Ferne Räume
Robin Minard
Immersive Sound Installation / May 30 – June 16, 2024
Chundua is a mountainous region in the Colombian Sierra Nevada. For the indigenous Arhuaco people, it is the heart of the world, from which all life, wisdom, and laws originate, and which all humans need. At the same time, Chundua requires people who treat nature with care to preserve the earth’s balance. Water is regarded by the Arhuaco as the source of life, and the associated frogs are considered sacred animals. Robin Minard captured the diverse sounds of these frogs in the rainforest.
The installation “Chundua – Frog Dreams” is inspired by the myths of the Arhuaco, especially a story about the inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada: It is said that they lie in hammocks, imagining themselves floating between the real and the spiritual world.
With 85 glowing plexiglass speaker objects, distant spaces are transcended into the ZiMMT hall. Dreamlike acoustic sequences of the Colombian rainforest emerge, gradually shifting between memory and imagination.
The installation was originally realized as part of the ECHOES project — Soundforum Bonn of the Beethoven Foundation Bonn. The ECHOES project connects artistic and scientific research. The work “Chundua” was created in cooperation between the Alexander Koenig Museum Bonn and the Atelopus Foundation, Santa Marta, Colombia.
In a separate listening room, three radio compositions are presented alongside the spatial installation. With the soundscapes he documents on international travels as field recordings, sound artist and composer Robin Minard always preserves site-specific ways of life and tensions.
Robin Minard
Robin Minard was born in 1953 in Montreal. He studied music theory and composition in Canada and Paris. Since the early 1980s, his work has focused on electroacoustic composition and sound installation art. From 1992 to 1996, he was a lecturer in sound installation at the Electronic Studio of the Technical University of Berlin. From 1997 to 2021, he was a professor of electroacoustic composition and sound art at the FRANZ LISZT University of Music and the Bauhaus University Weimar, where he also founded and led the Studio for Electroacoustic Music (SeaM Weimar) and served as head of the Institute for New Music and Jazz from 2008 to 2012 and 2015 to 2019. His work, which includes electroacoustic compositions, sound installations, sound sculptures, and radio art productions, has been presented worldwide. Among many other awards, he received the Prix Giuseppe Englert (Paris) in 2022, which honors projects that raise awareness and improve the quality of our acoustic environment.
swim 2024
With the series swim (spatial works and immersive music), ZiMMT invites you in 2024 to throw musical habits overboard. Nine concerts and three sound installations, bridging multiple genres, pose new questions. A broad spectrum of musical expressions from various genres is integrated into immersive, spatial experiences.
Fifteen very different local and international artists are part of swim. Their works range from intricately composed electroacoustic pieces to experimental approaches rooted in the aesthetics of club music. swim merges diverse sound worlds and lets radical approaches to music production and performance challenge conventional ideas. What is a live performance? Which technical means are used, and how do they expand musical expression? What happens to the role of the audience when it immerses itself in virtual sound worlds during an immersive performance?
Even ideas of what an instrument is are deconstructed, and familiar instruments are used in unusual ways.
During three-day microresidencies, musicians can develop their works on site using 3D audio technology and try out new approaches. All concerts will be live-streamed in high-quality binaural audio — for a spatial experience both on site and everywhere else.
