Sonic Amateurs Club: Unseen/Unheard

The colloquium will be dedicated to Electromagnetism, Radiophony, Listening to the Unheard, and Observing the Unseen. It will feature two presentations—one performative and one discursive—focusing on how broadcasting and other wave-related techniques act as material forces that redefine concepts of [public] spaces, social relationships, collectivity, and more. Emphasizing how these techniques and methods exist at the crossroads of radio, sound art, artistic and traditional research practices, the colloquium will explore how they challenge our understanding of the boundaries between the audible and inaudible, the visible and invisible. We will also focus on examining the socio-cultural contexts of collective memory and the processes of remembering.

The Sonic Amateurs Club (SAC) is a non-regular, sporadic, extra-academic program in Sound Studies, Sonic Arts and Experimental Music curated by Stas Shärifullá and Yann Martins.

Guests

Valentina Vuksic is working on consequences and containments of technological scenarios and is based in Au ZH. She works within the radiation of computational systems, improvising with the electrosmog of code, collecting and streaming sonic recordings of electricity, and interpreting the unintended side effects of technology-based experimentation as intrinsic to contemporary digital technologies. Valentina holds a PhD in Musical Composition from the University of Birmingham, in collaboration with the Institute for Contemporary Art Research at Zürich University.

Valentina will present a sonic walk-through on improvising with and within computational radiation, focusing on the electrosmog of the digital. Her approach shifts the side effects of abstract infrastructures into the spotlight, positioning them at the core of computation.

Evgeny Bylina (b. 1994, Kharkiv) is a cultural theorist, curator, sound scholar, and artist based in Tbilisi, whose work explores memory and nostalgia through both artistic and academic lenses. Drawing on phenomenology, media studies, and critical theory, he examines listening as a unique epistemological process capable of uncovering aspects of everyday life that escape rational understanding. His research focuses on cultural memory and the role of sonic practices in processing and transcending the traumas of the past. Evgeny also serves as the editor of the book series The History of Sound at New Literary Observer Publishing (Moscow).

In his talk, Evgeny will reveal how ideologies and systems of knowledge production shape the technologies of radiophonic cultures. Using examples from both classic and contemporary sound art, he will demonstrate how a creative approach can either challenge and “crack” this ideological influence or, conversely, become subservient to it.

Readings & Listenings

[Listening] Valentina Vuksic. Live at Sonic Protest Festival, 1st April 2023
[Listening] Garage Digital. Station Radio curated by Evgeny Bylina, 2023
Carolyn Birdsall. Nazi Soundscapes. Sound, Technology and Urban Space in Germany, 1933 — 1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012. P. 11 – 30.
Francois J Bonnet. The Order of Sounds. A Sonorous Archipelago (trans. Robin Mackay). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Urbahnomic, 2016. P. 31 – 50.
Adrienne Janus. Listening: Jean-Luc Nancy and the “Anti-Ocular” Turn in Continental Philosophy and Critical Theory. Comparative Literature 63 (2), 182-202, 2011.
Salomé Voegelin. Technologies of Sound Art. Techno-cultural occurrences. In. M.Bull (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies. New York: Routledge, 2019. P. 201 — 209.