The Center For Deep Listening

do snails have heartbeats?, by senem pirler

Senem Pirler (she/her) is a sound and intermedia artist, and educator based in Troy/Brooklyn, NY. Pirler’s interdisciplinary work crosses over into sound engineering, sound art, performance, video art, movement, and installation. Born in Turkey, she studied classical piano at Hacettepe State Conservatory and sound engineering & design at Istanbul Technical University (MIAM). She developed her artistry working as a composer and recording engineer before moving to the U.S. in 2010 to study Music Technology on a Fulbright Fellowship. Pirler earned her M.M. in Music Technology the Stephen F. Temmer Tonmeister Honors Track from NYU Steinhardt, and her Ph.D. in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

listening for awhile, by Alexandra spence

This text score was initially shared remotely with a group of friends/collective initiated by Johnny Chang between Auckland, Sydney, Berlin whilst we were all home-quarantining at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. The intention for the collective was to perform the same score from our separate homes and share in a moment of listening every Wednesday for the duration of the lockdown: physically separate, yet energetically together.

Alexandra Spence is an artist and musician living on unceded Wangal land in Sydney, Australia. Alex attempts to reimagine the intricate relationships between the listener, the object, and the surrounding environment as a kind of communion or conversation. Her aesthetic favours field recordings, analog technologies & object interventions. Alex has presented her music and art in Australia, Asia, Canada and Europe, and has released music with Room40, Longform Editions, More Mars (with MP Hopkins) and Canti Magnetici.

no music – directional earpiece, by david helbich

This short piece is an excerpt from a series of earpieces that I call “No Music”. The pieces appear in my audio guides, performances, workshops and video installations. This directional take on listening is also very nice to do in a group. But then be careful to allow enough time.

David Helbich (1973, Berlin/Bremen/Brussels) is a sound-, installation- and performance artist, who creates a divers range of experimental and conceptual works for the stage, headphones, paper and online media, and in public space. His work moves between representative, interactive and conceptual approaches, often addressing concrete physical and social experiences. A recurrent interest is the interaction with a self-performing audience.

Listening/Reminiscing, by C. Lavender

C. Lavender is an interdisciplinary sound artist, sound healing practitioner, and educator. Her work spans through live performance, recording, installations, compositions, videos and workshops. C. Lavender has performed, lectured and hosted workshops at MoMA, The Whitney, The Guggenheim, Hirshhorn Museum, The Rubin Museum, Museum of the Moving Image, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute among other venues. She is the author of the book “Transcendent Waves: How Listening Shapes Our Creative Lives” (Anthology Editions), which delves into how listening can be a powerful source of inspiration.

Listening to the universe, by CHINA BLUE

China Blue is an internationally exhibiting and award winning, sound artist whose work is driven by the principal that sound is energy. Over the past twenty years she has created work on the acoustics of the Eiffel Tower, contained in NASA’s Vertical Gun or produced by our brains. Her current work is based on her discovery of Saturnian sounds for NASA. Influenced by the Chinese Feng Shui application of sound, combined with a sculptor’s relationship to space and a feminist interest in the unheard, she claims an acoustic terrain that discloses the inaudible and makes it visual. 

GRAPHIC SCORE #6, by JUSTIN FRIELLO

Justin Friello is a multi-genre composer and performer from Schenectady, NY. His work focuses on vocal music, Theatre, text, graphic notation, and pre-compositional concepts. He studied composition with Huang Ruo, Du Yun, and Suzanne Farrin.

A SONG For Nebulas, by Brian Voce

Inspired by Cosmic Background Radiation from the dawn of time this score is for one or more players and may be read and interpreted either vertically or horizontally. Cosmic Background Radiation is faint radiation from the Big Bang fills all space in the universe. Invisible, silent, ever-present..

Born in 1958, I’m an artist and lecturer at the University of Lincoln interested in the intersection of sound and visual artworks. I’ve led workshops with student creatives and musicians exploring visual and audio ‘sonicsoundspaces’ translating the visual into sound and back again as ongoing cycles of creativity. Exploring and discovering new music is a private passion, (I have an extensive collection of musical genres). The theme of my own creative visual work is the relationship between structured and chaotic systems where chance and accident determine the outcome. https://www.instagram.com/brian_voce/

WAVES ON THE BREACH, by JUSTIN YOUNGBLOOD

Justin Youngblood is an undergraduate Music Composition major in the Louisiana State University composition studio and, his music has been performed at multiple composition studio events and recitals. He is also part of the trombone studio and has played with multiple bands at LSU including the Symphonic Band and the “Golden Band from Tiger Land”.

SONIC SHHH, by ED WOODHAM

Shhh is an onomatopoeia exclamation for silence or to be still. Almost anywhere in the world, if you want to quieten someone, you say “Shhh’ which means the ultimate, because that which is still is the ultimate nature of the existence. That which is in a state of sound is a reverb with a beginning and an end. 

Ed Woodham is a 65 year old southern queer independent conceptual artist, curator, producer, and educator based in NYC. He has been active in community art, education, and civic interventions across media and culture for over forty-five years. He employs humor, irony, subtle detournement, and a striking visual style in order to encourage greater consideration of – and provoke deeper critical engagement – with the urban environment. Woodham created the project Art in Odd Places (AiOP) as a response to the disappearance of public space and personal civil liberties. .

AUTISTIC EARS, by MATTIA MAUREE

This internally-focused performance may last as long as it feels like fun. It could be interesting to notice whether the time elapsed on the clock lines up with how time passed while engaged.

Autistic composer Mattia Maurée makes art that explores perception, bodies, & resilience. Collaboration, community, and education are core to Mattia’s work. Public-facing art projects have received generous support from The Puffin Foundation, Emerald Necklace Conservancy, MASS MoCA, the City of Boston, and the MA Cultural Council. Their critically acclaimed film scores have played in 13 countries. Also a published poet, Mattia developed their first full-length libretto with Guerilla Opera. John Heiss called their string quartet, ‘Lightlessness,’ “bold, adventurous, powerful and elegant.”