Bachelor in Sound Arts

Documents

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. Sound art and practices are becoming increasingly popular in contemporary art as well as in transdisciplinary research and performing arts.

This interdisciplinary field of study focuses on the emergence of sound in the modern Western world, with a particular interest in listening and the techniques for reproducing and broadcasting sound. Nowadays, a wide range of artists and academics work in the fields of sound art, music, anthropology, architecture, art history and many other disciplines. Major studies have focused on the idea of the soundscape, the relationship between the sonic and the visual, acoustic architecture, the sounds of nature, the history of aurality in Western philosophy, the human voice and the sounds of the anthroposphere. These questions, which are at the heart of our research and teaching, contribute to new artistic and pedagogical connections by combining performative, ethical, aesthetic and scientific environments and questions.

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 in Sion or by collaborating with institutions such as the laboratory on the NEAD Neuroscience of emotion and affective dynamics in Geneva, the Centre for digital humanities at the EPFL Ecole polytechnique fédérale in Lausanne, the Department of Oral History at the University of Lausanne and the other schools of the HES-SO network.


Modules


Guests 2023-24

Saâdane Afif, Stéphanie-Aloysia Moretti, Gérard Assayag, Alexandra Bellon, Lorenzo Benedetti, Steve Beresford, Frédéric Bevilacqua, Francesca Ceccherini, Anne-Laure Chamboissier, Marcelline Dellbeq, Orane Dourde, Max Eastley, Claude-Alexandre Fournier, Didier Grandjean, Bill Holden, Camille Llobet, Augustin Maurs, Gilbert Nouno, François Quintin, Elisa Rusca, David Toop, Nelly Valsangiacomo

Admissions

The application procedure can be found on the Bachelor in Fine Arts page.

More information (in French)

Selection of projects

See all projects