Sonic and visual artist John Kannenberg (b.1969) has been exhibiting art and performing music for more than fifteen years. His major audio and visual works deal with a variety of themes including primal natural forces, spirituality and mindful contemplation, melancholy and nostalgia, abstracted narrative tales, and the confluence of sonic and visual art.

John has performed, exhibited and curated work in the United States, Europe and Australia, including appearances at the 2004 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Tallinn, the 2004 Biennale of Electronic Arts in Perth, the 2004 Version Festival in Chicago, the 2003 Placard Festival in New York, the 2002 MAXIS festival in Sheffield, and several broadcast appearances on Resonance 104.4 FM in London. He has released recordings on the Crouton, Topscore, Retinascan, Earlabs and Grain of Sound labels, and has been one of a rotating group of co-presenters of the Something Else radio program on WLUW 88.7 FM in Chicago.

Since April 2002, John has served as creator, designer and curator of Stasisfield.com, an experimental music label and interdisciplinary digital art space presenting works by a diverse collection of artists from around the globe.
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00007 John KANNENBERG:: Autumn Enso
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VITAL WEEKLY ===== number 501 ===== week 46)
The enso is a stark black circle of ink, known from Japanese calligraphy and one of the important symbols of zen. John Kannenberg saw examples in an exhibition and was inspired to make enso using autumn leaves. These leaves were then put in a circle around instruments that are circles: a snare drum, hi-hat and crash cymbal. The snare drum was covered with rice paper. That's the basic set-up by which Kannenberg plays his music. Drum sounds as such are not in there, except maybe for the percussive opening sounds of 'Prelude'. Each of the six pieces are low humming beauties of drone music. It's hard to tell what it that he does exactly, by what means of processing, but he slabs out some truly beautiful pieces of overtones sounds, ringing and buzzing around, like a continuous semishigure. As pieces of music that are inside drone music, even when the entire process seems to be made with computer. Microsound with a capital M (I'm sure the lowercase posse will be offended by this). Some great stuff on there. (FdW)