_this site aims to be context-specific and is frequently adapted for the purpose of applications. If you are revisiting and find some works missing, please be in touch: isulvontrapp@gmail.com


hydrophone inserted into an air balloon taken out to sea
_the middle ear







A selection of works



2024_Breathing Spaces_was a mentorship programme and groupshow of up-and-coming sound artists selected for the Sonic Acts Biennale 2024. The meetings were held at Zone2Source artspace in Amsterdam and involved investigations of sound & space within the context of the 2024 biennale programme through the mentorship of composer and educator, Ji Youn Kang. Here, I developed and presented the performance/installation "The Backyard", a collection of field-recordings made during the working period played-back through an open wireless feedback system with FM transmitters and receivers that were mapped through a Max patch for delays and textures. The installation interlaced a sound journal of the residency with the live exhibition space and radio on-air.

_installation excerpt

SonicActs2024banner

A laptop, two radio and electronic parts scattered on a table facing into a glass house
_28.02.2024 @Zone2Source




2024_The Eternal Parent_is an experimental oprah for voice and electronics, a collaboration with Viktoria Nikolova and commissioned by Sophia Underground. The performance in three parts puts into question the deep etchings of storytelling archetypes and spiritual tropes within the collective consciousness. Through a relentless feedback loop operating on a sonic plane, we have merged cultural, visual and auditory elements, perpetually folding them back into themselves until they metamorphose into an unrecognisable new narrative state.

concept_Viktoria Nikolova
sound_Isul Kim



Sophia Underground banner





2023_Anatomic Buoyancies_is a collection of work arranged from material collected during Justin Bennett's field-recording workshop (The Hague). The works seek to explore the characteristics of each microphone through the choice of environment2 they are placed inside. Each microphone embodies a unique shape and size, bandwidth, field of capture, and usability requirements that situates it in unique contexts. The (self-proclaimed) objective was to explore the characteristics of microphones presented to us, through imagining a suitable environment to capture. The following recordings were complied and composed during a week's excursion through the city, shifting sands, an elevated dinner, and a practise of non-listening.

_geophone

_hydrophone with Harry Golden

_lavalier

_binaural





Voronoi diagram
_voronoi diagram


2023_Corpus ii_was a live performance of Corpus i through a 4-channel speaker configuration and three receiver radios; spatialized according to the voronoi principle.

_ii.30.3.2023_schwarzhaus





2022_Kairos_is a sound collage commissioned for Refuge Radio Berlin as a part of Alifiyah Imani's artistic research on Sonic Rituals. The piece constructs sonic clusters of events that happened in 2022 as an interpretation of kairos, or non-linear time, and how memories take on the retrospective marker of time. The composed situations play with the proximities of encounter with the social-political landscape of Berlin. By drawing in major events: the Artemis launch, war on Ukraine, feminist protests in Iran, and how these remembrances entwine with our ordinary soundscapes, it achieves an abstracted journalism or journaling of events from an individual perspective. The audio samples that mark each sonic event was taken from Instagram. Full stream here.


Peeling layers of old posters on a billboard sign
_untimely




2022_Floating basin_is a sound essay broadcasted on Cashmere Radio as a part of a cumulative work on Diasporic Listening to Berlin soundscapes with artist Yara Mekawei. The site chosen for this investigation is Floating University, a public intervention and recreation space above the rainwater retention basin of the old Templehofer airport. It is an urban sanctuary for wildlife and microbials. Inspired by their resistance to uphold against urban redevelopment pressures and the societal activation of post-COVID lockdown, the essay uses this site as a departure point to question the meaning of change. Full stream here.


Cashmere radio banner for Diasporic Listening to Berlin Soundscapes





2020_Returning to zero time_an immersive biofeedback environment was installed for the Reeperbahn Festival, in Hamburg Germany. Taking the anatomic womb as inspiration, audio and visual impulses are tuned to the average heart rate of visitors as an investigation on the social experience of synchronisation during the first COVID lockdown. Commissioned for the artist collective Frank Nubala.


A look inside a shipping container being refitted into an art installation
_process