Audiovisual installation for 2 video monitors, 2 microphones, headphones.
2025
As part of Errant Sound’s Group Exhibition HELLHÖREN
KUNSTPUNKT BERLIN – Raum für aktuelle Kunst. Schlegelstraße 6, 10115 Berlin.
Abfall is the latest iteration of Noise Re(in)duction, that explores the possibilities of Noise Reduction Algorithms. Abfall is an immersive sound installation that critically examines the politics of listening, sonic waste, and the unintended consequences of noise reduction technologies. By amplifying the discarded, Abfall transforms fragments of traffic, wind, and urban soundscapes into digital artifacts that function as primary compositional elements. Extracted spectrograms and distorted digital remnants of removed noise create an abstract landscape that reveal the aesthetic and political dimensions of sonic erasure, exposing the socio-political dimensions of soundscapes shaped by climate (in)justice, class divides, and surveillance capitalism. As a result of challenging the preconceived biases embedded in machine listening algorithms, Abfall encourages an apostasy from the current blind faith in technological progress and teleological narratives.
Noise Re(in)Duction
Artistic reseaerch on Noise Reduction Algorithms 2024 –
NOISE RE(IN)DUCTION is an artistic research project that that explores the possibilities of
noise reduction technologies as sonic material for music composition and sound art
installations. The aim is to reappropriate noise reduction algorithms such as those found in
videoconference applications and commercial headsets in order to question the prescriptive
listening practices imposed by tech corporations.
Through a spectral analysis of field recordings from Berlin NOISE RE(IN)DUCTION
addresses often overlooked listening practices that are involved in our everyday life, putting
in question the algorithms’ inherent biases of race, gender, ability, and class. Sound sources
of such as AC fans, radiators, home electronics, ambient noise, unwanted reverb and echo,
wind, traffic, and conversations, are transformed into with clicks, pops, crackles, distortion,
and other forms of digital “waste.” By deconstructing the different processes of sonic
transformations, the project negotiates the boundaries of different understanding of what
noise is and what is not.
NOISE RE(IN)DUCTION is particularly interested in mobile technologies that use noise
reduction algorithms such as noise canceling headphones and mobile videoconference
software. These technologies present and affront to the ways that we perceive and relate with
our sonic surroundings, thus creating an implicitly sonic augmented reality that alienates
further from unmediated sensible experiences.
The modification and combination of environmental sources, together with the physical
isolation of headphones, provide an ideal situation to question the ways in which we perceive
sound and noise mediated by audio technology and musical aesthetics. When noise becomes
an aesthetic criterion for music, what is left to be reduced or cancelled?
In a world of hyper-mediation and overconsumption which induces a “Mental State of Noise,” paying close attention to noise sources and refocusing our
listening habits provides a new perspective on noise and media oversaturation facilitated by
tech corporations.
Performances and Presentations:
Lecture-performance
at the Speculative Sound Synthesis Symposium 2024.
Outsourcing
is a multichannel sound installation that reinterprets the dynamics of
labour redistribution as sensible hierarchical structures between humans
and machines. Starting in the 1980s, many English-speaking Western
companies outsourced customer service jobs to former British colonies
including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, where labour costs are lower
and regulatory frameworks more relaxed. Today, companies are taking
advantage of information technology business process outsourcing (IT
BPO) to replace human customer services and personal assistants with
artificial intelligence. Delegation and agency enter into an ecology of
labour and exploitation that becomes apparent in this installation.
A generative soundscape of AI-synthesized call centres and office
environments is translated through machine-listening algorithms into
light and sound impulses. Enclosures of obsolete neon ceiling lights
function as resonant boxes that refer to the architectural and physical
environments of overcrowded offices. The absence of neon bars is
replaced by digitally controllable LEDs, enhancing the contradiction
between obsolete materials and newer technologies. Headsets enable
visitors to experience the sound environment and influence the outcome
of the installation. Thus, by outsourcing the job of creating its
composition to the public, the work is a critique of labour
redistribution practices: the artists provide the means of production,
while visitors can provide their labour to create value for the artists.
A complex story of intrigue, secrecy and artistic rivalry unfolds within Berlin's new music scene. The four episodes are centrer on a group of Latin American artists whose careers and personal lives are intertwined by unexpected events and revelations. Competition, love, community and passion are to be found in this avant-garde radionovela. Staring Carla Boregas, Mauricio Takara, Heidi Heidelberg, Mauricio Velasierra, Marina Cyrino and Matthias Koole, the composers and sound artistis explore the sonic potential and artistic possibilities of the medium of radio. The artists use sound, music and language to create sonic fictions and guide the listener through their diverse musical expressions.
Modulo
für die Bolivarische
Republik
des Klangs
is a
multichannel sound sculpture that reflects on the relationships of
international exchange using devaluated currency as sonic material. Venezuelan Bolivares are
used as modules for origami sculptures that amplify, filter, or transform the
different news reports and political positions that circulated media during the
height of the Venezuelan crisis (2018-2022) The piece conflates the official
texts of EU sanctions against Venezuela with the discourses of the Venezuelan
government and interviews with Venezuelan immigrants in Bogotá.
The
installation re-signifies the origami sculptures into the immateriality of
sound, providing an additional layer to the transductions of money as a
cultural signifier. As an immigrant in a new land myself, I appropriate the
struggles of Venezuelan migrants and present them in my own perspective as a
Colombian mi
grant in Germany. By adding the sonic component, the origami pieces
acquire a function as amplifiers, transducers and filters of information, of
realities and relationships between global north and global south. In this
case, cash (the paper currency) becomes, not a medium to add further value to
my work, but rather signifier or a bigger struggle between the systemic
injustices of immigration policies, of the post-colonial dynamics, and ultimately
the materiality of money as a social construct.
