Founded:
2006
Direction:
(The Politics of Vibration, Practice: Aesthetics After Art, In Praise of Copying, Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism, The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs)
Christie Pearson
(The Architecture of Bathing: Body, Landscape, Art)
Presentation:
Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuning Speculations Toronto; Tasmanian School of the Arts; KUNCI Cultural Studies Centre Yogyakarta
Support:
The Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council
The Waves is a multi-disciplinary research and creation collective investigating the import of wave-based phenomena and producing immersive vibratory environments. Our current work explores the intersection of different types of waves including light, sound, wind, water and earth. With the speculative premise that all places, cultures and events involve the unperceived intersection of various kinds of waves within a diverse spectrum of materialities and energies, we hope to open up the world of waves to broad audiences through writings, lectures, installations and events locally, nationally and internationally. We explore the historical, ecological and political importance of waves in natural and urban environments, in human and non-human communities. Wave-based environments can be above all transformative: offering cathartic release and a renewed sense of connection to oneself, community and environment. In our IVE prototypes, we appeal to feeling through the senses and an audience that is always a participant. We are inspired by environmental and sound art, relationality, happenings, site-specificity, heightened perception, urban geography, libidinal economies, indigenous and subaltern methodologies, and expanded cultural practices and technologies of immersion from public bathing to concerts and carnivals. Through building sensual and cognitive interconnection we seek to produce new publics, however temporary, in site-specific works that alter environmental perception.
