Sonic Experiments 2023

Norwegian Tine Surel Lange presents a multichannel electroacoustic ambient composition based on field recordings from and around the Andenes Lighthouse on Andøya in the Vesterålen archipelago on the Arctic Ocean in northern Norway. She enriches these soundscapes with sound sources that are important to her and which are related to the area. In doing so, she explores the question of what stories this lighthouse might tell. 

The work of the Italian Simone Borghi (aka Morning Seance) aims to transcend the boundaries of the ambient genre. Instead of relying on endless repetitions or simple minimalism, he explores the boundaries between calm and tension, creating a surprising, captivatingly hypnotic sonic journey.

In contrast, Turkish noise artist Tuce Alba invites us on a transformative journey with an audiovisual stage performance in which seeing, hearing and feeling come together for the benefit of a profound emotional experience. Using a Moog synthesizer, she intuitively sets melodic, harmonic and rhythmic progressions, relying solely on her sense of touch and hearing - always aiming to capture the tension between the unknown and the willingness to embrace it. 

Frenchman Axel Chemla takes a completely different path with his noise performance, which is also audiovisual, and relies on an explorative and radical approach based on neural audio synthesis. He does not rely on usual models trained with already existing data, but on sound synthesis by means of a spatial swarm of listening/generating agents. These are modeled in real time, with their internal structure modified to create a chaotic sound cloud that evolves over time through emergence and interaction.

With Nicolás Kretz, there is also a Karlsruhe-based artist included in the program. He plays a drone composition for guitar and modular synthesizer. With the guitar, he creates a feedback system whose sound structure, rich in overtones, constantly surrounds the audience. Through the combination of oscillating guitar, self-resonant filters and spatialization through the Sound Dome of ZKM, he forms a wholly engaging work. 

Grounded on field recordings of spaces at the ZKM and other spaces in Karlsruhe, Berlin-based Katharina Schmidt rounds out this extraordinary concert evening with a slowly evolving acousmatic, site-specific drone composition. The artist invites the audience to explore a dynamic web of harmonies and co-create the piece with their own experiences. By placing this interaction at the center, she also questions spatial-musical performance practices. Harmonic, social, physical and architectural spaces overlap and turn the concert hall into a network of social practices, conventions and resulting power relations.