Sound Vibes

Curated by Valérie Hasson-Benillouche & Valentina Peri

The history of the arts that mobilize sound technologies constitutes a large if rarely acknowledged portion of the history of the media arts. Since Luigi Russolo’s manifesto, "The Art of noises", a celebration of the rich scope of sounds that exist in the world, the artistic avant-garde has embraced sound as a fundamental tool for experimentation. From the futurist "Intonarumori" all the way through the situationists actions, Fluxus happenings and John Cage’s seminal work, sound and listening practices have been and continue to be transformed through the cultural manipulation of technology, both analogical and digital.

The exhibition "Sound Vibes" highlights a selection of artworks dealing with physical and material features of sound that suggest uncharted trajectories between aurality and vision.

The artworks in the show explore different soundscapes in which visitors are invited to dive through sight and hearing, in their unpredictable connections with form (Adam Basanta); frequencies (Roberto Pugliese); the body (Jacopo Baboni Schilingi); wind (Peter Beyls); water (Adam Basanta); the voice (Katharina Zimmerhackl); human noises (Laurent Mignonneau & Christa Sommerer). New forms of notation are also confronted: sound and image are therefore combined to create a meta-language through graphic signs. If Roberto Pugliese rearrange historical experiments in the representation of music, Katharina Zimmerhackl’s score is based on the mechanical recordings of the bouts and tremors of hysterical bodies.

The exhibition tries to reframe sound not only as a material subject to experimentation as acoustic data, but also as a space and place for the body and the senses, and as an object of culture and human agency.

Valentina Peri, 2019