Sonic Environments: exploring the potential listening

An AAD Session hosted by CUBE.

About this event

Hosted by the Centre for Urban and Built Ecologies (CUBE) and chaired by Joseph Kohlmaier, this seminar will focus on how listening in various forms can be utilised to establish agency, social relations and a different understanding of a place and its inhabitants. To explore this, Julia Udall, (Sheffield Hallam University/Studio Polpo), Alex DeLittle (Goldsmiths) and Jon Orlek (Sheffield Hallam University/Studio Polpo) will be speaking about the Sonic Acts of Noticing and Johanna Hällsten, London Metropolitan University, will be talking about two recent projects, Performing Hekla and Foreignhood.

Dr Johanna Hällsten is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, and the course leader for the Fine Art BA at London Metropolitan University. She works primarily with text, sound and performance, where the work focuses on translation between different cultures, species and forms, to address the interrelation between sounds and environments. Her work was recently performed at Nottingham Contemporary as part of InDialogue by Juxtavoices, and has been exhibited at (amongst others) Personal Structures, Venice Biennale, Translation Zone(s): Constellation Hong Kong, Sze Chi Ching Exhibition Gallery, ANTI festival, EV+A. She has published in (amongst others) The Front Edge of Environmental Aesthetics, Contemporary Aesthetics, Somatechnics, EUP journal, and in n.Paradoxa.

Sonic Acts of Noticing are two architectural designers and educators, a sound artist, and two web design-researchers. They come together to explore the potential of foregrounding the sonic in the creation of emancipatory spaces. They operate at the intersection of practice, teaching, and research; the material, the sonic and the virtual, in order to find modes and sites of intervention that will support collective learning and transformative change. The project has emerged from work to develop their room, 'The High Street of Exchanges', at the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2020 (now 2021), 'The Garden of Privatised Delights'. Dr Julia Udall is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at SHU, where she leads fourth year of the M.Arch and a director of Studio Polpo. Dr Alex De Little is a post-doctorate researcher at Leeds and Nottingham and an Honorary Fellow at Goldsmiths. Dr. Jon Orlek is an associate lecture at SHU and a Director of Studio Polpo.

Chair: Joseph Kohlmaier’s work is prolific, entangled and interdisciplinary, crossing the fields of art and design, performance, publishing and teaching. He is a Principal Lecturer and Head of Critical and Contextual Studies at the School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University. Joseph is a founding director of graphic design practice Polimekanos and Cours de Poétique, a not-for-profit publisher in the arts and humanities. In 2009, he founded Musarc, one of the UK’s most progressive choral collectives. For several years, Joseph taught a postgraduate module and international summer school on sound in the context of architecture and the city. He is co-editor of The Listening Reader (2017) with Sam Belinfante, a book that explores sound in the context of art and the gallery.

Image: Sonic Acts of Noticing