An architect of textured, neo-ambient soundscapes, the music of **Dania Shihab** explores both sound and identity, focusing on how the latter has fractured in a post-colonial world. 



Born in Baghdad, raised in Tasmania and now based in Barcelona, she moves between cultures and continents, her amorphous creative vision directly tied to her transient existence. The founder of experimental outpost Paralaxe Editions, Dania divides her time between Spain and the remote corners of Australia, where she works as an emergency doctor. Her musical practice, however, is preoccupied with harmonics and tonality, weaving together manipulated vocal fragments, processed field recordings and meditative atmospheres. In August 2022, her album _Voz_ was released on the label Geographic North. 

[Bandcamp](https://daniavoz.bandcamp.com/releases)

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Dania

PROGRAMME

Inner Ear(th)

**Nicole L’Huillier** is a transdisciplinary artist from Santiago, Chile. 

Through sound, vibrations, resonances, and multiple transductions, her work explores more-than-human performativity — from microscopic to cosmic scales; rituals of membranal and resonant architectures; as well as vibration and sound as construction materials for spaces, collectivity, identity, and agency. She has performed and exhibited widely at institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, Venice Architecture Biennale, Sónar +D, Ars Electronica, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, SXSW, and Bienal de Artes Mediales Chile alongside many others. Currently based in Boston, L’Huillier completed a PhD in Media Arts & Sciences at MIT in 2022. She was recently selected for a residency at Transmediale and La Becque. 	


[Website](https://nicolelhuillier.com/)

[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/nico_lh/)

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Nicole L'Huillier

SEMILLA

Semilla, Entierro

ENTIERRO (Burial of the Seed)

Semilla

Cuchicheos

**Stephen O’Malley** is a guitarist, producer, composer, and visual artist who has conceptualised and performed in drone and experimental music groups for over two decades. 

O’Malley’s wildly prolific practice — most notably his projects including _SUNN O)))_, _KTL_, and _Khanate_ — is defined by its remarkable breadth, complexity, and collaborative approach. He has worked with a wide range of experimental figures including Scott Walker, Gisèle Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Alan Moore, Alvin Lucier, Fujiko Nakaya, and Jim Jarmusch; and has worked with experimental music research centres including IRCAM, INA-GRM, and EMS in Stockholm among others. In addition to his recorded work, O’Malley has been a vigorous live performer since 2003, his hypnotic performances featuring a reverberating fog of electric guitar minimalism.

[Website](https://stephenomalley.com/)

[Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/stephenomalley74/?hl=de)

[Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/stephen-omalley)

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Stephen O'Malley

Breathtune

**Tomoko Sauvage** is a musician and sound artist best known for her experiments with hybrid instruments combining water, ceramics, sub-aquatic amplification and electronics. 

Her research is grounded in live-performance practices that embrace the unpredictable dynamics of materials. Incorporating ritualistic gestures, she playfully improvises with environments, using chance as a compositional method. Her performances and installations have been presented at RIBOCA, V&A Museum, Manifesta, Roskilde Festival, Sharjah Art Foundation, Centre Pompidou Metz and Nyege Nyege Festival, among others. Recorded in a water tank in Berlin, utilising self-invented ‘natural synthesisers’: porcelain and glass bowls, filled with liquid and amplified by hydrophones, her third solo album _Fischgeist_ was released in 2020. Sauvage lives and works in Paris. 


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Tomoko Sauvage

ARTWORKS

one sun after another

Buloklok

Enrico Malatesta & Tomoko Sauvage Sound Walk

In Curved Water

Events

Sonic Acts Biennial 2024


Niamké Désiré, otherwise known as **Aho Ssan**, is a Paris based artist.

After studying graphic design and cinema, he began to compose electronic music and create his own digital instruments. Shortly after he went on to win the Foundation France television prize for his soundtrack to the film _Ingha Mago_ in 2015 and worked on several projects related to IRCAM/GRM in France. His debut LP _Simulacrum_, first presented at Berlin Atonal 2019, was released in 2020 via Subtext Recordings. Based on philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacrum, it pits society’s presentation of inclusivity and equality against the experience of growing up black in France. His work has been presented at institutions such as the Lincoln Center, La Maison de la Radio, CTM, MACBA, Atonal, and Krakow Philharmonic. In October 2023, his second solo album _Rhizomes_ was released by Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label.


[Bandcamp](https://ahossan.bandcamp.com/music) [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/aho_ssan/) [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/ahossan)

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Aho Ssan. Photo by Marvin Jouglineu

Aho Ssan

Works

Expanded Experience

Rhizomes AV

Acousmonium II

**Ailbhe Nic Oireactaigh** is an Irish violist and composer living in Glasgow. 

Following a classical training, Nic Oireactaigh was drawn to improvisation and she enrolled in studies for jazz performance. Following graduation, her growing interest in Baroque traditions led to explorations in the tonal possibilities of gut strings; findings she used in both amplified and acoustic contexts. These improvised, traditional and early music influences can be heard on her solo recordings _Oreing_ (2017) and _The Rounds_ (2021); her touring work with experimental bands Woven Skull, Cian Nugent & the Cosmos and musicians including Josephine Foster and Circuit des Yeux, alongside her compositions for theatre and orchestra. In Glasgow, she has performed and collaborated with a wide variety of contemporary bands, musicians, and composers.

[Website](https://www.ailbhenicoireachtaigh.com/)

[Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/ailbhenicoireachtaigh)

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Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh

An interdisciplinary arts organisation based in Amsterdam.

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Biennial 2024

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Sonic Acts

Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 attended to questions of non-linear time, entangled ecologies, and pollution through an expansive exhibition, a provocative sound art programme, and an interdisciplinary symposium. This slow immersion into the environmental humanities is reflected in the design of the Biennial T-shirts and tote bags, available now in the Sonic Acts webshop. 



[→ Buy your merchandise here](https://shop.sonicacts.com/product-category/merchandise/)

Additionally, the third issue of _Ecoes_ magazine corresponds to the explorations of toxicity taken up by the Sonic Acts Biennial 2022. _Ecoes_ #3 includes essays, stories, and interviews by biennial contributors including **Andrea Galano Toro**, **pantea**, **John Grzinich**, **Aura Satz**, **Antonia Alamp**i, and many more. _Ecoes_ #3 can be purchased individually, or as part of a subscription, through the [Sonic Acts webshop](https://shop.sonicacts.com/). 


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Sonic Acts Biennial merch now available to buy online

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

Sam Lavigne

What does it mean to place narrative limitations on oil, where infinity is assumed? Commissioned by Sonic Acts, _OBIT_ by **Maryam Monalisa Gharavi** and **Sam Lavigne** can now be streamed online, after having been first exhibited in the form of an installation as part of the exhibition _one sun after another_ during Sonic Acts Biennial 2022. 

Drawing from semi-public databases containing the dates drilling began and the dates wells were abandoned, the work unscrolls the ‘birth’ and ‘death’ of all abandoned oil wells in the U.S., generating a ‘public obituary’ of oil. The ‘finality’ of _OBIT_ coincides with the flood of information each unit measures, or 314,452 total dead wells. Seemingly infinite, the work encloses and gives finitude via a closed scroll and text, placing appropriate narrative limitations on oil where infinity is assumed.


[→ Explore OBIT online](https://obit.sonicacts.com/) 


The multinational, multiconglomerate oil industry divulges myriad streams of data about its operations, which when looked at in both the macro (314,452 oil well deaths) and micro (distinct obituaries for each one) yield surprising and discordant findings. _OBIT_ synthesizes ‘oily’ data that reveals its own significance the very moment it is divulged. Through scraping, a technique developed by Sam Lavigne, it seeks data from within its own knowledge domains and industry collection sites. 


A former OVEREXPOSED resident, **Maryam Monalisa Gharavi** has been collaborating and working with Sonic Acts for several years. As an artist, poet, and theorist whose work deals with the paradoxes of our interactions with matter and immateriality, she explores the interplay between aesthetic and political valances. With _OBIT_, Gharavi works alongside artist and educator **Sam Lavigne** to dive deeper into the ‘twin’ extractive commodities of oil and data. Lavigne’s work plugs into the interlocking interfaces of data, surveillance and policing, as well as natural language processing and automation. Harnessing digital tools to perform online interventions, Lavigne brings to light the often opaque political and economic conditions moulding computational technologies.


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Artwork OBIT can now be streamed online

MELT

Following their installation as part of Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 exhibition _one sun after another_, **MELT** (**Ren Loren Britton** and **Iz Paehr**) invite listeners and readers to join their online guided meditation _presence-past presence-present presence-future_. As part of _never odd or even_, the ongoing project for their Sonic Acts OVEREXPOSED residency, MELT feel into futures in which Trans* and disabled presences might be fully embraced, dreaming towards being in time differently. 


Commissioned by Sonic Acts, _never odd or even_ explores multiple overlapping perspectives on numerous temporalities. As the project unfolds in various stages and formats, this latest development presents an online meditation for a plurality of joyful Trans* and disabled futures. _presence-past presence-present presence-future_ looks to futurity in non-normative, non-linear time. Sen(s)(d)ing desires, wishes, and intentions, MELT tunes towards timelines that instead of writing Trans* and disabled folks out of time, make presence a present for them to thrive in and bend the clock. 


As you click along, time stretches into the past through collective and ancestral memories and into the future with meditations for Trans* and Disabled futures. When we travel time as disabled and Trans* people, when do we go? What if ableism and binary gender mattered less, and had less pull on our shared spacetime? When we sync with crip spacetime, we move what matters towards a plurality of joyful disabled and Trans* futures. 


Presented as well as part of the exhibition _one sun after another_ during Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 in the form of an installation and a guided meditation, _presence-past presence-present presence-future_ invited visitors into non-linearity, loops, circles, palindromes, discontinuities, slowness, and attention to pace within their time. 


[→ Follow MELT’s guided meditation online](https://overexposed.sonicacts.com/neveroddoreven/meditation)
