Jürgen Buchinger

During my time at the Saari Residence, I want to develop strategies for the sonification of environmental data. How can I make daily, seasonal or gradual changes in measurements such as temperature, concentration of volatile organic compounds or particulate matter in the air audible? Which filters to use to which effect? What is audible at different rates of reproduction? I will first work on previously recorded datasets, and then test the developed strategies on newly recorded data from the surroundings of the residence to broaden the scope of my composition and to see how different landscapes affect the resulting sound.

I will also immerse myself in nature and attentively listen to attune my hearing to what we can already hear from plants, water and animals, and what is therefore more intuitively understood in terms of the sounds of our environment. I hope to find great inspiration there.

The research is part of my speculative artistic project Time out of Present that deals with the sounds of nature happening outside of the immediate human auditory resonance. Long-term data series of different places are transformed into sound to explore landscape through attentive listening. Expanding the project to different places in different times allows us to hear changes in nature but also the effects of human-made climate and environmental changes, sensing immediately the consequences that we cannot usually directly see or feel. The project aims to build new relations to our environment and its inhabitants through sound.

I am an artist and researcher in the field of media art and sound. I hold a Master of Arts in Film and am currently finishing my artistic PhD project on time-based art practices in urban public spaces. My mode of working is research-based and focused on experimentation, and I aim to include nature and non-human others in my art practice. My focus lies on artistic artifacts as vehicles for transferring knowledge and a poetic usage of data to emotionally convey the complexities of our world. My works have been shown internationally in group and solo exhibitions.

Website: https://differentspace.com