A workshop with John Grzinich
Morning session: 9:30 – 12
Afternoon session: 13 – 16:30

Senses of Place: Observation and intervention strategies in working with sound and moving image

The sensory experience [of light and sound] are phenomena of the weather-world. They belong to the fluxes of the medium, not to the conformation of surfaces.-Tim Ingold

In this workshop we will briefly cover a broad range of topics that can loosely be assembled under the theme “perception of the environment” in current audiovisual artist practice. Whether it is open „wilderness“, cultivated landscapes or the bulit, urban environment, we constantly inhabit and participate in a consistently evolving world. Yet in light of the ever increasing dominance of mechanization, automatization and „virtualization“ in the post-modern world, a priori issues such as environmental degradation and climate change are pressing us to fundamentally re-examine our relationship to the places we inhabit (particularly in understanding our responsibility). Despite the complexity involved, defining and cultivating environmental relations is rooted in
perception and must be practiced though observation and direct involvement. It is here that strategies of artistic practice play a vital role in the creative interpretation, intervention and
reappropriation of the everyday.

Key questions I will address include:
1.What types of meaning do we derive from the living landscapes and places we inhabit through sound and image?
2.How can we perceive environments on a geomorphic level?
3. What are methods or strategies for understanding and interpreting the non-human or extra-human world?
4. How do we understand the semantic relation between sound and image, in both the “real” world and the “mediated”?

Program

Morning session:

Introduction, theoretical background and artist´s presentation of selected works

Film screenings: “Transduction Twentyfifteen” (2016, 15 min) + “Curonia” (2015, 40 min)

Lunch break

Afternoon session:
Observation and exercises:

Listening and association

Soundscape frames

The silent image

Animist approach to objects

Some technical aspects and methods of capturing sound and image in open landscape and urban environment

Bio: John Grzinich (US/Estonia) has worked since the early 1990s as an artist and cultural coordinator with various practices combining sound, moving image, site-specificity, and collaborative social structures. He has performed and exhibited in North America, Europe and Japan and his compositions have been published on a host of international labels. He lives in Estonia and works as a program coordinator for MoKS artist-run center.
http://maaheli.ee/