Dhvāni is a Sanskrit word, which means resonance. The responsive and self-regulative installation Dhvāni develops an Indian epistemology-informed approach to sound art, emphasizing the role of the listener, inter-subjectivity and situational context as the primary trigger towards construing an artistic experience. Incorporating current research in acoustics and AI, the project examines the role of the “self” and inter-subjectivity against an overarching emphasis on the artistic object permeating in the Western art tradition. Departing from the object, the project aims to create fertile and evolving “auditory situations” where the selfhood and subjectivity of the listener can be considered in an inclusive manner through interactivity so as to encourage a participatory approach of artistic experience in terms of a networked collectivity. In doing so, the project develops an understanding of the role of chance and contingency in sound experience as a mode of creating temporal disjuncture for the “divine intervention” as Indian musician Gita Sarabhai informed John Cage in 1946 helping to shape Cage’s subsequent work with chance composition (Cage 1973: 158, 226).
Premiere: EXPERIMENTA Arts & Sciences Biennale 2020, Atelier Arts Sciences, Grenoble, France, in technical collaboration with Parag K. Mital (Google AMI grant), Tobias Lintl, Christoph Kummerer, Subhadeep Biswas, and Akash Sharma.