What to see and do at Glasgow's audiovisual arts festival Sonica

An 11-day festival dedicated to world-class audiovisual art gets under way in Glasgow on Thursday.

Sonica, which was launched at the city’s Tramway in 2012, will showcase contemporary artists and musicians from across the world alongside homegrown Scottish talent.

This year’s event opens launches with Alessandro Cortini, touring member of American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, who will perform the Scottish premiere of his Nati Infiniti project.

Organisers say the festival is a celebration of 30 years of Cryptic – a Glasgow-based creative company known for audiovisual art.

STV News takes a look at what else to expect from the festival including city-wide live concerts, installations and IMAX screenings.

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

The Royal Scottish National Orchestra is performing the Scottish premiere of John Luther Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Become Ocean” with kaleidoscopic live visuals from coder Alba G. Corral.

The organisers promise an ebbing and flowing sonic journey and a “meditation on the vast, mysterious tides of existence”.

Live concert at the Burrell from Scottish Ensemble

A new collaboration between Sonica and Scottish Ensemble, Echoes of the Burrell’, fusing sound and space with an afternoon of live music at the Burrell Collection.

In a carefully curated performance by violist Jane Atkins, the programme traverses through ancient and contemporary melodies inspired by the collection’s environment, exhibits and architecture.

Spectacular laser structures

The Scottish premiere of the new live show from Australian AV legend Robin Fox.

Known for his live performances where techno meets white noise, buzzing electronica and spectacular laser structures, Triptych Fox employs custom-made hardware to split image generation and audio amplification into equal parts, colliding the senses and filling the space with volumes of light perfectly synchronised to his music

World premiere of Ela Orleans’ La Nuit Dorée

The World Premiere of Ela Orleans’ La Nuit Dorée, a suite of deconstructed and reimagined French pop music of the 1960s and ‘70s inspired by her parents’ record collection and a temperamental record player that used to mangle the LPs it played.

At times familiar, at others transformed, these torch songs and dance tunes are set to a visual collage that summons up and subverts the fashion, film and style of bygone times; this is a vision of a Paris that could have been, and a golden age that never was.

In a double bill with the UK premiere of Alexandrian sound artist and composer Ahmed Saleh’s A Ten Year Walk To The Shore, a new work for voice and musical instruments that tells the story of two floods that devastated the low-lying city in the fourth and eleventh centuries and warns of future catastrophe where rushing tides will swamp bustling streets.

City chambers cast in a new light

Two new installations which recast Glasgow’s City Chambers in a new light. Inspired by Glasgow’s enigmatic city crest Egyptian artist Ahmed El Shaer creates a virtual reality tour below and beneath the City Chambers.

The Narrative invites audiences to walk parallel to the route of a regular guided visit and revealing the secret symbology of a familiar building – telling a story the public never normally hears.

In Sonic Lamp, Scottish composer Amble Skuse reflects on both the Glasgow Cenotaph which has stood in George Square since 1924 and, behind it, in the beautifully ornate domed entryway to the City Chambers, the Lamp of Remembrance in memory of ex-service nurses.

Amble Skuse’s new composition, which will play from speakers installed around the Lamp, weaves real-life experiences of those who have lived through conflict across the globe and invites visitors to pause, take in the music, and remember the lives of those lost to conflict.