Sonic Islands Residency & Exhibition. Rüggen & Liebig 12, Berlin, September, 2023
APRIL - Listening Back Installation. Tributary Projects, Gorman Arts Centre, Ngunnawal Country / Canberra
A multi-channel audio-visual installation that exposes the proliferation of ubiquitous online surveillance via the real time sonification of Internet tracking cookies. Listening Back sonically interrupts the visual surface of the browser interface to draw attention to backend data capture in real-time, providing a means to tangibly appreciate one of the imperceivable surveillance technologies that monitor our habitual online browsing.
2022
Such a busy year that I did not get around to archiving!!
2021
JUNE, NOV, DEC, Music for FLICKER Berlin, Stettin, Ljubljana
Solo Dance piece by Anna Nowicka, Light design by Aleksandr Prowaliński.
10 NOV - Nova Frequências, artist talk
7 OCT - Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity, Zabriske Bookshop, Berlin
Books for Earworms is a series curated by Felicity Mangan. Inspired by food and wine pairing, composers were asked to select or ‘pair’ themselves with a book from Zabriske bookshop. I chose David Graeber's Debt, the First 5000 Years and composed a Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity to play in the background during the event and while I read excerpts from the book. Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity is meant as a poetic inversion of Muzak's traditional role in stimulating seemless productivity in the workplace and pays hommage to Graeber's praise for the "unindustrious poor".
7 OCT - L'EXPÉRIMENTAL, Radio France.
Invited by François Bonnet to curate a playlist of music that has influenced or inspired me.
SEPT - OCT - Exhibition all_go_rhythm_ _ _This is A FREE CONCERT, oqbo gallery.
Contributed scores from previous LISTENING BACK performances and performed live with Merja Kokkonen on improvised vocals. Thanks to Stefan Römer and Merja for the opportunity to further experiment with the LISTENING BACK Chrome browser add-on as an improvising instrument. The LISTENING BACK browser add-on sonifies Internet cookies in real-time as one browses online, thereby providing sonic environments in which to experience some of the patterns and interruptions of the normalisation of Web surveillance.
23 & 24 SEPT - DEGRADATION LOOPS, live performance & presentation
Thirty minute live performance and presentation of Degradation Loops for the Rotting Sounds symposium at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Originally conceived as a 16 day generative sound installation that gradually and completely bit crushes my album Yellow Bell.
July & September - GRM Residency. Commission from GRM to produce a new work for their acousmonium which will be premiered in April 2022.
18 - 20 June - LISTENING TO LISTENING, TOP (Transdisciplinary Project Space), Berlin
Invited to participate in a group show titled Listening to Listening I played cut ups, random loopings and altered pitch manipulations of field recordings I had made directly outside TOP gallery. Transmitted via transducers attached to TOP’s shopfront window passing bodies could listen to me listening. Sound at once singular and universal affects individual bodies uniquely while enveloping all at once through different kinds of intensities. What does it mean to listen collectively with non-equivalence? Could listening to listening be a technique to appreciate difference?
Thanks to Tuçe Erel for the opportunity to experiment with resonant frequencies and glass.
May & Oct - GPS DÉRIVE*, video performance work, Liebig 12, Berlin
Video and sound work commissioned for Das Festival für psychogeographische Klangexkursionen. Following a residency in Uckermark at a former train station near the German Polish border GPS Derive was exhibited as part of a group show at Liebig 12 gallery in Berlin.
GPS Dérive is an attempt to engage the situationist practice of “dérive” in the contemporary context of being constantly tracked by global networks such as GPS and Wi-Fi. As a walking practice the dérive was a technique for drifting through a territory with an awareness of the psychogeographical effects of the (usually urban) environment. By walking through Uckermark with my android application that sonifies GPS and Wi-Fi a sonic awareness of their ubiquity and transcendence of borders reveals another means to trace territory, and be traced within territories. Considering the dérive as a practice for drifting and potentially getting lost in one’s environment is it even possible, due to global locating networks, to still get lost?
March - Liquid Architechture's DISCLAIMER
The notion of surveillance lifestyles refers to the contemporary context in which extractive algorithmic surveillance technologies are seamlessly embedded into everyday online connectivity. Beyond web activities such as photo sharing, liking, posting or buying a book; platforms are monitoring. Deeply entrenched in everyday communication, surveillant participants often assume creative, active, and performative roles in offering personal information to online platforms. In exchange for the accumulation of likes and followers, online surveillance is often viewed as fun, convenient, and has developed into ‘a whole way of life’.
My contribution to Disclaimer includes an interview with Australian technologist and privacy activist Roger Clarke; the sound of cookies while booking a plane ticket online; and an informal jam between guitarist Julia Reidy and myself browsing the web using the Listening Back (2017–) browser add-on.
Edited by Josten Myburgh.
2020
5 DEC - KM28, 3rd September, 2020, live recording released on Superpang!
SEPT - NOV - COMPUTATIONAL LISTENING, three radio shows for Noods Guest Radio Residency
OCT - THE BURROW, Collaboration with Erik K Skodvin, guest vocals by Merja Kokkonen for the Sonic Pieces label.
"...[T]he most beautiful thing about my burrow is the stillness. Of course, that is deceptive. At any moment it may be shattered and then all will be over. For the time being, however, the silence is with me." - Franz Kafka
MARCH - MICROPHONE PERMISSION, Editions MEGO
"Paranoid in tone and elusively spectral by nature, ‘Microphone Permission’ evokes its subject in a mix of quizzical ambient sound design and mutated techno pulses that furtively get under the listener’s skin. As one might hope from experiencing Jasmine’s acclaimed solo albums, ‘Yellow Bell’ (2015), ‘Traced’ (2017), and ‘Degradation Loops’ (2018), the sound of her new LP is also incredibly detailed and once again lures us into a hypnagogic state where her ideas about contemporary life’s liminal but ubiquitous aspects can better take hold."
4 MARCH - Live Performance on the Pentacle 15.3 Spatialised Sound System, HAU 2, Berlin
15 FEBRUARY - Opening of Zorka Wollny's retrospective at TRAFO, Stettin
Includes two collaborations with Zorka Wollny - Overtone Hive and The Birds.
12 FEBRUARY - Longform Editions Release - CURRENT HARMONICS
"Current Harmonics by Jasmine Guffond is built around the influence of harmonics in electrical currents and waveforms, and was presented as a sound installation at the Linach Dam in Germany’s Black Forest. Through sonically mimicking the energy produced by the flow of water through the dam and the shifting frequencies in the current harmonics, Guffond creates a feed of throbbing tones that braid and blend, soar and plunge, harmonize and diverge. To sit and listen to it is both galvanizing and daunting, like having a staring contest with your better self. What really gets me about it though, among the many sensations it stirs up, is the ways my breathing gets synced with the piece’s fluctuations. I feel this music – and it is deeply musical – and ride it out, all its ups and downs, every time I listen to it. It’s unnervingly immediate, an inhuman yet uncannily emotional creation, and when it ends, I want to go back and listen to it all over again."- Damian Van Denburgh, Another Green Kitchen
25 & 26 JANUARY - CTM Opening Concert
Live visuals by ilan katin
2019
LISTENING BACK ADD-ON for Firefox
Translates cookies into sound as you browse online thereby exposing real-time digital surveillance and consequently the ways in which our everyday relationships to being surveilled have become normalised.
TAZ Interview, November 2019
FALSE POSITIVES
Right the Right Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, November 2019
What are the implications of algorithmically policing the World Wide Web? Within two years it will be madatory for EU websites to implement an upload filter that automatically checks content i.e. every tweet, post, shared photo, audio or video for potential copyright infringement. During this lecture performance I challenged an already existing automatic upload filter, YouTube's content ID management system, for false postitive false positives.
CHICAGO ARCHITECTURE BIENNAL, 2019
Zorka Wollny invited me to collaborate on a 30 channel sound installation at the abandoned Overton Elementary School in Bronzeville, Chicago.
VENICE BIENNALE, 2019
Composed sound for Shulea Cheang's Installation 3x3x6 at the Taiwanese Pavilion.
Held off site at the Prison Palace, renowned for the incaceration of Casanova, Cheang's work traces the transformation of confinement and surveillance technologies within digital culture.
AUGUST - SLOW ROTATION, KNULP, SYDNEY
Sound installation for group show SPRING 1848 curated by Scott Donovan.
2 Channel 15min Audio Loop, Ceiling Speaker, Subwoofer, Amps
With the aim to topple monarchies, the European revolutions of 1848 began in France and spread to over fifty countries without notable coordination or cooperation amoung respective revolutionaries. Fast forward to the present and contemporary US political scientist Erica Chenoweth's theory suggests that it takes just 3.5% of a population in sustained non violent protest to topple a government. What is the tipping point of a revolution? And how to represent that moment when a critical mass aligns to topple established power through sound in a gallery space?
JULY - CURRENT HARMONICS, Reservior Festival
Site specific sound installation for Reservoir Festival at the Linachtalsperre Dam in the Black Forest
MARCH - Audio Foundation RESIDENCY / EXHIBITION, Auckland, Aotearoa
Sonic Profiles sonifies the meta-data from the Twitter accounts of well-known public entities: Donald Trump, Narendra Modi, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, YouTube, CNN and the BBC. By translating Twitter data into sound in real time, this multi-channel composition questions what it means, via the logic of data extraction, to be reduced to streams of data. By abstracting human bodies into data flows, online surveillance networks create profiles of the subjects of such surveillance – our data doubles. Considering the extent to which we watch each other via social media, personal identity becomes a commodity and our humanness itself is increasingly defined by our data-selves. Within a culture of permanent online connectivity, who are we to these ubiquitous algorithms and the data broker industry who programs them?
JANUARY - Q-o2 RESIDENCY, Brussels
During this residency I began recording musical pieces with my custom made Chrome browser add-on, Listening Back. Listening Back is an add-on for the Chrome browser that sonifies Internet cookies in real time as one browses online, thereby providing an audible presence for hidden infrastructures that collect personal and identifying data.
JANUARY - THE WIRE, Interview
2018
NOVEMBER 22 & 23 - EAVESDROP FESTIVAL, Berlin
Sound Installation, Dear Voyeur, meet Flaneur....Sincerely, Social Media Photo by Noshe
OCTOBER 26th - DEGRADATION LOOPS, 12inch & Digital Release on Karlrecords
This project began as a 16 day composition for a group show at 55 Sydenham Rd Marrickville NSW 2204 AU (R.I.P). Here is a limited edition vinyl version on Karlrecords. Artwork by Katherina Pling.
OCTOBER 26th - SOUND AND STONE compilation
What sound does a stone make? Earlier this year I was invited to make a remix from a library of sounds of stones. I was fascinated to find out about the Feßmann family legacy and dedication to extracting sound from stones. All materials contain resonant frequencies which often go unheard but in this case they have made the stones sing!
SEPTEMBER 27th - DEGRADTION LOOPS sound installation.
MUSE RUOLE, TRANSART Festival, Bolzano, Italy. Curated by Valeria Merlini
AUGUST 2nd & 11th - IAN POTTER MUSEUM of ART, Melbourne University & UNSW Galleries, Sydney
Lecture Performance, The Web Never Forgets with the Browser Duo and the custom made browser add-on Listening Back for Liquid Architecture / Eavesdropping Public Program
forrest from Jasmine Guffond on Vimeo.
JUNE 28th - CENTRO ANDALUZ DE ARTE CONTEMPORANEO. Cordoba, Spain
Live Performance. Visuals by Ilan Katin
JUNE 22nd - HANGAR, Barcelona
Performance with the Browser Ensemble utilising the custom made browser add-on Listening Back
APRIL 19th - JUNE 10th - SONIC PROFILES at MAMA, Albury, N.S.W, Australia
Sound Installation, as part of The Watched Exhibition at Murray Art Museum Albury.
The Watched group exhibition considers the impact of contemporary forms of surveillance on daily life and Sonic Profiles reflects on the extent to which we watch each other via social media platforms.
Sonic Profiles sonifies the meta-data from the twitter accounts of well-known public entities. By translating twitter meta-data into sound in real time, the work questions what it means, via the logic of data extraction, to be reduced to streams of data. Contemporary surveillance is often digital and therefore invisible, taking the form of online computer tracking. Behind the graphical interface of the Web browser automated data capture networks rather than 'watch', collect our data. Is the notion of 'watching over' helpful or misleading in regards to contemporary modes of online monitoring that have shifted from a visceral seeing to a logic of automated data extraction? Does this shift in modes of surveillance particular to online monitoring cultures give agency to sound as a method of investigation and mode of representation?
NOV 16th & 17th - EAVESDROP FESTIVAL, Berlin
Festival Curation and Performance with the Browser Ensemble
EAVESDROP presents outstanding Berlin-based and international examples of contemporary electronic music that are abstract, experimental and emotionally affecting.
EAVESDROP speaks to our contemporary sonic environments whether natural, architectural or virtual. The festival challenges and invites listeners to consider, from multiple perspectives, new social and technical developments in international music culture. It explores how digital and online cultures have fundamentally altered how we perceive and experience both music and hte world.
OCT 28th & 29th - AUDIBLE DATA STREAMS SONIFICATION FESTIVAL, Villa Elizabeth, Berlin
Oct 28th - LISTENING BACK & FROM CLOUD TO FOG - live performance of sonification works, with Andrea Belfi, Jeremy Coubrough, Jessica Ekomane & Eliza Goldox, Holger Heissmeyer
Oct 29th - Panal Discussion, Sonification-Interfaces as Instrument
OCT 19th & 20th - MACAO, Milan & RAUM, Bologna
Live Performances in Italy
SEPT 22nd - 29th - SONIC WALKER
If the City Could Speak, Melbourne - Public Sound Work
What does it mean to have our daily footsteps counted in the urban terrain of a ‘smart city’?
The City of Melbourne’s 24-hour pedestrian counting system measures the daily activity of pedestrians. Updated hourly, the data captured by thirty-five of the forty sensors installed around Melbourne’s CBD is sonified in real time and played back over the Signal 24 channel sound system.
SEPT 23rd - SOFT CENTRE FESTIVAL
Casula Powerhouse, Sydney - live performance
JULY - NEW ALBUM TRACED on Sonic Pieces
Boomkat review for my new album - In Traced, Guffond takes the textural and spatially sensitive ambient aesthetics of her previous LP, the acclaimed Yellow Bell, into palpably more paranoid and unnerving headspaces, using her filigree appreciation of electro-acoustic dynamics to convey that feeling with a subtlety which will surely resonate with anyone aware of digital surveillance technology’s transition from peripheral creep to a near ubiquitous presence.
JULY 8th - HEROINES OF SOUND FESTIVAL
Radial System Berlin. Live Visuals by Ilan Katin
Photo by Udo Siegfriedt
JUNE - On tour in Sydney and Melbourne with Jessica Ekomane and Silje Nes.
Installing Composition for Wi-Fi, GPS, Architecture and People at First Draft, Sydney
JUNE - UNTOLD STORIES group show at First Draft Sydney with Jessica Ekomane and Silje Nes
MAY 10th - BROWSER DUO live performance at Black Box, UNSWAD, Sydney. Sonifying internet tracking cookies in real time with the Listening Back Chrome Browser Extension.
APRIL - THE WEB NEVER FORGETS sound installation
Sydney Non Objective (SNO), Sydney
An immersive sound installation that exposes the proliferation of ubiquitous online surveillance via the real time sonification of internet tracking cookies. Named after the computer science term “magic cookie” internet cookies are commonly used for data profiling by advertising, corporations and governments, by placing a small file on the user’s computer. The relative invisibility of digital surveillance, and the proliferation of consumer modes of online surveillance has both intensified and rendered ambivalent our relationships to being surveyed. Sound provides a means for listening back to some of the imperceivable surveillance infrastructures that monitor our habitual online browsing.
APRIL 8th - CEMENTA FESTIVAL, Kandos
Live Performance
JANUARY 21st - The NOW NOW FESTIVAL, Sydney
Live performance
2016
DECEMBER - DEGRADATION LOOPS
55 Sydenham Rd, Marrickville, Gallery, Sydney
A 16 day composition that gradually and completely bit crushes my 2015 Yellow Bell album. A process of sonic destruction unfolds in response to a group show where visual artists Alex Gawronski and Jelena Telecki destroy and reassemble their work, to create new work, and question the dominance of commercial imperatives within art.
NOVEMBER - Jasmine Guffond / Plurals split release on Beartown Records.
A limited edition CDR release of live concert recordings in Istanbul and Berlin.
26th NOVEMBER - GLITCH FESTIVAL, León, Mexico Live Visuals by Ilan Katin
AUGUST - UNTOLD STORIES, Quiet Cue, Berlin
Composition for WiFi, GPS, Architecture, Furniture and People, explores sound as a method of socio-political investigation. Working with the properties of sound as a vibrational force WiFi and GPS networks are sonified into sub-frequencies specifically tuned to the room, thereby causing architecture and furniture to vibrate. By translating humanly imperceptible networks into the medium of sonic vibration, we are reminded that every object and every being, contains resonate frequencies that can be activated through sound.
Simultaneously used for global communication and surveillance, WiFi and GPS infrastructures inform our everyday experience by expanding our urban boundaries to the geopolitical and information channels of the world. Providing an audible presence for these otherwise intangible infrastructures allows for a direct sensory experience that encourages listening as a mode of examination.
16th JUNE - FILTER V, SPEKTRUM, Berlin
An initiative of ZONA DYNAMIC, the FILTER - Sound Art Series is an edition of temporary collaborations between 2-3 artists focusing on conceptual, context-reflective artworks that intervene in temporary spaces.
FILTER V is an experiment dealing with the power dynamics inherent to surveillance states across both physical and digital domains. Focusing on the intangibility of monitoring and capture infrastructures embedded within the networks we connect to and communicate with everyday - how does this affect collective movement?
Realised as a participative performance and sound installation in collaboration with Liat Berdugo, Eliza Goldox and Holger Heissmeyer. In the guise of aerobic instructions, collective movement is tracked and the body is used as a point of analysis. Liat Berdugo's Unpatentable Multitouch Aerobics incorporates everyday gestures such as zooming, swiping and flicking, that our technological devices have taught us to do, commenting on the corporate reach into our homes, psyches and bodies. The captured data is translated into sonic rhythms, enabling a listening mode of examination and creating an ongoing ritual and soundscape.
14th MARCH - Ambush Gallery, Sydney
Panel discussion with Gudrun Gut, Brooke Olsen, Gail Priest about visibility of women in music and the arts. Hosted by the Goethe Institute.
25th January - Intangible Threat, a showcase by class Sound, Art and Technology-poiesis, UdK. Transmediale/CTM Vorspiel 2016 festival, Berlin
“Sound, Art and Technology-poiesis” is an artistic praxis course at UNI.K – Studio for Sound Art and Sound Research, Faculty of Music, Berlin University of the Arts. Led by Daisuke Ishida and sound artist Jasmine Guffond during the winter semester 2015/2016. Participants were encouraged to create a work investigating contemporary personal, social and political issues with a special focus on the intangibility of surveillance in the digital domain, through the use of the similarly ephemeral medium of sound.
2015
