Events   /  SoundS

SOUND IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH

public lecture series

WiSe 2021/22

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Pho­tos © Kathrin Scheidt

3 Nov 2021 — 2 Feb 2022

 

Wednes­days | 6 — 8 p.m. (UTC +1) | online

 

In the win­ter semes­ter 2021/22, Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts presents a lec­ture series explor­ing sound in artis­tic research. The genome of the mas­ter pro­gram implies an under­stand­ing that the­o­ry and prac­tice mutu­al­ly inform each oth­er and rep­re­sent two sides of the same coin. We’d like to invite you to join this lec­ture series and explore the dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on the top­ic of artis­tic research as an encour­age­ment to reflect on your own positioning.

Artis­tic research, aes­thet­ic research, and prac­tice-based research have gained a lot of momen­tum at art schools and uni­ver­si­ties in the past few decades. Focus­ing on alter­na­tives to estab­lished method­olo­gies and par­a­digms based on evi­dence, his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal analy­sis, musi­col­o­gy, crit­i­cal think­ing, and cul­tur­al stud­ies, this lec­ture series address­es how artis­tic research has been estab­lished in sound stud­ies and in the son­ic arts.

Pri­mar­i­ly for the cur­rent MA Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts stu­dents at the UdK, these talks are also open to the gen­er­al pub­lic and stu­dents from all oth­er insti­tu­tions and departments.

3 Nov 2021


Speak­er : Jacob Erik­sen + Sabine Sanio
Intro­duc­tion to Sound in Artis­tic Research

 

This intro­duc­to­ry lec­ture is divid­ed into two parts. In the first part, we will focus on gen­er­al posi­tions in the the­o­ry of artis­tic research by ask­ing the ques­tions : How can we under­stand research as artis­tic ? What kind of out­come can artis­tic research pro­duce ? Fur­ther­more, how are these ideas addressed in polit­i­cal debates on artis­tic research in an aca­d­e­m­ic con­text ? In the sec­ond part, we will focus on how evo­lu­tions in music and sound art can be under­stood through the lens­es of artis­tic research. By exam­in­ing dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal exam­ples in music and sound art, we want to show how the notion of “the new” in com­po­si­tion­al and artis­tic prac­tice reacts to the com­posers and artists’ aes­thet­ic and sociopo­lit­i­cal situatedness.

Pho­to © speakers

10 Nov 2021


Speak­er : Salomé Voegelin
Son­ic Pos­si­ble and Impos­si­ble Bodies

Mod­er­a­tor : Jan Thoben

Stand in front of a mir­ror and repeat “why am I, I?” one hun­dred times.

This talk will con­sid­er the notion of son­ic pos­si­ble worlds in rela­tion to the body. I will dis­cuss the body as mate­r­i­al and flesh­ly body, as human and more than human form, whose son­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties rup­tures norms and expec­ta­tions through invis­i­ble per­mu­ta­tions, silences and screams. Thus, I will sound and artic­u­late a body in trans-for­ma­tion, ephemer­al and porous ; ques­tion­ing of indi­vid­u­a­tion and the bound­ary of the skin. And hope to hear the unrec­og­niz­able body, at the mar­gins of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al frame and at the brink of via­bil­i­ty, to engage in how its son­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty chal­lenges who we count as real, and how we hear their actu­al­i­ty : the norms and nat­u­ral­iza­tions that give us the rec­og­niz­able body and its name.

Mak­ing con­nec­tions between the work of, among oth­ers Han­nah Sil­va, Jocy de Oliveira, Shilpa Gup­ta and Pamela Z, and the writ­ings of Margrit Shildrick, Don­na Har­away, Eliz­a­beth Grosz and Rosi Braidot­ti, et al., we hear the promis­es of mon­sters, the dreams of cyborgs, the ambi­gu­i­ty of freaks, and reach the posthu­man, and come to spec­u­late on a vam­pir­ic invis­i­bil­i­ty that is the body’s mate­r­i­al-self in its son­ic shape, and in its being as being with every oth­er thing, human and more than human in concatenation.

Not only did bod­ies indi­cate a world beyond them­selves, but this move­ment beyond their own bound­aries, a move­ment of bound­ary itself, appeared to be quite cen­tral to what bod­ies ‘are’.” (Judith But­ler, Bod­ies That Mat­ter, On the Dis­cur­sive Lim­its of Sex, New York and Lon­don : Rout­ledge, 1993, p. ix.)

Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer engaged in lis­ten­ing as a socio-polit­i­cal prac­tice. She writes essays, books and text-scores for per­for­mance and publication.

Most recent­ly her book Son­ic Pos­si­ble Worlds 2014/21 appeared in a revised sec­ond edi­tion, extend­ing the dis­cus­sion on the son­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty of the world to rethink nor­ma­tive con­struc­tions and fab­u­late a dif­fer­ent body from its sound. Voegelin’s prac­tice engages in par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, col­lec­tive and com­mu­nal approach­es and uncu­rates cura­to­r­i­al con­ven­tions through per­for­mance. She co-con­venes, with Mark Peter Wright, the cross-dis­ci­pli­nary lis­ten­ing and sound mak­ing event Points of Lis­ten­ing https://pointsoflistening.net, and uncu­rates cura­to­r­i­al con­ven­tions to re-know the world from the con­nect­ing log­ic of sound.

Voegelin is a Pro­fes­sor of Sound at the Lon­don Col­lege of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts Lon­don, and cur­rent­ly rep­re­sents the Pro­fes­sor­ship Klangkun­st in den Kunst­wissenschaften at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Art Braunschweig. 

www.salomevoegelin.net  @soundwords_sv

Pho­to © speakers

17 Nov 2021


Speak­er : Chris Salter

Alien Agen­cies – Cap­tur­ing Res­o­nance from the Insid­er Perspective

Mod­er­a­tor : Daisuke Ishida

 

 

One of the key con­cepts in the notion of artis­tic research is the term research itself, which for all intents and pur­pos­es sig­ni­fies the cre­ation of new knowl­edge about some aspect of the world. Yet, research has some strong assump­tions behind it – name­ly, that there is a dis­tance to be estab­lished between the research object and the researcher them­selves. This pos­es a rather com­plex prob­lem for the artis­tic since the entire point of artis­tic prac­tice is to inter­vene in the world, not to observe it at a crit­i­cal dis­tance. This gets even more com­pli­cat­ed when it comes to the phe­nom­e­na of sound – how to cap­ture it as a research object at a dis­tance when, in fact, with sound there is no dis­tance and there is no object. This talk bases itself on a chap­ter from my 2015 MIT Press book Alien Agency : Exper­i­men­tal Encoun­ters with Art in the Mak­ing which focus­es on the work of sound artists O+A (Bruce Odland and for­mer Sound Stud­ies Guest Pro­fes­sor, Sam Auinger). The book asks what hap­pens in cre­ative prac­tice when the mate­ri­als of art and research behave and per­form in ways beyond a cre­ators’ inten­tions. To make the prob­lem stick­i­er and more intrigu­ing, how does an artist them­self (in this case, the author Chris Salter) under­stand the prac­tices of oth­er artists at both a dis­tance and close up in order to inves­ti­gate how new son­ic events can come into the world and how they shape both know­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing that world in a new way. 

Chris Salter is an artist, Pro­fes­sor for Design + Com­pu­ta­tion Arts at Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty in Mon­tréal and Co-Direc­tor of the Hexa­gram net­work. He stud­ied phi­los­o­phy, eco­nom­ics, the­atre and com­put­er music at Emory and Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ties. His artis­tic work has been seen all over the world at such venues as the Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, Bar­bi­can Cen­tre, Berlin­er Fest­spiele, Wiener Fest­wochen, ZKM, Musée d’art Con­tem­po­rain, EXIT Fes­ti­val and Place des Arts-Mon­tréal, among many oth­ers. He is the author of Entan­gled : Tech­nol­o­gy and the Trans­for­ma­tion of Per­for­mance (MIT Press, 2010) and Alien Agency : Exper­i­men­tal Encoun­ters with Art in the Mak­ing (MIT Press 2015). His new book Sens­ing Machines will be pub­lished by MIT Press in 2022.

Pho­to © speaker

24 Nov 2021


Speak­er : Dieter Mersch

Sounds of Silence. On com­po­si­tion­al research

Mod­er­a­tor : Bern­hard Rietbrock

 

The musi­cal pro­duc­tion of the post-war peri­od often saw itself as as “exper­i­men­tal”. The fuzzy term can be spec­i­fied, if under­stood from the point of view of a gen­uine research prac­tice. This equal­ly con­cerns nois­es, tones, sounds, and silences, their rela­tion to space and time as well as to the lis­ten­ers and their spe­cif­ic “work of hear­ing”, the “howl­ing” (Gins­berg) of real events in the world and their record­ing or archiv­ing by mass media, which car­ry their noise into the last cor­ners of pri­vate exis­tence. Sound as Research was pur­sued in a par­tic­u­lar­ly rad­i­cal way in the suc­ces­sion of John Cage by the Fluxus artists, who based their aes­thet­ic prac­tice pri­mar­i­ly on the empti­ness and full­ness of musi­cal per­for­mance. The lec­ture will deal with some famous exam­ples, in order to not only explore the lim­its and pos­si­bil­i­ties of the con­cept of research in the arts, but also to sharp­en its definition.

Dieter Mer­sch, Prof. em. for Aes­thet­ic The­o­ry at the Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts and for­mer direc­tor of its Insti­tute for The­o­ry, also was the pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Soci­ety for Aes­thet­ics until this year. Most impor­tant pub­li­ca­tions : Was sich zeigt. Mate­ri­al­ität, Präsenz, Ereig­nis (2002); Ereig­nis und Aura. Unter­suchun­gen zu ein­er Ästhetik des Per­for­ma­tiv­en (2002); Medi­en­the­o­rien zur Ein­führung (2006); Pos­thermeneu­tik (2010); and Epis­te­molo­gien des Ästhetis­chen (2015).

 

Pho­to © speaker

1 Dec 2021


Speak­er : Alfred Darlington

Com­pos­ing for sur­round sound instal­la­tion and performance

Mod­er­a­tor : Jan Thoben

 
 

Exam­in­ing lis­ten­ing modal­i­ties in immer­sive envi­ron­ments with spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to time scale and ges­ture. Also how we might uti­lize Ambison­ics and/or Wave field Syn­the­sis (WFS) as bridge to Oliv­eros-ian Deep Lis­ten­ing. No need for spe­cial­ized equip­ment as we will be focused on abstrac­tion best suit­ed for future proof­ing. Fol­low­ing this dis­cus­sion Daedelus will share ini­tial results from their time as artist in res­i­dence at S.E.T.I. build­ing (un)Earthed — a mul­ti­fac­eted expe­ri­ence extend­ing the audi­ence’s ear upward as antenna.

Daedelus (Alfred Dar­ling­ton) is a pro­lif­ic pro­duc­er and per­former. Renowned as an ear­ly user of Monome grid con­trollers, they are found­ing fac­ul­ty of Berklee Col­lege of Music’s EDI (Elec­tron­ic Dig­i­tal Instru­ment) prin­ci­ple instru­ment pro­gram, and A.I.R. with S.E.T.I.

 

Pho­to © speaker

8 Dec 2021


Speak­er : The Neigh­bour­hood Char­ac­ter / Ari Robey-Lawrence

Build­ing Inter­sec­tion­al Com­mu­ni­ty via Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Research and Cre­ative Praxis

Mod­er­a­tor : Daisuke Ishida

 
 

This talk will draw on exam­ples from the artist’s own col­lab­o­ra­tive prac­tice to explore the poten­tial of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research and prac­tice-led method­olo­gies as applied to elec­tron­ic music in cre­ative indus­tries con­texts, and how to facil­i­tate artis­tic inter­ac­tion, engage­ment, empow­er­ment exchange through such means.

 

The Neigh­bour­hood Char­ac­ter / Ari Robey-Lawrence, (she/they) is an elec­tron­ic music pro­duc­er / com­pos­er, vocal­ist, DJ, edu­ca­tor & researcher, and cre­ative indus­tries freelancer.

They are a co-cura­tor of DICE Con­fer­ence & Fes­ti­val, and the founder of wood // work col­lec­tive, an inter­sec­tion­al plat­form com­mu­ni­cat­ing through diverse forms of cre­ative expres­sion con­ceived with the pur­pose to cre­ate alter­na­tive avenues for socio-cul­tur­al mobil­i­ty, pro­fes­sion­al self-empow­er­ment, and transna­tion­al inter­change in cre­ative industries.

Ari’s doc­tor­al research (Gold­smiths Media and Comms) traces inter­ven­tions in the pol­i­tics and prax­es of rec­i­p­ro­cal and self- empow­er­ment by Black elec­tron­ic and dance music pro­duc­ers. As a pub­lic speak­er, they engage with issues of race, pol­i­tics and com­mu­ni­ty through the lens of the dance music, and over the last three years has curat­ed and organ­ised a range of pan­el events and work­shops, with top­ics rang­ing from strate­gies for men­tal health & preser­va­tion, lega­cies of DIY resis­tance, iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, and inter­gen­er­a­tional­i­ty in the dance music scene fea­tur­ing a range of Berlin & EU- based qtibpoc artists, cul­tur­al and com­mu­ni­ty workers.

From 2014 — 2021, Ari was a core cura­to­r­i­al mem­ber in one of Berlin’s few remain­ing inter­sec­tion­al & non-prof­it DIY spaces ; Raumer­weiterung­shalle, and co- organ­ised and facil­i­tat­ed a range of events aimed towards pro­mot­ing the engage­ment of Black and inter­sec­tion­al artists over the years ; most recent­ly includ­ing a 3- day vinyl DJ work­shop as part of the 2018–19 SWITCH Music Work­shops, which pro­vid­ed free and acces­si­ble elec­tron­ic music edu­ca­tion to inter­sec­tion­al qtibpoc in Berlin.

As The Neigh­bour­hood Char­ac­ter, Ari has released a num­ber of col­lab­o­ra­tive and solo projects both dig­i­tal­ly and on vinyl, played at a range of local and EU nightlife events and venues since 2015, host­ed radio pro­gram­ming on Berlin Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, THF Radio, with appear­ances on NTS, Radio80k, Night­shade FM and more. They have designed sound for a wide array of pro­duc­tions for inde­pen­dent artists and direc­tors, and col­lab­o­rat­ed with estab­lished com­pa­nies such as the Max­im-Gor­ki The­atre. Most recent­ly they have worked behind the scenes as part of the staff at Berlin’s Hard Wax, and cur­rent­ly leads an under­grad­u­ate mod­ule on Cre­ative Col­lab­o­ra­tion as a Lead Lec­tur­er at BIMM Insti­tute Berlin. 

 

Pho­to © speaker

15 Dec 2021


Speak­er : Alex Artea­ga
Aes­thet­ic Aur­al Research

Mod­er­a­tor : Sabine Sanio

This lec­ture address­es two suc­ces­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the con­cept of artis­tic research. The first con­sists in under­stand­ing this kind of research as a vari­ety of inquiry real­ized through aes­thet­ic prac­tices beyond the nor­ma­tiv­i­ty of the art sys­tem. “Aes­thet­ics” here will be out­lined in the frame­work of the enac­tive approach to cog­ni­tion basi­cal­ly as a kind of trans­for­ma­tive inter­ac­tion. The sec­ond spec­i­fi­ca­tion pro­pos­es a real­iza­tion of aes­thet­ic research in the aur­al sphere through the per­for­mance of prac­tices of hear­ing and listening.

Alex Artea­ga is an artist researcher who com­bines and hybridizes aes­thet­ic, phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal and enac­tivist research prac­tices through an inquiry into embod­i­ments, envi­ron­ments and aes­thet­ic cog­ni­tion. He stud­ied music the­o­ry, piano, elec­tron­ic music, com­po­si­tion and archi­tec­ture in Barcelona and Berlin and received a PhD in phi­los­o­phy at the Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty Berlin for his dis­ser­ta­tion Sen­su­ous Fram­ing : Fun­da­men­tals of a Strat­e­gy to Real­ize Con­di­tions of Per­cep­tion. He was post-doc research fel­low at the Col­legium for the Advanced Study of Pic­ture Act and Embod­i­ment (Hum­boldt Uni­ver­si­ty Berlin) and one of the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tors in the research project Visu­al and Audi­to­ry Per­cep­tu­al Appa­ra­tus for the Eval­u­a­tion of City Devel­op­ment in Agglom­er­a­tions (Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts). He has been vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor in dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts Helsin­ki and the Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts, cura­tor of the Research Ven­ter at a.pass (Brus­sels), senior researcher at KASK School of Art HOGENT in the frame­work of the research project Dis­trac­tion as Dis­ci­pline and mem­ber of the edi­to­r­i­al board of the Jour­nal for Artis­tic Research. Alex Artea­ga devel­ops long-term artis­tic research projects such as Archi­tec­ture of Embod­i­ment (www.architecture-embodiment. org) or Con­tin­gent Agen­cies (www.contingentagencies.net). 

 

Pho­to © speaker

12 Jan 2022


Speak­er : Ania Mauruschat

The Sym­pho­ny of Sirens by Avraamov/Ammer/Einheit as Artis­tic Research on the Polit­i­cal Dimen­sion of Noise

Mod­er­a­tor : Sabine Sanio

 

In Octo­ber 2017, the Ger­man radio play artists Andreas Ammer and FM Ein­heit restaged Arsenij Avraamovs Sym­pho­ny of Sirens, which is con­sid­ered to be the loud­est com­po­si­tion in music his­to­ry and has only been pre­sent­ed to the pub­lic two times : 1922 in Baku and 1923 in Moscow as cel­e­bra­tions of the Bol­shie rev­o­lu­tion. 100 years after Octo­ber 1917 Ammer and Ein­heit were invit­ed by the Phil­har­mon­ics Brno in Czech Repub­lic to stage it again due to the cen­te­nary of the rev­o­lu­tion. Instead of a sheer reen­act­ment Ammer and Ein­heit came up with their own inter­pre­ta­tion of Avraamov’s Sym­pho­ny of Sirens, which can be regard­ed as the result of their indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive artis­tic research of more than 30 year on the lega­cies of the avant-gardes, on devel­op­ments of acoustic tech­nol­o­gy and on Wal­ter Benjamin’s phi­los­o­phy of his­to­ry. The talk will expli­cate this claim by refer­ring to acoustic and visu­al examples.

Ania Mau­r­uschat is a Ger­man media stud­ies schol­ar (aes­thet­ics & ecol­o­gy, the­o­ry & cul­ture) and lec­tur­er, focussing on sound and radio. She was trained as a radio jour­nal­ist and as an edi­tor and edu­cat­ed in the human­i­ties and social sci­ences in Munich. From 2002 to 2012 she worked full-time for the press and pub­lic radio sta­tions, main­ly focussing on the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of dig­i­ti­za­tion on art, lit­er­a­ture and sci­ences. From 2012 to 2014 she worked as a sci­en­tif­ic assis­tant, lec­tur­er and project man­ag­er at the chair for media aes­thet­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Basel, Switzer­land. From 2018 to 2021 she was mem­ber of the PhD lab “Epis­te­molo­gies of Artis­tic Prac­tices”, work­ing on the epis­te­mol­o­gy of radio art. Since Sep­tem­ber she is Marie Curie Research Fel­low of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Copen­hagen, Den­mark. The title of her post­doc project is “Sound­ing Cri­sis” (www.soundingcrisis.eu).

 

Pho­to © speaker

19 Jan 2022


Speak­er : Bud­ha­ditya Chat­topad­hyay
Con­nect­ing Res­o­nances : A Decolo­nial Inter­ven­tion into Artis­tic Research in/through Sound and Listening

Mod­er­a­tor : Jacob Eriksen

 

The talk intends to cre­ate a fer­tile entry point into the his­to­ry, prac­tices and aes­thet­ics of sound and lis­ten­ing in South Asia as a key area of the Glob­al South. The talk facil­i­tates an under­stand­ing of the unique audi­to­ry cul­ture and son­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty of the under­ex­plored south­ern part of the globe by an artis­tic research approach depart­ing from the speaker’s own prac­tice with sound and lis­ten­ing. Such new knowl­edge fun­da­men­tal­ly shifts the per­spec­tives in sound stud­ies and in a glob­al son­ic art his­to­ry with a decolo­nial approach of co-lis­ten­ing with the mar­gin­al and nomadic voic­es in a mode of reci­procity. The talk re-exam­ines a fun­da­men­tal issue in the stud­ies of moder­ni­ty and glob­al­iza­tion con­cerned with media cul­tur­al encoun­ters and tech­no­log­i­cal trans­mis­sions between Glob­al North and South as a two-way process of post­colo­nial con­flu­ence. The project draws from the body of work of prac­ti­tion­ers active in South Asia, whose work has often been neglect­ed in the Euro­cen­tric field of sound stud­ies and son­ic arts.

Bud­ha­ditya Chat­topad­hyay is an artist, media prac­ti­tion­er, researcher, and writer. Incor­po­rat­ing diverse media, cre­ative tech­nolo­gies and research, Chat­topad­hyay pro­duces works for large-scale instal­la­tion and live per­for­mance address­ing con­tem­po­rary issues of envi­ron­ment and ecol­o­gy, migra­tion, race and decolo­nial­i­ty. Chat­topad­hyay has received numer­ous res­i­den­cies, fel­low­ships, and inter­na­tion­al awards. His sound works have been wide­ly exhib­it­ed, per­formed or pre­sent­ed across the globe, and released by Gru­en­reko­rder (DE) and Touch (UK). Chat­topad­hyay has an expan­sive body of schol­ar­ly pub­li­ca­tions in the areas of media art his­to­ry, the­o­ry and aes­thet­ics, cin­e­ma and sound stud­ies in lead­ing peer-reviewed jour­nals. He is the author of three books, The Nomadic Lis­ten­er (2020), The Audi­to­ry Set­ting (2021), and Between the Head­phones (2021). Chat­topad­hyay holds a PhD in Artis­tic Research and Sound Stud­ies from the Acad­e­my of Cre­ative and Per­form­ing Arts, Lei­den Uni­ver­si­ty, and an MA in New Media from the Fac­ul­ty of Arts, Aarhus University.

https://budhaditya.org/

Pho­to © Jan­no Bergmann For Cop­per Leg

26 Jan 2022


Speak­er : Jen­ny Gräf Shep­pard
Son­ic Ori­en­ta­tions Ambison­ics Research
Mod­er­a­tor : Jacob Eriksen

 

In this talk I will present the frame­work for research that takes place with­in the research project, Son­ic Ori­en­ta­tions, as a means to describe how sound and son­ic method­olo­gies func­tion as artic­u­la­tions. I use the terms sound­ing to refer to a range of spe­cif­ic son­ic method­olo­gies that work to col­lapse (or per­haps ques­tion) dis­tinc­tions of sounder/listener, subject/object, audience/artist, while also serv­ing to empha­size in the present par­tici­ple the move­ment, time, change and action of prac­tice. In shar­ing the the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work of the project along with audio-visu­al doc­u­men­ta­tion, I aim to share the ways in which we are sound­ing research. The project com­pris­es one part of my PhD titled Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Ves­sels : redefin­ing agency through sounding.

Son­ic Ori­en­ta­tions, fund­ed by the Dan­ish Min­istry of Cul­ture, estab­lish­es a facil­i­ty and research group around Ambison­ics (3D sound) and its poten­tial in Media Art to open up new per­spec­tives on sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and nar­ra­tive through spa­tial­ized sound. Son­ic Ori­en­ta­tions research is framed by the ques­tion : What are some of the meth­ods and tech­niques that can be used with­in Ambison­ic immer­sive sound to exper­i­ment with shift­ing sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, ori­en­ta­tions and new nar­ra­tive forms ? The project ini­ti­ates an inter­na­tion­al dia­logue around this par­tic­u­lar sound tech­nol­o­gy and its poten­tial in VR and Media Art for­mats to re-ori­ent the lis­ten­ing sub­ject. A research group works to devel­op approach­es to Ambison­ics cham­ber as not sim­ply a tool, but as a cre­ative instru­ment for work­ing with flu­id sub­jec­tiv­i­ties and exper­i­men­tal nar­ra­tive approach­es. With the­o­ret­i­cal texts that inform our cre­ative exper­i­ments, we are push­ing the poten­tial of this very under-stud­ied form of 3D sound. By explor­ing this immer­sive sound tech­nol­o­gy and asso­ci­at­ed prac­tice from a the­o­ret­i­cal per­spec­tive, the aim is to con­nect var­i­ous the­o­ret­i­cal ideas with the expe­ri­en­tial poten­tial of spa­tial­ized sound, offer­ing new per­spec­tives on sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, agency and narrative.

Jen­ny Gräf Shep­pard is a musi­cian, artist and sound researcher based in Copen­hagen. In her work, she acti­vates periph­er­al places and states through sound com­po­si­tion, impro­vi­sa­tion and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry works. She works with immer­sion and rup­ture to explore chang­ing per­cep­tions of die­ge­sis and space, for­mal choic­es root­ed in a deep inter­est in social behav­iors and per­cep­tu­al fields. Her works range from sound col­lab­o­ra­tions with old­er women with demen­tia, to tac­tile speak­er design, and col­lab­o­ra­tive research with­in an Ambison­ic chamber.

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2 Feb 2022


Speak­er : Åsa Stjer­na
Son­ic Doc­u­men­tarism?- An Eco­soph­i­cal Per­spec­tive
Mod­er­a­tor : Julia H. Schröder

 

In the era referred to as the Anthro­pocene, Son­ic arts play an impor­tant role in prob­lema­tiz­ing and mak­ing expe­ri­ence­able the glob­al con­di­tion. Son­ic prac­tices such as field record­ings and forms of soni­fi­ca­tion, at the same time con­sti­tute prac­tices of wit­ness­ing, mak­ing audi­ble usu­al­ly inaudi­ble data, and mak­ing con­nec­tions between the local and the global.

But what hap­pens to the “doc­u­men­tary” when sci­en­tif­ic state­ments are trans­formed into an artis­tic con­text ? And con­verse­ly, what hap­pens to the “artis­tic” in the engage­ment with sci­en­tif­ic data ? In this pre­sen­ta­tion, Åsa Stjer­na dis­cuss­es the pos­si­bil­i­ties and dilem­mas of son­ic prac­tice as doc­u­men­tary prac­tice, draw­ing on her own artis­tic prac­tice and artis­tic research.

Åsa Stjer­na is a Swedish artist using sound and lis­ten­ing as her artis­tic modes of explo­ration. Through her site-spe­cif­ic instal­la­tions, she explores sound’s poten­tial, mak­ing the embed­ded con­di­tions and under­ly­ing nar­ra­tives con­nect­ed to a sit­u­a­tion per­ceiv­able, draw­ing con­nec­tions between past and present, local and glob­al, as well as human and more-than human. By this she seeks to reframe the act of lis­ten­ing, evok­ing a sen­si­bil­i­ty of places as com­plex ecologies.

Also active as artis­tic researcher, she has been specif­i­cal­ly inter­est­ed in explor­ing the con­tem­po­rary con­di­tions of son­ic sit­u­at­ed prac­tice and its abil­i­ty of being trans­for­ma­tive, i.e. what it actu­al­ly means “to make a dif­fer­ence” in the era of Antrophocene and advanced cap­i­tal­ism. Guid­ed by method­olo­gies of  fem­i­nism, ecos­o­phy and posthu­man­ism she pro­pos­es an under­stand­ing of site-speci­fici­ty as an aesthetic–ethical prac­tice  and engage­ment between spe­cif­ic and diverse “bod­ies” with agencies—human as well as non-human, span­ning across and con­nect­ing the mate­r­i­al, social, dis­cur­sive, artis­tic, and tech­ni­cal realms at the same time in a giv­en situation. 

Stjer­na has par­tic­i­pat­ed in an exten­sive num­ber of exhi­bi­tions inter­na­tion­al­ly, among oth­er Klangstaet­ten Stadtk­länge Braun­schweig,  the Trans­me­di­ale Media Fes­ti­val, Berlin ; the Nordic Music Days, Stock­holm ; the Ulti­ma Con­tem­po­rary Music fes­ti­val, Oslo and the Akademie der Kün­ste, Berlin. Her works include sev­er­al pub­lic per­ma­nents com­mis­sions : Earth Song (2020), com­mis­sioned by Stock­holm Kon­st ; Sky Brought Down (2017) Sahlgren­s­ka uni­ver­si­ty hos­pi­tal in Gothen­burg, Swe­den com­mis­sioned by Väs­tra Göta­land­sre­gio­nens kon­sten­het and The Well (2014) at Swedish Insti­tute in Paris com­mis­sioned by the Pub­lic Art Agency Sweden.

Stjer­na rep­re­sents pro­fes­sor­ship sound art at Hochschule für bildende Kün­ste in Braun­schweig, Ger­many, 2020–2021.

 

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