The sound object, which combines a musical composition with elements of the terrarium and cricket farms, where they are grown in egg cartons. She draws on the artist’s critical reflection on human impact on the ecosystem on a planetary and microscopic level, and realizes it by exploring symposium, focusing on her ability to co-create with a non-human actor, in this case Acheta domesticus. The object connects the real sounds of crickets in the gallery space with a musical work consisting of field recordings, the sounds of a self-made string instrument, analog and digital modular synthesizers, acoustic resonance and feedback loops. As a sound line, it travels through several levels of thinking about the living conditions in which the crickets found themselves in the Anthropocene: from the role of maintaining dynamic balance in nature to vulnerability to man due to his interventions in the environment and because in capitalist society we cultivate and sell our consumer logic for food to lizards, spiders and hedgehogs, as well as humans.
The artist’s main purpose is to help crickets hear in different sound positions not only in their natural habitat, but also when they are transformed into commodities, and then provide them with alternative voices and sounds with sound inputs connected to analog and modular synthesizers, thus enabling them to accept them as subjects as co-creators of the composition. *
* the text was published in the “Living Object” catalog published by MGML.
Sasha Spačal
is a post-media artist working at the intersection of research into living systems, contemporary and sound art. Her work focuses primarily on the posthuman state, where human beings exist and function as one of the elements in the ecosystem and not as sovereign. This abandons the Cartesian system and accepts the fact that the field of technology has expanded not only from hardware to software, but also to wet equipment, from which hybrid phenomena of mechanical, digital and organic logic of operation originate.
Her works have been presented in many international venues, including the Ars Electronica Festival (AT), Prix Cube Exhibition (FR), Transmediale Festival (DE), Athens Digital Arts Festival (GR), Center de Cultura Contemporània Barcelona – CCCB (ES) , Perm Museum of Contemporary Art (RUS), Onassis Cultural Center Athens (GR), Chronos Art Center (CHN), Laboratory Art & Science Foundation / New Tretyakov Gallery (RUS), Prague City Gallery (CZ), Cynetart Festival (DE) , National Art Museum of China (CHN), Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (SI), Kapelica Gallery (SI), Device_art (CRO), Art Laboratory Berlin (DE), Kiblix Festival (SI), Gallery of Contemporary Art Celje (SI) ), Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (SRB), Lisbon Soa Festival (PT), Sonica Festival (SI). Her work has been awarded and nominated for the Ars Electronica Prize, the Ars Electronica Starts Prize, the Japan Media Art Award, the Cube Prix, the New Technology Art Award and the New Aesthetica Prize.
Publishing House Kamizdat
Acknowledgments Cona – Institute for the Processing of Contemporary Art, Agosto Foundation Prague
Production MGML