Events   /  SoundS

THE SONIC REAL

24+25 September 2021 | Online Conference

TheSonicReal-udkbackground
Screen Shot 2021-09-24 at 17.12.33

Pho­tos © Kathrin Scheidt

24 Septe­mer 2021 | 4–7 p.m.

25 Septe­mer 2021 | 4–9 p.m.

online

 

The Son­ic Real Onlince Con­fer­ence focus­es on recent debates on the real in phi­los­o­phy and the son­ic arts. Over the past decades, artis­tic posi­tions in exper­i­men­tal music and sound art have been ques­tion­ing the empha­sis on sub­jec­tiv­i­ty while explor­ing the unno­ticed and the inaudi­ble. Ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion of the thresh­olds of audi­bil­i­ty, son­ic media reflex­iv­i­ty and the rela­tion­ships between sound and space show the increased inter­est in an aes­thet­ics of the real.

Select the­o­rists from phi­los­o­phy, media the­o­ry and musi­col­o­gy as well as musi­cians dis­cussed the rela­tion­ship between the dif­fer­ent the­o­ret­i­cal notions of the real and the son­ic arts.

 

This D‑A-CH project con­fer­ence was co-host­ed by the Zürcher Hochschule der Kün­ste and the IMR Insti­tute for Music Research and fund­ed by Deutsche Forschungs­ge­mein­schaft and the Swiss Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion.

 

24 SEP 2021 | 4PM 

Prof. Dr. Christoph Cox und Prof. Dr. Markus Rautzenberg in conversation, moderated by Dr. des. Bernhard Rietbrock

 

Philo­soph­i­cal Con­cepts of the Real

This talk focused on philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts of the real. The start­ing point traces back to Lacan’s descrip­tion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal sys­tem by means of the Real, the Sym­bol­ic, and the Imag­i­nary. Where­as in the arts sym­bol­iza­tion and imag­i­na­tion stand for the posi­tion of pro­duc­tion aes­thet­ics, the Real that accord­ing to Lacan eludes sym­bol­iza­tion as well as imag­i­na­tion refers main­ly to aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ence. Accord­ing to the the­o­ry, the var­i­ous cur­rents in the arts are dis­tin­guished by the Real, with which they set out to come to terms and which is dis­cussed in aes­thet­ic the­o­ry as the unut­ter­able which can­not be said, or as the pre­vi­ous­ly inaudi­ble, which, of course, is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance for the son­ic real at hand. One of the essen­tial aspects of the dis­cus­sion between Christoph Cox and Markus Rautzen­berg was be the attempt to illu­mi­nate the con­se­quences that fol­low from dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of the real which ulti­mate­ly lead to dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ic conclusions. 

Prof. Dr. Christoph Cox teach­es and writes on con­tem­po­rary Euro­pean phi­los­o­phy, cul­tur­al the­o­ry, and aes­thet­ics. He is the author of Son­ic Flux : Sound, Art, and Meta­physics (Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, 2018) and Niet­zsche : Nat­u­ral­ism and Inter­pre­ta­tion (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Press, 1999), and co-edi­tor of Real­ism Mate­ri­al­ism Art (Stern­berg, 2015) and Audio Cul­ture : Read­ings in Mod­ern Music (Con­tin­uüm, 2004/2017). The recip­i­ent of an Arts Writ­ers Grant from Cre­ative Capital/Warhol Foun­da­tion, Cox is edi­tor-at-large at Cab­i­net mag­a­zine. Christoph Cox is cur­rent­ly vice pres­i­dent for Aca­d­e­m­ic Affairs and dean of fac­ul­ty and pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Hamp­shire College.

 

Prof. Dr. Markus Rautzen­berg is a philoso­pher and media the­o­reti­cian. His chief areas of research are media the­o­ry, the­o­ry of images, aes­thet­ics and epis­te­mol­o­gy. From 2011 to 2014, he head­ed the DFG-project “Evoka­tion. Zur non-visuellen Macht der Bilder (Evo­ca­tion. On the non-visu­al pow­er of images)” at Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin and has pub­lished Markus Rautzen­berg : Bild und Spiel. Medi­en der Ungewis­sheit, Pader­born 2020 ; Ungründe. Per­spek­tiv­en prekär­er Fundierung with Juliane Schif­fers in 2016 and Tri­al and Error. Szenar­ien medi­alen Han­delns with Andreas Wolf­stein­er in 2014. Since 2016, he has been Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at the Folk­wang Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Essen.

 

Dr. des. Bern­hard Riet­brock stud­ied Sound Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Berlin, where he also received his PhD at the Fac­ul­ty of Music on the top­ic of Alvin Lucier’s Reflex­ive Exper­i­men­tal Aes­thet­ics. He has been a research asso­ciate at the Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts since 2014, where he cur­rent­ly leads the Swiss side of the DACH research project Hear­ing the Oth­er — On the Aes­thet­ic of the Real in Exper­i­men­tal Music and Sound Art at the Insti­tute for Music Research. In 2016, he found­ed the Ever Present Orches­tra at the ZHdK as part of the research project Reflex­ive Exper­i­men­tal Aes­thet­ics after Alvin Luci­er, with which he has since giv­en con­certs world­wide as artis­tic direc­tor togeth­er with Alvin Lucier.

Graph­ics © Kathrin Scheidt

24 SEP 2021 | 6PM

Volker Straebel and Dr. Luc Doebereiner in conversation, moderated by Jan Thoben

 

Media Speci­fici­ty and Son­ic Materialism

A mate­ri­al­ist under­stand­ing of sound address­es not only its cor­po­re­al, tan­gi­ble and affec­tive dimen­sions as dis­tinct from sub­jec­tivist thought and spir­it. It also rais­es ques­tions about sound’s tech­ni­cal medi­a­tion. What role does media tech­nol­o­gy play in con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing the son­ic real ? While media and the real bear an intrin­sic rela­tion­ship, the claim that (record­ed) sound itself pro­vides direct access to the real has been sub­ject­ed to crit­i­cal scruti­ny. Volk­er Straebel and Luc Döbere­in­er pre­sent­ed per­spec­tives on son­ic mate­ri­al­ism and on media spe­cif­ic strate­gies in the son­ic arts.

 

Volk­er Straebel (1969) is a musi­col­o­gist focus­ing on exper­i­men­tal and elec­tro-acoustic music, sound art, inter­me­dia, per­for­mance and con­cept art. Between 2015 and 2020, he was 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. Since 2021, he serves as the Dean of the Herb Alpert School of Music at the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of the Arts

Luc Döbere­in­er is a researcher and com­pos­er of instru­men­tal and elec­tron­ic music from Berlin. He stud­ied at the Insti­tute of Sonol­o­gy in The Hague and holds a doc­tor­al degree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Music and Per­form­ing Arts Graz. His work is con­cerned with com­po­si­tion­al mod­els and explores the rela­tion of mate­ri­al­i­ty, ide­al­i­ty, per­cep­tion and algo­rith­mic com­pu­ta­tion of sound.

Jan Thoben is a Berlin-based musi­col­o­gist, art his­to­ri­an and musi­cian. He has been teach­ing at uni­ver­si­ties and art uni­ver­si­ties in Ger­many and the UK since 2013. He worked as a research and teach­ing assis­tant at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Leipzig from 2015–2017 and at the Mainz Acad­e­my of Arts from 2017–2019. Since 2017, he has been the inter­im pro­gram coör­di­na­tor for the mas­ter’s pro­gram Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts at the Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts, where he took over as inter­im pro­gram direc­tor in 2021.

Jan Thoben has pub­lished on exper­i­men­tal music as well as on sound art and media art prac­tices of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry (https://udk-berlin.academia.edu/JanThoben).

Togeth­er with Bern­hard Riet­brock and Trevor Saint, he is artis­tic direc­tor of the Ever Present Orches­tra (http://everpresentorchestra.net) and has worked on audio­vi­su­al trans­for­ma­tion in the con­text of var­i­ous sound art projects.

Graph­ics © Kathrin Scheidt

25 SEP 2021 | 4PM

Prof. Dr. Judith Siegmund and Dr. Rahma Khazam in conversation, moderated by Prof. Dr. Sabine Sanio

 

Recon­sid­er­ing the Philoso­phies of the Real

Works of son­ic art fre­quent­ly use tech­nol­o­gy to bring to our atten­tion sounds that lie beyond human per­cep­tion. There are good argu­ments for see­ing in this trend an engage­ment with con­tem­po­rary philo­soph­i­cal debates on the real. Draw­ing on exam­ples of art­works that seek to engage with the non-human dimen­sions of sound, this talk explored and crit­i­cal­ly exam­ined the ways in which spec­u­la­tive real­ist philoso­phies approach the aes­thet­ics of the real.

Dr. Rah­ma Khaz­am is a researcher in con­tem­po­rary aes­thet­ics affil­i­at­ed to Insti­tut ACTE, Sor­bonne Paris 1. She stud­ied phi­los­o­phy and art his­to­ry and received her Ph.D from the Sor­bonne in aes­thet­ics and art the­o­ry. Her research ranges from mod­ernism and image the­o­ry to spec­u­la­tive real­ism and new mate­ri­al­ism and has been pub­lished in edit­ed vol­umes, aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals and exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logues. Recent pub­li­ca­tions include “Art, Sci­ence and the Mutant Object” in Post-Spec­i­men Encoun­ters Between Art, Sci­ence and Curat­ing, 2020 and “Son et Image : Face au Réel” in L’é­cho du Réel, 2021.

Since the ear­ly 1990s, Prof. Dr. Judith Sieg­mund has come to the pub­lic’s atten­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry con­cep­tu­al art with video works as well as mul­ti­me­dia instal­la­tions and doc­u­men­tary books. Char­ac­ter­is­tic of her work­ing method is the attempt to cap­ture the every­day dis­cours­es of var­i­ous par­tic­i­pants, and to reflect them — aes­thet­i­cal­ly trans­formed but unfil­tered in terms of con­tent — back into the pub­lic space.

Sieg­mund’s back­ground is in phi­los­o­phy and the fine arts, and she was Junior Pro­fes­sor for The­o­ry of Design / Aes­thet­ic The­o­ry and Gen­der The­o­ry at the Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts from 2011 to 2018. There she found­ed the three-year research project “Auton­o­my and Func­tion­al­iza­tion — An Aes­thet­ic-Cul­tur­al-His­tor­i­cal Analy­sis of Art Terms in the Visu­al Arts in Berlin from the 1990s to Today”.  Prof. Dr. Judith Sieg­mund has been Pro­fes­sor of Philo­soph­i­cal Aes­thet­ics at the Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts since March 2021.

Prof. Dr. Sabine Sanio, head of the depart­ment „The­o­rie und Geschichte audi­tiv­er Kul­tur“ (the­o­ry and his­to­ry of audi­tive cul­ture) at the Mas­ter’s pro­gram Sound Stud­ies, Uni­ver­sität der Kün­ste Berlin ; stud­ied ger­man lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy ; numer­ous arti­cles about actu­al aes­thet­ics, media aes­thet­ics and media his­to­ry, Son­ic Arts, New and Exper­i­men­tal Music and about the rela­tion­ship between the arts.

Graph­ics © Kathrin Scheidt

25 SEP 2021 | 6PM

Charles Curtis und Dr. des. Bernhard Rietbrock in conversation

 

Per­form­ing the Real

Cel­list Charles Cur­tis was born in 1960 in Lagu­na Beach, Cal­i­for­nia. After attend­ing Juil­liard he taught part-time at Prince­ton, per­formed wide­ly in the solo and cham­ber music reper­toire, and worked with the bands King Mis­sile, Dog­bowl and You Suck. From 1989 to 1999 he was prin­ci­pal cel­list of the Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra of the North Ger­man Radio in Ham­burg. His long cre­ative rela­tion­ships with exper­i­men­tal­ists such as La Monte Young and Mar­i­an Zazeela, Alvin Luci­er, Tashi Wada and Éliane Radigue have brought into being a body of dis­tinc­tive works mod­eled on his cel­lo-play­ing and per­form­ing per­sona. Nald­jor­lak (2003−2005) by Éliane Radigue is a con­cert-length solo cel­lo work made col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Cur­tis, her first com­po­si­tion for an acoustic instru­ment and a live per­former with­out ampli­fi­ca­tion or elec­tron­ic sup­port. Some fif­teen com­po­si­tions by Alvin Luci­er have involved Cur­tis in a cen­tral capac­i­ty ; and he is the lead­ing inter­preter of La Monte Young’s just into­na­tion string music in the world. Cur­tis is Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­for­nia, San Diego.

Dr. des. Bern­hard Riet­brock stud­ied Sound Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Berlin, where he also received his PhD at the Fac­ul­ty of Music on the top­ic of Alvin Lucier’s Reflex­ive Exper­i­men­tal Aes­thet­ics. He has been a research asso­ciate at the Zurich Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts since 2014, where he cur­rent­ly leads the Swiss side of the DACH research project Hear­ing the Oth­er — On the Aes­thet­ic of the Real in Exper­i­men­tal Music and Sound Art at the Insti­tute for Music Research. In 2016, he found­ed the Ever Present Orches­tra at the ZHdK as part of the research project Reflex­ive Exper­i­men­tal Aes­thet­ics after Alvin Luci­er, with which he has since giv­en con­certs world­wide as artis­tic direc­tor togeth­er with Alvin Lucier.

Graph­ics © Kathrin Scheidt

25 SEP 2021 | 7PM

Concert Charles Curtis (cello)

 

Cel­list Charles Cur­tis was born in 1960 in Lagu­na Beach, Cal­i­for­nia. After attend­ing Juil­liard he taught part-time at Prince­ton, per­formed wide­ly in the solo and cham­ber music reper­toire, and worked with the bands King Mis­sile, Dog­bowl and You Suck. From 1989 to 1999 he was prin­ci­pal cel­list of the Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra of the North Ger­man Radio in Ham­burg. His long cre­ative rela­tion­ships with exper­i­men­tal­ists such as La Monte Young and Mar­i­an Zazeela, Alvin Luci­er, Tashi Wada and Éliane Radigue have brought into being a body of dis­tinc­tive works mod­eled on his cel­lo-play­ing and per­form­ing per­sona. Nald­jor­lak (2003−2005) by Éliane Radigue is a con­cert-length solo cel­lo work made col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with Cur­tis, her first com­po­si­tion for an acoustic instru­ment and a live per­former with­out ampli­fi­ca­tion or elec­tron­ic sup­port. Some fif­teen com­po­si­tions by Alvin Luci­er have involved Cur­tis in a cen­tral capac­i­ty ; and he is the lead­ing inter­preter of La Monte Young’s just into­na­tion string music in the world. Cur­tis is Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor of Music at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­for­nia, San Diego.

Graph­ics © Kathrin Scheidt

Graph­ics © Kathrin Scheidt