The Sound is Present - Artists' Talk

About

Thanks to names such as John Cage, the before unperceived, irrelevant sounds of everyday life began to matter. They became entities, objects themselves, with a presence of their own, free from human control and subjectivity; purposeless, continuously changing, captured from the perpetual flow of the ever-changing world. 

Up until the 20th century working with sound generally meant composing music; organized structures of sound, controlled and mediated by human subjectivity; finite and fixed entities written down on a score. However, thanks to an ontological shift on this matter, the concept of music and music itself started to be deconstructed. Inspired by the notions of 'being' and 'duration' (by Nietzsche and Bergson, respectively), and highly propelled by the development of sound recording and processing devices, sounds - not music - became the focal point of audible art pieces. 

By becoming permeable to endless experiments using all sorts of infinitely new sounds, the sonic sphere is now richer. In The sound is present the two invited artists will share with us their own experiences with the sonic world, calling our attention to the rich ubiquitous, unseen presence of sound, that can be manipulated in order to create new meanings and relations. As John Cage once said: Music is permanent, only listening is intermittent. 

Roxanne Nesbitt - Trained as an architect and orchestral musician, Roxanne Nesbitt works to combine several disciplines. Her research and practice explore the connections between sound, sight and motion, employing, spatial and sonic strategies to forge new relationships and reveal existing analogies. 

Miriam Hamann - Focusing on installations which deal with space, her work is the result of an investigation into the sculptural presence of everyday objects. In addition to the decontextualization and recontextualization of everyday objects the immaterial plays an important role as well. She uses sound and light as an immaterial 'fabric' that is uncoupled from its environment and original function to become a building block for the creation of new architectures and spatial perceptions.