The results of Justin Bennett’s Sound Installation class 2020–2021 have been exhibited at WEST Den Haag on 11, 12 and 13 June 2021.

The exhibition showed works by Tristan Beutter, Lars Floris, Alec Gordon, Kim Ho, Siavash Jafari, Tornike Karchkhadze, Jerzy Klimczak, Farzaneh Nouri, Atte Olsonen and Ran Perry.

The title “Voor Ogen en Oren” refers to a pioneering exhibition “Für Augen und Ohren” or “Écouter par les yeux” from 1980. It brought together a spectrum of work from musicians, composers, inventors, conceptual artists where sound and image were equal partners. The idea of ‘sound art’ did not exist 40 years ago, but addressing all the senses is normal practice for artists these days.

This group of Sonology students have spent the last year investigating the connections and boundaries between the senses and asking questions like 'What happens when you compose for visual vibrations? How does listening work underwater? How can we interact with digital life-forms? Can a computer dream about the city? How can you compose with time in an exhibition context?'

Atte Olsonen, a M2 Sonology student, took part in the class:

'The installation class has been a nice chance to work with other forms of sound art than the ones of more or less traditional performance and fixed media. It's a shame that we only get to actually work on this in a real space for one week in the whole year.'

Atte himself made a spatial interactive audiovisual sound installation called Listener in which the audience was invited one by one into a darkened room to explore the interactivity of the surrounding rattling sound in the light of a flashlight. With Listener Atte investigates the agency of machines. His work invites the viewer to meditate on the presence shared between her/him and the mechanical beings in the space.

Image: Knud Peter Petersen (detail of cover from catalogue Für Augen und Ohren).