January – February 2013 at Khoj International Artists’ Association, Delhi.

Sonic art has moved into an audio culture where musicians, composers, sound artists, scholars and listeners are attentive to sonic material, the act of listening and the creative possibilities open through sound recording, dissemination, transmission and playback. This ‘culture of the ear’ has come to prominence only recently when the social scientists, anthropologist and culture studies started to notice and study sound a marker of cultural difference and temporal study.

Sound Art in India is a nascent, but emerging field. With more and more artists and musicians exploring the meaning of sound, a new language is being understood and redefined. The understanding of sound beyond music is leading to new experiments embodying new auditory sensibilities and awareness.
Curator: Charu Maithani

Opening Programme on 2 February, 2013

6:00 PM – 10:00 PM at Khoj Studios : Opening of Auditions: Sound Residency 2013, featuring works by Abhijeet Tambe (India), Chi-Wei Lin (Taiwan), Malose Malahela (South Africa), Priya Sen (India), Rudi Punzo (Italy), Pawel Janicki (Poland) and Robert Millis (USA)
6:45 PM – 8:00 PM at Khoj Studios : Live performances by artists Chi-Wei Lin, Rudi Punzo and Robert Millis
9:00 PM – 10:00 PM at Khoj Studios : Repeat performances by the artists

Note

Sound art historically derives from electroacoustic and electronic music, where electronics are used to generate or modify sounds. It is sonic and auditory explorers like Luigi Russolo, John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer, Pauline Oliveros and R. Murray Schafer (among many others) that have expanded the understanding of audio culture.

Sound or sonic art has now moved into what is known as “audio culture”, an ever widening category in which musicians, composers, sound artists, scholars and listeners are attentive to a variety of auditory possibilities, sonic material, the act of listening and creative possibilities of sound recording, dissemination, transmission and playback. This “culture of the ear” has come to prominence only recently when social scientists, anthropologists and scholars active in culture studies began to look at sound as a marker of cultural difference and temporal study.

In continuing Khoj’s sound exploration since 2006, we presented another sound residency in January 2013. This residency, titled Auditions, aims to grow opportunities of dialogical and practical exchange to foster sharing and growth of auditory understanding. Taking a collaborative approach, the residency has looked at how low-tech devices can be used to produce different aural modalities by employing various media to craft sonic landscapes. Exploiting the highly interdependent social technology that characterises contemporary society, the residency aims to dispel the illusion of superficial machine mediated relations. It looks to direct attention towards an immersive sonic experience by using simple, inexpensive, recycled technology.

Auditions samples auditory practices of different kinds. Each of the participating artists comes from different backgrounds with contrasting engagements. While Priya Sen’s work is like moving through a sound mine where the listener can excavate sound in different areas of the room and investigates the connect and disconnect between sound and image, Abhijeet Tambe’s Flying creates an immersive environment with a fictional account derived from his personal experience of being in Delhi placed in an intimate environment of a black box. Pawel Janicki’s work is an interactive installation in which he uses field recordings made in Delhi along with a database of the Hindi language. His uses a program that can be easily accessed by anyone. Rudi Punzo’s kinetic sculptures use movement to create rhythmic sounds. Where in Punzo’s work sound is a residue of an interaction between objects, Malose Malahlela’s installation de-contextualises musical installations, bringing forth the innate feelings evoked by music. The residency has been an opportunity to reveal the many layers of sound encountered, captivated and occupied, and is intended to foster sharing and growth of auditory understanding.

Charu Maithani, January 2013

More Information here.