Sound art workshops

Ahmed Basiony focused his academic study on digital sound art during the preparation of his master’s thesis between the years 2002 and 2006. At the same time, he started organizing the independent experimental workshop for digital sound art at the faculty of Art Education at Helwan University in 2006, as one of the experimental workshops for media and creativity supervised by the artist Dr. Shady El Noshokaty. Basiony had already started participating in 2000, when he still was a student.

In his independent workshops, Basiony introduced the first academic program in sound art experimentation to Egypt. He created this program that gives the students a chance to acquire the creative skills that are important to perceive sound as a raw material in relation to imagination, as well as the methodology to merge the audible material with virtual images whose state and nature students can manipulate and change using digital audio equipment and software.

Basiony depended on the weight of his personal performance to attract a great number of students to this new medium in Egypt. He was a catalyst in the evolution of the concept of sound art in every new workshop that included live sound performance in the summer of 2009 and 2010. During those two workshops he taught the students the power of compound natural sounds and how to transform environmental ambient sound into abstract shapes and forms in the mind of the audience, which would acquire an almost architectural nature built up in direct live performance in front of a live audience utilizing all available technologies of live sound performances.

He paid close attention to the power of group learning, the importance of interaction and the merging of experiences as well as experimentation in the execution of ideas. Most of the ideas were a result of direct brainstorming evolving through group interaction into a sound piece that tickles the mind and senses when heard in a live performance studio.

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by Shady El Noshokaty.