This event is part of the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology's Spring 2020 Artistic Research Luncheon Series.

Since everything that is matter has the capacity to vibrate and resonate, our reality is intertwined by vibrations that physically animate matter across scales and media. This idea presents a framework where both human and non-human agents are part of large-scale resonating assemblages. In spite of this, our present and future seem to be falling into a vertiginous state ruled by anthropocentric powers that insist on alienating alternative perspectives and systems of coexistence and collaboration. In exploring the above-mentioned vibrancy as a model for intricate existence, we might find strategies to exist in more fluid and symbiotic ways within the human and non-human. This discussion presents and explores the concept of the “Membrane” as a fundamental part of the understanding and constitution of a vibrational ontology, a key element for the performativity of everything. These ideas will be presented as part of the basis for experimental work (installations, compositions, performances, and listening sessions) that aim to explore resonant rites and the performativity of non-human agents.

Speaker:

Nicole L’Huillier is a transdisciplinary artist from Santiago, Chile, currently based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Through installations, performances, sculptures, compositions, and multiple transductions, her work explores human and non-human performativity, rituals of membranal and resonant architectures, as well as vibration and sound as construction materials for spaces, identity, and agency. Nicole is currently a PhD candidate and research assistant at the MIT Media Lab, Opera of the Future group. She also holds a master's degree in Media Arts and Sciences (2017) from the MIT Media Lab.