a lecture and workshop on Otoacoustic Emissions with Jacob Kirkegaard

Wednesday, 28 October, 11:00

Black Box Atelier Mediakunst

Since 2006, Jacob Kirkegaard has been researching, recording and creating works using otoacoustic emissions - tones that are generated by the human ear itself.

This lecture and workshop offers an in-depth introduction to this mysterious phenomenon. Kirkegaard will uncover the mechanics of the ear and what happens inside the cochlea to produce these tones, and share recordings from his extensive archive of otoacoustic emissions, collected over many years.

Kirkegaard will also present his groundbreaking work Labyrinthitis, which is composed entirely of otoacoustic emissions recorded from Kirkegaard’s own ears - tones generated by his own ears. When these emissions are played back to an audience they can evoke responding emissions in the ears of the listeners. By listening to Kirkegaard’s ear tones, they may therefore hear tones produced by their own ears: hearing the mechanics of hearing itself.

The workshop explores and discusses the ear not only as an organ for receiving sound, but as a sound-producing system - opening up the possibility of listening to the very process of hearing, and to what the ear has to say.

“Jacob Kirkegaard has countered Duchamp’s dictum, ‘One can look at seeing, one can’t hear hearing.’”
⏤ Douglas Kahn

At 5pm, Jacob Kirkegaard will give a listening session as part of the research project The Art of Resonance – The Resonance of Art in Herculeslab, Campus Bijloke, Cloquet. More info