The seminar will concentrate on the ways in which contemporary artists translate urban experiences through sound, media and communication technologies. Salomé Voegelin presents listening to the urban environment as a civic engagement, highlighting the socio-political importance and consequence of hearing place. Samuel Bianchini’s work brings together old and recent communication technologies by transforming mobile phone messages into light that emerges in public space. In both practices, the aural involves the visual and vice versa, while the street becomes a space of interaction. Chaired by Anne Zeitz, the seminar reviews how artists reflect on the urban landscape, and what possibilities are offered by engaging with the invisible dimension and virtual networks of contemporary cities.
Biographies
Samuel Bianchini
Samuel Bianchini is an artist who lives and works in Paris. He shows regularly in France and abroad. Bianchini’s work investigates the impact of technology on modes of representation, new forms of aesthetic experience and socio-political organisation, frequently collaborating with scientists and technology research centres. He is Associate Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Ensad, Paris), where he is the head of the research group Reflective Interaction dedicated to interactive and performative installations.
Salomé Voegelin
Salomé Voegelin is a Swiss artist and writer based in London. She is the author of Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art (2010), and Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound (2014). Voegelin’s artistic practice involves sound and text works produced in collaboration with David Mollin. Voegelin is Reader in Sound Arts at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.
Anne Zeitz
Anne Zeitz is a researcher and artist working with photography, video and sound media. She is based in Paris and holds a PhD in Aesthetics, Science and Technologies of the Arts. Her research focuses on mechanisms of surveillance and mass media, theories of observation and attention, and practices of counter-observation in contemporary art. Zeitz teaches at the University Paris 8, is a member of the research project Média Médiums and postdoctoral fellow of the Labex Arts-H2H.