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Staff Profile

Dr Jorge Boehringer

Background

Jorge Boehringer is an experimental artist, composer, researcher, and teacher.  He presents circumstances in sound, visual media, objects, and text as sites for material investigation of research questions.  Boehringer's research concerns how structure, form, and pattern are apprehended in temporal and embodied environmental experiences.  Working between process and perception, he frames his research empirically in the form of mobile and installed works of spatialized sound, along with compositions of density and texture for ensembles of all sizes.

At Newcastle University, Boehringer is Research Associate for Sonification Design and Aesthetics in Project RADICAL, an interdisciplinary investigation of sonification listening and design.  

Boehringer studied composition with Pauline Oliveros, Bryn Harrison, Peter Ablinger, Alvin Curran, Fred Frith, and Gerald Gable.  He attended composition workshops with Maryanne Amacher, Allan Kaprow, Paul DeMarinis, and Gordon Mumma.  He holds a PhD from the Centre for Research in New Music (CeReNem) at the University of Huddersfield, UK, and a Master's Degree in Music Composition and Theory from Mills College in Oakland, California, USA.

Boehringer is a curator and community organiser, and recently served as a board member at Fuse Gallery in Bradford, while also working as a curator for art exhibitions and performance events at Unna Way and Dai Hall in Huddersfield.  Boehringer is committed to encouraging inclusiveness, diversity and experimentalism in DIY artistic and community spaces, and views this work as a strong source for innovative practice within the arts as well as a site at which grassroots social development can be enacted.

Research

Jorge Boehringer is Research Associate for Sonification Design and Aesthetics for Project RADICAL, a Leverhulme-funded interdisciplinary investigation of sonification listening and design that is split between Northumbria and Newcastle Universities.

Boehringer's research is manifested in his artistic practice, which has an international presence.  He has recently presented work at the Exploratorium Museum in San Francisco, California, and at Stanford University, as well as throughout the UK, Ireland, and France.

Boehringer has written and lectured on the intersection of artistic practice and everyday life, as experienced through the work of experimental artists and composers.  He is a keen student of philosophy and particularly of phenomenology, and has applied unique interpretations and insights from this field, and particularly from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, to the creation of new artworks.  He also wrote a series of articles for a Czech music journal examining foundational Sound Arts practices from a hybrid phenomenological perspective.

A keen student of prehistory, Boehringer has presented Applied Archeological work within the field of Archeo-acoustics. This work involved sculptural re-creation of iconic examples of rock art in what is now West Yorkshire, and a practical analysis of the process involved and results obtained in light of contemporary artistic practices, and cultural phenomena such as autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR).

Boehringer has also written critical papers around the nature and economics of artistic practice.

Teaching

While his work at the Newcastle University presently consists of research, Boehringer is keen to work with students again soon.  He views his work as an educator as fundamental to his own curiosity-driven artistic practice and considers the development and delivery of learning to play a grounding role within his research work.

Boehringer has served as a module leader for a Studio Production BA course in Prague, Czech Republic.  He has worked extensively in the liminal zone of interdisciplinary education between contemporary visual arts, musical, and interactive arts practices.  In this capacity he has taught Composition, Live Electronic Music, Sound Spatialization, Audio-Visual Composition, Sound Production, Interaction and Interface Design, Idea Generation, Art History, Experimental and Interactive Media courses, English, and even a class in Adobe Photoshop. 

Recently he taught in both the School of Music, Humanities, and Media as well as that of Computing and Engineering at the University of Huddersfield.  At Huddersfield he taught on Computer Composition, Desktop Music Production, Composition Practice, Recording, and Sound Spatialization modules.  He also served as supervisor for many undergraduate student Final Year Projects.

Boehringer's teaching philosophy concerns the development of inclusive strategies for curiosity-led learning in which learners themselves participate as much as possible in the development of the learning methodologies employed.  Boehringer's favourite teaching environment is one in which students can share in lecture-delivery, and workshops and atelier presentations, as well as public events, can create practical platforms for experimentation with and discussion about techniques and concepts studied.

Publications