Tactics&Practice #14: Workshop 4/4: Fuzzing Apparatuses

In order to explore multiple ways of receiving and intersecting sounds and vibrations, participants will be invited to experiment with different types of microphones and interfaces for listening and recording. In this exercise, they will engage with different scales and types of vibrational phenomena: from tactile and intimate listening to exploring the propagation of sound vibrations in different media and to listening to electromagnetic activity as well as other invisible forces that surround us.

Participants will use recording devices to explore the potential of sounds and manipulate them with an open-source Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). By transforming their recorded material into personal creations, they will acquire foundational tools for analysing and editing sound as they reflect on, share and engage in a dialogue about scales of listening and practices of attunement.

All of this will be done in relation to (and around) La Orejona, a vibrational membrane microphone sculpture that is based on a soft accelerometer elastic sensor and interacts with vibrational phenomena around it. Participants will be able to directly engage with La Orejona’s membrane and unpack the many questions and possibilities it brings up in terms of relationality, unintelligibility, incommensurability, collectivity, noising, resonance, frequencies, signals, mappings, transductions etc.

Nicole L’Huillier (1985) is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her work centres on exploring sounds and vibrations as construction materials to delve into questions of agency, identity, collectivity and vibrational imagination. Through installations, vibrational/sonic sculptures, custom-made (listening and sounding) apparatuses, performances and experimental compositions, she explores performativity and agency from micro to cosmic scales and creates membranal as well as resonant rituals. She holds a PhD in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT (2022). Her work has recently been shown at transmediale, Sonic Acts, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Ural Industrial Biennial, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Bienal de Artes Mediales, Venice Architecture Biennale and Ars Electronica, among others.