Into Beethoven's Sound Box by Alum Olivia Ting
BCNM alum Olivia Ting has been working on a project titled "Into Beethoven's Sound Box" with a grant from the National Arts & Disability Center in UCLA.
From the artist:
After some 15 years with a deaf right ear, I got a cochlear implant exactly a month after my MFA graduation! Since then I've reconnected with my musicianship and piano background, documenting all the weirdness of learning to hear again with a digital alien in my head. This body of work (photograph series and video) is in part inspired by Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament where he first comes to terms with his impending deafness.
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The human body always strives to make sense of the environment it exists in. Where one channel is blocked, it adapts and delegates awareness to the network of other senses. As I relearn the Appassionata Sonata (published a year after the Heiligenstadt Testament) with my cochlear implant, I can only pay homage to Beethoven’s tenacity and determination, and his will to forge his own reality.
Check out Olivia Ting's amazing project here!