Eleni specialises in digital art and critical theory, drawing on contemporary sonic, technocultural, alternative futurisms.
Eleni is a writer, theorist and practitioner born in Athens and based in London.
She became Senior Tutor in Visual Communication in May 2018 and prior to that was Senior Lecturer, member of the London Graduate School and founder and director of the Audio Culture Research Unit at Kingston University.
Her latest monograph, The Rhythmic Event, Art, Media, and The Sonic (2014), investigates a selection of digital media art practices deploying technoscientific processes to open digitality to the virtual and is part of The MIT Press series Technologies of Lived Abstraction, edited by Brian Massumi and Erin Manning. She co-edited and contributed to the edited volume Media After Kittler (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015) and her most recent articles can be found in the journal Parallax Special Issue Sounding/Thinking (Taylor & Francis, Vol 23 2017) and in the edited volume Navigating Noise (September 2017) published by the Art Research series Kunstwissenschaftliche Bibliothek / Verlag der Buchandlung Walther König.
With AUDINT, she is currently working on editing the anthology titled Unsound : Undead, published by Urbanomic in Spring 2019, and on producing a series of exhibitions with the same title, funded by the Arts Council of England.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
Expertise
Gallery
More information
Research interests
Eleni's research is situated at the intersection between digital media, speculative theory and sound art practice. Her research expertise and supervision interests include, but are not limited to, digital culture, media theory, computational aesthetics, science fiction, sonic fiction, electronic music, interactive media, artificial intelligence, voice and automation, sound studies, continental philosophy, software studies, speculative theory, and theories and practices of time travel. Her writings and practice deal with both the known and unknown impact of new technologies on culture, aesthetics and politics, investigated through the staging of transdisciplinary philosophical, technoscientific, and artistic encounters. Her research asks questions such as, how do we approach aesthetics as something that is both subjectless and objectless, not able to be tied down to the particular object, artwork, situation or body by which it is apprehended. Ikoniadou's enduring engagement with digitality draws on a strong belief for the need for theory to be informed by practice, as well as by fiction, speculation and abstraction.
Practice
Eleni has lectured, published, and presented in digital media theory and practice topics since 2004. Her longstanding interest, since her MA in Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice at Goldsmiths College, has been how code interrupts traditional notions of perception and phenomenality, to give way to new nonhuman and inhuman modes of thought and experience.
Eleni has performed, presented and organised events in art venues and institutions such as the ICA, Tate Britain, CTM Festival, Spike Island, Loop Festival Berlin, Goldsmiths College, University of Oxford, Central St Martins College, Humboldt University, Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (BEK), The Lighthouse, The Showroom, and others.
Research funding
2018: The Arts Council of England
Production grant for a series of AUDINT exhibitions in the UK
Current and recent projects
‘Unsound : Undead’ by AUDINT is an Arts Council funded series of exhibitions and live events taking place in the UK between 2018-2020. The first show opened at Spike Island, Bristol in April 2018, as part of the Bristol New Music contemporary music biennial. It involved a new multi-media installation and series of performances, readings and audio-visual presentations by invited guests and collaborators, including contributions from Elysia Crampton, Coby Sey, Laurie & Olly, SIREN DJs and AUDINT members themselves.
At the centre of Unsound : Undead is a new work produced for an ‘Unsound System’—an acousmonium of multiple infrasonic and ultrasonic speakers, operating at frequencies that are ‘felt as much as heard.’ Around the gallery, a series of projected videos, animations and archival materials will disclose the AUDINT group’s legacies and future trajectories within the peripheral and occulted dimensions of the sonic. Together, these elements explore how sound and its (science) fictions might channel the otherworldly and produce new forms of agency, subjectivity and materiality outside of place and time.
The forthcoming book Unsound : Undead is edited by Eleni Ikoniadou, Toby Heys and Steve Goodman and features contributions by Matthew Fuller, Ayesha Hameed, Tim Hecker, Agnes Gayraud, Shelley Trower, Paul Purgas, Dave Tomkins, Lee Gamble, Amy Ireland, and others.
Her Voice: a historical/ fictional archive of the female voice, from its human, mythological, synthesised, electronic and digitalised status, to its imminent AI future. Funding application to be submitted July 2018.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Forthcoming Books
Ikoniadou, E. (2019) Unsound : Undead, coedited with Steve Goodman and Toby Heys, Urbanomic
Ikoniadou, E. (2019) 'Sound, Art, and Vibrational Technologies of Disruption', in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art eds. H. Schultze and S. K. Groth, Bloomsbury Press
Ikoniadou, E. (2020) Her voice, intended for Zone books
Selected Publications
Ikoniadou, E. (2017) ‘Sono-Aesthetics’, in Navigating Noise eds. N. van Dijk, K. Ergenzinger, C.Kassung, S. Schwesinger, Art Research Kunstwissenschaftliche Bibliothek, Walther
König
Ikoniadou, E. (2017) ‘A Sonic Theory Unsuitable for Human Consumption’, Parallax Special Issue Sounding/Thinking ed. J. Lavender, Vol.23 Issue 3, July 2017
Ikoniadou, E. (2016) ‘Unsound Monoliths’, in Black Hyperbox, eds. A. Popa and F. Fueras, PUNCH
Ikoniadou, E. (2016) ‘The Unsound Methods of AUDINT’, The Wire, December 2016
Ikoniadou, E. (2016) ‘Hyperrhythmia’ in Connecting Rhythms, September 2016, Interalia
Ikoniadou, E. (2015), Media After Kittler, co-edited with S. Wilson, Media Philosophy Series, eds. E. Ikoniadou and S. Wilson, London, N.Y.: Rowman and Littlefield International
Ikoniadou, E. (2015) ‘The Sonorous Work of Art’ in art Percussive Hunter 11 ed. N. J. Lekkerkerk, Akbank Sanat
Ikoniadou, E. (2014) 'Abstract Time and Affective Perception in the Sonic Work of Art', Special Issue Rhythms, Body & Society eds. Pa. Valiajo, M. Tiainen, Vol. 20, Issue 3&4, 2014: pp. 140–161
Ikoniadou, E. (2014) The Rhythmic Event, Technologies of Lived Abstraction series, eds B. Massumi and E. Manning, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
Ikoniadou, E. (2014) ‘Algorithmic Thought: a review of Contagious Architecture by Luciana Parisi’ in Computational Culture, a journal of Software Studies, Issue 4, 9 Nov 2014
Ikoniadou, E. (2012) 'A Rhythmic Time for the Digital’ in The Senses and Society, Vol. 7, Issue 3, Berg (Bloomsbury) Nov 2012: pp. 261–275
Ikoniadou, E. (2010) ‘Rhythm–House: A Virtual Design for the Digital’, Special issue in Creative Media, Culture Machine, Vol. 11, eds. S. Kember & J.Zylinska, Dec 2010
Ikoniadou, E. (2010) ‘Hypersonic sensation: the non-human in human perception’ in Sounds of the Overground eds. H. Tessler & N. Hassan, Turku: International Institute for Popular Culture
Ikoniadou, E. (2008) ‘Rhythmic Topology, the affective stretching of nature’ in An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environments with Deleuze/Guattari ed. B. Herzogenrath, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Ikoniadou, E. (2007) ‘Microsonic sensibility: phantoms of affects to come’, Yproductions Library ed. Jaron Rowan
Selected Talks/Keynotes/Performances
2018. AUDINT: Unsound : Undead, exhibition, Spike Island Bristol
2017. The Lament: Artificial Voices and Female Intelligence, performative sound piece, Post-Cyber Feminist International, ICA, London
2017. Rhythm in the work of Gaston Bachelard and Kodwo Eshun, workshop, Rhythmanalysis Seminar Series CHASE, Goldsmiths College University of London
2017. AUDINT: A Century of Zombie Sound, performance, Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens
2016. AUDINT: A Century of Zombie Sound, performance, Sonologia: Out of Phase, São Paulo
2016. AUDINT: A Century of Zombie Sound, performance, Loop festival, Funkhaus Berlin
2016. Dangerous Sounds, presentation, Technology Now: Sonic Feminisms, ICA, London
2016. Sound-Rhythm-Fiction, workshop, Atoms and Beats, 3rd Objetologias Conference, Bau College of Design, Barcelona
2016. 'After Media', paper, 6th International Conference in HE, Universitat De Vic, Central Catalunya 2016: Thinking Sound: From Nature to the Posthuman, paper & organiser, ACRU, Kingston University
2016. AUDINT: Pain Camp Economics, performance, Speeding & Braking, Goldsmiths College
2016. Rhythm as Pattern and Variation: Political, Social and Artistic Inflections, paper & organiser, ACRU/ TRU, Goldsmiths College University of London
2016. Chronopoetics, a lecture by Wolfgang Ernst, organiser, ACRU/ LGS/ MA in Theory and Art, Central St Martins College
2016. Sound/ Noise, workshop, organiser, AHRC TECHNE, The Sound of Research, Selsdon hotel, UK
2015. 'Sonic Fiction: making reality, proliferating improbability', paper, Tuning Speculations III, Array Space, York University, Toronto
2015. 'Re-orienting the Technological', keynote paper, Acts of Orientation international conference, Humboldt University’s Excellence Cluster Image Knowledge Gestaltung, Berlin
2015. AUDINT: Delusions of the Living Dead, respondent, Speculative Tate research series, Tate Britain
2015. Three Ecologies of Rhythm, 3 consecutive 5 hour long seminars, alongside Ray Brassier and Katerina Kolozova. Performing Arts Centre, Spring Meeting, St Erme France
2015. New Media and Aesthetics, keynote paper, Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (BEK)
2015. The Torment of the Hum, keynote paper, 16th CTM Festival: Un-Tune, Berlin
2015. 'Space is the Place', keynote paper, Critical Spaces–Disorienting the Topological, Kingston University, London
2014: The Rhythmic Event, keynote paper, The Lighthouse, Brighton, UK
2014. The Virtual Dimension of Sound, keynote paper, Ethnomusicology and Sound Studies, University of Oxford
2014. 'Hyperrhythmia', paper, Tuning Speculations II, Array Space, York University, Toronto
2014. 'Abstract Audio', paper, Sounding the Counterfactual: Hyperstition and Audial Futurities stream, London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT), Goldsmiths College
2014. 'The Halted Moment', paper, European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan
2013. The Inaudible Sonority of the Image, Affective Experiences, Parasol Unit, King’s College/ Middlesex University/ UCL
2014. Sabotaging the Audiostat, an evening with Marc Couroux, organiser, Central Saint Martins
2013. Media After Kittler, organiser, LGS, Bolivar Hall Venezuelan Embassy
2013. The Trembling Image, Summer School, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Warwick University
2013. Respondent, Luciana Parisi’s Contagious Architecture, Computation, Aesthetics and Space, book launch, The Showroom, London
2012. 'Another Temporality, Moving Forest', Chelsea College of Art and Design
2012. The Sonic Event, Annual Conference Music & Philosophy, Royal Musical Association, King's College London
2011. Rhythm & Event, organiser, LGS, King’s Anatomy Theatre and Museum
External collaborations and activities
2015 – present: Member of the art-research cell AUDINT (www.audint.net)
2015–8: Founder and Director of the Audio Culture Research Unit (ACRU)
2013 – present: Co-editor of Media Philosophy series, Rowman & Littlefield International (https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/RLI/RLIMPY)
2012 – present: Editorial Board Member, Evental Aesthetics: Independent Journal of Philosophy (http://eventalaesthetics.net/)
2011–8: Executive member of the London Graduate School (LGS) (www.thelondongraduateschool.co.uk/)