Zsolt Sőrés
Since 1995 Zsolt Sőrés is a fellow worker of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Research Center for the Humanities, Institute for Literary Studies in Budapest. He is a bibliographer and technical editor of the scientific magazine Helikon Review of Cultural Studies. Since 2014 he has been teacher of Composition Department, Electronic Music Media Art, Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest. His teaches motion picture soundtrack analysis, sound design (sound installation art / soundwalk), contemporary music and contemporary chamber music. In 2005 he was the series editor of the Szünetjel Könyvek (Pause Sign Books), and published the Hungarian versions of the following books: Jozef Cseres: ”Musical Simulacrums”, Michael Nyman: ”Experimental Music. Cage and Beyond”, Edwin Prévost: ”No Sound is Innocent”. In 2008, he edited a book and wrote a preface study about ”New Chances of Autonomy” with the texts by Hakim Bey aka Peter Lamborn Wilson among other onthological anarchists and also published a book about the avantgarde art in Slovakia (”Transart Communication. Performance & Multimedia Art. Studio erté 1987-2007”) at Kalligram, Bratislava. In 2011, he edited a book (”Hacked Realities”) – and wrote a preface study as well – about drug culture and alternative realities in modern art and literature. Until 2010 he was the main organizer of the underground film screening series called ”Club of Invisible Films” at Ludwig Museum – Contemporary Art Museum in Budapest. From 1996 to 2002 he was one of the artistic director of the ”Pause-Sign International Improvised and Experimental Music Festival” and from 2008 to 2010 curator of the ”Relative (Cross)Hearings International Contemporary Music Meeting” in Budapest. In 2012, he was the Hungarian curator of the international ”Sound Exchange – Experimental Music Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe” project. In 2014, Zsolt Sőrés curated the first collective international sound installation exhibition in Hungary called ”On the Edge of Perceptibility – Sound Art” at Kunsthalle, Budapest.
Sőrés also an internationally acclaimed experimental musician. He is one of the pioneers of free improvised music in Hungary. Since 1992 he has performed across Europe, USA and Canada. Over the past two and a half decades, he appeared on dozens of albums as a leader or a member of various international experimental music groups and projects. He is a creator and collaborator of soundwalks and various sound installations.
Research program
Soundwalk – Citywalk: Artistic Transformation of The City Space
My project searches for a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of acoustics. The project draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space together with the social sciences, the architecture and urban planning discourse – as well as its strategies and working methods – into the context of sound art (e. g. the soundwalk and its theory, as a form of sound installation art). A soundwalk is a walk with a focus on listening to the environment, an audio tour. The soundwalk takes the audio tour and adds characters, sounds, and plot – all while placing the listener in ”real world” environments (i.e. not museums) – to create hyperreal, immersive experiences that allow the listener to explore an often familiar world in new ways. A soundwalk is pars pro toto the particular manifestation of acoustic and soundscape ecology. I want to publish a summary/final study (and later a complete walkscape audio work) about how new perspectives of an interactive art form – the soundwalk/citywalk – can effects/transforms our social life “sense” in the light of our “ferial” experience in Kőszeg into something else, something more “transcendental”. In my research project I would like to present a theoretical approach which examine in a critical and sensitive way the given urban, architectural and social situations alongside their resulting socio-political implications, that re-use existing spaces or that conceive and open new “cross-cultural synergetic” spaces. A dialogue at the intersection of art, architecture/urban space, history, literature, science and the artistic work with sound will trace out the complex relations and interactions of space – sound, both presenting and testing new strategies, methods, possibilities and potentials of sound work within the artistic and applied context.