Jasna Veličković

Jasna Veličković is a Serbian composer, performer, and artistic researcher based in Amsterdam. Her work investigates how magnetic phenomena can become compositional systems, with a particular focus on magnetism as both sonic material and compositional method. Since 2008, she has developed The Art of Coil, a long-term artistic research project exploring self-built instruments, electromagnetic systems, and process-based approaches to composition and performance. This research led to the invention of the Velicon, a self-built electronic instrument that uses configurable magnets, metal objects, and coils to generate sound. Through this work, she creates dynamic sonic environments in which experimentation, listening, interaction, and transformation become central compositional principles. Her music has been presented internationally at the Holland Festival, ISCM World Music Days, MATA Festival, Archipel, Ring-Ring, Gibanja and Sound (Dis)obedience. Her composition Underneath (2021), for hyper-organ and coils, received the Mokranjac Award for Best Composition in 2022. Alongside her artistic practice, she is a guest teacher in the Composition Department at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. In 2025, she co-founded TEMPERATURA, a concert series dedicated to experimentation and collaboration in contemporary music. 

 

 

The year is 2013. I am in a gallery, preparing for a performance. The ambient noise of the space is louder than my instrument, forcing me to rethink how the work could exist in such an environment. Then, by chance, a magnet slips from my hand and touches a coil. The impact produces a powerful, unexpected sound. That accidental encounter became the starting point for the Velicon, a self-built electronic instrument that uses configurable magnets, metal objects, and coils to generate sound. In this keynote, I trace how that moment transformed my understanding of composition and how magnetic phenomena evolved from a source of sound into a compositional model. Through self-built instruments, magnetic systems, and the Velicon, I explore composition as a field of reciprocal influence, where sound, bodies, materials, and listening continuously shape one another. What kinds of voices emerge when objects begin to sing? How is agency shared between performers, objects, and sound? How can electronic waste become a treasure hunt for sound? What hidden sonic worlds lie within the architecture of an instrument? In dialogue with the SMC26 theme INTERPLAY, I invite the audience to rethink musical creativity as something that emerges not from isolated control, but from the dynamic relationships between people, objects, magnetic forces, and listening.