Marko Ciciliani

Marko Ciciliani (born February 23, 1970) is a composer, audiovisual artist and performer.

Marko Ciciliani was born in 1970 in Zagreb, Croatia.

In 1971 his parents emigrated to Germany where he predominantly grew up in Karlsruhe.

Starting in 1990 he studied composition and music-theory with Ulrich Leyendecker at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg.

From 1993 to 1994 he spent a year in New York City, studying at the Manhattan School of Music with Nils Vigeland.

After returning to Hamburg he continued his studies until his graduation with Manfred Stahnke.

In 1996 he emigrated to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where he studied until 1998 as a post-graduate student at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

His principal teachers during that time were Clarence Barlow and Louis Andriessen.

Already in his early works Ciciliani showed a fascination for works of open forms which formed the center of his works from 1999.

This interest was partly fed by his fascination for the music of John Cage which was one of the reasons why he went to study in New York City with Nils Vigeland – a former close collaborator of Cage.

Since the early 2000 he was also increasingly active as a sound-engineer and performer of electronic music.

He performed with many leading ensembles and orchestras, such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra or the SWR Orchestra, as well as MusikFabrik and ASKO.

From 2000 Ciciliani started experimenting with electronic improvisation.

In order to be able to extend open form and algorithmic principles to the realm of electronic sound synthesis, he started using SuperCollider in 2001.

Between 2001 and 2005 he co-organized the concert series Kraakgeluiden in Amsterdam with Anne LaBerge.

This weekly series featured electronic improvised music and became an important center for the experimental music scene in the Netherlands.

As an instrument for improvisation Ciciliani used a no-input mixer, a mixing board in which internal feedbacks are generated by connecting the outputs to the inputs.

Ciciliani started to work with lighting as an important part of his compositions in 2003.

His open form period culminated with the live-installation "Map of Marble" which was premiered at the Zagreb Biennale in 2005

Also in 2005 he released the CD "Voor het Hooren Geboren" containing open form chamber music played by ensemble Intégrales.

In 2005 he founded his own ensemble “Bakin Zub”, which focussed on multimedia works which combine instrumental parts, live-electronics and visuals.

In 2007 Ciciliani started a PhD at the Brunel University London under supervision of Bob Gilmore and Johannes Birringer.

After having realized two works using laser in 2007 and 2009, he used this medium again in his "Steina" for violin, live-electronics, live-video and laser.

In 2008 he released the CD "81 matters in elemental order" which was entirely produced and composed with the no-input mixer.

Shortly after this release he stopped performing with the no-input mixer.

Ciciliani remained in Amsterdam until 2010, living primarily as a free-lance composer and playing an active role in the Dutch music scene.

He completed his doctorate studies in 2010 with a thesis on interrelationships between visual media and music, specifically in the context of using light designs as part of compositions.

In 2010 he moved to Austria, taking up a teaching position at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.

This became one of his main areas of interest which also led to his dissertation at Brunel University in 2010.

In 2011 he became guest-professor at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

In October 2014 he was appointed full professor for computer music composition and sound design at the IEM.

Bakin Zub's last public appearance was in 2014, when it premiered Ciciliani's program-length work "Suicidal Self Portraits" at the festival Forum Neuer Musik Deutschlandfunk in Cologne.

More recently, Ciciliani has primarily worked with live-video in his audiovisual works, as for example in his solo compositions "Via" or "Formula minus One".

In 2015 Ciciliani produced a book titled "Pop Wall Alphabet".

It is a transmedia work combining 4.5 hours of music (included as a DVD with the book), roughly 300 pages of digitally generated texts and 27 images.

The work is based on condensations of material from publications of pop music, be it as superimpositions of songs, rearranged texts or combined artworks as images.

The music was described a "monlythic verticalisation of sound".

The focus of this work is a study of perception and acoustic pareidolias.

In 2019 Ciciliani's most recent publication was released by ChampDAction in Antwerp titled "Transgressions".

It consist of a book with an integrated USB stick that contains four audiovisual compositions.