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. The archive of memories is then audiated/imagined as a musical composition through binaural recordings and electroacoustic processing of field sounds. Where appropriate, each interviewee also provides an image of his/her ears that are then sculpted as closely as possible in clay and included in a binaural recording system. Through this, his project asks – how do we hear through someone else’s ears the same way we may imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes? Might we develop a deeper responsibility to the environment through the conservation of sounds that may be lost, or never again heard because of noisy anthropogenic changes to our soundscapes? How might we attend to the affect within each instance of listening, and create transformative politics of listening?
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Credits
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. Getty Pacific Standard Time Art x Science x LA UCLA Art Sci Center California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center Leonardo ISAST
