27 October - 1 November 2015
'Chromatic Aberration' Screening as part of the Fascinations Competition at the 19th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Jihlava, Czech Republic http://www.dokument-festival.com/
12-17 November 2015 'Chromatic Aberration' Screening as part of the International Competition at the 17th International Film Festival Bratislava, Slovakia http://www.iffbratislava.com/
1 October 2016
'Her Marks, a Measure' solo show at Fridman Gallery, New York
Exhibition opening and catalogue launch, with newly commissioned essays by Justine Ludwig, Erika Balsom and Omar Khalif Artist in conversation with Justine Ludwig 1st of Oct 5pm (addition film screenings 26th Oct and 2nd Nov 7pm) http://www.fridmangallery.com/aura-satz
28-29 October
'Kepler's Trial' An Opera by Tim Watts based on Ulinka Rublack's book 'The Astronomer & the Witch', with film elements by Aura Satz Premieres at St John's College, Cambridge http://keplers-trial.com/
10-20 November 2016 'Where there is Sea, there are Pirates / The Imagination is a Political Act', group exhibition at 3137 gallery, Athens http://www.3137.gr/pirates
13 April - 27 August 2017 'As Above, So below: Portals, Visions, Spirits & Mystics', group exhibition at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Dublin http://www.imma.ie/en/page_237202.htm
3-14 October 2018 'Entangled Nightvisions' shortlisted for Les Nouveaux Alchimistes competition at Montreal Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC), Montreal http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/en/
Wed 23 Jan 2019
Slow Looking at Art, broadcast on BBC radio 3s 'Free Thinking' Ways of
Seeing with artists Michael Craig-Martin & Aura Satz, scientist Daniel Glaser and art writer Kelly Grovier. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00023jf
8th March 2019
To coincide with International Women's day, Jo Hutton and Louise Gray are
joined by Fari Bradley, Aura Satz and Beatriz Ferreyra discussing women’s
place in the history of electroacoustic music, Resonance FM
https://www.resonancefm.com/schedule/2019-03-08
24 Feb - 1 March 2021 Visiting artist in residence, School of Arts Institute of Chicago, including artist talks and film screenings http://www.saic.edu/cate
15 Sep - 28 Nov 2021 'Aboard my floating house' 10e Triennale d’art contemporain, le Centre culturel d’Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium https://www.magmatriennale10.be/
16-17 March 2022 'Preemptive Listening' talk and screening as part of 'Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening' at Institute Art Gender Nature, FHNW, Academy of Art and Design in Basel on site and online. With Caroline Bergvall, Merve Yesilada Caglar, Bill Dietz, Nina Emge, Jazmina Figueroa, Virna Gulzari, Ayesha Hameed, Kate Lacey, Nour Mobarak, Dylan Robinson, Aura Satz, Stas Sharifullin, Li Tavor & Nicolas Buzzi, and Hannah Weinberger. Moderated by
Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Research associate: Marion Ritzmann. https://www.artandeducation.net/announcements/451535/ages-of-receivership-on-generous-listening https://dertank.ch/en/we-explore/gender/#ages-of-receivership
19 June 2022 'The Grief Interval' screening as part of The London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF), Woolwich Works https://lcmf.co.uk/
24 July 2022 'Rock Talk: A conversation towards Geologic Listening: A conversation with Kodwo Eshun, Anjalika Sagar, Sukhdev Sandhu, Aura Satz, Cauleen Smith & Deborah Stratman', Union Docs, NY https://uniondocs.org/event/2022-07-24-rock-talk/
15 Nov 2022 'Quantum Listening' Ignota book and prints launch at Reference Point, London, with artist Aura Satz, curator and writer Irene Revell and NTS creative director Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura, hosted by Ignota’s Sarah Shin and Susanna Davies-Crook https://ignota.org/products/quantum-listening-launch
7 Dec 2022 Screening 'The Future Waters of the Storm Surge' (2022) at Kino Moviemento, Berlin as part of Kontraklang. Films and music by Olivia Block, Gunilla Sköld Feiler & Dror Feiler, Martin Grütter & Aron Kitzig, Christian Kesten, Patricia Martínez & Luis Paris, Makiko Nishikaze, Michiko Ogawa & Manuel Pessoa de Lima, Lis Rhodes, Julia Rommel, Aura Satz & BJ Nilsen
https://kontraklang.de/concert/movie-night-nr-2/
3-4 Feb 2023 Exhibition of 'The Trembling Line' as part of Strom festival for electronic music at Berliner Philharmoniker - including Aura Satz, Blawan, Hauschka + Kai Angermann, Juan Atkins, MARCEL DETTMANN, Nidia, Studio Robert Henke pres. CBM 8032 AV, transformed acoustix (members of Berliner Philharmoniker + Simon Stockhausen), Stefan Goldmann, upsammy, Wolfgang Voigt pres. GAS https://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/strom/
August 2023 - October 2024, Her Luminous Distance' on display as part of permanent collection, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_NPG.2017.56
Artist page on the website of The Wire: Adventures in Modern Music: thewire.co.uk to accompany the cross-platform feature on my work in the September 2010 issue:
An excerpt of the filmic installation 'Sound Seam' thewire.co.uk
An excerpt of 'Automamusic' thewire.co.uk
An excerpt of 'Oramics: Atlantis Anew', thewire.co.uk
An excerpt of 'Vocal Flame', thewire.co.uk
Short film on the Theremin virtuosa Lydia Kavina, thewire.co.uk
Listen to an excerpt of 'Dial Tone Drone' on thewire.co.uk
Excerpt of 'The Trembling Line' on thewire.co.uk
'Sound Seam' is a film which gives voice to the idea that every surface, in particular parts of our anatomy, is potentially inscribed with an unheard sound or echoes of voices from the past. The soundtrack’s musical composition is interlaced with a voice-over which draws on Rainer Maria Rilke’s text 'Primal Sound', where he reflects on the possibility of playing the coronal suture of a skull with a phonograph needle. The overlapping voices of the narratives tell a forensic love story of yearning, encryption, inscription, decoding, memory and erasure. The film uses microscopic photography, scanning electron microscopy, and sounds of otoacoustic emissions to uncover haunting aural bonescapes. The voiceovers too are recorded using old sound technology as a filter - writing and over-writing of wax cylinder to create unexpected scratches, glitches, loops and echoes. The music is composed and recorded onto wax cylinder and acetate discs by composer and phonographer Aleks Kolkowski.
During 2009-2010 Aura was artist-in-residence at UCL's Ear Institute, where she undertook research into hearing anatomy and shot most of the microscopic footage, including a golden cochlea, an ear drum and inner ear hair cells. The horn sequences of the film were shot at the Museum for Music Automatons in Seewen (Switzerland), during their temporary exhibition "When Sound Still Came from the Horn". All close-ups of acetate discs and wax cylinder sound grooves are from the private collection of Aleks Kolkowski.
Written, directed, filmed and edited by Aura Satz
Music and sound recordings onto wax cylinder and acetate discs made by Aleks Kolkowski
Voiceovers by Aleks Kolkowski and Aura Satz
Otoacoustic emission recordings provided by Prof. David Kemp and recorded onto wax cylinder.
Aura would like to thank all staff at the Ear institute, in particular David McAlpine, David Kemp, Andy Forge, Dan Jagger, Ruth Taylor, Jonathan Ashmore, Torsten Marquardt, Kate Lay, Neil Roberts and Bradford Backus. Special thanks also to Christoph E. Hanggi at the Museum for Music Automatons.
Aura would also like to thank Shira Hess, David Edelsztein and of course Leila for their patience and support throughout.
Microscopic view of Shellac Grooves & Microscopic view of Acetate SwarfStereocilia & Sound Inscriptions
Exhibitions:
5 - 14 March 2010
Sound Seam exhibition premiere at AV FESTIVAL10:
Aura Satz in collaboration with Aleks Kolkowski
Sound Seam premiered at the AV festival in Newcastle in March 2010 as a complex filmic sound installation in collaboration with Aleks Kolkowski, featuring 20 original phonograph and gramophone horns, a number of hearing trumpets and an 8ft auxetophone horn on loan from the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.
The film, film installation and publication were funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Documentation of the installation at the AV festival can be seen on The Wire website.
AV FESTIVAL 10: Energy presents the world premiere of Sound Seam, an atmospheric film installation by artist Aura Satz in collaboration with musician Aleks Kolkowski.
The installation explores sound inscription, encryption, decoding and the material quality of memory. It draws on the German poet Rilke's 1919 text Primal Sound in which he proposes that the groove-like line of a skull (the coronal suture) could be played with a gramophone needle. The mesmeric film uses microscopic close-ups of gramophone grooves, wax and acetate shavings, phonograph cylinder recording and erasing technology, as well as footage of the anatomy of the ear, where inner ear hair cells have been animated to look like a sound groove, and a gold-plated cochlea spirals like a shellac disc. The musical soundtrack is derived from the analysis of sounds made by playing a gramophone needle across a skull and from otoacoustic sounds emitted by the ear. Every one of the hundred-odd recordings used has been individually cut onto a wax cylinder or disc record, some even over-written so as to create unexpected surface noises, scratches, glitches, loops and echoes. You are invited to listen to a magnificent array of original phonograph, gramophone horns and ear trumpets and piece together the various strands of this intriguing 'forensic love story' voice-over which draws on Rilke's text.
Guided Exhibition Tour of Great North Museum: Hancock and Hatton Gallery, Saturday 6 March, 2.30-3.30pm. Tour starts with Sound Seam.
Exhibition produced by AV Festival 10 in partnership with Great North Museum: Hancock. Funded by The Wellcome Trust and produced during an Artist Residency at the Ear Institute, UCL, London. Sound design produced with support from the AHRC.
Discovery Museum
Blandford Square, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 4JA www.avfestival.co.uk
9 December 2010 - 16 January 2011
Solo exhibition 'Sound Seam' at Wellcome Collection
A small publication with contributions from cultural historian Steven Connor and novelist Tom McCarthy will be available during the exhibition.
23 January - 3 February 2013
'Soundfigures' Solo retrospective at Blaak 10, as part of the 42nd International Film Festival Rotterdam
curated by Edwin Carels
Spiral Sound Coil (2010) is an immersive psychoacoustic installation. Automamusic (2008) looks at self-playing instruments such as the pianola, wind-up music boxes and organs, filmed at the Museum of Music Automatons in Switzerland. Theremin (2010) is part of a series of videos characterised by their unusual sculptural relation to their performer. Sound Seam (2010) uses microscopic close-ups of gramophone grooves and the anatomy of the ear, while the accompanying music includes wax cylinder recordings and otoacoustic sounds emitted by the ear. Oramics (2011) is a homage to Daphne Oram, pioneer of British Electronic Music and creator of hand-wrought, drawn sound. Vocal Flame (2012) is a sound sculpture made using a Ruben's Tube, an acoustic device that visualises sound as a standing wave of small flames, with music by Steven Severin (of Siouxsie and the Banshees).
Blaak 10 Gallery
Witte de Withstraat 7
3012 BL Rotterdam
The Netherlands
18-29 January 2012 Samsung Art+ Prize, Group exhibition at BFI Southbank, London
Samsung Electronics are delighted to present the UK’s first ever prize for new media art. A shortlist of 10 emerging and established contemporary artists has been selected by a panel of curators from leading arts organisations for a two-week exhibition at the BFI Southbank. Opening on 18 January 2012, the exhibition will include new work as well as pieces that have never been shown before in the UK.
The Samsung Art+ Prize aims to highlight artists who reveal the ways technologies can touch our lives. All of the selected artists must be a citizen of, educated in or currently residing in the UK and they have been nominated
for work they have created in the past three years. The shortlisted artists selected are: Neil Cummings, Doug Fishbone, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Torsten Lauschmann, Lucky PDF, Aura Satz, Hiraki Sawa, Semiconductor, Erika Tan and Thomsonand Craighead.
The resulting shortlist showcases the diverse range of practice offered by new media, and includes artists working in screen friendly idioms as well as those exploring diverse strategies of communication such as performance, sculpture and music.
The 10 nominated artists have been selected for their ability to expand and challenge our understanding of the role of new media. In the era of smart media the prize will celebrate the unique ways in which artists respond to the changing world and embrace the possibilities offered by different media opportunities; not only as platforms of production and research but also as new modes of communication beyond the traditional gallery.
The judges including Jan Dalley, Arts Editor at the Financial Times; Dr. Peter Weibel, Chairman and CEO of the ZKM Centre for Art and Media; Stuart Comer, Curator of Film, Tate Modern; Jiyoon Lee, Director of SUUM; and New York based media artist, Sooja Kim.
1-6 March 2011 Screened as part of a selection of artist's films curated by the Wellcome Collection
Artprojx Cinema at the SVA Theatre, New York
in association with The Armory Show & VOLTA NY
Screenings of artists' films & videos
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd Street between 8th & 9th Avenues
New York www.svatheatre.com www.artprojx.com
Radio interview on 'Sound Seam' by Tim Dee as part of the programme '78 Revolutions'
BBC Radio4
5th May 2011 11:30-12:00
21-23 June 2012
Pop-up Cinema at Christie’s South Kensington
with screenings of films by Aura Satz. Part of Supersonix Symposium, Exhibition Road, London
Thursday 21st and Friday 22nd: 11am to 6pm; and Saturday 23rd 11am to 1pm
Plus
23rd June 2.45-4.45pm: A screening of an additional selection of films curated by Aura Satz, including films by Manon de Boer, Jayne Parker and Luke Fowler
3-7 October 2013
Screened at the 51st New York Film Festival
'Views from the Avant-garde', curated by Mark McElhatten
Our popular yearly touchstone for experimental film returns with 45 programs in glorious Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film and HD formats. Many familiar faces have returned and this year's slate feature 45 new artists as well as several mini-retrospectives of artists including, Aura Satz, Lois Patiño, Sandro Aguilar, and Jean-Paul Kelly. Views will also offer special tributes to the late Stom Sogo and Anne Robertson, whose work is a testimony to the power of a cinema that is fearless, confidential and inextinguishable. Curated by Mark McElhatten.
1st November 2013
Screened with a live voiceover as part of ‘Unconscious Archives’: Malcolm Le Grice, Aura Satz, Sally Golding, Gideon Vein, Guy Edmonds, Cafe OTO
13 May 2015 'Soundfigures: Films by Aura Satz'
A selection of films by Aura Satz, DIM Cinema, Vancouver Cinametheque,
programmed by Michele Smith
(Near) extinct technologies make sound visible in this program of shorts by London-based artist Aura Satz that delve into ideas of knowledge, memory, and communication. On a Chladni Plate, a device that marked the birth of acoustics, grains of sand, moving like Busby Berkeley dancers, form intricate patterns in response to changing sound frequencies, their shapes recalling the utopian quest for a “pure,” onomatopoeic alphabet. Wax cylinder recordings combine with modern scientific instruments to animate a text by Rainer Maria Rilke on the possibility of hearing the dead by playing their skulls with a gramophone needle. A Ruben’s Tube translates a histrionic voice-over into a standing wave of small flames, provoking unexpected associations, from the biblical burning bush to various acts of ventriloquism in pop culture. Breaking its long silence, the Oramics Machine plays hand-drawn compositions by its inventor, electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram. Kaleidoscopic effects in the lamphouse of a 35mm film printer honour Natalie Kalmus, colour consultant on masterpieces of the Technicolor era. Chromatic distortions in early colour-film tests are revealed through the eyes of the George Eastman family and old Hollywood stars. In a dramatic finale, Satz and experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes encode their voices as abstract light patterns on 16mm mono and 35mm stereo filmstrips in a collaborative exploration of sound-image synchronicity.
18 Feb 2016 'Between the Bullet and the Hole' (Plus Other Shorts) + Q&A at Whitechapel Gallery, London
Aura Satz presents the UK première of 'Between the Bullet and the Hole', her latest short film which examines the role of women in ballistic research, early computing and pattern perception in warfare. Presented alongside her works focusing on memory, notation, encryption and gender, the event also features an in conversation with special guests Morgan Quaintance and David Alan Grier.
24 March 2016
'In and Out of Synch', an evening of films and sound with Aura Satz
presented by Liquid Architecture and Gertrude Contemporary
Satz presents works that explore the relationship between esoteric technologies (Chladni plate, Rubens’ tube, theremin, mechanÂiÂcal music machines, phonoÂgraphs, dial tones, drawn/optical sound) and the human body (heightened perception, sensory disorientation, psychoacoustics) and how these are mediated by notation systems, languages and codes. Followed by Q&A with Joel Stern.
