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Performance at Shubbak Festival 2021
Sonic Jeel is a collaborative initiative made up of artists investigating sound design and audiovisual media within the context of Qatar and Gulf region.
The group is made up of VCUarts Qatar faculty members – associate professor Michael Hersrud and Simone Muscolino, director of Art Foundation – with other VCUarts Qatar faculty, students, and alumni.
They describe their ambition as building a platform for “exploratory research production and distribution of experimental sonic work in support of the growing creative local industry”.
Their energetic sound is heavily influenced by the unique experience they are living in Doha.
“Our work is deeply influenced by the place in which we reside, the sounds we hear around us, and the people we meet,” said Muscolino. “It's kind of embedded in the creative process.”
“It’s a special experience,” said Hersrud. “We are fortunate to collaborate with an international pool of students and faculty at VCUarts Qatar, and I'm happy that this mix of culture can be heard in the unique sounds that Sonic Jeel has produced.”
Over the past year, Sonic Jeel has worked closely with VCUarts Qatar assistant professor Hadeer Omar, who is also an independently practicing new media artist.
Omar, a primary collaborator with Sonic Jeel, has been integral to several recent performances, specifically contributing her expertise of projected video and light to create immersive spaces.
“We are all faculty at VCUarts Qatar and have many overlapping interests, so there is a lot of exchange that happens daily and we contribute to each other's research,” she said.
The artistic collective have participated in multiple local and international art events over the past year.
“Sound is often intangible, so we attempt to connect our sound production to something physical – that could translate to an object, or activating a space for an event, similar to what we did for Printed Matter’s Virtual Art Book Fair in New York.” said Hersrud. “It was a pre-recorded choreographed audiovisual performance involving several students and alumnae.”
“We filmed in three physical locations, but the final work was an online virtual event,” he added.
Another physical event that took place was the activation of the historical site Al Koot Fort near Msheireb Properties and Souq Waqif in March 2021.
The project was part of the Tasweer festival, supported by Qatar Museums and initiated by Omar.
Sonic Jeel worked onsite at the fort with Omar for several months.
“Together we went on adventures of Souq Waqif to capture sounds as source material,” said Hersrud. “From the crackling of food in street vendors, chiming of bells, conversations of people, or the trotting of horses – all these recordings were the starting point to create our compositions.”
Sonic Jeel took to a virtual stage in July 2021 for their first full live performance via the online edition of the London-based Shubbak festival, a live programme of events led by contemporary artists across the Arab world.
In partnership with Getfadaa, an online platform connecting artists and spaces around the world, and Msheireb Downtown Doha’s Al Hosh Gallery, the group represented Doha under the theme *When the World Closed, which also saw ambitious acts from Khartoum, Beirut, Gaza, and Marrakech through different art forms such as dance, visual arts, music, and theatre.
Building upon their former collaboration at the Al Koot Fort, Sonic Jeel worked together with Omar to sample a library of original sounds and imagery to create an immersive cinematic-like experience.
The artists used four brick-made stations of synthesisers and laptops, setting the environment of the space with matrix-feel lights and visuals familiar to culture in Qatar that were brought together by electronic beats mixed with local sounds.
