Bachelor in Sound Arts

Degree awarded: Bachelor of Arts HES-SO in Fine arts, major in Sound Arts

From the beginning of the academic year 2021-22, EDHEA offers a Bachelor in Sound Arts to its BA students in Fine Arts. Sound art and practices are becoming increasingly popular in contemporary art as well as in transdisciplinary research and performing arts. They take part in new forms of artistic and educational cross-breeding by developing an awareness of the connections between environments and performance-related, ethical, aesthetic and scientific issues.

Students pursuing the Bachelor in Sound Arts at EDHEA have the opportunity to complete their artistic training with specialised and transdisciplinary competences at the crossroads of these different fields. The curriculum is offered to artists who wish to investigate aural practices and sound studies based on fine arts and in connection with contemporary research on the international art scene. EDHEA is the only art school in French-speaking Switzerland to offer a Bachelor in Sound Arts within its Bachelor programme in Fine Arts.

The programme

The Bachelor in Sound Arts offers an experimental approach to theory and practice in tune with the multiple facets of contemporary art professions in the field of sound arts and of practices concerned with attentional devices and listening. Job prospects are plenty in the artistic and curatorial fields as well as in transdisciplinary research.

After a common semester of basic intensive training for all Bachelor students, the Bachelor in Sound Arts gradually begins in the second semester with a specialised and transversal pro-gramme focused on the impact of sound arts on our perception of our environment and the world.

Under the responsibility of Christophe Fellay, founder of the Sound Unit at EDHEA in 2004, the Bachelor in Sound Arts brings together a strong team of artists, curators and theoreticians active on the national and international art scene. Artists and other researchers of international standing lead workshops and master classes, and mentor on-field research as well as national and international projects.

The Bachelor’s professionalising mission enables students to carry out in real-life conditions their artistic projects and research in partnership with field partners such as the MUDAC museum of contemporary design and applied arts and Plateforme 10 in Lausanne, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Red Cross Museum in Geneva, the Valais Art Museum or by collab-orating with institutions such as the laboratory on the neuroscience of emotion and affective dynamics (NEAD) in Geneva, the Centre for digital humanities at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Department of Oral History at the University of Lausanne and the other schools of the HES-SO network.