Unsound : Undead

AUDINT

Opening Friday 24 May 6-9pm
Exhibition runs until Saturday 15 June, open Tuesday - Saturday 12-6pm
Part of our 2019 programme home

EXHIBITION IMAGES | EXHIBITION BOOKLET

arebyte Gallery is pleased to announce Unsound : Undead, a new installation by AUDINT.

Unsound : Undead brings together AUDINT’s research into the peripheries of audition as explored in their edited collection Unsound:Undead (Urbanomic Press April 2019)

From high frequency crowd control systems, whispering windows, and directional ultrasound  technology to haptic feedback devices using vibration within immersive VR, the parameters of the sonic are constantly re-engineered.

AUDINT refer to such augmentations, which extend audition to encompass the imperceptible and the not-yet or no-longer audible, as unsound. The notion of undead, for them, is a cipher, constantly recrypted by socio-economic, political, aesthetic, techno-scientific, juridical, and other forces.

The imperceptible cosmology of unsound in its oscillating relationship to the undead defines the audiovisual events of this exhibition.

For the past ten years the AUDINT group has been researching these peripheries of sonic perception and the portals they open to new dimensions. AUDINT is a UK based research unit operating across the fields of sound, performance, theory/fiction, film and installation art. Currently consisting of Souzana Zamfe, Toby Heys, Steve Goodman (Kode9), and Eleni Ikoniadou, AUDINT was formed to investigate the weaponisation of vibration, sonic perception, and the otherworldly dimensions of the inaudible.

Performances and installations have been produced for galleries and festivals including Tate Britain, Mutek Montreal, Unsound Krakow, New Forms Vancouver, Sonar Istanbul, Transmediale Berlin, Art in General New York, Spike Island Bristol.

AUDINT is a sonic research cell that first came into being just after WW2. Formed by three ex-members of the Ghost Army, it later resurfaced during the Vietnam War, staffed by the filmmaker Magdalena Parker, Marshall Spector and Vietnamese bio-acoustics expert Nguyễn Văn Phong. The current iteration of AUDINT consists of Patrick Defasten, Steve Goodman, Eleni Ikoniadou, Toby Heys and Souzanna Zamfe.

The group’s output to date has taken multiple forms, including tape and LP editions, computer software, art installations, performances, books, and films. AUDINT’s research and practice considers the weaponisation of sound, peripheral sonic perception and more widely the otherworldly and obscure dimensions of the audible (which they call “unsound”), engineering a nonlinear timeline of sonic events stretching from the eighth century BC song of the Sirens to the “holosonic” technologies of 2057; nodding to the sonic (science) fiction legacies of musicians like Drexciya, Sun Ra and Underground Resistance.

AUDINT have previously produced audiovisual installations at Tate Britain, The Academy of Art Berlin, Art in General New York, Unsound Festival Krakow, and performances at Transmediale Berlin, Mutek Montreal, Sònar Istanbul, The White Building London, and the New Forms Festival Vancouver. Their first book Dead Record Office and vinyl record Delusions of the Living Dead/DRNE Cartography were released together on AUDINT Records in the limited edition packageMartial Hauntology, and they have issued a series of limited edition cassettes on the Reel Torque label. Their upcoming anthology, Unsound : Undead, will be published by Urbanomic in summer 2018.