Embodied Listening

Ragnhild May, Mariana Dias, Jaka Škapin. Host: Jovana Maksić

00:00

Free entry

The session is hosted by Jovana Maksić (Trust).

The Body as a Site for Composition

Ragnhild May (PhD Fellow, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts/University of Copenhagen, DK)

Traditional Western instruments are designed for a specific body and a specific type of practice. Feminism and posthumanism give a different view on the body’s relation to technology than the one that has been prevalent in musical history. What traditionally has been viewed as separate entities are fused and entangled. An example of such an entangled relation is seen in the psychoacoustic phenomenon difference tones, an additional low-frequency third tone that occurs endogenously in the ear of the listener as a consequence of two high pitched tones. The tone does not exist in the original sound stimuli but is elicited endogenously in the ear (Roederer, 2008). The phenomenon blurs the boundaries between instrument and body as the sound is elicited from inside the body of the listener, that thereby can be seen as the instrument itself or the site for composition. This raises issues such as: Can one envision a type of instrument practice for other norms, bodies and forms of practices? When are the categories body and instrument entangled?

Theoretically, I will consider difference tones as an example of another way of understanding the instrument’s relation to the body. The theoretical survey of the issues will take its starting point in the concepts: entanglement and cyborg, sourced from Karen Barad and Donna Haraway.

Ragnhild May is educated in visual arts and has a Master of Fine Arts in Music/Sound from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (US) as well as Post-Master of Fine Arts in Sound Art from Royal Institute of Arts Stockholm (SE). She is currently a PhD fellow at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (DK). May has been awarded the Carl Nielsens Talent Price, International Studio & Curatorial Program. In 2022, May was an Arts and Media Fellow at DAAD in Berlin.

Captioning Sustained Sound: Closed Captioning and Accessibility in Sound and Video Art

Mariana Dias (Masters studies in Visual & Media Anthropology, HMKW Berlin, DE)

My research surveys emerging practices in Closed Captioning and Accessibility in the fields of Sound Art and Video Art. Closed Captioning is a crucial accessibility feature that involves much more than dialogue transcription, essential sound cues and speaker identification. While established standards exist for film and TV, unconventional narratives present in sound and video art pose challenges that can make the captioning process subjective, risking artwork misrepresentation and a diminished experience to those who rely on this accessibility feature. Therefore, the goal of this research is to survey, measure and suggest closed captioning methods specific for sound and video art that sustain audience diversity while extending the expressive potential of these art forms. The presentation would include examples of captioned sound and video art pieces, the considerations behind their captioning process, and how certain techniques might be scaled into accessibility protocols for larger exhibitions, collections, or even festivals.

Mariana Dias is a Brazilian-American scholar from Miami, currently pursuing a Masters in Visual & Media Anthropology at the Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft (HMKW) Berlin. For the past ten years she has been active in online radio and audiovisual translation, two fields now converging in her academic practice. Her current research interests include AI and conflict mediation, non-violent communication, online radio websites, and auto-ethnographic radio storytelling with memes, the latter taking the form of a monthly radio show called Deep Fried DJ on Cashmere Radio.

Collective IDentity: Collaborative Improvisation, Voice, Movement and Parkinson's Disease

Jaka Škapin (Music Director at Luminelle, London, UK)

Weaving in my recent experience of creating radiophonic content within the Creative Europe funded B-AIR programme with my longterm collaborative moving image and facilitation practice as part of Luminelle's Collective IDentity project, this presentation aims to consider the role of embodiment, language and technology in co-creative artistic processes centring lived experience of people with Parkinson's.

B-AIR brings together nine partner organisations from seven European countries, with Radio Slovenia as the lead, joining forces in a project researching how sound stimuli affect our cognitive, emotional and personal development, in other words: what sound means to people and the world around them. Collective IDentity (CID), is the latest in a series of multidisciplinary explorations produced by Luminelle under its artistic director Danielle Jones. It explores core themes of intimacy, care, and relationship, and was devised using a co-creative approach in which all dancers took part in a live, improvised dance process within their home in 2021.

Drawing on stories and experiences from their lives as inspiration, Jones and Škapin improvised a responsive and nurturing one-to-one exchange with the dancers in workshops which took place across the country in the homes of dancers with Parkinson's. Movement direction by Danielle Jones draws from the raw and human approach of cinematographer Pavel Radu, using handheld camera to connect with the vulnerability of the human body in movement, amplified by the improvised vocal contributions of Jaka Škapin which utilise looping and sampling technologies. The resulting body of work is an honest, intimate, and jubilant look at life, the body, and the domestic space. This presentation aims to pose questions about the role of voice, improvisation and technology in co-creative processes which centre the lived experience of vulnerable groups and individuals.

Jaka Škapin is a Slovenian transdisciplinary performance artist and award winning composer (Sound and Music awards, best sound/music at the Toronto Experimental Film Festival, best dance film at LA Shorts film festival) whose sound is marked by meditative and expansive vocal tapestries bearing the marks of his background in choral music, jazz training, and Slavic heritage. His work has recently been featured by the British Music Collection, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Düsseldorf's TIN Festival, as well as Nijmegen's IFNL Festival. In 2022, he premiered E - man - A, a PRS Foundation funded solo performance combining an improvised vocal score, autobiographical narrative and projection in a rituals of challenging patriarchal masculinity from within.

Event Access

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Supported by SHAPE+ which is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.