Dissemination – INTIMAL: Interfaces for Relational Listening

Yarmonics Sound Festival Talk 23/09/22

Talk with Martin Scaiff @ St. George Theatre. Great Yarmouth. Yarmonics Festival. Photo by Ranieri Spina

I am very grateful for the invitation to Yarmonics Festival in Great Yarmouth. The festival is a gathering creating sense of place at Great Yarmouth, through sound and listening. I offered a talk about the INTIMAL embodied system for relational listening, as a set of technologies to listen to what I have called “Sonic Migrations”.

The panel on which I talked was focused on Sound and Health and was chaired by Martin Scaiff. AM Kanngieser connected via Zoom to offer her talk. Martin’s talk focused on the experience of listening activities with children and teenagers, while AM Kanngeiser on the awareness of consent for listening/recording marine creatures’ sounds. I found both talks fascinating as they expressed an urgency of exploring these listenings for sustainable futures.

I received wonderful feedback and questions such as “what would be my ideal interface”, and “how do I negotiate place and presence” with Quantum listening. My ideal interface might be one that reinforces my individual and collective agency while I move with others co-present and across the distance. Regarding location, I still strive for sensing a balance, in which I remain grounded even across the distance. A technology that reminds me about the practice and reinforces the multiple possibilities of being that Pauline Oliveros invited us to explore. Still practising, and listening in the practice.

Thanks again for such a wonderful event!

Great Yarmouth Sea. The ‘easternmost’ that you can be in England. Photo by Ximena Alarcón.

Deep Listening, Dissemination, INTIMAL App©, Podcast

Listening to the In-Between with the INTIMAL App

Proud to be contributing to the first of three podcast series ‘Listening to the In-Between’ exploring the practice of Deep Listening® in ArtEZ Studium Generale in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Thanks to Joep Christenhusz, researcher and music journalist for this great work full of curiosity. I am very happy sharing this sound space with Ed McKeon bringing our knowledge and experience into Deep Listening and the legacy of Pauline Oliveros. Listen and read here: https://tinyurl.com/25udun6n

Conferences, Dissemination, INTIMAL App©

INTIMAL App© in Soundings: Assemblies of Listenings & Voices across the Souths, Berlin Aug 21-25

Attendees to SOUNDINGS. Berlin ADK. Photo by Dr. Amit D. Patel

It was a real nurturing experience to be part of this important gathering SOUNDINGS: Assemblies of Listenings and Voices Across the Souths at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. I offered a workshop with the INTIMAL App© and I am full of gratitude to the organisers for the invitation and encouragement to speak and share my work and renewed reflections.

Soundings was a seminal 5-day gathering of musicians, artists, performers, and sound scholars from outside of the European canon. Soundings addressed “the dearth of critical engagement with artists and thinkers working on the margins of the Eurocentric discourses, to counteract a scant presence of the Global South, diasporic, and indigenous music and sound works, and scholarship in the contemporary fields of music and sound arts”. In meaningful soundings and listenings with diverse formats, I was invited to listen to the plants, as well as the research and art of my artists-researchers-thinkers colleagues from the Global South, who have engaged also in migratory journeys to make their voices, thoughts and artistic and intellectual development heard and evolve in countries from the Global North. A deep and critical revision of how we voice and listen was framed with silences for reflection, on what unites us, also on our diversities, and how we find ways for being recognised on equal levels for our long-distance journey to be supported across the globe.

Academic-Dissemination, Dissemination, Publications

Sonic Proximities, published in JONMA Journal

I am very pleased to announce and share my publication “Sonic Proximities: Locating Oneself and the Others Within a “Migratory Journey”.” in the Journal of Network Music and Arts 4, 1 (2022).

This issue of the Journal addresses the theme “Network Arts:
Transformation of Distance.” Questions on different aspects of distance are addressed by the five articles involving different technologies, art practices and contexts, in contemporary times of connecting during the Covid-19 pandemic.

My contribution is a reflection on the first version of the INTIMAL App© developed with The Studio Recovery Fund, and the test with 10 women in Bath, UK. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, this article reflects on the social and environmental “sonic proximities” that emerged out of the listening experiences using the INTIMAL mobile app with ten women based in Bath, United Kingdom. I suggest that the embodied and interactive simplicity of the app stimulates connections that support the gradual transformation of environmental and social distance, thereby providing a sense of individual and collective agency.

The reflection was presented first at the NowNet Arts Conference 2021, and with the feedback received and further reflections, the results are published here.

Thanks to Sarah Weaver and Corinna Kirsch, to make possible this publication, and congratulations on the full issue.

Academic-Dissemination, Conferences, Dissemination, Environmental, INTIMAL App©

CTM Festival Berlin 25.05.22

I am very grateful for the invitation to speak at the CTM Festival 2022, at the panel Contact with the more-than-human-world. The panel brought together reflections from Jono Gilmurray, Susan Schuppli and Faiza Ahmad Khan, AM Kanngieser and Zoe Todd. Curated by Anita Jóri, the panel explored how sound artists have engaged politically, socially and aesthetically with our environments, in the context of climate crisis. How our work might respond to the urgent questions of listening, and the negotiation of our position in relation to other more-than-human entities. I offered a talk on “Sonic Migrations: resonances that hold us as we walk through telematic rituals for agency.”

This has been a great opportunity to bring together an overview of my 19 years of work listening to migrations and nourishing the principles of the INTIMAL system and the INTIMAL App©. Thanks to Anita Jóri, the speakers and the wonderful organisation of the Festival!

Academic-Dissemination, Collaborations, Dissemination, INTIMAL Collective, Publications

Routed Magazine & iDiaspora

An article written by the INTIMAL collective, and titled “INTIMAL: Relational listening that unknowingly prepared us for the COVID-19 pandemic” has been published by the magazine Routed and iDiaspora, in an special issue, “Empowering global diasporas in the digital era”. It has been published in English, Spanish and French.

We are proud of sharing this issue with other 18 experiences using digital technologies in different ways to use digital media to connect, help, heal and stand for migrant’s needs and rights all over the world.

We are grateful the editors and the team that makes this possible!

Dissemination, Interfaces, Workshops

Sensing INTIMAL App©

The Branderburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM)

I was invited on May 26th and June 2nd to The Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM) by the Research Group “SENSING: The Knowledge of Sensitive Media”, to share my research with the project INTIMAL, first stage, and to offer a Sentient workshop , involving Deep Listening®, Relational Listening, and experiencing the INTIMAL App© which is part of the second stage of the project. This time, the frame of the collective experience was proposed as “Dreaming while awake: for a network of presence“. Thanks to all the members of the group for engaging with the experience of listening, walking, and connecting to the place and to others, while experiencing different levels of presence. Thanks to Kate Donovan for the invitation!

Dissemination

INTIMAL Documentary

(Abajo en español)

This documentary summarises the first stage of development of the art-research project INTIMAL led by Dr. Ximena Alarcón at the University of Oslo’s RITMO Research Centre, between 2017-2019, thanks to a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellowship she was awarded.

The project invites people to listen to their migrations, in order to expand their sense of place and sense of presence. In its first stage, Ximena proposes two questions: 1) how the body becomes an interface that keeps memory of place, and 2) how to improvise and transmit the experience of an embodied migratory journey using non-screen based interfaces. As a case study, she involved Colombian women who have migrated to European countries, in the exploration of their migratory journeys, via listening, improvised voice and body movement, in co-located and telematic settings. She used Deep Listening practice and Embodied Music Cognition methods to develop the INTIMAL System: a physical-virtual “embodied” system for Relational Listening, to be used in telematic sonic performance, in the context of human migration.

(Español)

Este documental resume la primera etapa de desarrollo del proyecto de investigación artística INTIMAL liderado por la Dra. Ximena Alarcón en el Centro de Investigación RITMO de la Universidad de Oslo, entre 2017-2019, gracias a una beca Marie Skłodowska Curie que le fue otorgada.

El proyecto invita a las personas a escuchar sus migraciones, con el fin de ampliar su sentido de lugar y presencia. En su primera etapa, Ximena plantea dos preguntas: 1) cómo el cuerpo se convierte en una interfaz que guarda la memoria del lugar, y 2) cómo improvisar y transmitir la experiencia de un viaje migratorio sonoro del cuerpo, utilizando interfaces no visuales, y con sensores de movimiento. Como caso de estudio, involucró a mujeres colombianas que han migrado a países europeos, en la exploración de sus viajes migratorios, a través de la escucha, la voz improvisada y el movimiento corporal, en entornos co-localizados y telemáticos. Utilizó la práctica de Deep Listening y los métodos de Embodied Music Cognition para desarrollar el INTIMAL System: un sistema físico-virtual “incorporado” para la Escucha Relacional, para ser utilizado en performance de improvisación sonora telemática, en el contexto de la migración humana.

Dissemination

Walking Festival of Sound, Jan 15, 2021

I was invited by Jacek Smolicki and Tim Shaw to speak in the Walking Festival of Sound. I received very nourishing questions about the different layers of the INTIMAL project: such as my approach to healing, sonification, oral archives, audience, performers and embodiment. Thanks a lot to everybody present there, for their listening, and for their engagement in the Q&A. Thanks again to Jacek and Tim, this was a very refreshing way to start the year, to continue giving the next steps for the INTIMAL project.

Dissemination, INTIMAL Collective

El Retorno de nuestras voces – Comisión de la Verdad, 14 Nov, 2020

English below

Como colectivo INTIMAL tuvimos el honor de participar en este evento cultural “El Retorno de nuestras voces” organizado por la Comisión de la Verdad (Colombia), en el Reino Unido e Irlanda. Mil gracias a lxs organizadores por incluirnos en este evento con tantas voces que necesitan ser escuchadas desde el exterior de Colombia, para sanar al sacar la voz y ser escuchadxs.

English

As an INTIMAL collective, we had the honor of participating in this cultural event “The Return of our voices” organized by the Truth Commission (Colombia), in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Many thanks to the organizers for including us in this event with so many voices that need to be heard from outside Colombia, to heal by speaking out and being heard.