Tripping on Organ-Ologies 2.0 – Towards an ecology of practices
Loosely based upon and continuing the course, in this semester we will focus on the relations between natural and artificial senses and the environment. From the depth of our ears’ hair cells and human receptors to the far-reaching capabilities of animal and technological sensing, our sensory organs and systems form and fashion our Umwelten: the diverse ‘windows’ through which living beings perceive and experience. What happens when we deeply tune into these processes?
Diving into the ecological aspect of sonic practices and the concept of Umwelten means embodying the fathomlessness of entanglements between environments and sensory systems and taking the leap to listen differently with our own bodies. This attempt holds the potential of opening ourselves towards environmental listening and of shedding a different light on body-mind-world connections.
The methods of this inquiry will again be based on spiraling between practice and theory. We will listen together to live and reproduced sound, make sounds and record them, draw, trace and make marks, read and write. Moving seasonally from autumn to winter, we will engage with somatic practices, exploring movement and stillness, outdoors and inside. We will discuss various forms of ecological-artistic practices and analyze their sonic and polysensorial aspects. A rich mix of texts and artistic examples will aid us in defining what these emerging approaches could look and sound like.
Being an exercise in an ecology of practices, the outcome of this course will be an individual project, developing and manifesting a practice aligned with the ideas engaged with during the semester. Individual tutoring is built into the process.
Teaching in the project module will take place together with composer and artist Dr. Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari. Guests during the semester will include vocalist and herbalist Atalya Tirosh, sound artist and scholar Dr. Janina España Keller and experimental electronic artist Víctor Mazón Gardoqui, with whom we will continue to build microphones as instruments to explore our surroundings with extended acoustic sensors.
Instructors: Prof. Kerstin Ergenzinger, Dr. Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari