Sound Art & Sonic Arts: Hidden Materialities

Students Cáit Ní Dhuinnín, Moumita Roy, and Verneri Salonen exhibit works created during the sound art course, taught by Ava Grayson through SAMA (Sound Art & Sonic Arts). The works exhibited engage with the hidden potential of sound that resides in material, evoked by sonic relationships and memories through the varied processes of each work.

Verneri Salonen: Post-Fossil Data?

The technological stethoscope is listening to the communication between two external hard drives. The computer acts as a director between them, and the jerry can speaker is the narrator.

This system is fully automated: it turns itself on and off during the gallery opening hours and hibernates in cycles for the sake of energy consumption. The process loops different file types and file sizes between the hard drives, making the audible performance varied in time.

Beneath the coulisses of designed cases, one can find informative labels which are not informative at all for the common user. What does it mean to be blind to the information given and to the fossil capitalism that made it all possible in the first place?

The data is playing, and here we are listening the materiality of digitality.

Verneri Salonen​ (1989) is a Helsinki based media artist currently p​ursuinga Bachelor’s Degree in the Time and Space department in University of the Arts Helsinki. Verneri's work focuses on different forms of energy with themes arising from personal experiences. He is interested in exploring and exposing hidden materialities and preconditions of our contemporary technoculture. Verneri has participated in multiple group exhibitions and film screenings in Finland and Norway. Since 2016, he has also been part of the organizing team of a moving image society called Kino Club Helsinki.

Moumita Roy: Reminiscience

Reminiscence is an artistic exploration of aural memories. Whilst going through the archive of my field recordings after I moved to Finland from India, I discovered how some sounds from home have strong memories and emotions associated with them. This made me interested in exploring how our culture, background, and life experiences shape our meaning-making and relationship with sound. This work is aimed at these topics.

For this piece, I have interviewed participants about their significant aural memories and created compositions combining the interview excerpts, field recordings, and different processing techniques based on each of these unique memories. The installation aspires to break the conventional way of presenting audio documentary and places itself within sound art practices. This piece is inspired by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s ​The Dark Pool.​

Moumita Roy​ is a film enthusiast and a sound designer. Based out of Kolkata, India, she has worked on numerous films, documentaries and commercials both as production sound mixer as well as post-production sound designer. Currently, she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Sound in New Media at Aalto University, Finland and is being supported by a scholarship from Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation. She envisions using sound in a wide array of fields beyond the conventional domain of films and has recently started venturing into sound art.

An alumna of India’s premier Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Moumita received the National Award for Best Audiography at the 63rd National Film Awards in non-feature film section for the film Edpa Kana (language: Kurukh). Before diving into sound designing, Moumita graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Media Science from Techno India College. She has a brief experience as an educator and also dabbled as a production executive for various television shows during early years in her career.

Cáit Ní Dhuinnín: Sounding the Stones

Our everyday actions have clear, visible effects on the world around us, they can also effect and activate things unseen and unheard. Walking through the stones, the visitor activates the installation; silent bodies become audible. The movement of the stones creates sounds which are amplified, they react to the journey of the listener who meanders through the stone-scape.

Cáit Ní Dhuinnín​ (b.1988) is an Irish artist currently based in Helsinki. She studied in the Crawford College of Art and Design where she received a BA in Fine Arts. Following that, she completed a Higher Diploma in Art Education in Limerick School of Art and Design, after which she taught art for five years. She is currently undertaking a Masters in Fine Art at the University of the Arts, Helsinki. Cáit has a multidisciplinary practice including filmmaking, installation, writing, drawing, participatory works, and performance. Her ongoing work relates to stone and human bodies. She is interested in questions around how meaning and value is placed on things and how collaboration with materials occurs. She also works with site and is interested in different ways of communicating place and experience.

EVENTS

Listening Across Disciplines​ ​(22.03. & 29.03.2019, 16:30–18:00)

This discussion group is open to all interested participants, and will aim to explore the various approaches and the possible extent to which we can apply the concept listening. Many established physicists (such as David Bohm and David Peat), religious scholars (such as Karen Armstrong and Fethullah Gülen), and experimental musicians and practitioners (such as Pauline Oliveros) have greatly expanded the possibilities and possible approaches to listening, as well as what those approaches can produce. All interested participants are encouraged to bring their own notes, texts, and ideas to share.

ArtSound Playground: an evening of performances​ (05.04.2019, 17:00–18:00)

This performance evening will showcase a spectrum of sonically-driven pieces created by students across University of the Arts Helsinki. Free entrance.

What’s sounding: experiment workshop inspired by Pauline Oliveros​ (07.04.2019, 12:00–16:00)

There are 15 places available in this workshop. Please sign up here: https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/SAMASoundingWorkshop2019

“What’s sounding? Always listening” were the phrases that experimental music pioneer and Deep Listening method creator Pauline Oliveros used to greet and say goodbye to her students.

Throughout her life, Oliveros developed many sonically-related practices and ideas that pushed the imagination into far-reaching places, such as reflecting human voices off the moon, utilising sound outside the scope of human hearing in her works, and performing alongside composer Alvin Lucier using brain waves.

During this short workshop, lecturer Ava Grayson and Time & Space Master’s student Cáit Ní Dhuinnín will lead a series of exercises that will explore aspects of Oliveros’ rich approaches to listening and sounding.

The workshop is free and open to all. Please dress comfortably and bring a blanket or yoga mat for sitting and lying on.