Mutable Audible – An Operative Ontology of the Sound Image, Gabriel Paiuk

 

Doctoral Defence,
October 11th

 

In the coming October 11th at 13:45, at the Academiegebouw of Leiden University,Rapenburg 73, Gabriel Paiuk will defend his dissertation Mutable Audible – An Operative Ontology of the Sound Image.

 

Gabriel Paiuk’s project Mutable Audible investigates how that which is heard – the audible – is formed as inherent to material, collective and technical circumstances. The audible is conceived as not exclusively bound to the private realm of the mind or
the will of the individual listener, but as dependent on the diverse operations that inform how a sensorial engagement with sound takes place.

 

To account for the mutable character of the audible, Paiuk postulates a novel concept of sound image built upon the work of the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon. This notion is unhinged from previous uses of the term, namely those that define it as a visual surrogate or a mental representation. Rather, the image is conceived as a node in a cycle of functions that articulate a metastable relationship between sensing agent and milieu. The result of this reconsideration is twofold. On the one hand, the sound image is postulated as a tool to address the audible as a variable locus of engagement with the world. On the other, it unsettles assumptions that keep the image anchored to its traditional visual-centric forms and techniques and drives its transformation to encompass the realm of sound.

 

Four artistic works constitute the experimental backbone of the dissertation, that explore how the audible is variably produced. In this context, the relational character of sound is reassessed, not anchored in the presumed stability of listening subjects and the projection of sound identities, but emerging within collective protocols, material configurations and technical infrastructures in which listening unfolds.

 

As part of the doctoral promotion, three of the artistic works developed by Gabriel Paiuk as part of his dissertation will be presented publicly.

 

On October 6th, 8th and 9th the sound installation Focus will be exhibited at The Grey Space in the Middle – Paviljoensgracht 20-24, 2512 BP Den Haag– from 14:00 till 20:00. On October 10th, Focus will be open to the public from 15:00 to 17:00 and
from 18:00 to 20:00.

 

On October 10th, the works The Construction of an Imaginary Acoustic Space, for ensemble, tape and digital soundtrack, and Sound Theory (The Clouds) for violoncello, specially-purposed loudspeaker setup, video and live-video will be performed by the New European Ensemble and cellist Arne Deforce at the Conservatoriumzaal in Amare – Spuiplein 150, 2511 DG Den Haag, at 20:00.

 

More information can be found here.

 

 

Mini-Symposium,
October 12th

 

As an addendum to Gabriel Paiuk’s doctoral promotion a brief symposium will take place on October 12th, comprising presentations by Colombian sound scholar and enthnomusicologist Ana María Ochoa Gautier (Tulane University) and French
philosopher Cécile Malaspina (Collége International de Philosophie), followed by a round table discussion.

 

Both presentations will address the audible as a variable locus of engagement with the world. The work of Ana María Ochoa Gautier, primarily articulated in her work Aurality – Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Colombia, is a fundamental landmark in articulating how listening is inherent to singular cosmologies and how this unfolds in non-western indigenous communities. She elaborates on how diverse “ontologies and epistemologies of the acoustic” are proper of “audile techniques, in which sound appears simultaneously as a force that constitutes the world and a medium for constructing knowledge about it” (Ochoa 2014, “Aurality…”, p.3) Cécile Malaspina is the author of An Epistemology of Noise and principal translator of Gilbert Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. In her work, the notion of noise is explored in its emancipatory potential as understood across a range of realms, not tied to the categories of acoustic or visual ‘noise’ but as a fundamental category for a reevaluation of how theories of knowledge can be articulated.

 

This event will take place on October 12 th , 15:30 at Studio L – New Music Lab on the 6th floor of Amare – Spuiplein 150, 2511 DG Den Haag

 

More information can be found here.

 

Image courtesy of Gabriel Paiuk