Atmosphere of Sound

Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption

UCLA Art Sci Center’s garden is organized around the themes of our 2024 Getty Pacific Standard Time: Art x Science x LA exhibition, Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption. We will present a series of artist-led sound walks and panels around the relationship between sound as a post-object art form, and our shifting relationship to the world of things as necessitated by climate change. Our garden will be organized around key questions such as: “Can we learn to connect empathically with non-human species such that we come to appreciate their value as sentient beings?” “How might we expand our acoustic senses in order to raise our appreciation of the diversity of patterns of communication beyond human language?” And “What is the value of artistic collaborations for scientific researchers working on urgent environmental issues?” Sound art is a bridge to connect with scientists who are frequently more familiar with instrumental music and other sound-based forms of art. Additionally, many scientists are engaged in work that deals with inaudible frequencies and waves that can be transformed into sound waves and made accessible to audiences. The focus on sound art is intended to de-privilege sight as a sense that encourages false certainties, in favor of sound that provokes an inquiry-based response on the part of the viewer or participant. Artists in residence at Art Sci are developing sound walks as interactive platforms for embodied connection.

Video

Sonic Dreamscapes, Atmosphere of Sound, UCLA Art Sci Center, Broad Art Center, Credits: Bill Fontana

Breathe to Flow, Atmosphere of Sound, UCLA Art Sci Center, Broad Art Center, Credits: Anna Nacher

Variations on Aeolian Dynamics: For Contained Winds, Atmosphere of Sound, UCLA Art Sci Center, Broad Art Center, Credits: Joel Ong

From a Whale’s Back, Atmosphere of Sound, UCLA Art Sci Center, Broad Art Center, Credits: Yolande Harris

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Breathe to flow

Anna Nacher

The way we, as humans, participate in the vibrational fields and flows of energy of the Planet Earth is embodied practice, even if the process often remains somewhat mysterious, unnoticed or unacknowledged. This workshop will explore how a human vocalization, which is nothing else than amplified and conscious breathing, can become a practice of inquiry into the planetary water cycle.

That Unseen Vibrance

Yolande Harris

Can our conscious listening effect the world around us? That unseen vibrance. These are dense vibrations, larger than our bodies, larger than our eardrums. They work through us. They present as oceanic. I have a sense of being inside the sound, submerged in another medium, molten, or perhaps growing wings. Of enormous pressure depth yet vibrance shimmer. To dive into the oceanic with our own airborne sounds, feet on the ground, ears underwater. What animal could hear like this?

The Sound of Clouds and other Sonic Memories

Joel Ong

Since 2015, Joel Ong has been collecting sonic memories through interviews and casual conversations. As part of his Residency with UCLA this summer, Ong turned his attention to sonic memories in the environment, and is collecting these in order to draw attention to fluctuations in the climate observed and remembered through the inter-subjectivities of a diverse group of interviewees.

Sounding Mycelial Networks: MycoMythologies Storytelling Circle

Kaitlin Bryson, Saša Spačal

MycoMythologies: Storytelling Circle is an on/off_line performative workshop that evokes and employs the mycelial mind of the attendants through nodes of knowledge gathering practices and embodied mycology.

Vibrations Matter: Art & Science of Deep Listening

Victoria Vesna, James Gimzewski, Carlo Ventura, Charles Taylor, and members of the Art Sci Now collective members — Ivana Dama, Clinton Van Arnam, John Brumley, and Paul Geluso

This event addresses vibrations from the point of view of visual and sound artists considering the scientific research into matter, brain waves, human and animal voice, environmental noise and outer space. Our starting point is quantum mechanics — based on music theory and that nanotechnology is showing us the waves that underlie all matter which many Eastern philosophies have known for centuries.

Credits

Research and Curation by: Victoria Vesna and Anuradha Vikram

Sound Design by: Ivana Dama and Clinton Van Arnam

Partners: UCLA Art Sci Center, UCLA Design Media Arts California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), Getty Pacific Standard Time Art x Science x LA, Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center, LEONARDO UCLA Arts Collective: Clinton Van Arnam, Ivana Dama, Ivy Lovett, John Brumley, Kaitlin Bryson, Shilpa Rao, Zeynep Abes, Nancy Wu