oOo Liquid is a sonic exploration of the fluctuating nature of environmental processes connected to intrinsic mobility in contemporary social relations. Liquidity suggests a dissolution of fixities. It is inspired by a systemic approach to life that follows the flux of the ever-changing new ecologies. Water is life. As humans, we regulate it with majestic edifices of past and current times. We contain it in fountains enjoying it for the aesthetic pleasures of the spilling streams of tourists. We enclose it with dams in hydroelectrical lakes to harvest it for energy consumption. But it evades our control with droughts, storms and floods, with calamities of our own terraforming making.
The sounds of a crystal clear cold body of water flowing through the ever warmer soup of the sea, exploding in a wave hitting the rocks, infused by the liquefying sound synthesis undulates on a tightrope between despair and anticipation of a brighter future. The sound in OTTOsonics immersive sound system cradles the listeners in the chronoreality of water, inducing the sensation of becoming fluid. The artist’s motivation comes from the interest in object-oriented ontology and the posthumanist perspective that proposes a deeply troubled yet bonding relationship of humans with the things in the world. It promotes strange kinships instead of separations, which are manifested in aesthetic inclination toward diversity, randomness, cycles, and polyrhythmic and polyphonic structures.
The residency will take place in Ottensheim, Austria, from 5 to 11 June 2022.
Public event on 11 June 2022, at ??
About OTTOsonics
OTTOsonics is a collective of sound artists, developers, and sound engineers with an initiative to make immersive audio formats accessible to sound and performance artists, as well as cultural and educational institutions, and to facilitate their use in the arts and culture. OTTOsonics is an open platform for artists to address barriers to incorporating immersive sounds in all disciplines of arts and performances, to exchange technical and creative methods from production to implementation, and to share artistic and technological know-how across the field of acoustic and electronic music. OTTOsonics Residency is a one-week program, where participants experiment with ways of realizing musical ideas in a multichannel environment utilizing open-source software and custom-made devices.
Artistic direction: Rojin Sharafi
Director, hardware developer: Manu Mitterhuber
Software developers: Enrique Tomás and Martin Kaltenbrunner
Venue: OTTOsonics, Am Damm 4/9, 4100 Ottensheim, Austria
Link: https://www.alterbauhof.at/ottosonics/
Research phase
Mud, a mixture of soil and water, has a bad reputation for being something dirty. It connects to our fear of the invisible bacteria and tiny creatures that flourish in the muddy waters. In aquatic ecology, contrary to such prejudice, life in mud is a litmus indicator of biodiversity. The critters dug in the squishy textures, hidden yet essential, make the difference between the living waters and those that are dead. With a hydrophone, I was able to eavesdrop on what they had to say about this. It was taken precisely at midday on a sunny weekday in the early summer on a rustic wooden docking pier for small boats on the border of the Sečovlje Saltpans Natural Park at the mouth of the St. Bartholomew’s Canal (45°29’53.2″N 13°35’36.7″E). There was some sea traffic and occasional hovering of small tourist planes overflying the saltpans. But not too many acoustic competitions for percussive chatter of the fish and tiny shrimp and very little disturbance of the soft muddy water that makes their home.
Flux: I recorded the sound of the crystal clear cold upper stream of Soča River (46°20’29.7″N 13°40’22.2″E) with a hydrophone at midday on a sunny summer day during PifCamp hacker camp. Not so long ago, this place was desolated, revealing bone-white rocks, dead, silent, with no trace of any form of life. The recording is a tribute to the rewilded nature of the once barren and now overgrowing lush mountain scree, infused by the liquefying undulating on a tightrope between despair and anticipation of a brighter future.
Past events
• oOo Liquid live performance, at the HEKA: PLIMA event with Mauricio Valdes San Emeterio and Robertina Šebjanič, the official opening of HEKA Laboratory on the Crossroad of Art and Science, @PiNA, Cesta Zore Perello-Godina 3, amphitheatre behind the Arena Bonifika, Koper/Capodistria, 1 October 2021
• Liquid oOo / Mud fixed media, @CENSE on Radio Punctum: Water, curated by Polina Khatchenkova & Petra Kapš, 28 December 2021
• Liquid oOo / Water ambisonic composition, @OTTOsonics Residencies, public presentation, 11 June 2022
• Liquid oOo / Water fixed media, @OTTOsonics Festival, curated by Manu Mitterhuber, Enrique Tomás, Rojin Sharafi, Martin Kaltenbrunner,, 17 September 2022
• Mladi Levi Festival, 18-26 August 2023, Ljubljana (SI). In collaboration with Robertina Šebjanič.
• IZIS Festival, music programme curated by Mauricio Valdés San Emeterio, @Libertas, production: PiNA Koper (SI), 9 October 2023.
• Open Thursdays series, ZiMMT, Leipzig (DE), 19 October 2023. In collaboration with Robertina Šebjanič.