall of 2009, as part of the regional festival "Viertelsfest 2009".
We invited composers and sound artists from all over the world to contribute with their own art. Each work was played for one week, every day between sunrise and sunset. All compositions serve the same purpose: being pleasant to men, but scary to the birds.
Each work was further presented on the national radio programme of ORF Kunstradio with a three minutes field recording. On October twenty fifth, all compositions took part in a forty minute radio mix.
Featured artists: Sylva Smejkalová, Daniel Lercher, Andres Bosshard, alien productions, Martin J. Pichler, Vinzenz Schwab, Heike Kaltenbrunner, Tetsuo Kogava.
