SOUND CAMPUS – “Sonic Fever” Edition - Tag 3

We are thrilled to announce the new edition of Sound Campus, a sound program presented in collaboration with Ars Electronica and University of Arts Linz, from the 3rd to the 5th of September 2024.

This year’s edition takes the shape of a carrier bag 1 of sounds that gathers diverse forms of musical expression. Looking to the power of sound as catalyst and shape-shifter, “Sound Campus - Sonic Fever” proposes a polymorphous stage for fiction, imaginary spaces and anachronistic possibilities.

Fostering a culture of solidarity, we embrace sound works exploring the creative potentials of alternative shared environments and shared auditory experiences. In this context, we bring the focus to the creative potential of sound as a tool for challenging normative and dominant narratives, replacing them with ones of sharing, caring and response-ability.

Sound Campus - Sonic Fever Edition Theme

Sonic Fever explores the nuances in the contact between sound making and futurity. The pioneer artist Pauline Oliveros conceived the delay as an expansion of time by bringing present sounds into the future and allowing past sounds to be heard in the present, like a "time machine”. In the same way, resonance, reverb and echo can be considered as temporal carriers.

Furthermore, the way in which a familiar song brings us to a previously known place or emotion, or how various sound practices reference each other, shows multiple threads of meaning interwoven in an inevitable process of becoming. This awareness reveals a political responsibility and opens up questions:

How does the past resonate in the future? What are the future sounds of our digital and physical selves? How can music alter narratives and adapt to the constantly shifting ecosystem in which it is created? Is it possible to change the listener's attention into a shared space and an imaginative space? Can we decentralize the human realm, amplifying the voices of non-human agents? Is it possible to envision a queer futurity? 2

A state of fever adverts a space of fine-tuned sensitivity, where ideas are fleeting and flicker at the point of transformation. At the same time, it offers a state of immersion and highlighted intuitions. The detachment with the “real” sets a breeding ground for re-enacting utopias, rhythms and dynamics, with future resonance.

Context Sound Campus

The program consists of a series of performances, open sessions, audio-walk and talks that will take place around Hauptplatz 6, during the Ars Electronica Festival. Since 2020, Sound Campus has been a format hosted by the University of Arts Linz, providing an opportunity for students and performers to exchange and share their work with a wider audience.
 

1 Carrier Bag is a term coined by Ursula K. Le Guin in her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which questions the spear as the first human tool, focusing instead on the carrier bag, net, and sling in human evolution and interaction.

2 Questions inspired by: Sonic Fictions and Feminisms in SF Melees: Mobilizing Worlding in Contemporary Electronic Music by Mollie Zhang and Marie-Andrée Pellerin’s Speculative Phonetics, Science Fiction and Sound Art Investigations (PhD Project).