Longing for Objective Music

Participants include Lillevan (Glacier Music), Cornelius Borck (Brain Music), Veit Erlmann, ethnomusicologist (University of Texas/Austin) Discussion leader: Holger Schulze

The poetic and mathematical-proportion/aesthetic claim of music of spheres, a music of the ether, the wind, the planets, or nerve signals is one of the most popular projections of human cultures onto the inhuman world in religion, art, and science. The contributions and discussions explore wherein the musical or sound-aesthetic quality of the sonic creations of non-human sound producers might consist. To what extent should auditive expressions of the inorganic be understood as an integral part of the musical life and the sound ecology of the human world? How does our view of nature change when we understand natural events as musical events?

In cooperation with: Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik e.V.

Participants:

To the biography of Cornelius Borck

Ralf Hoyer completed his training as a sound engineer at Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik Hans Eisler and studied composition at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste. He composed for chamber ensembles, opera, and orchestra, developed experimental sound installations, and multi-media projects, co-founded Ensemble pianoplus for chamber music and live electronics, and was curator and artistic director of the interdisciplinary Berlin art festival Pyramide. Hoyer was the founding chairman of Initiative Neue Musik Berlin and was chairman of the Komponistenverband Berlin, and since 2010 has served as chairman of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Neue Musik.

Berlin-based music journalist Björn Gottstein focuses on the music of modernism, the avant-garde, and electronic music. He regularly moderates new music radio programs for WDR and music features for BR, SWR, HR, and Deutschlandradio Kultur. He is a music critic for Die Tageszeitung and publishes regularly in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, MusikTexten, and Dissonanz/Dissonance, Parergon, and Nutida Musik. He has been a member of the editorial committe for the journal Positionen since 2005. In 2006, his book Musik als Ars Scientia was published by Pfau-Verlag.

The animation, video, and media artist Lillevan was a co-founder of Rechenzentrum (1997–2008). Parallel to working with the audiovisual group, he collaborated with artists from around the world in several disciplines—opera and installation, minimalist electronic experimentalism, dance and classical music. Lillevan understands his work as a multilayered process whose central principle is improvisation. He studied politics, film, and film theory, and worked as a screenwriter and was generally involved in the film and animation community of the late 1980s and early 1900s. After running several Berlin clubs, he returned to film in the mid-1990s.

Holger Schulze, the founder and head of the Sound Studies Lab and a founding member of the European Sound Studies Association, is the editor of the book series Sound Studies, the co-editor of the international journal for historical anthropology Paragrana, and writes for various journals and radio stations.Currently a guest professor at Institut für Kulturwissenschaft at the Berlin’s Humboldt Universität, Schulze has done research as part of the Nordic Research Network for Sound Studies and the program Bild Wissen Gestaltung, and co-founded the master’s degree program in sound studies at Universität der Künste Berlin.His publications include: Sound Studies (2008), Intimität und Medialität: Tektonik der Medien (2012), and Gespür, Empfindung, Kleine Wahrnehmungen: Klanganthropologische Studien (2012).

In the framework of