Sounding the posthuman attitude — a historico-aesthetical analysis of onto-epistemological perspectives in contemporary sonic arts

In the recent years works of son­ic art have increas­ing­ly engaged with the notion of the posthu­man : Envi­ron­men­tal sound art ; arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in musi­cal com­po­si­tion ; infra- and ultra­sound in elec­tron­ic music and sound instal­la­tions ; posthu­man the­o­ry in sound art con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion. How­ev­er, the present pro­pos­al claims, that we have always been posthu­man. This has man­i­fest­ed in var­i­ous ways through­out his­to­ry, and must there­fore to be under­stood as an atti­tude. The posthu­man atti­tude engages with and seeks beyond lim­its of human per­cep­tion, cog­ni­tion and knowl­edge. This atti­tude, I sug­gest, is to be found in con­tem­po­rary as well as in his­tor­i­cal works of son­ic arts. The orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to knowl­edge of this project is to bring new per­spec­tives into the research fields of posthu­man the­o­ry and sound stud­ies by ask­ing : How does the posthu­man atti­tude man­i­fest in the son­ic arts ? How do we fos­ter an ade­quate the­o­ry of the posthu­man in the son­ic arts ? And what knowl­edge can be derived from a specif­i­cal­ly son­ic artis­tic atti­tude towards the posthuman ?

IDA HAVUKAINEN

PhD can­di­date | Uni­ver­si­ty of East­ern Finland

Ida Havukainen is a PhD stu­dent in Social and Cul­tur­al Encoun­ters doc­tor­al pro­gramme in Uni­ver­si­ty of East­ern Fin­land. Grad­u­at­ed with a Mas­ter of Arts in Cul­tur­al stud­ies in 2016, major­ing in eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gy. Grad­u­at­ed with a BA in music ped­a­gogy in 2017. Forth­com­ing arti­cle in Decem­ber 2019 : “Kehon posi­tiot laulunopetuk­sen käytän­nöis­sä” (“Posi­tions of the body in singing teaching”). 

ANTTI IKONEN
Lec­tur­er | Aal­to University

Antti Iko­nen start­ed his career in the ear­ly 1980s with­out any for­mal edu­ca­tion. He obtained skills in sound design and applied music through prac­tice in numer­ous artis­tic and com­mer­cial pro­duc­tions : con­tem­po­rary dance, the­atre, short films, radio plays, art instal­la­tions, and new media. Since 2001, he has been work­ing as a lec­tur­er of sound design and music in Media Lab Helsin­ki (Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty). His cur­rent research han­dles audi­ble inte­ri­or design, focus­ing in ques­tions of listening.

Designing sounds for a children’s hospital

Con­tem­pla­tive lis­ten­ing is the most cru­cial skill and fun­da­men­tal method when design­ing sounds for spe­cif­ic envi­ron­ments. It is essen­tial to know the ingre­di­ents and under­stand the behav­iour of the sound­scape in ques­tion, and espe­cial­ly when using gen­er­a­tive meth­ods in (re)constructing or (re)creating a sound­scape this can­not be ful­ly achieved with­out lis­ten­ing for an extend­ed peri­od of time. Fur­ther­more, sound­scapes and aur­al inte­ri­ors can be lis­tened to in a reduced way as they were ambi­ent music.

In this talk I will intro­duce an actu­al large-scale inte­ri­or sound design project in order to delin­eate the char­ac­ter­is­tics of sound as an ele­ment, mate­r­i­al and sub­ject of dis­cus­sion in a big­ger plan­ning con­text. A new hos­pi­tal for chil­dren in Helsin­ki, Fin­land was com­plet­ed and tak­en into use in 2018. Aside from patient rooms and facil­i­ties for med­ical oper­a­tions, large areas of this hos­pi­tal are being equipped with loud­speak­ers. The loud­speak­ers are used to play a gen­er­a­tive ambi­ent sound­scape spe­cial­ly designed and tai­lored for the hos­pi­tal. While going through the project, I will con­cen­trate on the impor­tance of lis­ten­ing with­in the design process and eval­u­a­tion of the out­comes rather than going deeply into tech­ni­cal details or admin­is­tra­tive issues.

HETA KAISTO
Doc­tor of Art can­di­date | Aal­to University

Heta Kaisto (MA) is a doc­tor­al stu­dent in visu­al cul­ture at Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty School of Arts, Design and Archi­tec­ture, and cur­rent­ly work­ing as a direc­tor of Rau­ma Art Muse­um, Fin­land. She has a back­ground in art
his­to­ry, com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy, and she takes a deep inter­est in music and sound. In her prac­tice-based research she explores writ­ing as a mode of think­ing in texts, images and sounds in the con­text of post-war the­o­ry and art. As a part of her artis­tic research, she has co-writ­ten and direct­ed a radio play “A Hun­dred-year-old Night” based on archival mate­ri­als of the Finnish Civ­il War in 1918. She is about to start to work on her sec­ond project under a title “songs of disaster”.

Siren and the Imperfect Songs of Disaster

I am a writer, cura­tor and singer-song­writer from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. In my research, “in Res­o­nance, for — Writ­ing towards the Dis­as­ter” I explore through the con­cept of dis­as­ter and res­o­nance the bound­aries of writ­ing and think­ing in phi­los­o­phy. How to deal with an expe­ri­ence that is out­side the pos­si­bil­i­ties of ratio­nal meaning-making ?

With the help of writ­ers that have pushed the bound­aries of fact and fic­tion such as Mau­rice Blan­chot and PJ Har­vey, I try to write towards a lim­it expe­ri­ence of a dis­as­ter. My posi­tion is one of a theorist/artist : at the same time explor­ing the poiesis of mak­ing and the poet­ics of it. In my research sound acts as a mate­r­i­al, a rela­tion and a method. This includes for exam­ple archival inter­view mate­r­i­al on Finnish civ­il war, lis­ten­ing as a method, and a voice as sin­gu­lar­i­ty dis­rupt­ing the uni­ty and neu­tral tone of the ide­al dis­course of phi­los­o­phy. In the sem­i­nar I will focus on the lat­ter : the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a voice to con­vey think­ing of a dis­as­ter and what it could mean for me as a theorist/artist. I will base my talk on the essay “The Song of the Sirens” by Mau­rice Blanchot.

DR. HARRI LAAKSO
Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor | Aal­to Univeristy

Dr. Har­ri Laak­so is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Pho­tog­ra­phy Research in the Depart­ment of Media at Aal­to Uni­ver­si­ty, Fin­land. He also works in the Depart­ment of Art and in the Depart­ment of Film, Tele­vi­sion and Scenog­ra­phy. Laak­so is an artist, researcher and cura­tor inter­est­ed in pho­to­graph­ic images and the­o­ry, artis­tic research, word/image rela­tions and audio plays. He has led and par­tic­i­pat­ed in many research projects and artis­tic projects and pub­lished texts and curat­ed exhi­bi­tions espe­cial­ly relat­ed to pho­tog­ra­phy and con­tem­po­rary art.

BERNHARD RIETBROCK
Research Asso­ciate | Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts (ZHdK)

Bern­hard Riet­brock is a musi­cian, pro­duc­er and research asso­ciate at the insti­tute for music research at the Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts (ZHdK). He is a mem­ber of the D‑A-CH research project “Hear­ing the Oth­er — an Aes­thet­ic of the Real in Exper­i­men­tal Music and Sound Art” and artis­tic direc­tor of the Ever Present Orches­tra, which is ded­i­cat­ed to the pre­sen­ta­tion of the excep­tion­al work of Alvin Luci­er. Based on his exam­i­na­tion of cur­rent philo­soph­i­cal the­o­ries on the real in the light of Lacan­ian con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion and Amer­i­can exper­i­men­tal music with a focus on Alvin Lucier’s phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal aes­thet­ics, he inten­sive­ly works on ques­tions about the future per­spec­tives of such con­tex­tu­al­ized aes­thet­ic posi­tions, strate­gies and concepts. 

PROF. DR. HABIL. SABINE SANIO
Lec­tur­er | Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts (M.A.)

Sabine Sanio is lec­tur­er in the­o­ry at the Mas­ter’s pro­gram Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts, Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts Berlin ; stud­ied ger­man lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy, doc­tor­ate in Ger­man Stud­ies, habil­i­ta­tion in musi­col­o­gy and mem­ber of the D‑A-CH research project “Hear­ing the Oth­er — an Aes­thet­ic of the Real in Exper­i­men­tal Music and Sound Art”; numer­ous arti­cles about actu­al aes­thet­ics, media aes­thet­ics and media his­to­ry, Son­ic Arts, New and Exper­i­men­tal Music and about the rela­tion­ship between the arts — as books : Alter­na­tiv­en zur Werkäs­thetik : Cage und Heißen­büt­tel (Saar­brück­en 1999), 1968 und die Avant­garde (Sinzig 2008), as edi­tor : Sound als Zeit­mod­ell : Zeit als Klang denken (Berlin 2014), Borderlines/Auf der Gren­ze : Georg Klein (Heidelberg/Berlin 2014). In Eng­lish (in print): Audi­to­ry Mir­rors : About the Pol­i­tics of Hear­ing, con­tri­bu­tion to The Oxford Hand­book of Sound and Imag­i­na­tion, ed. M. Grimshaw, M. Walther-Hansen, and M. Knakker­gaard. Oxford UP, to appear 2019.

GABRIEL SANTANDER

Gabriel San­tander grad­u­at­ed in Com­po­si­tion from the Real Con­ser­va­to­rio Supe­ri­or de Músi­ca de Madrid, after which he won the com­po­si­tion com­pe­ti­tions Flo­ra Pri­eto 2010 in Madrid and the Clang Cut Book 2013, organ­ised by KNM Berlin. He has attend­ed Com­po­si­tion cours­es with Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, Bri­an Fer­ney­hough, Michael Jar­rell and José María Sánchez Verdú, as well as Sound Stud­ies sem­i­nars at the UdK Berlin. He stud­ied in Berlin with Peter Ablinger and has researched on his work since 2010. He is cur­rent­ly Inter­im Pro­fes­sor in Com­po­si­tion at the Con­ser­va­to­rio Pro­fe­sion­al de Músi­ca Joaquín Turi­na in Madrid and Pro­fes­sor in the Musi­col­o­gy Fac­ul­ty of the Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty Valen­cia – VIU. He has giv­en numer­ous lec­tures on musi­cal analy­sis and com­po­si­tion­al process­es at con­ser­va­toires and fes­ti­vals in Madrid, Seville and Krakow. Togeth­er with Mar­i­ja Pen­de­va he has trans­lat­ed into Span­ish 3 books of Plays by Mace­don­ian Play­wright Goran Ste­fanovs­ki, pub­lished by the Aso­ciación de Direc­tores de Esce­na de España – ADE Teatro and fund­ed by the Euro­pean Commission’s Cre­ative Europe programme.

VOLKER STRAEBEL
Head of depart­ment | Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts (M.A.)

Volk­er Straebel (1969) is a musi­col­o­gist focus­ing on exper­i­men­tal and elec­tro-acoustic music, sound art, inter­me­dia, per­for­mance and con­cept art. Since 2015, he has been direc­tor of the Sound Stud­ies Mas­ter pro­gram at the Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts, after hav­ing served as direc­tor of the Elec­tron­ic Music Stu­dio at the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Berlin. He has real­ized and per­formed elec­tron­ic music and inde­ter­mi­nate works by John Cage and oth­ers. His pub­li­ca­tions include pieces on sound art, media-spe­cif­ic music, John Cage, Alvin Luci­er, and Phill Niblock.