Jakob Kudsk Steensen created a sonic and immersive environment for The Deep Listener, the inaugural Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission that explores themes of extinction, preservation and the emergence of new ecological realities. Featuring immersive sound, talks and readings by Prof Kate Jones, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Matt McCorkle and Himali Singh Soin.
Focusing on deep listening, artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen devised an evening of sound, poetry, spoken word and a promenade that extends our senses, our awareness of the earth and the environments around us by slowing down, listening, paying attention and using our ears.
Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity, in the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research at University College London. Kate Jones is a world-leading biodiversity modeller known for her innovative, broad cross-disciplinary research in the linkages between global change, biodiversity and ecosystem services, winning the Philip Leverhulme Prize for outstanding contributions to Zoology in 2008. Kate holds scientific advisory positions for a number of national and international conservation charities and was the Chair of The Bat Conservation Trust from 2010-2015. She also directs a number of citizen science projects monitoring biodiversity globally. Kate is a passionate science communicator and regularly appears in the national and international media, including the Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4 in 2015. Allegedly*, Charles Darwin is her 8th cousin (6 times removed). *ancestry.co.uk
Jakob Kudsk Steensen is an artist and art director concerned with how imagination, technology and ecology intertwine. His works range from immersive VR ecosystems to mixed reality installations bridging physical and digital worlds which invite audiences to enter new ecological realities. He collaborates with scientists, artists and non-governmental organisations from different fields. Kudsk Steensen embarks on ventures and excursions where he collects organic material, which is then digitised and converted into digital worlds with 3D scanners, photogrammetry, satellite data and computer game software. Inspired by ecology-oriented science fiction and conversations with biologists and ethnographers, his projects are ultimately virtual simulations populated by mythical beings existing in radical ecological scenarios. He has exhibited internationally at the Future Generation Art Prize, Venice, Pinchuk Art Center, 5th Trondheim Biennale for Art and Technology, the Carnegie Museum of Art, GUEST, GHOST, HOST: MACHINE! Marathon, Serpentine Galleries and MAXXI Rome among others. His work has been shown at Sundance, TriBeCa and Cannes among other film festivals.
Matt McCorkle is a New York-based sound designer and naturalist. By translating field recordings into digital and physical environments, his work seeks to help people experience the natural world in new ways. McCorkle has created sound and music experiences for the American Museum of Natural History, Google Zeitgeist, YouTube and TedX, among others.
Himali Singh Soin works across text, performance and moving image. She utilises metaphors from the natural environment to construct speculative cosmologies that reveal non-linear entanglements between human and non-human life. Her poetic methodology explores the myriad ways of knowing, from scientific to intuitional, indigenous and alchemical processes. She contributed to the Serpentine Marathon 2017, and has shown at Whitechapel Gallery, ICA, Lewisham Art House, Art Licks, Art Night London (London); Kadist (San Francisco); the Dhaka Art Summit (Dhaka); Abrons Art Centre (NYC); Brick Bar (Riga); Serendipity Arts Festival (Goa); Khoj (New Delhi); OCA (Norway); Fabrika (Moscow); A Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam); Bucharest Art Week (Bucharest); Meet Factory (Prague) among others. Her writing appears regularly in Artforum and Frieze among others. She is the recipient of the 2019 Frieze Artist Award for her work on the poles and their uncanny bearing on the rest of the world.
