Throughout history sound has evolved intertwined with the human life-world. Recent interest in the field of art, science & technology and the long trajectory of media-arts practices have impacted upon sound to develop as a type of aesthetic marker for various biological and body-based processes.

This session focuses on sound used to express, detect, communicate and build knowledge (medical and other) of the body; sound used in the creation of body-based experiences, embodied communication ('real' or imagined) and body-environment relations; as well as sonic practices that engage in feminist, inter-sectional, queer, post-colonial approaches to embodied sound knowledge production.

Chairs:

• Dolores Steinman
• Michelle Lewis-King

Various sound-based investigations of the environment from microscopic- to planetary-scale have advanced human knowledge of the surrounding animate and inanimate world. This session focuses on theoretical approaches and practice-based reflections on sound in hybrid constellations of living organisms, the mineral world and technology at large. The session is specifically interested in relations between humans, non-humans, robots, minerals, plants, artificial intelligence, the earth and the universe that are expressed or investigated with sound; as well as on practices such as synthetic biology, gene-editing, other laboratory-practices, field-work in non-/natural environments, geology-based approaches and perceptions on ecological niches in relation to sound practices.

Chairs:

• Laura Beloff
• Dolores Steinman
• Michelle Lewis-King

The session will interrogate the different ways in which sound-based art practices have been increasingly seen as the form of environmental research, often framed as a walking practice (both in the classic methodologies of sound walking and its contemporary modifications). We are particularly interested in how listening (both mediated and unmediated) addresses the nature of environmental change, including listening beyond human sensorial capabilities, also with the focus on blurring the boundaries between natural and artificial. We invite the contributions investigating the multiple forms of grasping the sound phenomena, ranging from the acts of mediation through the relatively simple recording technology to the more elaborate cases of data sonification, addressing the various modes of materiality through the concepts of oscillations, vibrations and the tension between pattern and chaos.

Chairs:

• Anna Nacher
• Agnieszka Jelewska
• Michał Krawczak