Events   /  SoundS

SOUND IN ARTISTIC RESEARCH

public lecture series

WiSe 2023/24

Pho­tos © Kathrin Scheidt

6 Nov 2023 — 12 Feb 2024

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

 

Dur­ing the win­ter semes­ter 2023/24, Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts presents the sec­ond lec­ture series explor­ing sound in artis­tic research. The Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts 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.

 

Mod­er­at­ed by Prof. Dr. Sabine Sanio

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.

6 Nov 2023


Speak­er : Prof. Georg Klein

Based on Re-search

 

Sound artist Georg Klein com­bines the­o­ret­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions with an artis­tic per­spec­tive on the sub­ject of artis­tic research. Start­ing point are Dieter Mer­sch’s reflec­tions, which he pre­sent­ed dur­ing the last lec­ture series at SoundS and in his book “Epis­te­molo­gies of Aes­thet­ics”. Using exam­ples from his own artis­tic devel­op­ment of research-based sound art over the last 25 years, both ini­tial con­di­tions and artis­tic results are pre­sent­ed and put up for dis­cus­sion. The con­cep­tu­al dis­tinc­tion between research (“Forschung”) and inves­ti­ga­tion (“Recher­ché”) plays an impor­tant role, as does the dif­fer­ent poten­tial with regard to pub­lic impact of the outcome.

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).

 
link to pdf

Pho­to © speakers

13 Nov 2023


Speak­er : Dr. Pedro Oliveira

Crossover/Crosstalk

 

In this talk I will present and dis­cuss my ambigu­ous rela­tion­ship with meth­ods as they emerge in both my aca­d­e­m­ic and artis­tic prac­tice, focus­ing on ways of arriv­ing and find­ing com­fort in unset­tle­ment. Using the bor­der as both object of study and place of enun­ci­a­tion – large­ly inspired by the work of Glo­ria Anzaldúa –, with my work and research I seek to probe and rehearse the lim­its and lim­i­ta­tions of the artis­tic and aca­d­e­m­ic by com­pli­cat­ing the bound­aries and demands of both. I will out­line these issues with and through my most recent artis­tic pro­duc­tion, which stems from my long term project of inquir­ing the so-called “dialect recog­ni­tion soft­ware” used by the Ger­man migra­tion author­i­ties in asy­lum cas­es. We will lis­ten and dis­cuss the ways in which these works are tra­versed by and speak to aca­d­e­m­ic research and polit­i­cal activism.

Dr. Pedro Oliveira is a researcher and sound artist whose work is com­mit­ted to an anti­colo­nial study of lis­ten­ing and its inter­sec­tions with vio­lence at the Euro­pean bor­der. He has exhib­it­ed and per­formed work at the Akademie der Kün­ste Berlin, Send/Receive Fes­ti­val Win­nipeg, CTM Fes­ti­val, Blaues Rauschen Fes­ti­val, Haus der Kul­turen der Welt, Fon­dazione Merz Tori­no, Fes­ti­val Novas Fre­qûen­cias, Akademie Schloss Soli­tude, the Max-Planck Insti­tute, among oth­ers. Cur­rent­ly he is a Research and Arts Fel­low at the Leuphana Insti­tute for Advanced Stud­ies, and occa­sion­al lec­tur­er at the Sound Stud­ies and Son­ic Arts at the Uni­ver­sität der Kün­ste Berlin. He holds a PhD from the Uni­ver­sität der Kün­ste Berlin. 

 

https://oliveira.work

Pho­to © speakers

20 Nov 2023


Speak­er : Prof. Dr. phil. Christa Brüstle 

Artis­tic Research – Affir­ma­tive View of a Musicologist

 

Artis­tic Research – Affir­ma­tive View of a Musicologist

In the cur­rent dis­course of Artis­tic Research, many artists and some philoso­phers are rep­re­sent­ed, but hard­ly any voic­es from aca­d­e­m­ic musi­col­o­gy. The dia­logue between the dis­ci­plines would undoubt­ed­ly be more than nec­es­sary. The lec­ture will dis­cuss a musi­co­log­i­cal posi­tion that is sup­port­ive and coöper­a­tive. It is the result of my own expe­ri­ences as a super­vi­sor of artis­tic-sci­en­tif­ic doc­tor­al stu­dents. Above all, it turned out that a proces­su­al approach to artis­tic work­ing meth­ods and their ver­bal­iza­tion are cen­tral in a joint project of Artis­tic Research. The mutu­al under­stand­ing of art and sci­ence is a win-win sit­u­a­tion for every­one involved.

Prof. Dr. phil. Christa Brüs­tle is Senior Sci­en­tist in Musi­col­o­gy and since 2012 Direc­tor of the Cen­tre for Gen­der Research and Diver­si­ty as well as  Pro­fes­sor of Musi­col­o­gy, Women’s and Gen­der Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Music and Per­form­ing Arts Graz from 2016–2021. From 1999 to 2005 and 2008 she was a mem­ber of the Col­lab­o­ra­tive Research Cen­ter “Cul­tures of the Per­for­ma­tive” at the Free Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin, where she fin­ished her post-doc qual­i­fi­ca­tion in 2007. From 2008 to 2011 she was a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor at the Berlin Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts and in 2014 a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of musi­col­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hei­del­berg. She is also a board mem­ber of the Insti­tut für Neue Musik und Musik­erziehung (INMM) Darm­stadt. Her pub­li­ca­tions include Konz­ert-Szenen. Bewe­gung – Per­for­mance – Medi­en. Musik zwis­chen per­for­ma­tiv­er Expan­sion und medi­aler Inte­gra­tion 1950 – 2000, Stuttgart 2013 ; Text as Source and Mate­r­i­al in Con­tem­po­rary Music The­atre (Stu­di­en zur Wer­tungs­forschung 65), Wien 2023.

Pho­to © speaker

4 Dec 2023


Speak­er : Sam Auinger

Think­ing with the Ears – towards a Hear­ing Perspective

 

Think­ing with the Ears – towards a Hear­ing Perspective

Look­ing back on my more than 35 years of artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bruce Odland, we oper­at­ed from the begin­ning with devel­op­ing an audi­to­ry per­spec­tive as a gen­er­al approach to our cre­ative works, main­ly sound instal­la­tions in pub­lic spaces. Our work was an ongo­ing artis­tic research that touched all the areas that seemed rel­e­vant to us to under­stand how sound is cre­at­ed, how peo­ple per­ceive sound and what sto­ries the ears tell. Acoustics, design and mate­ri­als, psy­choa­coustics, neu­rol­o­gy, and phys­i­ol­o­gy, in the sense of why do I hear what I hear, includ­ing all the cul­tur­al and social impli­ca­tions that a sound event trig­gers in us, are the cen­tral ques­tions of this research. This approach result­ed in meth­ods, prac­tices, and insights that helped us and is still help­ing us in our work. Our approach which we named hear­ing per­spec­tive, cre­at­ed and still gen­er­ates dis­course mate­r­i­al in many relat­ed and unre­lat­ed fields such as archi­tec­ture, urban plan­ning, study of the sens­es and the polit­i­cal dimen­sion of sounds. In my lec­ture “Think­ing with the Ears — towards a Hear­ing Per­spec­tive,” I will dis­cuss our artis­tic research employ­ing some works and give insights into our work­ing process.

Sam Auinger is a son­ic thinker, com­pos­er, and sound artist. His artis­tic research focus­es on deep­en­ing the under­stand­ing of acoustic/auditory qual­i­ties in urban liv­ing envi­ron­ments. He prop­a­gates a “think­ing with the ears.” For him, it is a crit­i­cal every­day prac­tice for under­stand­ing our role in an endan­gered plan­e­tary cli­mate at all lev­els, from the social to the eco­log­i­cal. Togeth­er with artist Bruce Odland, he found­ed O+A in 1989. Their cen­tral theme is hear­ing per­spec­tive. They are known for their per­ma­nent sound instal­la­tions in pub­lic spaces, tun­ing — trans­form­ing urban sound in real-time. As in the works har­mon­ic bridge Mass­Mo­ca (US) since 1998, Son­ic Vista Frank­furt (D) since 2011, and at doc­u­men­ta 14 with “Sym­pho­ny of Res­o­nances” in Thes­sa­loni­ki (GR) in 2017, among others.

Pho­to © speaker

18 Dec 2023


Speak­er : Dr. Gilles Aubry

Plur­al Sound Aes­thet­ics : Artis­tic research on sound, aural­i­ty, and ecol­o­gy in Morocco

 

Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of his book “Sawt, Bod­ies, Species” (Adocs 2023), Gilles Aubry presents find­ings from his doc­tor­al research on sound and aural­i­ty in Moroc­co. Engag­ing with artists, musi­cians, and sci­en­tists, Aubry’s more-than-son­ic approach encom­pass­es a wide range of prac­tices, includ­ing music archives, seis­mol­o­gy, Sufi heal­ing, indus­tri­al extrac­tivism, and eco­log­i­cal voic­es. The pre­sen­ta­tion empha­sizes **/collaboration/**as a com­pre­hen­sive method­ol­o­gy for the co-pro­duc­tion and medi­a­tion of knowl­edge in both anthro­po­log­i­cal and artis­tic research. This involves obser­va­tions, con­ver­sa­tions, exper­i­ments, and per­for­ma­tive inter­ven­tions con­duct­ed with local peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties. Lis­ten­ing takes a cen­tral role in these exchanges, with a focus on the poten­tial for social, polit­i­cal, and eco­log­i­cal change.

Dr. Gilles Aubry oper­ates between of sound and visu­al arts, exper­i­men­tal music, and aca­d­e­m­ic research. His cre­ations include instal­la­tions, films, per­for­mances, and radio pieces, delv­ing into son­ic mate­ri­al­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy, and ecol­o­gy. Aubry’s works have been show­cased at numer­ous inter­na­tion­al art insti­tu­tions, music venues, fes­ti­vals, and con­fer­ences, includ­ing Son­ic Acts Ams­ter­dam (2010), Ultra­schall Fes­ti­val Berlin (2015), doc­u­men­ta 14 in Kas­sel (2017), HKW Berlin (2018), Reina Sofia Muse­um in Madrid (2020), and Tai­wan Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val (2021). He holds a PhD in social anthro­pol­o­gy and teach­es sound art at UDK and HMKW Berlin. Pub­lished by Adocs Press in 2023, Aubry’s book “Sawt, Bod­ies, Species” offers an in-depth account of sound and aural­i­ty in Morocco.

www.earpolitics.net

Pho­to © speaker

15 Jan 2024


Speak­er : Dr. Elen Flügge

Lis­ten­ing while : audi­to­ry prac­tices in research

 

What, and how, are we ‘study­ing’ when we under­take sound stud­ies ? We might be observ­ing our own lis­ten­ing habits and those of oth­ers. We might be inves­ti­gat­ing acoustics on site or the­o­riz­ing how ‘lis­ten­ing’ is under­stood in a par­tic­u­lar social con­text. Often, we are using some form of lis­ten­ing to inves­ti­gate oth­er phe­nom­e­na, places, or per­sons. Lis­ten­ing while walk­ing, record­ing, inter­view­ing, writ­ing or draw­ing can all become the basis for prac­ti­cal meth­ods. This lec­ture explores a num­ber of lis­ten­ing prac­tices – in the sense of for­mal­ized and applied uses of lis­ten­ing – as means of under­stand­ing shared audi­to­ry envi­ron­ments. These include meth­ods employed in artis­tic and qual­i­ta­tive research in son­ic arts as well as oth­er dis­ci­plines, which have used tech­niques such as lis­ten­ing walks or audio record­ing in research designs. This talk con­sid­ers how lis­ten­ing prac­tices might be con­strued as sit­u­at­ed, mul­ti­fac­eted, cul­tur­al­ly-embed­ded, and adapt­able tools for process­es of knowl­edge cre­ation and/or disruption.

Dr. Elen Flügge is a writer, researcher and sound artist, focus­ing on per­son­al and urban sound space, site spe­cif­ic works, and lis­ten­ing per­spec­tives. After study­ing phi­los­o­phy at Bard Col­lege, NY, she obtained a Sound Stud­ies mas­ters at the UdK (Uni­ver­si­ty of Arts) in Berlin, focus­ing on audi­to­ry cul­ture and exper­i­men­tal sound installation.


She recent­ly com­plet­ed her PhD, “Lis­ten­ing Prac­tices for Urban Sound Space in Belfast” at SARC (Son­ic Arts Research Cen­tre) at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast, UK, in coöper­a­tion with Recom­pos­ing the City research group. Her project used meth­ods drawn from son­ic arts and ethnog­ra­phy, such as con­ver­sa­tion­al sound­walks, to explore inhab­i­tants’ audi­to­ry expe­ri­ence in pub­lic spaces and con­sid­er poten­tials of city sound plan­ning. Flügge has been active in numer­ous musi­cal projects and ensem­bles, with vio­lin as well as voice, such as HIVE exper­i­men­tal choir in Belfast. Her pub­li­ca­tions on son­ic arts and lis­ten­ing include a chap­ter for the Blooms­bury Hand­book of Sound Art (2020).

personalsoundspace.com
http://hivechoir.com/
   

She is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing a sound­walk for the upcom­ing Klangstaet­ten / Stadtk­laenge fes­ti­val in Braun­schweig 2023. https://www.klangstaetten.de/

Pho­to © speaker

29 Jan 2024


Speak­er : Dr. Zeynep Bulut

His­tor­i­cal Turns and Promis­es of Sound­ing Together

This talk con­sid­ers the his­tor­i­cal terms and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance of artis­tic research in sound. The term, “artis­tic research,” has been employed in aca­d­e­m­ic and cre­ative con­texts since the ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry. Rad­i­cal for­ma­tions of the time, such as the Bauhaus School and Black Moun­tain Col­lege, intro­duced inter and cross-dis­ci­pli­nary pos­si­bil­i­ties of art mak­ing, and informed art mak­ing as research. They also under­lined the process­es of art mak­ing both as an indi­vid­ual and as a com­mu­nal prac­tice asso­ci­at­ed with the foun­da­tions of “demo­c­ra­t­ic cit­i­zen.” (Turn­er 2013, 2019). Since then, var­i­ous research ini­tia­tives, which use the terms like prac­tice-based research, research-based art or artis­tic research, have direct­ly or indi­rect­ly incor­po­rat­ed these ideas into their pro­grammes. In par­tic­u­lar, artis­tic research in sound has pur­sued and con­tributed to exper­i­men­tal, expe­ri­en­tial, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, col­lab­o­ra­tive, social­ly engaged, and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry turns of cre­ative, social, and sci­en­tif­ic research. The promise of these turns and the artis­tic research is arguably to devel­op crit­i­cal and unortho­dox meth­ods to raise aware­ness for indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive envi­rons, to fur­ther con­tex­tu­alise, ques­tion, and dis­cuss con­tem­po­rary social issues such as the cli­mate cri­sis, mobil­i­ty and migra­tion, as well as to high­light sound mak­ing and sound­ing togeth­er as a trans­for­ma­tive way for con­sid­er­ing new ways of being togeth­er. In this talk, I take a close look at this promise. Draw­ing on works by Pauline Oliv­eros, Lina Lape­lyte, and John Akom­frah, I will explore dif­fer­ent forms of sound mak­ing and sound­ing togeth­er and what they may capac­i­tate and transform.

Dr. Zeynep Bulut has been a Lec­tur­er in Music at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast since 2017. She was pre­vi­ous­ly an Ear­ly Career Lec­tur­er in Music at King’s Col­lege Lon­don (2013−2017), a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at the ICI Berlin Insti­tute for Cul­tur­al Inquiry (2011−2013), and a vis­it­ing post­doc­tor­al fel­low at the Max Planck Research Group “Epis­temes of Mod­ern Acoustics,” led by Prof. Dr. Vik­to­ria Tkaczyk at the Max Planck Insti­tute for the His­to­ry of Sci­ence (2018). She received her PhD in Crit­i­cal Studies/Experimental Prac­tices in Music from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego (2011). Her research inter­ests include voice and sound stud­ies, exper­i­men­tal music, sound and media art, tech­nolo­gies of hear­ing and speech, voice and envi­ron­ment, and music and med­i­cine. Her first man­u­script, titled, Build­ing a Voice : Sound, Sur­face, Skin (under con­tract with Gold­smiths Press), explores the emer­gence, embod­i­ment, and medi­a­tion of voice as skin. Her arti­cles have appeared in var­i­ous vol­umes and jour­nals includ­ing The Oxford Hand­book of Sound Art, Per­spec­tives of New Music, Post­mod­ern Cul­ture, and Music and Pol­i­tics. She is reviews edi­tor of Twen­ti­eth-Cen­tu­ry Music. Along­side her schol­ar­ly work, she has also exhib­it­ed sound works, com­posed and per­formed vocal pieces for con­cert, video, and the­atre, and released two sin­gles. Her com­pos­er pro­file has been fea­tured by British Music Col­lec­tion. She is a cer­ti­fied prac­ti­tion­er of Deep Lis­ten­ing, and project lead for the research net­work and plat­form, Music, Arts, Health, and Envi­ron­ment (MAHE) sup­port­ed by the Eco­nom­ic and Social Research Council’s Impact Accel­er­a­tion Account at QUB.

Pho­to © Jan­no Bergmann For Cop­per Leg

22 Jan 2023


Speak­er : Prof. Eve­lyn Buyken & Prof. Katrin Losleben

‘Becom­ing-with’ in the Sonic

 

Music and bod­ies ‘become’ through the co-cre­ation­al process­es of sound and dif­fer­ent human and non-human bod­ies with­in social con­texts. To under­stand bet­ter the rela­tion of musi­cians, tra­di­tion­al­ly under­stood as those who pro­duce sounds, and the sounds them­selves, we con­duct­ed micro-phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal in-depth inter­views with six cel­lists. This nov­el method allowed us to zoom-in to the moment of cre­ation of sound. Extend­ing recent under­stand­ing of music as “onto­log­i­cal pol­i­tics”, and draw­ing on Karen Barad’s accounts of intra-action, we the­o­rize how sounds, mate­ri­als and bod­ies ‘become-with’ each oth­er, and iter­a­tive­ly co-con­sti­tute the musi­cian-per­sona, the sound and the instruments.

Eve­lyn Buyken is a cel­list and music researcher based in Cologne. Her prac­tice involves baroque cel­lo, artis­tic research, ensem­ble play­ing, con­cert dra­matur­gy and teach­ing artis­tic research at High­er Music Edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions. She is a research fel­low at the Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Arts in North Rhine-West­phalia (JungeKol­leg). 

From 2018 to 2023 she was pro­fes­sor for artis­tic research and founder of the FORUM and Labor Kün­st­lerischeForschung at the Cologne Hochschule for Music and Dance and PI of the Euro­pean research project RAPPLab (Reflec­tion-based Artis­tic Pro­fes­sion­al Prac­tice, www.rapplab.eu). Her research includes embod­ied knowl­edge prac­tices, rehearsal research, HIPP, trans-dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tices between music and dance, insti­tu­tion­al and ped­a­gog­i­cal knowl­edges of artis­tic research, gen­der the­o­ry in music and music his­to­ry of the 18th and 19th cen­tu­ry. She pub­lish­es, per­forms and lec­tures internationally. 

Eve­lyn was trained as a baroque cel­list and vio­la da gam­ba play­er, also in musi­col­o­gy, music ped­a­gogy and lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ties and Con­ser­va­to­ries of Cologne, Rome and Trossin­gen. She received her PhD on Bach cul­ture in the ear­ly Jew­ish salons of Berlin and was grant­ed a schol­ar­ship from the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary grad­u­ate school a.r.t.e.s. (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne) for this research. In 2022/23 she was fund­ed by the Kun­st­s­tiftungNRW for her research on inter-sub­jec­tive per­for­mance prac­tices in a Bas­so Con­tin­uo Group. 

Katrin Losleben is trained as a musi­col­o­gy, lit­er­a­ture and media schol­ar. She received her phD at the Uni­ver­si­ty for Music and Dance Cologne. In 2017, she joined the Cen­tre for Women´s and Gen­der Research of UiT The Arc­tic Uni­ver­si­ty of Nor­way as pro­fes­sor. Losleben works at the inter­sec­tion of fem­i­nist posthu­man­ist and artis­tic research on embod­i­ment and embed­ded­ness through sound and lis­ten­ing. Losleben is co-edi­tor of the Euro­pean Jour­nal of Musi­col­o­gy. Her pub­li­ca­tions include Singstim­men : Ästhetik, Geschlecht, Vokal­pro­fil, with Sask­ia Maria Woyke, Anno Mungen and Stephan Mösch, Würzburg 2017 and Gen­der Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion in Acad­e­mia. A Con­cep­tu­al Frame­work for Sus­tain­able Trans­for­ma­tion, ed. with Meli­na Duarte and Kjer­sti Fjørtoft, Rout­ledge 2023. Losleben is PI of the project Arc­tic Audi­to­ries – Hydros­pheres in the High North https://arcticauditories.com (NFR 2021–24, 325506).

Pho­to © speaker

5 Feb 2024


Speak­er : Dr. Jas­mine Guffond 

Lis­ten­ing Back

 

Lis­ten­ing Back is a sound­ing and lis­ten­ing prac­tice, a Web brows­er plug-in, and a research into the poten­tial of sound to engage con­tem­po­rary socio-polit­i­cal con­texts, in par­tic­u­lar – algo­rith­mic surveillance.

The Lis­ten­ing Back brows­er add-on soni­fies Inter­net cook­ies in real-time and has been enact­ed across live per­for­mance, instal­la­tion, and per­son­al com­put­er usage. By pro­vid­ing sit­u­a­tions to lis­ten back to cook­ie data with­in the real-time dynam­ics of Web brows­ing, the affec­tive, embody­ing, time-based, omni-direc­tion­al and expe­ri­en­tial affor­dances of sound are engaged, not pri­mar­i­ly as an object of study but as a means of cre­ative inquiry. This sound­ing strat­e­gy for inter­rupt­ing the visu­al sur­face of the brows­er inter­face to expose back-end data cap­ture address­es a con­tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion where panop­tic modes of sur­veil­lance, reliant on the human sen­so­ry modal­i­ty of vision and a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the sur­veil­lance appa­ra­tus, have been large­ly super­seded by non-sen­so­ry, post-aes­thet­ic, extrac­tive capac­i­ties of algo­rith­mic sur­veil­lance. Intan­gi­ble, auto­mat­ed data cap­ture infra­struc­tures there­by evade human seman­tic inter­pre­ta­tion and scruti­ny. Sound as an aes­thet­ic device that reg­is­ters both con­cep­tu­al­ly and expe­ri­en­tial­ly, is engaged to rein­state sense-mak­ing into the online sur­veil­lance con­text and this talk will share artis­tic out­comes that explore what it means to engage sound to think through and expe­ri­ence con­tem­po­rary data politics.

 

Jas­mine Guf­fond is an artist and com­pos­er work­ing at the inter­face of social, polit­i­cal and tech­ni­cal infra­struc­tures. Focused on elec­tron­ic com­po­si­tion across music and art con­texts her prac­tice spans live per­for­mance, record­ing, instal­la­tion and cus­tom made brows­er add-on. Through the soni­fi­ca­tion of data she address­es the poten­tial of sound to engage with con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal ques­tions and engages lis­ten­ing as a sit­u­at­ed knowl­edge prac­tice. Jas­mine com­plet­ed her PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales Art, Design & Archi­tec­ture depart­ment in 2021 where she con­duct­ed prac­tice-based research into sound and lis­ten­ing as a crit­i­cal modes of inquiry into online sur­veil­lance cultures.

Jas­mine has exhib­it­ed inter­na­tion­al­ly includ­ing com­pos­ing sound for Shulea Cheang’s instal­la­tion at the Tai­wanese Pavil­ion, Venice Bien­nale, 2019, and col­lab­o­rat­ing with Zor­ka Woll­ny on a sound instal­la­tion for the Chica­go Archi­tec­ture Bien­nal, 2019.  She com­plet­ed her Sound Stud­ies mas­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty der Kün­ste in 2015, received the ‘Work­ing Grant for New Music und Sound Art’ from the Berlin Sen­ate in 2016 and was fea­tured in Wire mag­a­zine in 2019. She has per­formed live inter­na­tion­al­ly at elec­tron­ic music and art fes­ti­vals includ­ing open­ing for CTM fes­ti­val in 2020 and has released solo records to crit­i­cal acclaim with the Son­ic Pieces (2015, 2017), Karl Records (2018) and Edi­tions Mego (2020) labels.

 

http://jasmineguffond.com/

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12 Feb 2024


Speak­er : Dr. Rah­ma Khazam

Redefin­ing Artis­tic Research


This lec­ture will explore the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between art and artis­tic research. Where­as artis­tic research might focus on the descrip­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of audi­to­ry phe­nom­e­na, sound art tends to priv­i­lege sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence. And where­as research tends to be an ongo­ing col­lec­tive endeav­our, an art­work is more often than not a one-off express­ing a sin­gle artist’s sen­si­bil­i­ty. Yet at the same time, a research project can also be an art­work, inas­much as it too can demon­strate cre­ativ­i­ty and orig­i­nal­i­ty. The bound­aries between  art and artis­tic research have always been unclear, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the case of sound art, which often involves con­sid­er­able tech­ni­cal research. I will present dif­fer­ent exam­ples of sound works that explore these para­dox­es and con­tra­dic­tions, chal­leng­ing and redefin­ing the notion of artis­tic research. 

Dr. Rah­ma Khaz­am is a researcher affil­i­at­ed to Insti­tut ACTE, Sor­bonne Paris 1 and Ensad­Lab, Paris. She stud­ied phi­los­o­phy and art his­to­ry and received her Ph.D from the Sor­bonne in aes­thet­ics and art the­o­ry. Her research ranges from sound art and its his­to­ry to con­tem­po­rary aes­thet­ics 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 ; “Son et Image : Face au Réel” in L’é­cho du Réel, 2021 ; Objets vivants, ed. Rah­ma Khaz­am, Mime­sis 2023 ; “Reen­vi­sion­ing the Tech­no­log­i­cal Sub­lime” in Christi­na Kubisch : Inaudi­ble, Invis­i­ble, Press­es du réel, 2023.

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