Sonification Workshop with Jasmine Guffond
What does it mean to think and feel through sound? The workshop will begin with a guided tour of Jasmine Guffond “Listening Back” at TRAFO, and it will be continued at the Academy of Art in Szczecin. November 6th & 7th - Trafo & Art Academy Szczecin
Sonification is the translation of data into sound. Employed across scientific and artistic fields, the practice of sonification questions the traditional hierarchy of the senses between sound and vision by valuing listening as a method of understanding and interpretation. Jasmine Guffond will introduce her practice of sonifying and Listening Back to ubiquitous surveillance data. Students will have the opportunity to explore sound as a creative, aesthetic, communication tool by exploring different approaches to mapping phenomena to sound. While this workshop is focused on process, outcomes could be individual or collective music / sound pieces (recorded or performed), or grahpical scores. Jasmine Guffond is an artist, composer and researcher working at the interface of social, political and technical infrastructures. Focused on electronic composition across music and art contexts her practice spans live performance, recording, installation and custom made browser add-on. Through the sonification of data she addresses the potential of sound to engage with contemporary political questions and engages listening as a situated knowledge practice. Jasmine has exhibited internationally including composing sound for Shulea Cheang’s installation at the Taiwanese Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2019, and collaborating with Zorka Wollny on a sound installation for the Chicago Architecture Biennal, 2019. She has performed live internationally at electronic music and art festivals including opening for CTM festival (DE) in 2020, a commission for Groupe de Recherches Musicales’ (GRM) acousmonium, premiered at Présences Électronique (FR) in 2022, and Heroine of Sounds Festival (DE), 2017 & 2023. She received the ‘Working Grant for New Music und Sound Art’ from the Berlin Senate in 2016 & 2022, was featured in Wire magazine in 2019 and has released solo records with the Sonic Pieces (2015, 2017), Karl Records (2018) and Editions Mego (2020) labels. She completed her Sound Studies masters at the Berlin University der Künste (UdK) in 2015, and her PhD in 2021. Her candidature was undertaken at the University of New South Wales Art, Design & Architecture department where she conducted research into sound and listening as critical modes of inquiry into online surveillance cultures. She currently teaches at the Sound Studies department at UdK, Berlin, Germany.
𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐆𝐮𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐧𝐝 (born 1972) is an artist and composer working at the interface of social, political and technical infrastructures. Her practice spans live performance, recording, sound installation and custom made browser add-on. Through the sonification of data she addresses the potential of sound to engage with contemporary political questions and engages listening as a situated knowledge practice. Interested in providing an audible presence for phenomena that lies beyond human perception, via the sonification of facial recognition algorithms, global networks, or Internet tracking cookies she questions what it means for our personal habits to be traceable, and for our identities, choices and personalities to be reduced to streams of data. Jasmine Guffond lectures at the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at Universität der Künste in Berlin. She comes from Sydney (Australia). She lives and works in Berlin.