Direct Bodily Empathy - Sensing Sound

Edited by Anna Briers, Direct Bodily Empathy – Sensing Sound is a book that explores sound as a medium, posing questions around the ways artists use deep listening – to audible currents and felt vibrations, sirens and noise – as a means of collective attunement, of knowledge building, and as a tool for critically engaging with a planet in crisis. Catalysed by the two-part exhibition curated for the tenth anniversary of the Len Lye Centre, the publication takes a polyphonic approach through the connective tissue of acoustics. It places the work of Len Lye in concert with major contemporary artists from Aotearoa and abroad, pairing essays and expanded texts from leading scholars with intriguing works from the sonic field. Here, sound installations, resonant objects, graphic scores, visual music, kinetic sculptures, field recordings, experimental films, musical composition, choreography, and broader sonic artefacts echo, fracture and accord. Featuring work by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Roy de Maistre, Andrew Faleatua, Oskar Fischinger, Simon Ingram, YoungEun Kim, Yona Lee, Len Lye, Machine Listening (Sean Dockray, James Parker, Joel Stern), Ross Manning, Yuko Mohri, Mel O’Callaghan, Mia Salsjö + the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Aura Satz, David Sequeira, Rachel Shearer, Weather Cry (Phil Dadson and James McCarthy); and texts by Anna Briers, Len Lye, Machine Listening, Gascia Ouzounian, Aura Satz, Rachel Shearer and Janine Randerson, Lleah Smith, Mark Peter Wright.