The Pteropoetics of Birdstrike
(2020)
author(s): Jacob Smith
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
“The Pteropoetics of Birdstrike” is a work of multimedia scholarship consisting of a curatorial essay and a twenty-five minute audio piece. Working at the intersection of Sound Studies, Environmental Humanities, and Mobility Studies, the project examines the phenomenon of birdstrike: when birds collide with aircraft. The physical and radiophonic spaces of the airport create a contact zone of human and avian aeromobilities, with birdstrikes as vivid dramas of that shared space. I consider the implications of birdstrike through a critical essay that curates an audio composition that works through the selection and juxtaposition of found sound material. That material consists of recordings of air traffic control conversions during birdstrike incidents, recorded interviews with a pioneer in the field of forensic ornithology, and several poetry recitations. The recitations include the iconic “aerial image” of a skylark’s flight-song, paired with recordings of the actual bird. The result of the whole is to redirect a tradition of aerial imagination towards a new “pteropoetics” that understands the sky as a habitat shared with others.
Listening in/to Exile: Migration and Media Arts
(2019)
author(s): Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition responds to the current flux of migration and the resulting condition of estrangement. The projects – an augmented book project and a corresponding media artwork – respond to mass migration, hyper-mobility, placeless-ness and nomadism, which are blurring the boundaries between the local and the global, the corporeal and the digital, the private and the public. Through an exploration of the poetic and critical capacities embedded in everyday listening the two projects attempt to shed light on the aesthetics of addressing the notion of exile, alienation and estrangement. The exposition let the viewer/reader engage with the artistic matter; namely, the field recordings and on-site writings - artistic acts of poetic contemplation grounded in a personal experience of the urban alienation, with the aim of movement towards self-understanding and emancipation.
Stop and go: nodes of transformation and transition
(2017)
author(s): Michael Zinganel, Michael Hieslmair
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Stop and Go is a research project investigating physical and social transformation at nodes and hubs of transnational mobility and migration alongside major pan-European road corridors in a geographic triangle between Vienna, Tallinn, and the Bulgarian-Turkish border. It draws on intensive embedded field trips with a mobile lab (a Ford Transit van) using (deep) mapping, workshops, installations, and exhibitions both on tour and in a stationary work space in a Vienna logistics hub (a former railway station). Intermediate and final results have been represented in diagrammatic drawings, maps, and (animated) graphic novels.
Exile and Other Syndromes
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
We live in an era of pervasive mobility and (dis)connectivity that triggers perpetual dislocation, where perceptions constantly shift across places to form unsettled geographies, producing meanings that at times are arguably independent from the locative sources. As increasingly migratory being, a wandering urban dweller of today's post-global cities is sensitive to environmental sounds navigating through various urban sites considering them as spatio-temporally evolving but gradually disorienting auditory situations, juxtaposed with real-time spatial information, and memory of another place in another time. The nomadic subject relates to these situations through contemplation, mindfulness and contingent processes informed by the enhanced sense of mobility. ‘Exile and Other Syndromes’ (2015 – 2016) responds to this indisposition of migration, placeless-ness and nomadism – impulses of a contemporary condition that eventually blurs the boundaries between the digital and the corporeal, between local and the global, or between private and enhanced access and freedom of the public domain, helping the nomadic subject to emerge as an elevated, emancipated self. The project intends to examine these contemporary realities manifesting in a responsive, augmented, and intelligent environment incorporating multi-channel sound diffusion, modulated text and audio data visualisation. The work considers mindful aspects of deterritorialized mode of listening, and explores its introspective capacity transcending the barrier of immediate meaning to touch the poetic sensibilities. The première of the working version will take place at CUBE, IEM: Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, Kunstuniversität Graz, 19:00, 19 January 2016.