As one-half of Viennese multimedia performance group Granular-Synthesis, Ulf Langheinrich explores the interface of time, vision, technology, and subjectivity, bringing these components into uneasy proximity in order to foreground relationships of codetermination. A featured artist at world renowned exhibitions and festivals such as Japan's Nagoya Biennale and Austria's Ars Electronica, Granular-Synthesis (which includes Langheinrich and co-producer Kurt Hentschlager) were introduced to American audiences in 1996 via the New York-based Asphodel label's Recombinant tour, during which the group presented its audiovisual work-in-progress, "Motion Control" -- an arresting, multi-panel projection of the face of Japanese performance artist Akemi Takeya digitally manipulated and reorganized to suggest a sort of hyperkinetic stasis. Asphodel sublabel Sombient subsequently released a solo work by Langheinrich; titled Degrees of Amnesia, the 72-minute CD presents 13 wonderfully varied digital ambient landscapes utilizing, among other software-based production techniques, granular synthesis -- a method of digital sound design whereby sounds are reduced to their smallest possible quanta, or "grains," and organized and manipulated to achieve otherwise unattainable levels of sonic depth and detail. ~ Sean Cooper, Rovi
