How Artistic Researchers are Sonifying Climate Data
A Discussion about "Twenty Springs" at Malmö Konsthall
Berlin-based Sono-Choreographic Collective discuss their sound installation Twenty Springs, happening in parallel at Malmö Konsthall from Wednesday, October 18th to Sunday, October 22nd, 2023. They will discuss methods of artistic research, and how they turned 20 years of environmental data into a 60-minute installation.
The discussion will also explore how artistic research creates knowledge, and intersections between artistic and academic research. It specifically welcomes both an interested general public and practitioners interested in artistic research.
About the Installation “Twenty Springs”
“Twenty Springs” translates the spatial and temporal scales of climatic change into a sound sculpture, turning 20 years of environmental data recorded at a Svalbard permafrost measurement station into a 60 minute sound installation. As hourly atmospheric and subterranean measurements are transformed into a polyphonic drone, the project explores how the fragile complexity of planetary systems can be sensed and embodied. The sound installation was created by the Berlin-based artist trio Sono-Choreographic Collective and brought to Malmö Konsthall by curators Kajsa Antonsson and Brandon Farnsworth.
The climate crisis remains for many an inaccessible, looming threat. In “Twenty Springs”, presented at Malmö Konsthall from 18–22 of October, the Sono-Choreographic Collective installs a sonic environment drawing on a detailed set of hourly environmental data points from the Arctic, the fastest-warming place on earth. Using custom software, instruments, storytelling strategies and participatory somatic practices, “Twenty Springs” relates long climatic changes to our sensory perception, making palpable the damaging effects to the earth’s atmo-, hydro-, cryo- and geospheres.
“Twenty Springs” is part of Sono-Choreographic Collective’s Common Grounds project, initiated by Julia Boike, leader of permafrost research at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut Potsdam, and running from 2020 through 2025. It is a collaborative artistic-scientific exploration of strategies for sonifying and communicating environmental data. It asks how a long-term collaboration between the practices of climate science and sonic arts can be translated into public experiences, producing artistic outputs including a sound installation, concert-lecture, music record, video work, and an art-science publication.
About the Sono Choreographic Collective
The Sono-Choreographic Collective consists of Kerstin Ergenzinger, Bnaya Halperin-Kaddari and Kiran Kumar who come from practices in sculpture, music, and dance respectively. Their work distills into sound, music and object making, as well as movement and writing.
Participants
Sono Choreographic Collective (Bnaya Halperin Kaddari, Kerstin Ergenzinger, Kiran Kumar), moderated by Brandon Farnsworth, Division of Musicology, Lund University, together with Johannes Stripple, Dept. of Political Science, LU, and organised by Kajsa Antonsson
The exhibition opens with a vernissage the 18 of October at 17.00 with presentations from artists and curator.