Events

BEK Opening Week 2025: BEK Samples with Mona Hedayati

BEK, C. Sundts gate 55 31.01.2025 20.0031.01.2025

Published

Friday, January 31
BEK, C. Sundts gate 55, floor 9
Time: 20:00
Free

Curves & Reverbs is a participatory performance that builds on Mona Hedayatis’ previous performances done with biosensors, taking as its departure point her experience of migration and exile. It is part sonification and part visualization of biosensor data.

Initially, participants try on the wearable and have their neurophysiological data transformed into simple sonic forms in an onboarding phase while they watch their real-time graph visualization of sensor data. Subsequently the participatory segment complexifies the sonification and adds data-responsive footage relevant to my socio-political experience. 

The performance thus weaves together sensory and narrative elements towards collective reflection and embodied engagement, operating at the intersection of art-science-technology, and socio-political critique. By transforming participants’ real-time biosignals without logging them into auditory and visual outputs, the work invites participants to confront their physiological reactions to acoustic and visual outputs, creating a feedback loop that bridges the personal and the political while setting the grounds for empathy afforded by technical mediation.

MONA HEDAYATI

Mona Hedayati is an artist and scholar currently on the brink of defending her dual PhD between Canada and Belgium in interdisciplinary humanities and artistic research. She has an MFA in digital media and a Master of Research in social-political art and design and has been working across computation art and sound design. 

She implements interdisciplinary methods borrowed from interaction design, visual anthropology, and embodied computing to underline the importance of situated dimensions of new technologies and to underline her experience of exiled migration. 

Hedayati has done a number of residencies including BEK in Spring 2024. Her work has been disseminated internationally at venues as diverse as Hessian Center for Artificial Intelligence (Darmstadt), Whitworth Gallery (Manchester), Kunsthal Extra City (Antwerp), Body Electric Retrospective (Toronto), NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, IMPAKT Center for Media Culture (Utrecht), Fylkingen New Music & Intermedia Center (Stockholm), Kasko Center for Art and Performance (Basel), Mesh Festival (Basel), and Ars Electronica Festival (Linz), among many others. 

Accessibility

BEK’s space unfortunately is not wheelchair accessible. Please send us an email at bek@bek.no if you’re using a wheelchair, and we’ll do our best to facilitate your needs. Our space has all gender toilet facilities. Service dogs are welcome. We also provide the option of a quiet room.

Images: 1) Design by Blank Blank Studios. 2) Mona Hedayati, photo: Samuel Bramley for Snippet. 3-4) During BEK Opening Week 2025, photo: BEK

Back to the full programme of BEK Opening Week 2025