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October 18, 2023

SINGING SOIL is an immersive audiovisual installation that embarks on a sound expedition, delving into the captivating underground world and amplifying it to human scale and perception. The installation invites the audience to take a walk inside the enigmatic sound realm of soil life to explore a new perspective on the relationship between humans and nature.

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October 13, 2023

One of our co-founders, Felipe will be in Belgium on Oct 27 for kikk festival. At this event, Felipe will discuss our projects and why we do what we do. As we like to say, the why and the how are always essential for us when embarking on a new project. When we take on decisions, we need to resonate with the idea of a project. We need to find out what we are doing this project for.

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August 10, 2023

The gloomy Berlin weather of the last few days was perfect for doing bits and bobs, cabling and testing! Pascal is making the first experiments for a new, outdoor installation coming soon!

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July 31, 2023

5th birthday to one of our favourite projects, MEANDERING RIVER. Time flies! It has been exhibited over 25 times across the world. It was also our first piece dealing with AI generated music, its crazy to see how much the field progressed in those 5 years...

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July 19, 2023

We created SENSESCAPES in collaboration with SCHNELLEBUNTEBILDER and intolight at the Grassimuseum for Applied Arts in Leipzig. As part of the permanent exhibition “From Art Nouveau to the Present Day” museum visitors have the chance to learn about different design epochs. What do you think, which very influential design epoch is this one?

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July 12, 2023

We are really happy to announce that we are presenting a multi-channel sound installation at Schemerlicht Festival. The installation is bringing the hidden world of soil to our level, as magnifing glass to life under our feet, and our role as humans to conserve it!

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Photo by Müller Mulinarius

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June 20, 2023

Last chance to see EVENT HORIZON, at least for a while! The wonderful Himmel unter Berlin is coming to an end tomorrow, we wish you a great last stroll in the dark tunnels!

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DEAR PARTNERS, COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS

DEAR PARTNERS, COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS

We are back with our usual biannual news, but sssssh! This time we are also sharing some secrets we haven't told anybody yet about current and upcoming projects!
Sound Installation
Marionette

What happens to an open society that cannot agree on a common reality?

Earlier this year our installation together with "Künstler ohne Nahmen" became the centrepiece of the Marionette exhibition at POPKUDAMM BERLIN about the bizarre world of deep fakes. The piece played with perception and viewer expectation, to bring attention to deep fakes and how sensitively we have to deal with media in the future.

Standing under the tents, visitors heard a soundscape of rain and thunderstorms intertwined with a piano piece derived from the pealing of bells, creating a nostalgic sentiment about camping and stormy summer nights. Yet by reaching the end of the installation, lighting, rumbling and the forest of tents gained another meaning: The gruesome reality of war. The light and sound choreography followed the rhythm of the first missile attacks on Ukraine in February 2022.

Exhibition
KHROMA NEW MEDIA CENTER

Two of our sound scultpures became part of the opening exhibition of the Khroma Berlin New Media Center.

Khroma Berlin is a New Media art center, spanning over 1200 square meters presenting light and sound installations, code-driven, kinetic and interactive art. We are very proud to announce that two of our sound sculptures are part of their first exhibition. Fireflies makes the emergent behaviour of the synchronous fireflies audible, while Touch-me-not, a kinetic installation reflects on the very nature of the relationship between art peace and visitor.

AI generated Image
Sound Scenography
Mine Stories

Investigating into the sound of the past, to transform an old story into a tangible experience

We are excited to take part in designing a museum experience which tells the story of a mining site through big scale interactive exhibits. It is truly special to be able to plan a whole exhibition with the sound in mind from the very beginning. The eerie beauty of the mine is an incredible sight, but still very much a land of darkness. The underground world of catacombs possesses a haunting soundscape with interesting acoustic properties which gives us plenty of wonderful opportunities to think, and bring the place alive sonically. We can't wait to tell you more as the project progresses!

Sound Design
Foam

Designing the urban space for a liveable city of tomorrow

FOAM Institute further develops design together with our friends at why do birds, to protect urban health through improving the acoustic quality of cities. After creating a uniform sound for Germany's electric buses in public transportation, FOAM is currently working on three further AVAS sounds for different brands. Working with several brands at a time gives a great opportunity to bring the design principle to life, and approach each one of them as a single part of a harmonious sound palette. Similarly to the instruments of an orchestra, even though all brands possess their own unique sound characteristics, when played simultaneously they melt together seamlessly, to create a harmonious backdrop to our daily lives.

Interactive Sound Environment
Sensescapes at Grassi Museum for applied Arts

Translating design epochs into visuals, sound, and movement

Sensescapes is an interactive 360° room installation which we created in collaboration with SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER and Into Light at the Grassimuseum for Applied Arts in Leipzig. As part of the permanent exhibition “From Art Nouveau to the Present Day” museum visitors have the chance to immerse themselves in audiovisual interpretations of the exhibited style epochs (Bauhaus, Art-Deco, Streamline, Optical-Art, Computer-Art and Machine Learning). For each design era we composed and programmed interactive music and sound design. The visitors bring the interpretations to life and modify them through their movements, which allows them to learn playfully about the different design styles.

CREDITS: Media Scenography: SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER, intolight / Sound Scenography: kling klang klong / Creative Consulting: Axel Buether
Interactive Sound Environment
Myriad

Sonifiying the complex system of animal migrations

The multiple award winning project Myriad explores the beauty and challenges of the animals’ global migrations in an ever-changing, globally connected world that is increasingly being influenced by humans.

The piece originally created as a Virtual Reality experience will be soon transformed into an interactive and immersive walk-through installation, to make its debut at the Frankfurter Kunstverein. We are really happy to support the beautiful storytelling of Myriad with an interactive spatial sound composition. The audiences will be able to join different migrating species, travelling along wind and ocean currents, across continents and over soaring mountain ranges as they make their way around the globe, side by side with an ever expanding human population. The intent of Myriad fits perfectly into our practise of sonification, in which we use sound to weave scientific insights into fascinating, emotional stories - in this case, stories of survival and perseverance.

CREDITS: Myriad is produced by Interactive Media Foundation and Filmtank in Co-Creation with Miiqo Studios, Context Films and Artificial Rome
Sound Scenography
Extending Our Tools

Adaptive audio system with one of the most advanced spatial audio mixing tools: L-ISA

In the last few months, we have been working on a big scale sound scenography project that gives us several opportunities to learn and try out new tools and formats. We were invited to use L’Acoustics’ spatial audio system & processor L-ISA throughout the exhibition.L-ISA introduces an object-based spatial mixing workflow for real-time rendered media experiences. This feature enables us to seamlessly integrate our spatial audio know-how into real-time generated visual workflows and let us create interactive and ever-changing sound environments in „3D“. Earlier this year we met their team at their headquarters near Paris and besides training sessions, we shared ideas on how to adapt their technology for our specific use case.

The project also gives us a chance to utilise our custom made, adaptive audio system for the first time in a spatial sound setting. Thanks to this tool the sound experience changes depending on the visitors pace and interests, adapting the whole dramaturgy of the exhibition on the fly. Combined, the two systems can create a vivid, versatile and immersive scenography that isn’t bound by sweet-spots, phantom sources or preconceived visitor behaviours.

Ludovic Specko
Sound Installation
Event Horizon

A journey through the event horizon at Himmel unter Berlin.

Our favourite secret exhibition, Himmel unter Berlin opened again this May at an amazing underground location. We presented a new, 12.2 channel sound and light installation that brings visitors on an emotional journey to the point of no return. Event Horizon is the boundary around a black hole where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light can escape. The installation poses the question, what could we hear when time, information, and matter become disentangled from each other?

The 15 minute piece explores the topic through the human voice - superimposing musical materials that bridge the ancient and the modern, before ultimately becoming a state that melts, entwines and ultimately collapses into fragments of breath and text. We are very grateful for our collaboration with Fohhn, whose system helped us to immerse visitors in the sound, and translate an ungraspable phenomenon into an an emotional experience.

Concert
Listening to Climate Change

300 years of classical music met our compositions based on climate data at the Konzerthaus Berlin in November.

In Listening to Climate Change the professional musicians of the future, the Youth Orchestra Berlin performed a concert to raise awareness for a more ecological tomorrow. The repertoire of the concert included five classical pieces written between 1737 and 2008 with five pieces written and produced by us. Through the mixed concert program a timeline emerged, where our pieces musically represented climate change.We are grateful to Landesmusikrat Berlin for their openness and the opportunity to try out new ideas. For the third piece of the concert  we tried a spatialisation technique for orchestra and audience for the first time, in which we turned the cellphones of the audience into individual speakers.  Based on where they were seated, the audience was assigned one of the 12 individual voices of the composition and became an integral part of the piece. We were very impressed by the potential of the approach not only because it was a fun way to involve the audience but also made use of the whole spatial capacity of the concert hall.

CREDITS: A collaboration between Landesmusikrat Berlin and kling klang klong / Orchestra: Landesjugend Orchester Berlin / Conducter: Lancelot Fuhry / Creative Direction, Concept, Composition, Sound Design, Programming, Mixing: kling klang klong
AI Opera
Chasing Waterfalls

First time in the history of opera, a composition for one singing voice synthesis system.

Chasing Waterfalls premiered this fall at the Semperoper and then had its Asian premiere at Hong Kong New Vision Arts Festival. We co-composed the opera with Angus Lee for 6 human singers and for the first time in the history of the genre, for one singing voice synthesis system.

The opera, developed by phase7's artistic director Sven Sören Beyer, embarks on a music-theatrical investigation on the impact that artificial intelligence has on our human, social and creative existence. Apart from using several neural networks in our compositional process we also created an artificial intelligence pipeline, whose output became a character of the opera on its own account.

With the technical help of T-System MMS the audience was able to hear lines composed by the AI without any human intervention. The 5th scene of Chasing Waterfalls was dedicated entirely to this character, who took the stage and reflected on its own existence. To help the future's AI Operas, our colleagues at T-Systems MMS decided to share their code which we whole heartedly support! Until those future projects roll around, listen to Scene 5 to see what we could do with the technology available today!

CREDITS: chasing waterfalls is a cooperation of @phase7performing.arts with Semperoper Dresden and New Vision Arts Festival, directed by Sven Sören Beyer. Generously supported by the Sächsische Semperoper Stiftung. Composition: Angus Lee, kling klang klong and AI / AI voice creation: kling klang klong with technical support from T-Systems MMS / Libretto: Christiane Neudecker and AI / Visuals: Studio Eigengrau, Frieder Weiss and Ployz /Light design: Henning Schletter /Costume and stage design: Pedro Richter Atelier Berlin
Photo credit: © NFB/SBB/Tommi Aittala
Immersive Audio
Chomsky vs. Chomsky

CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY is an interactive exhibition that explores virtual reality, artificial intelligence and the work of the famous linguist Noam Chomsky.

If we know so little about the human mind, what exactly are we trying to replicate with AI?  CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY is a mixed reality installation that invites visitors to have a thought-provoking encounter with Artificial Intelligence, guided by a virtual host inspired and built on the digital traces of renowned linguist Noam Chomsky. This interactive, multi-user, playful and collaborative experience allows users to examine the promises and pitfalls of AI in a fun and engaging way, while posing the questions of what we’re hoping to achieve, to recreate and at what cost. Since all of these topics are very close to our heart, creating immersive composition and interactive sound design for the piece was a real passion project. The piece debuted this November in Berlin and will soon go on a world tour.

CREDITS: CHOM5KY vs CHOMSKY created by Sandra Rodriguez. A co-production of the National Film Board of Canada and SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER, with support from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. Design code and Scenography: Sebastian Huber, Johannes Lemke, Max Seeger, Johannes Timpernagel, Felix Worseck, Michael Burk / Back-end architect: Sandy Sherman Bishop / AI Lead: Moov AI / AI Data Scientists: Simon Dagenais, Étienne Boisvenue, David Torres / Producer: Uschi Feldges, Carl-Johannes Schulze
Sound Scenography
Luxembourg Pavilion

Live through the Pavilion experience again! Our walkable score played by the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra is available online.  

It was a bit more than a year ago that our Sound Scenography premiered for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Dubai Expo 2020. The scenography of Jangled Nerves celebrated 5 important facets of Luxembourg, which divided the exhibition space into 5 chapters. Our orchestral score created a dramaturgical arch throughout the pavilion while it elevated the exhibition into an emotional journey. Visit our website to listen to the full soundtrack!

Sound Scenography
+Panic Kosmograf

A real-time generated school of fish on an extraordinary display, underpinned by our swarm sonification at the Main Hall of the Humboldt Forum.


Originally created for the Humboldt Labor, SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER developed a custom version of the +Panic swarm-system for the impressive display of the Kosmograf. Just like for its interactive counterpart at the After Nature exhibition, our swarming, real-time composition is accompanying the visuals.

CREDITS: Design and code: SCHNELLE BUNTE BILDER / Archtiecture Kosmograf: Holzer Kobler Architecturen in cooperation with Studio Gourdin / Gourdin & Müller for Berliner Schloss - Humboldt Forum Stiftung / Special Thanks to Team Humboldt Forum: Alan Prohm, Ali Hosseini, Andreas König, Julien Kuhnert

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