From 22 to 26 April 2025, Liepāja will host the 12th International Sound Days Festival, an interdisciplinary event that combines music, visual and sound art in workshops, an exhibition, performances and electronic music concerts. “The aim of Sound Days is to identify and strengthen the sound art and electronic music community in Latvia, to foster international cooperation and growth by highlighting a unique theme and experimental forms of sound creation each year and bringing together both local and international stakeholders in a shared creative space.
The central theme of the 2025 festival is live coding and algorithms in audiovisual art. The festival will include the first algoreive – a live electronic music party – in Latvia. Artists will generate rhythmic electronic music and hypnotic visualisations by writing computer program code “live” (in real time). The Algorave movement started in the UK in 2012 and has since grown into a global community with events in London, Berlin, New York, Mexico City and elsewhere. Algorave’s programme in Liepaja is curated by musician, creative programmer and curator Patrick Borgeat (DE), who has organised many live coding events in Germany and other countries. “Algoraves are exciting for me not only because making music by writing algorithms often results in exciting and non-confirming musical styles but also because many live coding performances don’t rely on safety-nets and can be very spontaneous. We have a diverse line-up featuring artists from the Baltic states, as well as some well-established names from the European live coding scene traveling from Germany, Spain and the UK. The evening will start with performances focusing on visuals, movement and sonic exploration and will become more and more danceable later on. I believe that, together with the live visuals, the evening will be a unique blend of live electronic music, media art and programming culture with a line-up that doesn’t need to shy away from similar events in Berlin, Barcelona or other metropoles.”
The multifaceted activities of the Sound Days Festival will take place at the Art Research Laboratory (MPLab) of RTU Liepaja and the cultural space “Tipogrāfija Creative Quarter”: a five-day programme of educational workshops, networking events, several performance programmes, concert evenings and presentations of the workshop results in an audiovisual art exhibition. “The festival is a meeting point for young artists and musicians with established and experienced artists in sound art, electronic music and audiovisual media. This year, the festival’s 9 workshops at RTU Liepaja Academy will bring together around 90 art students and enthusiasts from 6 European countries. A special event that celebrates the birth of a new community will be the first Baltic Live Programming Meeting on 25 April at the Tipogrāfija Creative Quarter in Liepāja,” says Krista Dintere, festival producer, sound artist and docent at RTU Liepāja.
The programme of the festival “Sound Days” in Liepāja from 22 to 26 April:
April 22–26: creative workshops RTU Liepāja MPLab, Kūrmājas prospekts 13. The workshop leaders are musicians, sound and visual artists and creative programmers from Latvia and Europe. The workshops will explore and learn image and sound creation techniques such as live sound and image programming, data visualisation, algorithmic image, interaction of nature and technology. Participation in the workshops will be free of charge, but places are limited. Workshop leaders’ biographies and descriptions of the workshop content, as well as the application form, can be found on the festival’s website https://sound.mplab.lv/.
April 25 at 12:00 BLCM (Baltic Live Coders Meetup) – Baltic live coding community meeting in the Creative Quarter of the Typography and online. You can register for BLCM by contacting the organisers at skana@aste.gallery
April 25 at 20:00 Algorave Liepāja at the Tipogrāfija Creative Quarter. Live programming music improvisation performances by linalab (CO/ES), nervousdata (DE), Attrique Orgeat (DE), kurivari (EE/UK), Decomposition Loops (LT), V of Londor (LT), WERR (LT), sofi (LV/FI), Agita Reķe (LV/NL), Šūna2 (LV). Flor de Fuego (AR/DE), Miksulis (LV).
April 26 at 18:00 festival workshop results presentations in the Tipogrāfija Creative Quarter- performances and pop-up exhibition. Together with the workshop participants, the workshop leaders Patrick Borgeat (DE), Florencia Alonso (AR/DE), Jasmin Meerhoff (DE), Tata Frenkel (LT), Ioanna Vreme Moser (RO/DE), Lina Bautista (CO/ES), Jan Georg Glöckner (LT/DE), Kaspars Jaudzems (LV) and Rihards Vītols (LV) and Györgyi Rétfalvi (HU/CZ) present the workshop results.
April 26 at 20:00 festival galá concert in the Tipogrāfija Creative Quarter. The Sound Days closing concert will bring together artists from Latvia and abroad, combining avant-garde pop, live techno, atmospheric and noise music in a varied programme. Artists will perform with their own instruments, sensors, loopers and feedback systems, as well as with a variety of forms – audiovisual performances with projections and costumes, or performances in other parts of the space, off stage. The concert will also explore the interests and energy of young artists. Eleonora Kampe (LV/EE), Elizabete Balčus (LV), Paula Vītola and Platons Buravickis (LV), Alise Rancāne (LV), Farah Wind (DE), Werr (LT), Ofae (LV), Sabrina (LV), Omiros (LV), Dafelz (LV) will perform.
The curator of the concert, artist Paula Vītola, highlights her improvised performance with composer and pianist Platons Buravicki as a surprise for herself and others: ‘I will be playing my own synthesizers, which create sounds with modulated light, but Platons will improvise on piano, together creating an unusual, slightly noisy and timbrally coherent sound experience. It will also be fascinating to hear and see the dreamily surreal audiovisual performance of Elizabeth Balčus, acclaimed in Latvia and abroad, as well as Eleonora Kampe’s noisy voice and feedback experiment.”
Tickets for Skaņa dienas events are available at the “Biļešu paradīze” box office and online.
“Sound Days is a great opportunity to combine the useful with the enjoyable, working for a week with renowned artists and broadening your artistic vision. An important value of the event is the sense of community that develops among all involved – participants, workshop leaders and artists, spending time together also outside the classes, making contacts and new friendships,” Raivo Mihailovs, a young artist and radio DJ, describes his experience at Sound Days Festivals.
“Sound Days” are organised by ASTE. Art, Science, Technology, Education, association “E-Lab, Electronic Art and Media Centre” and RTU Liepaja Academy, with the financial support of Liepaja City Municipality “Culture Authority” and State Culture Capital Foundation.
A look back at the 2024 Sound Days in pictures.
More information on the festival website https://sound.mplab.lv/ and by writing to skana@aste.gallery or calling the festival producer Krista Dintera +371 25997662.