*1956, musician, composer and soundscape artist, composes experimental, electro acoustic music. He specialises in creating bio-acoustic music based on the sounds of animals, especially insects and spiders. He performs solo and with various groups, including Jata C and SAETA, the first Slovene band engaged in experimental music. He is also active in international Free Forms of Arts movement where artists of different artistic genres (musicians, dancers, poets, writers, philosophers,…) actively meet; ([https://www.freeformsof.art](https://www.freeformsof.art/)). He is also actively involved in sound ecology by organising sound safaris. He has released several CDs and a vinyl LP Bio, Industrial Acoustica (green,) with compositions from his bioacoustic and urban noise opus. He also creates music for film, theatre, performances and multimedia installations, as well as soundscapes for museums and galleries. In 2023, he took part, among other things, in the Free Forms of Art meetings, Chilli Jazz Congress and solo projects such as the To)pot 2023 festival with his work The Eye that Hears the Past ([https://www.steklenik.si/en/bostjan-perovsek-the-eye-that-hears-the-past/](https://www.steklenik.si/en/bostjan-perovsek-the-eye-that-hears-the-past/)). He is also preparing a project for the European Capital of Culture GO! 2025, Nova Gorica / Gorizia **see also here.
One of the most important parts of his work is how to connect art and science. One of the result of such work was his composition “Stenice, mrož in vrata plešejo kolo / Bugs, a Walrus and the Door are Dancing in a Circle”put in the selection of the 10 compositions from Europe and United States, proposed by the Association of the European Radio Stations (EBU) for the period 1995-96, and performed within the programme “Radio Ars Acustica”.
Hidden Soundscapes and the interweaving of creative worlds
Recently, I have been working in two main areas; one, active for a long time, is the discovery of the sound world, which is mostly hidden to human ears, and the other, where the reflection on musical and sonic action manifests itself also by taking into account the phenomena of synaesthesia and dissociation. At first sight, these elements may seem not to belong together, but a better insight into the matter of study and manifestation through music and sound art shows that they are all interconnected.
The sonic hidden world is present in my works mainly in the field of bioacoustics with sounds of insects, spiders and more recently bats. I incorporate them into complete bioacoustic compositions or use them as individual sounds or small composed sound modules in the process of live musical improvisation.
And where does all this come together with synaesthesia and dissociation?
Whereas synaesthesia is about the connection between two or more senses that do not normally work together, which may allow us to hear sound when looking at colours or to taste taste the texture of food when listening to music, dissociation is about the ability of consciousness to (temporarily) recede from reality by establishing a distance from direct physical or emotional experience. In the case where the eyes see something that does not match the sound that the ears hear, we are talking about multisensory dissociation between vision and hearing.
If we combine the latter two definitions with the notion of an inaudible world to the ear, we get an experience similar to the one described by the two definitions, in that our consciousness tries to convince us that we are hearing something we already know, or it tries to convince us that there might be something wrong with our experience of sound. Unpacking this inaudible in compositions and musical improvisation is actually an exercise in listening to the silent, the inaudible, which strengthens our capacity to embrace the strange and the new. Mindfulness becomes important.
Free Forms allows the sensory stimuli of different artistic practices to be brought together in a way that follows unwritten rules and principles. Receiving and experiencing what is heard and seen through music, dance, painting, spoken word, etc. creates new experiential, emotional and intellectual worlds.