Farmers Manual is an electronic music and visual art group, founded in Vienna in the beginning of the 1990s. The core members of the collective are Mathias Gmachl, Stefan Possert, Oswald Berthold, Gert Brantner, and Nik Gaffney. Part of the very lively Viennese electronic music scene of the 1990s, Farmers Manual were successfully crossing the boundaries between electronic music, live visuals, experimental graphics, and web design for Zeta Industries.

Farmers Manual
Farmers Manual performing at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, February 2002
Farmers Manual performing at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, February 2002
Background information
Also known asfarmersmanual
OriginVienna, Austria
Genres
Years active1995–present
LabelsMego, Tray, OR, and more
MembersMathias Gmachl
Stefan Possert
Oswald Berthold
Gert Brantner
Nik Gaffney
Websiteweb.fm

Their CDs, published through avant-garde labels such as Mego, Tray, and OR, often contained multimedia content. Their most significant release[according to whom?] might be RLA (which stands for "Recent Live Archive"), a DVD released on Mego in 2003, which contains the band's extensive backcatalogue of live concert recordings from 1995 to 2003, compressed in MP3 format - totalling 3 days and 20 hours of audio content and released under a Copyleft licence.[1]

As visual artists, Farmers Manual have been included in numerous international festivals, such as FCMM (Montreal, 1999), Avanto (Helsinki, 2001), Art+Communication (Riga, 2006) [1].

Selected discography

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  • (1996) Farmers Manual: No Backup (CD+, Mego 008)
  • (1996) Farmers Manual: FM (12", Mego 017)
  • (1996) Farmers Manual: Does Not Compute (12", Tray)
  • (1997) Farmers Manual: fsck (CD, Tray)
  • (1998) Farmers Manual: Explorers_We (CD, OR)
  • (2000) CD_Slopper: SaskieWoxi (CD, OR)
  • (2001) Gcttcatt: Amperase (CD+, Mego 021)
  • (2002) pxp: while(p){print"."," "x$p++} (CD, Wavetrap)

Note: this album, by Farmers Manual member Oswald Berthold, was awarded an Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica 2002.[2]

  • (2003) Farmers Manual: RLA (DVD-Video/ROM, Mego 777)
  • (2017) Farmers Manual: fmoto (Files, bandcamp)

References

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  1. ^ Buttimer, Colin (2003-06-05), Farmers Manual - RLA (recent live archive) DVD, BBC, archived from the original on January 26, 2009, retrieved 2007-12-26
  2. ^ Hecker, Florian; Herrington, Tony; Humon, Naut (2002), Prix Ars Electronica 2002 - Jury-Statement, Ars Electronica Archive, archived from the original on February 7, 2006, retrieved 2007-12-26

Further reading

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