Sono-Electro 2023


A St Leonards-on-Sea Festival for sound-based responses to the local ecology
Electro Studios, 8th-20th August 2023


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About Sono-Electro

SONO ELECTRO will take over ELECTRO STUDIOS PROJECT SPACE - Artist-run Galleries in St Leonards on Sea, between 8th-20th August to grow sound-based responses to the local ecology.

Why a sound-based festival?
“Although many of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think.” - Jill Bolte Taylor

Sound is a pressure-based sense, and we feel pressure - the act of listening and hearing is closer to feeling than seeing. Sound provides a sense of listening in for what isn’t seen,: only felt and heard.

Why local Ecology?
Sound localizes a sense of place and belonging. The nature of sound is inextricably tied to place, and people make place - we focus on local ecology to listen in to who and what is going on around us. To form new narrative and a way forward together.

Artists


SALLY

Between her 20+ years making, performing and producing music, a PhD in Sonic Arts and a passion for creating supportive music tech education spaces for women, Isobel's career embraces a sense of independence and experimentation.

Her four solo albums have amassed over 25 million Spotify streams, her sound works have been performed on international stages and she has published in academic journals, such as Organised Sound and The Journal of Sonic Studies. Threaded throughout her work is a fascination with how we make sense of ourselves, the world around us and the process of creative exploration itself. 

In 2018, Isobel founded The Female DIY Musician, an online resource providing music technology tuition for women in music, and is proud to produce and host the critically acclaimed feminist music tech podcast, Girls Twiddling Knobs.

Isobel is currently developing a new Live performance project called SALLY.

ANAM CARA (Solen Fluzin + James Alec Hardy)
www.anamcara.studio @anamcara.studio

Anam Cara is focused on the intersection of curation, creative production and performance, evolving with each project, unbounded by form or medium. Started by sol (Solen Fluzin) and James Alec Hardy sharing a background in art, performance, music and architecture, they are rooted in both physical and digital spatial installations. Anam Cara operates as a creative practice generating challenging projects aimed towards cultivating friendship, collaboration and a fairer creative economy.

sol (Solen Fluzin) | www.solenfluzin.com

sol is an artist, sound art curator, and educator. Trained to Masters level in architecture and music in France, Australia, The Netherlands and the US, she has co-led programmes on site-specific sound art and shared knowledge on fundraising + partnerships for art projects.

James Alec Hardy | www.jamesalechardy.com

3d spatial link


RUBY COLLEY

Is a Composer, Violinist & Sound Artist. Ruby creates instrumental soundscapes that are far beyond the realm of traditional playing,
weaving in environmental sound and electronics. Both her Composition & Sound Art is inspired by nature and the intersections of Humanity
found within it Murmurations, released in February 2010, presents a selection of pieces inspired by nature and natural forms. Her interests have developed into building a relationship between the
audible world and her creative practice.

Her album ‘Overheard’, was released in April 2022, and draws upon field recordings and weaves them with instrumentation and electronics. The album seeks to unravel the
connections between human presence and nature in response to the climate crisis. Th single ‘Springs Eternal is featured on NMC records - Big Lockdown Survey. This was followed by her EP ‘Underheard’, released in Feb ’23. Both received radio play from Radio 3: In Tune, Night Tracks, and Freeness.

Sound Art/Design
Her commission Edgeland was shown at Altpitch festival online June-December 2021.
Marie In The Margins, installed in Battle Abbey, Hastings May ‘22 is a soundtrack & sound
design. A film exploring the forgotten workforce of twelfth-century female scribes &
illustrators.
‘Hear My Tree’ April ‘21
‘Shoonaki’ in April ‘22.
Unmasked & Stripped Bare April ‘23
All original sound installations as part of ‘Town Explores a Book’ festival.


JILLIENNE SELLNER

Is a UK based Canadian sonic artist, PhD researcher and curator. She has performed and had installations in the UK, Turkey, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Sellner’s work considers the irrevocably entwined relationship between colonialism, the environment and culture and emphasises the interconnections between the global South, gender, utility, exploitation, defense, leisure and environmental conservation. Her practice sites itself between collaborative distributed listening, live networked performance and soundscape composition. She is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths University, London. Heya Collective, which Sellner initiated in 2018, occupies a central role in her practice-led research. The collective of herself and three female sound artists from Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, engages in collaborative, improvisatory musicking in live networked and in-person performances. Heya’s practice articulates Sonic cyberfeminisms as unknowing in acute auditioning strategies in parallel with sonic response and unknowing of the Other. The collective employ durational practices of listening and sharing soundscapes which impart glimpses of destabilised experience and identity, refracted through glitch, latency and failures of the network, distill sonic intentions into a bodiless yet radical inclusivity.

www.jillienesellner.com
heyasounds.wordpress.com


LUCY STEWART

Is a design researcher, service designer and grower. She works at the intersection of community participation, the natural environment, climate change and digital technology.

Sono Contributions: Lucy is planning an installation using chimes - the music of the breeze - as a welcome to the festival and as an sonic response to space and scale, land ownership and localism. Throughout history, chimes have been used to ward off evil spirits, to scare birds, and as warning signals when the uncontrollable forces of nature were about to impact the environment. Now we want to use them to highlight the scale of space left empty to the detriment of local communities and ecologies.


ARAM ZARIKIAN

Is a versatile creative working as a drummer, performer, producer, sonic consultant and exhibitor of Sound Art. Having started playing drums at an early age his passion for music and sound has taken him all over the world and included studies at Los Angeles Music Academy and the University of the Arts in London.

In addition to his work as a drummer, percussionist and sound artist he is currently creating music for film, sound libraries as well as producing artists.

Drawing on his years of experience his lecturing focuses on the creative use of technology in performance and more generally, the creative process. He holds the position of senior lecturer at BIMM University London (BA, MA) and is a honorary associate of the Royal Academy of Music (HonARAM) in London.

www.aramzarikian.com
aram.zarikian@gmail.com

Getting to Sono-Electro:

ELECTRO STUDIOS
5 Seaside Rd, Saint Leonards-on-sea TN38 0AL


Google Maps Link:

Electro Studios: Site Documentation (click on photos to zoom in)

Curators


JAMES WILKIE 
(b.1984) is a sound artist and composer who explores the connections between persons, spaces, and the imagination using sound through directed listening, A/V compositions + installation work, text, and live performance.

James works with Sensory Experiences and brands such as Bentley Motors and John Lewis. He teaches at UCL Bartlett Designing for Performance and Interaction MArch as he continues to work in music and research.
COLIN BOOTH

Is a practicing artist and Director/Curator of Electro Studios Project Space.
His practice engages with sculpture, painting, installation, photography and text. He has exhibited widely in the UK and Europe, with solo shows at the De La Warr Pavilion, James Hockey Gallery, Laing Art Gallery, Herbert Read Gallery, V&A Museum of Childhood, University La Cambre, Brussels, MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) London, the Prenzlauer Studios in Berlin and Rottstr5-Kunsthallen in Bochum. Group shows include 'Only Connect’ at El Bruton in Seville and ‘Book of the Word’ at Helsinki Contemporary. In 2018 he was one of only two UK artists selected for the 38th EVA International in Limerick, in 2019 his work was featured in ‘Book of the Word’ a major new Thames and Hudson publication on artists who work with text and in 2020 he was the first ever UK artist invited to undertake a ‘Wunderkammer Residency’ at the prestigious Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens near Ghent. In 2021 he was awarded an Arts Council DYCP grant to research and develop two large-scale public art projects, one of which is to create a 12 metre high concrete rendition of the diving board that towered over the the famous St Leonards Lido, that once stood directly opposite his studio. Since 2019 he has also focused on developing and programming Electro Studios Project Space, launching a new first floor gallery in 2021.

https://colinbooth.com/
JILLIENNE SELLNER

Is a UK based Canadian sonic artist, PhD researcher and curator. She has performed and had installations in the UK, Turkey, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Sellner’s work considers the irrevocably entwined relationship between colonialism, the environment and culture and emphasises the interconnections between the global South, gender, utility, exploitation, defense, leisure and environmental conservation. Her practice sites itself between collaborative distributed listening, live networked performance and soundscape composition. She is a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths University, London. Heya Collective, which Sellner initiated in 2018, occupies a central role in her practice-led research. The collective of herself and three female sound artists from Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, engages in collaborative, improvisatory musicking in live networked and in-person performances. Heya’s practice articulates Sonic cyberfeminisms as unknowing in acute auditioning strategies in parallel with sonic response and unknowing of the Other. The collective employ durational practices of listening and sharing soundscapes which impart glimpses of destabilised experience and identity, refracted through glitch, latency and failures of the network, distill sonic intentions into a bodiless yet radical inclusivity.