Description
What does it mean to think of atmosphere as media? In this talk, I explore the atmospheric and vibrational qualities of Heather Phillipson’s installation Out of this World, and the role of sound in communicating immaterial and ephemeral phenomena, while drawing connections with singer and inventor Margaret (Megan) Watts Hughes’s work through their shared interest in vibration. Responding to Phillipson’s description of Out of this World as “a visual and acoustic fog,” the talk will discuss different approaches to ‘elemental media’ in order to think through the relationship between experiences of material and immaterial phenomena, across human and more-than-human worlds. Moving from brief comparisons with other artists who have used fog in order to evoke the imbrication of political, military, and environmental histories in Japan and Thailand, such as Nakaya Fujiko and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, to Sung Tieu’s exploration of the psychological effects of sonic warfare in Vietnam and Cuba, I ask: how can the sonic help shift scalar registers from the intimate and embodied, to the atmospheric and the climatic?| Period | 27 Sept 2024 |
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| Event title | 'Vibrations across worlds: sonic atmospheres in Heather Phillipson’s Out of this World' - public talk at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery |
| Event type | Exhibition |
| Location | Swansea, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |