Åsa Stjerna’s bio is this.
Åsa Helena Stjerna (born 1970 in Stockholm) is a Swedish artist using sound and listening as her artistic modes of exploration. Through her site-specific installations, she explores sound’s potential, making the embedded conditions and underlying narratives connected to a situation perceivable, drawing connections between past and present, local and global, as well as human and more-than human. By this she seeks to reframe the act of listening, evoking a sensibility of places as complex ecologies.
Also active as artistic researcher, she has been specifically interested in exploring the contemporary conditions of sonic situated practice and its ability of being transformative, i.e. what it actually means “to make a difference” in the era of Antrophocene and advanced capitalism. Guided by methodologies of feminism, ecosophy and posthumanism she proposes an understanding of site-specificity as an aesthetic–ethical practice and engagement between specific and diverse “bodies” with agencies—human as well as non-human, spanning across and connecting the material, social, discursive, artistic, and technical realms at the same time in a given situation.
Stjerna has participated in an extensive number of exhibitions internationally, among other Klangstaetten Stadtklänge Braunschweig, the Transmediale Media Festival, Berlin; the Nordic Music Days, Stockholm; the Ultima Contemporary Music festival, Oslo and the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Her works include several public permanents commissions: Earth Song (2020), commissioned by Stockholm Konst; Sky Brought Down (2017) Sahlgrenska university hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden commissioned by Västra Götalandsregionens konstenhet and The Well (2014) at Swedish Institute in Paris commissioned by the Public Art Agency Sweden.
Stjerna represents professorship sound art at Hochschule für bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany, 2020-2021.
Earth Song
The first project I looked into was Earth Song. In this project Åsa Stjerna captures the vibrations of the earth moving underneath our feet into this permanent sound installation. She claims the earth is singing underneath us. And through this sound installation, the installation acts as an interface to translate the Earth’s seismographic movements into a sonic experience.
I saw the photo of what seemed like a speaker system underneath these circular pieces of wood. I have an installation proposal coming up and all these visiting practitioners are helping me and influencing me into ideas quite a lot. I think the idea of connecting the speakers to a system that is already online detecting seismographic activity and then converting it into vibration and sounds is really fascinating. The only thing, in my opinion, is I’m not sure if the earth is actually singing. I would say instead that this is perhaps a deeper way for us to understand the movement of the earth. Humans have a tendency to ignore things that aren’t right in front of us, including climate change issues and worldwide famine and poverty. An installation like this really reminds us how not in control we are and the power of the earth.
I am interested to see what Åsa thinks about permanent sound installations and how you approach that idea. In comparison, let’s say for example a temporary sound installation whose intentions are different than something which is meant to be in public for the foreseeable future. How does a sound artist plan and think about that as an idea?
MARE BALTICUM
MARE BALTICUM is an artistic exploration into the sound pollution of the Baltic sea. MARE BALTICUM is a sound installation based on research into the Baltic sea taken from four different locations across the Baltic sea. Thirty-eight hydrophones were placed and recorded for one hour at the exact same time every day for a year to understand the sonic environments underwater. The recordings were then placed in a room where each loudspeaker represented one area of recordings from the Baltic sea. The sounds would merge and harmonise throughout playing to showcase this underwater sonic landscape.
I also watched the short four-minute documentary explaining the process and the final sound installation. I’m in the current moment doing research on acoustic ecology and this helps inspire my research for my audio paper. I’m doing it on noise pollution in cities and how sound artists can help design cities in the future to avoid negative outcomes. I never thought about the human activity to harm even underwater as I thought it would drown out through the ocean. I find this interesting, as humans, we usually think about us taking over landmass as what is ruining the environment which it definitely does but I also think we undermine the effects of noise pollution on animals. There have been studies into how animals change their instincts when faced with loud noise pollution from humans. Cicadas in cities are shown to make louder cries than in the wild as they have to combat noise pollution to mate.
I’m tempted to ask about her experience with this particular sound work and what she thinks about noise pollution amongst our existence and what a sound artist role could be. I guess this has opened up my idea that it might not just be a physical role for example helping to design cities but more of a showcase role. To perhaps also create works that bring attention to noise pollution.
Currents
Currents is also a piece I believe fits in a similar theme as the previous. Eighteen channel speaker system setup within the Oslo opera house in Norway. This piece is the “sonification of the North-Atlantic currents”. The eighteen channel speaker system is fed information from a Swedish research team which is continuously fed into the speaker system. The research team is studying and measuring the changing patterns of overtime of the flow of the North Atlantic currents which is directly linked to the ice caps melting. The information is then used to manipulate and control the sound textures created for this installation. The North-Atlantic sea was not used as a sound source but instead its information to control the sound textures within the opera house eighteen channel system. It also speaks on that this piece isn’t to bring answers just to bring awareness of the issues towards climate change.
This has brought a lot of information to my paper. Tied with the previous installation I think sound artists can and do have a responsibility to use their art to convey political and social issues. I think it’s a powerful medium to make people think without directly showcasing a message. Just to lay the ideas in front of people to realise what is going on. Again following up on the previous questions I want to ask I think I want to speak about, what role sound artists can play in bringing up social issues and political problems.
Post Lecture Reflection
Åsa Stjerna started the lecture by reflecting on her work for the last 15 years. She spoke on how sound and listening is her main forefront. She spoke about sound installations and her ideas of how to work with site-specific work. About engaging with the site and not just placing your speakers there and expecting to fit in. In one specific installation, she dug up one kilometre of dirt to fit in cables around a cemetery. And in her other work in the Oslo opera house, she used the wooden sculpture as a speaker stand. She believes that site-specific work is something that can’t be repeated and each site is to be treated as a new area and everything is done from scratch. I agree completely with her words here. About not just using a site but contextualising your installation to the site and how it can fit in. Maybe add or accentuate the site as it stands.
She also spoke her opinions on sound art and how when receiving commissions a lot of companies limit the artist in their work. She finds it frustrating that over the years since sound arts has been officially recognised as an art form it has shifted and been taken out of context. A lot of companies already have a predetermined idea of what they want from the commission. Of what sound arts are before even asking the artist. She believes commercial commissions are holding back and creating a negative aspect. They are not allowing the artist to think or create.
Another big part of her work is sonification. She enjoys representing non-audible information into something sonic. She also does a lot of research into this subject and believes there is a huge issue in sonification within the translation process.
MARE BALTICUM was also spoken about. The process of working with the scientist was through her PhD work. and she found herself and even the scientist fascinated with what she could do with boring numbers and data that they collect.
I also asked the questions that I thought of earlier. In regards to my first one, which was. What is the process of working towards a permanent or temporary sound installation? She spoke about how they are pretty much alike, although the length of time allows the creation or expression of different ideas that a temporary installation offers.
I found her work interesting but also a bit confusing and challenging for me to accept some thoughts. I liked that she used her work to speak about climate change issues but when asked with her thoughts of using large corporations who create the majority of climate change issues to make an installation about it she didn’t really speak on it. I also really agreed and it did make me think differently about site-specific sound installation work. Thinking more into how to fit in the site not just bringing or using the site. I believe this creates greater meaning.