Justin Bennett
Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory of The Hague
Netherlands
Justin Bennett (UK, 1964) works with sound and image. Trained in sculpture and electronic music, he uses drawing, video, sculpture, and a diverse array of sonic forms in his research. One recurrent theme is our experience of architecture, urban development, and (un)built space. He employs sound in order to render it audible as well as palpable: in his work, careful listening provokes a radically different way of seeing and experiencing. Bennett's use of sound recording is cinematic. He uses microphones like camera lenses to change perspective. – The microphones – the listener's point-of-hearing – move through a city, a street, a windy Russian tundra, or the different-sounding spaces of a building. In many of Bennett's works sound is complemented by video images that affect the experience of the visitor. In some of his research projects the audiovisual material is juxtaposed with voice-overs and drawings, mapping space, movement, sound, magnetic fields etc. through language and diagrams. A reciprocity is created between various forms of expression: a drawing or a text can be a score; and sound and image become ways of drawing and writing. Bennett's work is a research into sound and image as specific media, and an exploration of the ways in which they can be used and experienced. His way of working sparks unexpected complementarities, synaesthetics, collisions and manipulations of the mind. Justin Bennett is a faculty member of the Institute of Sonology, Den Haag and a founding member of Jubilee, platform for artistic research and production, Brussels.