Radio Amnion: Oceanic Listening as Transcendental (t)Ec(n)ology

Workshop and Listening Session with Jol Thoms and Denise Helene Sumi

In this workshop, we invite you to learn about the project and sonic ritual Radio Amnion through guided listening exercises and explorations of oceanic compositions by Anne Bourne, Jose Rivera, Margarida Mendes, Antonina Nowacka and others. Radio Amnion, initiated by Jol Thoms, is a sound art project that commissions contemporary compositions transmitted over 2.5km deep into the Pacific Ocean, far from human perception, over a submerged neutrino telescope. During each full moon, the abyssal waters of the Cascadia Basin resonate with the deep frequencies and voices of invited artists. Radio Amnion regards itself as part of the Earth’s living hydrological cycles and questions the divisions between scientific and artistic forms of knowledge. It asks: What value does knowledge beyond the measurable and quantifiable have or mean, and can sound create intimate relationships with bacteria and energetic cosmic living forces? What else could sound do?

We explore how relational technologies and oceanic listening can sensitize us to understanding the planet as inseparable and vital: How different forms of knowledge and “signals” (scientific, artistic, human, non-human and more-than-human) enable a multi-perspective and multi-sensory approach to the realities of a lifeworld of many intelligences and beings, or how they can also reveal and test boundaries.

Deepening our understanding of how technological, ecological, and planetary processes transcend each other, we learn about concepts such as “difference without separability”, the “pluriversal”, and the “web of life”: Here, relationships are a political factor: the relations we establish and how we recognize and shape them have direct ethical and environmental consequences for our interconnected world (of many worlds).

The workshop requires no prior knowledge and is open to all interested participants. Students and sound artists working with similar formats are encouraged to share works, audio essays, field recordings, or sound compositions in advance that reflect their interest in the living matter and activities on Earth and beyond. The workshop will be held in English with the possibility of translation into German.

The format is realized in collaboration with Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures (University of Applied Arts, Vienna).

Further information on registration will follow shortly.