How does a pulsar sound? What noises are made at night by a dreaming human brain? What might we hear when New York guitarist Hans Tammen sonifies his own DNA data live on stage with his “Endangered Guitar”? How does a Swiss Alpine panorama transform into a concert soundscape? Technically speaking, sonification refers to the process of making data audible. Its historical roots date back to the time of Pythagoras, who used acoustic experiments on a monochord to demonstrate mathematical relations. With the advent of digital interfaces and coding, sonification developed rapidly in music as an acoustic counterpart to visualization in the arts. Since the mid-1980s, new trends emerged bringing forth a broad spectrum of artistic production, often in collaboration with scientific practice and theory.
At this point, it is no longer a technical problem to sonify non-musical processes, such as ocean currents, or share prices, as a form of artistically representing scientific data. Instead, the more critical question has shifted to, at what point does an object of artistic-scientific research become an artefact? How can the arts complete the logical next step of using the physical experience of data to establish a new relationship to reality for listeners? What criteria determine aesthetic content and make a work based on sonification its own independent musical work?
The three day festival Sonifications – Audible Data Streams of the Berlin Society of New Music, explores these questions in the Villa Elisabeth, Berlin, presenting a selection of current sonification strategies: compositions, sound installations and performances of outstanding artistic merit. Full programme here: www.audible-data-streams.com
Alvin Lucier, Terry Fox, Arnold Dreyblatt, Jutta Ravenna, Eliza Goldox, Jasmine Guffond, Hans Tammen, Julian Klein, YoHa, Åsa Stjerna, Kairos Quartet, Roland Dahinden, Hildegard Kleeb, Alexandre Babel, Andrea Polli, Johannes Kreidler, Martin Hachmann, Lula Romero, Werner Cee, Sukandar Kartadinata, Mio Chareteau, Tomoko Mio LIVE, ZKM-Selection: Ludger Brümmer, Falk Morawitz, Ricardo Climent LIVE
Friday, 27th October – Sunday, 29th October 2017
Villa Elisabeth | Invalidenstr. 3 | 10115 Berlin/Mitte
Ticket Reservations: T. 030/ 53 67 59 71 and at the box office
