Biography
Johannes Girardoni is an Austrian-American multi-media and installation artist. Over the past two decades, Girardoni’s work has been driven by exploring the relationship between matter and light, how that dynamic affects perception, and why combinations of natural and artificial phenomena, including algorithms, can fundamentally shift our experience and understanding of site and space. Girardoni’s diverse works range from purely non-technological – using only base materials such as found wood and wax – to hyper-immersive installations in light and sound that blend artificial and human perception. A primary example of this is Girardoni’s use of sensors and algorithms that allow viewers to hear the sound of light. Girardoni often blurs traditional subject-object relationships by generating reciprocity between viewer and work. Meshing material and virtual content, these orchestrations of light, matter, and data are proposed as occasions to disengage from communication. A central tenet of Girardoni is that the supra-sensory conditions created through his works can act as counterpoints to – and inform a critical discourse about – the influx of mediated realities in modern culture.
Girardoni’s art has been shown in galleries and museums worldwide, including at the 54th Venice Biennale, Italy, the Ludwig Museum, Germany, The Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, The Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, as well as at TED2014 in Vancouver, British Columbia. More recently, Girardoni presented a survey exhibition titled Sensing Singularity at Lévy Gorvy, London. Girardoni has been the subject of features and reviews nationally and internationally, including in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The L.A. Times, ArtNews, Art in America, and Sculpture, among others. Girardoni is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2019 Francis J. Greenburger Award for exceptional merit and contribution to the world of art.
Girardoni (born in 1967, Austria) emigrated to Southern California in the early 1980s. The artist studied at Bowdoin College and the M.I.T. Media Lab. Girardoni currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
In-situ Art + Architecture
The studio’s work in the built environment explores a hybridization of art and architecture to amplify the experience of self and site. In collaborations with architects, Girardoni’s method advocates for site-specific art to underpin the architectural design process. His approach leans on the idea of “art before architecture.” Girardoni focuses on formulating a conceptual art program in which the art magnifies the sensory activation of the site and the architecture. Compressing art and the built environment creates opportunities to blend the physical and the ephemeral, which amplifies visitors’, residents’, and participants’ experience of place.
Girardoni’s art in architecture collaborations have ranged from master planning site-specific art programs in large projects to in-situ installations in residential work. He has worked with world-renowned architects, including Tom Kundig, EYRC, Rick Joy, and Kulapat Yantrasast/WHY.
Chromasonic
In 2018, Johannes Girardoni formed the collaborative studio and research lab Chromasonic with sound artists and musicians Orpheo McCord and Joel Shearer to explore non-ordinary states of consciousness through developing organic technologies that harmonize light and sound frequencies in immersive communal environments within large-scale, poly-sensory installations. Chromasonic is developing three site platforms: Chromasones, Satellites, and Sensory Field.
The studio proposes its work as a cultural impact enterprise to disrupt the attention-monopolizing effects of mainstream technologies that have permeated our culture. Fusing science with art in light and sound, the studio embraces an ethical use of technology to integrate natural and artificial cognition. Chromasonic explores the potential of art as a catalyst to harmonize cognitive and somatic states.
Chromasonic installations are synesthetic experiences where participants see sound and hear light. The melding of sensory modalities blurs boundaries between physical and perceived realities, suspending participants in time and space, in situ, to inspire a radical state of presence. Grounded in eliciting an awareness of your perception – an awareness of awareness – the work can create a foundation for new connections to self and others. Chromasonic installations and the networked platforms the studio is working on for the future are intended to benefit the public.