Nicole L’Huillier
La Orejona Records
Exhibition
16 May–2 June 2023
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana
Part of Tactics & Practice #14: Scale
According to interdisciplinary artist and researcher Nicole L’Huillier, everything that is material has the capacity to resonate, from the micro scale (that of particles) to the macro (cosmic and interplanetary) scale. As a consequence, anything at any level of existence and materiality can be a performative agent of sound, and through the porous membranes that contain and are contained by our bodies and their technological extensions we can enter into resonant dialogues with countless entities, signals and forces. L’Huillier’s understanding of reality as a membrane between different performative agents that can be involved in “resonant rites” directly informs the interactive sound installation La Orejona Records.
A membranal listening apparatus for more-than-human entities, La Orejona (literally “the big-eared one”) is a sculpture that acts as a recording studio. With its elastic vibrational membrane microphone, it can record phenomena such as sound waves, touch-activated oscillations and ground tremors. However, in contrast to typical modern microphony that targets “signals” and filters “noise”, La Orejona operates with the purpose of indiscriminately weaving independent signals into a collective and inseparable muddy mass of sound.
THE AUTHOR
Nicole L’Huillier (1985) is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher from Santiago, Chile. Her work centres on exploring sounds and vibrations as construction materials to delve into questions of agency, identity, collectivity and vibrational imagination. Through installations, vibrational/sonic sculptures, custom-made (listening and sounding) apparatuses, performances and experimental compositions, she explores performativity and agency from micro to cosmic scales and creates membranal as well as resonant rituals. She holds a PhD in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT (2022). Her work has recently been shown at transmediale, Sonic Acts, Kunsthalle Baden Baden, Ural Industrial Biennial, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo MAC, Bienal de Artes Mediales, Venice Architecture Biennale and Ars Electronica, among others.
CREDITS
Author: Nicole L’Huillier
Production of the exhibition:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2023
Part of the series:
Tactics & Practice
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana
Thanks to Karsten Schuhl for coordinating the production and fabrication and to Jessie Mindell and Devin Murphy for their contribution and assistance to the sensor system and mapping. This work was originally commissioned for the transmediale festival 2023 (Berlin) and was developed as part of the transmediale residency 2022 thanks to the support of Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio de Chile and the Division of Culture, Arts, Heritage and Public Diplomacy – Dirac, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chile.
Tehnical support: Projekt Atol Institute
RELATED ACTIVITIES
ARTIST TALK
Fuzzing Signals, Fuzzing Membranes
Starting from the idea that reality is dynamically arranged by vibrations that are in constant interference, resonance and transduction, the artist guides us through an exploration of the vibratory – particularly the sonic through its aural and tactile manifestations – as an intrinsically collective medium that can activate intimate and intricate ways of relating to other media and to the world we are part of. This talk presents a resonant exploration that proposes a body of work based on the possibilities within the concept of La Membrana, an organisational conceptual apparatus and model structure that stimulates vibrational ways of being and thinking. By learning from La Membrana and implementing a series of membranal strategies, the artist intends to construct a narrative that is oscillatory in essence and that opens a number of questions around performativity and agency from a multiscalar and multiagential perspective. With no fixed point of reference or static definitions, Nicole’s presentation embraces the poetics of unintelligibility and incommensurability. Full of fuzzy instruments and techniques, this talk is charged with ambiguity and confusion as resonant mediators and translators, as apparatuses for tuning in/to our vibrational reality.
WORKSHOP
Nicole L’Huillier
Fuzzing Apparatuses
17 May 2023, 2 PM-5 PM
Aksioma | Project Space, Ljubljana