Marcel Zaes Sagesser | Creative Media + Sound + Technology

Art + Research

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Bio


Marcel Zaes (or Marcel Zaes Sagesser) is an artist and researcher investigating how humans are increasingly intertwined with their technologies. By putting a strong emphasis on sound and its underlying media and materiality, Marcel creates opportunities for listening to constructed or found environments through technology, so as to understand how sound, once technologized, shapes our human experience as much as it renders social, cultural, and political phenomena audible. Examples include drum machine use in popular music, participatory rhythm collections in browser-based interfaces, or interactive musical scores for electronic music performances. This work leads to a rich hybrid practice in academic scholarship and creative work, including interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches as well as technological development. After a PhD in Music + Multimedia Composition (Brown University ’21), Marcel relocated to Shenzhen and since then investigates, with his interdisciplinary focus, the sonic materiality of the Greater Bay Area, reflecting on how “high tech” and “low tech” aspects of one of the largest areas of human settlement play out in sound and sonic media – and again, how these sonic materialities render the humans’ relationship to local technologies audible and visible.
Marcel’s work has appeared internationally in academic venues such as Computer Science (DIS, TEI, HCII, VINCI, CHCHI), media studies (SCMS), computer music (NIME, ICMC, ISMIR, SEAMUS), popular music studies (IASPM), at spatial audio, musicology, artistic research, and cultural studies conferences (CSA), and in journals such as the Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, or Norient Sampling Politics. His creative work has been exhibited or performed at venues such as the Center for New Music San Francisco, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design, The Stone at The New School New York, the Biennial of Contemporary Arts Lisbon, at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, at Shanghai Cadillac Concert Hall, Montreux Jazz Festival China, Hong Kong Center for the Arts, or Wuhan Biennale. As an acknowledgment of his work, Marcel received a number of international grants, prizes and fellowships, among others the Fulbright Fellowship by the United States of America. 

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    Writing
    The Grain No. 12/11 W4 102 1 From the City: Integrating a 3D Model with Audio Data as an Experimental Creative Method
    Enza Migliore, Marcel Zaes Sagesser, Yujing Ma
    In International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI), Taiwan
    Conference publication, 2024 (forthcoming)

    Metric Displacement: The Sound of Network Friction
    Brian House, Annie Aries, Marcel Zaes Sagesser
    The Journal of Media Art Study and Theory
    Journal article, 2023
    link

    Mediating Place as Staging Time in “Setting”: Sonic Interactive Mobile Technology as an Art Performance
    Marcel Zaes Sagesser
    In DIS Companion ’23: ACM Designing Interactive Systems, Pittsburgh PA
    Conference publication, 2023
    doi

    Listening Through Technology: an Interactive Sound Walk for a Suburb in Shenzhen
    Marcel Zaes Sagesser and Binghuang Xu
    In 12th International Conference on Design, User Experience and Usability, HCI International (HCII)
    Conference publication, 2023
    doi

    A Grain of: A Multimodal Representation of the City’s Ecology Through Material and Sound
    Enza Migliore, Marcel Zaes Sagesser, Hanyu Qu
    In Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI) 
    Conference publication, 2023
    doi

    A Digital Archive of Participatory Location Rhythm Performances: Listening as a Way of Attending to the Pandemic
    Marcel Zaes Sagesser
    In Sounds of the Pandemic: Accounts, Experiences, Perspectives in Times of Covid-19
    Focal Press, Waltham MA
    Chapter, 2022

    Rhythms, Textures, Identities: Folding as a Technique in Kyoka’s Signature Sound
    Marcel Zaes Sagesser
    In IIPC International Insitute for Popular Culture, IASPM South Korea
    Conference publication, 2022
    link

    #otherbeats: A Hypermediated Playback System in Web Audio
    In ICMC International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Santiago, Chile
    Conference publication, 2021
    link

    #otherbeats: Performing a Participatory Archive of Social Rhythm
    Marcel Zaes
    In New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Shanghai, China
    Conference publication, 2021

    The Material Politics of Techno Punk
    Marcel Zaes
    In Sampling Politics Today, Norient Sound Series 1
    Norient, Switzerland
    Essay, 2020
    link
    doi

    Schnittmuster in der Populären Musik (in German)
    Brockhaus, Immanuel, Michael Harenberg, and Marcel Sagesser.
    In Inside The Cut. Digitale Schnitttechniken und Populäre Musik. Entwicklung – Wahrnehmung – Ästhetik
    Transcript, Berlin
    Chapter, 2010

    CV

    (under maintenance)

    Academic Appointments

      
    since 2022  Assistant Professor, School of Design, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

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