Rasa Šmite

Our senses have always been “mediated” – the sound can't be heard without the “medium” of water or air. Since the advent of new sounds (noises) by the industrial era and technologies of recording, amplifying, or transmitting, our acoustic environments have greatly changed. With more recent enhancements of immersive and sensing technologies, our 'sensoriums' have intensified and become more mediated than ever before.

Sound is the second of most used senses in Western culture after vision. Sound is a powerful force in organizing space; it is sound, not visuals that marks dramatic shifts from one world to another. The 'constructivist' potential of the sound has been used to a large extent in music or radio, whereas 'experiential' capabilities such as sensual and immersive properties of the sound have been mainly explored by art practices that emerge outside of purely musical environments.

I will introduce my artistic practice from pioneering internet radio experiments and creative explorations in electromagnetic spectrum to more recent 'techno-ecological' research projects that use sensing technologies, data sonification and visualizations.

For creating “Pond Battery” (2014-2015) and “Swamp Radio” (2018) artworks of “Biotricity” series (together with Raitis Smits) I performed artistic interventions in various ponds, swamps and marshlands in North Europe installing “bacteria batteries'', sensors and transmitting devices. Environmental data were collected, sonified and visualized making visible the invisible activities in nature such as bacteria living in water sediments and producing electrical currents.

My recent work “Atmospheric Forest” (2021), an immersive VR environment, is an attempt to expand on exploring and transforming sensual experiences; it is visualizing and sonifying the fragrancy of pine trees, revealing complex patterns of relations between climate change, forest emissions and the atmosphere.

By showcasing how sensing technologies and immersive capabilities of sound are well suited to reveal our interdependence of living organisms on each other and their environment, I would like to discuss future strategies and methodologies for working with sound. Moreover, I argue that combining both ‘constructivist’ and ‘experiential’ approaches may show us new directions in sound creation practices that focus revealing new perspectives in our relations to the environment.

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Biography

Rasa Smite is an artist, curator and researcher, working in the intersection of art, science and 'techno-ecologies'. She is co-founder of Riga based RIXC Center for New Media Culture and chief-editor of Acoustic Space publications.She holds PhD, and is currently a professor in New Media Art at Liepaja University (Latvia) and visiting lecturer at MIT Art, Culture and Technology program in Boston (since 2018).In her artistic practice, Rasa Smite works together with Raitis Smits since the mid-1990s – their pioneering streaming sound projects are internationally acknowledged and awarded:“Xchange” internet radio network (received PRIX Ars Electronica 1998), “RT-32. Acoustic Space Lab” (2001), sound art and radioastronomy project is included in the museum's collection.Since 2009 their innovative artistic practice has been devoted to 'techno-ecological' research; “Talk to Me. Human-Plant Communication” (since 2011), “Biotricity. Swamp Radio” (since 2014), and more recent “Atmospheric Forest” (2021) have been exhibited in Ars Electronica, ZKM Karlsruhe, Van Abbe museum, National Science and Technology Museum in Stockholm, MIT in Boston, Venice Architecture Biennale 2018, Futurium Museum in Berlin, and various other venues.
http://rixc.org | http://smitesmits.com