About the Work
Johannes and Harriet Girardoni propose that an artwork can be an extension of perception, making way for states of heightened presence and the potential for individual and collective expanded consciousness. The artists are driven by the conviction that art can serve as a powerful agent of change – at levels from the cellular to the societal – addressing the challenges of our hyper-mediated culture by creating intentional perceptual experiences in physical space.
The Studio’s work is anchored in the practice of the Austrian-American installation artist Johannes Girardoni, who has spent three decades investigating how the interaction of matter and light impacts our experience of site, space, and self. By broadening the definition of perception across both biological and technological sensing, and combining a material-based practice with an ethically oriented application of computational systems, Girardoni’s work acts to tune awareness, revealing the plasticity of perceived reality. Since 2012, the American artist Harriet Girardoni has further developed the Studio’s multidisciplinary approach, leveraging her training in clinical psychology and contributing to emerging research in neuroaesthetics.
These investigations into the potential of art to shape cognition, connection, and affective states are advanced by active cross-pollination with scientists, technologists, architects, performing artists, and philosophers. Positioned at the intersection of multiple fields of inquiry, the Studio’s work extends from non-technological sculptures in wood and wax, to suprasensory installations that generate continuous feedback loops between the work and participant. A primary example is the artists’ development of Spectrosonic Refrequencing (SSR), an algorithmic system that extends human perception across sensory domains — allowing viewers to hear the sound of light — while simultaneously sensing its participants as they experience the work in an ongoing perceptual exchange.
This radical reciprocity – which has significant implications for how art is experienced, situated, and sustained over time – opens a condition that Studio Girardoni has termed the “Post-Contemporary”: an artistic paradigm suited to a world where conventional subject-object relationships are being dissolved by our increasing hybridity with technology. At a crucial juncture in civilization, where we are at risk of dissociation from our senses and one another, the Studio’s work is an intervention that affirms embodied human experience and reveals the continuity between art and life.
Biography
The work of Studio Girardoni has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including the 54th Venice Biennale, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, and the Ludwig Museum, as well as at TED2014. Their work is held in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, Museum Voorlinden, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, the Margulies Collection, and the Progressive Art Collection, among others. In 2018, the Studio presented a survey exhibition titled Sensing Singularity at Lévy Gorvy.
Studio Girardoni has been the subject of features and reviews internationally, including in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wallpaper, Cool Hunting, the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, ArchDaily, and ARTnews.
The Studio has collaborated on large-scale permanent works with leading architects such as Tom Kundig, EYRC, and Kulapat Yantrasast/WHY. Awards for these collaborations include the 2019 AIA California Honor Award for Spectral Bridge House and the Architizer A+ Award for Architecture and Art, among others. The Studio is also the recipient of the 2019 Francis J. Greenburger Award for exceptional merit and contribution to the world of art.
In 2020, Studio Girardoni co-founded Chromasonic, an initiative grounded in the Studio’s foundational framework of algorithmically linking light and sound, to explore its relation to health and cognition. This work continues independently within the Studio’s evolving practice, generating new spatial works and extending into broader investigations of perception, neuroaesthetics, and human experience.
Johannes Girardoni, born in Graz, Austria, emigrated to Southern California in the early 1980s. The artist studied at Bowdoin College and the MIT Media Lab. Harriet Girardoni, born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, holds a B.A. in Fine Art and Psychology from Wellesley College and an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Pepperdine University. The artist duo lives and works in Los Angeles.
The Architecture of Perception
Studio Girardoni’s work in the built environment creates a continuum between art and architecture that amplifies the experience of self and site. In collaboration with architects, the artists’ method advocates for the integral role of site-specific art from the earliest phases of the architectural design process. Through the development of immersive sites that heighten the senses and intensify spatial awareness, the Studio foregrounds perception as an active, shaping force.
Art becomes continuous with life, an expansion of receptivity that operates across biological and technological phenomena. As such, the Studio moves towards work that forms a symbiotic whole with its designed environment, whether a private residence or a public space. From intimate installations that anchor small-scale sites, to site-specific art programs that provide an intrinsic logic for complex master plans, the Studio reveals the natural plasticity of perception as we make sense of the spaces we inhabit. Studio Girardoni works to shape and refine this perceptual plasticity, cultivating a profound sense of connection with our environment and one another.