Sound is a medium that invites participation, reflection, action and reaction. Sound operates across boundaries of senses, media, materials and forms. This year’s graduate show pieces from our students present a range of approaches into these observations. With an emphasis on both the physical-visceral and the emotional-ethereal affect of sound, the different works exhibited in the DMSA area in Grand Parade (East Wing, Back Building across the courtyard, 3rd Floor) pose a series of complex questions that the visitors will play a leading role into deciphering.

Jeph Vanger’s Sφera is the result of a one year field research in Berlin, Klingenberg Am Main, Athens with people such as Hans Peter Kuhn & Markus Klug. Sφera is a multichannel sonic environment where the physical presence of sound and the ongoing engagement become the priority. The symphony of (1) a hand-built subwoofer, (2) an also hand-built multicell horn speaker and (3) the 3D audio speaker IKO are creating a sonic “atmo-sphere” where the encounterer is able to experience sound in its spherical existence. The piece pays tribute to the mournful sound of the Foghorn, using original recordings from the Foghorn Requiem (2013) field performance in which more than 50 ships gathered on the North Sea (UK) to perform an ambitious musical score. Using walls, floors, human bodies as tools of a spatial orchestration, the sound surrounds the listener and enables him or her to be a fundamental part of the installation. Borrowing a few words from Dr Kersten Glandien: “What it can mean to be an empowered active encounterer rather than a passive overwhelmed consumer?”

A peformance of Sφera is scheduled for the Private View, June 1st at 7pm. Book your tickets.

SΦΕRA from Jeph Vanger Sound on Vimeo.

Sound is enveloping and ambiguous, simultaneously of the body and beyond it; a trigger of memories, senses and sensations. Sophie Kiairie’s Soul positions the listener in complete blackness-blindfolded with their ears as the only means to navigate through a binaural soundspace of familiar-like creatures and environments. Soul is a short first-person immersive audio play. In Soul, you are placed in the shoes of a soldier undergoing training in a facility in order to gain heightened hearing senses that in turn help you the soldier in combat against unknown creatures that have invaded the planet, eating people’s souls. They do so to strengthen themselves, and to feed their Queen, who is to give birth to a King strong enough to conquer the universe. It starts at the end of the training in a facility, where scientists have placed you in a training room where they proceed to load 4 different sonically simulated environments to explore.

Oliver John’s The Miraculous Land is a 40 channel generative, ambisonics inspired sound installation. For the majority of its everlasting duration it sonically comprises of an electroacoustic sound design driven construction of a room in a library. At points the illusion of the library intentionally deconstructs itself, separating sounds from their sources and manipulating them to create intangible realities. This makes each of the 40 loudspeakers individually decipherable, creating surreal illusions of movement within the three dimensional soundspace. Because of this, one becomes attentive of its artificial creation, which puts light on the constructed sonic environment as a digital soundscape.

PROGRAMME

Performance Studio:

Private view: 1st June
Aki Purser / Jeph Vanger (1800 changeover)

2nd – 3rd June:
Jeph Vanger // Sφera

4th June:
DMSA Day / Alvaro Villar-Castillo // SONORAMA

5th June:
Alvaro Villar-Castillo // SONORAMA

6th – 8th June:
JORDAN LEWIS // THE N0VA GATHERING

9th – 10th June
Aki Purser // 記憶 (MEMORY)

Sound Diffusion Lab:

1st – 3rd June:
Oli Johns // The Miraculous Land – Library

4th – 5th June:
Edward Scott // Lissajous Sounds
PJ Davy // Heads in The Cloud

6th June:
Liam Eshgi-Luck // The Cacophonic Hospital

7th – 8th June:
Edward Scott // Lissajous Sounds

8th – 10th June:
PJ Davy // Heads in The Cloud

Ongoing Installations
Room 229
Oskar Jeff // Reconstructing Tapes
Sophie Kiarie // Soul
Liam Eshgi-Luck // The Cacophonic Hospital
Michael McKeown // Aquarium Music
Bobbie Cook // Hard Shoulder

Room 228
Jasmyn Bloch // FEMPORIS

The Shower room
Ivan Arbiol Camps // The Return of the Unwanted

Sound Diffusion Lab Foyer
Jack Lister // Flood the Box