short vita

Program Coordinator  | Sound Studies and Sonic Arts (M.A.) 
Lecturer | Sound Studies and Sonic Arts (M.A.)

Jan Thoben is a Berlin-based musicologist, art historian and musician. He has been teaching at universities and art universities in Germany and the UK since 2013. He worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig from 2015-2017 and at the Mainz Academy of Arts from 2017-2019. Since 2017, he has been the program coordinator for the master's program Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he took over as interim program director in 2021.

Jan Thoben has published on experimental music as well as on sound art and media art practices of the early 20th century (https://udk-berlin.academia.edu/JanThoben).

Together with Bernhard Rietbrock and Trevor Saint, he is artistic director of the Ever Present Orchestra (http://everpresentorchestra.net) and has worked on audiovisual transformation in the context of various sound art projects.

Links

Sound Studies and Sonic Arts (M.A.)

www.see-this-sound.at

www.sonictheory.com

Publications (en)

2021. Dieter Daniels and Jan Thoben (Eds.), Video Theories: A Transdisciplinary Reader. New York: Bloomsbury (forthcoming)

2021. Jan Thoben and Bernhard Rietbrock (Eds.), Alvin Lucier. I am sitting in a room. Archival Recordings 1969-2019, Berlin: Sound on Paper Editions.

2020. “Media Parasites, Specificity and the Unheard.” - Kunsttexte.de, Auditory Perspectives, no. 1. edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/21841/5-JThoben_kunsttexte2020AP.pdf

2020. “For the Record. Thoughts on Medium Specificity in the Sonic Arts.” EContact! Medium-Specific Practices in Sound 20 (3). econtact.ca/20_3/thoben_specificity.html

2017. “Vibratory Alchemy: Science and the Senses in the Work of Alvin Lucier.” In Alvin Lucier. Illuminated by The Moon, edited by Bernhard Rietbrock, 40–44. Zurich: Zurich University of the Arts.

2012. “John Cage’s Silent Scores.” In Sounds Like Silence: Silence Today, edited by Dieter Daniels and Inke Arns. Leipzig: Spector Books.

2010. “Technical Sound-Image-Transformations.” In See This Sound. Audiovisuology. Compendium and Essays: A Reader, edited by Dieter Daniels and Sandra Naumann, 425–37. Köln: Walther König.

Publications (de)

2018. “Look at the Natural World. Klang und Licht bei Alvin Lucier.” In Alvin Lucier, edited by Ulrich Tadday, 110–29. Musik-Konzepte. München: edition text + kritik.

2017. “Musik aus Licht. Raoul Hausmanns Optophonie und die Sonifikationspraktiken der Berliner Avantgarde: 1922 Bis 1933.” In Sonifikation: Transfer Ins Musikalische, edited by Julia H. Schröder, 95–101. Hofheim: Wolke.

2012. “Phonographische Ereignisse. Zum Aufführungscharakter Des Abspielens von Schallplatten.” MAP – Media | Archive | Performance # 3. www.perfomap.de/map3/kapitel4/phonographische-ereignisse

2012. “Die Stille der Bilder und die Macht der Töne. Spuren einer Medienästhetik der Sonifikation in Rilkes Ur-Geräusch.” In Das Geschulte Ohr. Eine Kulturgeschichte Der Sonifikation, edited by Axel Volmar and Andi Schoon, 171–89. Bielefeld: Transcript.

2008. “Audiovisuelle Transformationen ~ Zur Intermedialität Der Schwingung.” In Tanzende Bilder. Interaktionen von Musik Und Film, edited by Klaus Krüger and Matthias Weiß, 77–79. München: Fink.