Christina Kubisch. Waves, Walks and Wilderness

As one of the most important media artists in the world, composer Christina Kubisch presents a cross-section of her work as well as the world premiere of her latest piece at the ZKM. Electrical vibrations transformed into sound can be experienced in exhibitions, concerts and »Electrical Walks« via special headphones.

The artist about her work: On the occasion of the exhibition »Resonances. The Electromagnetic Bodes Project« in 2005, I was able to explore the electromagnetic fields of ZKM | Karlsruhe for the first time. In 2012 and 2013, I made further recordings during the exhibition »Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art«. Special discoveries were the old and new server rooms of the museum, the permanent collection of historical computer games and video art as well as the surroundings of ZKM. As part of the awarding of the Giga-Hertz Main Prize for Electronic Music and Sound Art 2021, I was once again able to collect further material in the hidden technology rooms of the ZKM. 

Around 20 years ago, I already had the idea of turning these electromagnetic discoveries into a composition or an installation. In fact, parts of my electromagnetic field recordings were already incorporated into the work »CLOUD«, which was shown at the ZKM in 2013. The 2023 commission for a fixed media composition for the Klangdom in the ZKM cube came at exactly the right moment. Ultimately, I was not only able to present the documentation of my previous work with the »Electrical Walks« series (there are now 94 walks realized worldwide) and the »Virtual Walks« from Oslo and Tbilisi, where you can actively design a walk yourself between acoustic and magnetic sounds on the computer, but above all work freely with the electromagnetic treasures of ZKM. For me, the resulting three-part composition »Out of Sight« is like a series of three abstract images, with sound surfaces that were intuitively selected and superimposed without any subsequent electronic processing.