exploratorium berlin

Due to the current Corona regulations, no face-to-face events are possible at the exploratorium until 9 May 2021 or longer.

To alleviate cultural deficiencies, our exploratorium medicine cabinet offers instead:

• Lockmusic – the style of our time. We’ll show you how it’s done and remind you of the tips from our explo facilitators: https://exploratorium-berlin.de/veranstaltung/improvisieren-in-zeiten-von-corona/
        
• Digital events:
     – Improvisation reading circle on 20.4.
     – key-concepts #5 with Adam Pultz Melbye on 22.4.
     – Word in Transformation – Poetry Workshop with Johann Reißer on 23.–25.4.
     
• Magic moments: videos of numerous past concerts and discussion evenings, either on our YouTube site or on the video site of our homepage.
        
• Revel in memories: our concert gallery with selected photos since the explo opening in 2004
        
• Looking ahead: our new programme from February 2021, either as an overview as a pdf download or in detail on our website www.exploratorium-berlin.de.
        

We wish you all the best and look forward to better times!

In German language. For details see German version.

Due to the current corona situation, the reading circle on April 20 will take place as a video conference. Participation is only possible with pre-registration using the registration form below or by e-mail to Mathias Maschat. Registration must be made by the evening before, Monday, April 19.

Dates until June 2021:
Tuesday 20.04. | 11.05. | 08.06.
18.00–19.30

Facilitator: Mathias Maschat
E-mail to Mathias Maschat

Admission free, registration required

Talk in English

Guest: Adam Pultz Melbye
Moderation: Mathias Maschat

Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/exploratoriumberlin

In the fifth edition of the Denkraum series key_concepts, Mathias Maschat talks to Adam Pultz Melbye, who is a Berlin-based improvisor, double bass player, programmer, instrument designer and PhD-researcher at Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Also, Adam Pultz Melbye presents his newly developed instrument (together with instrument builder Halldór Úlfarsson), the FAAB (Feedback-Actuated Augmented Bass).

Since 2007, Adam Pultz Melbye has recorded and toured extensively, as a soloist, as well as with musicians/groups such as Julia Reidy, Evan Parker, Lotte Anker, Pat Thomas, Flamingo and Ingrid Schmoliner. Driven by a fundamental fascination with double bass resonance, for the past two years, he has focused his work on the FAAB (Feedback-Actuated Augmented Bass) – a hybrid feedback double bass equipped with pickups, a built-in speaker cone and signal processing algorithms. The FAAB is a highly resonant, sonically ambiguous and sometimes volatile instrument and while enabling sounds and playing practices impossible on the acoustic double bass, the instrument also resists traditional notions of mastery and control. As such, improvisation is a central feature of the development of a language and performance practice with the instrument and has led Adam Pultz Melbye to speculate that resistance and precariousness are in fact fundamental requirements for the enactment of improvisation.

The conversation focuses on solo improvisation and how it plays out with an instrument, the materiality of which intersects, and is constituted by, both virtual and physical domains. Here, resonance may mean both the acoustic phenomenon of physical bodies vibrating sympathetically with themselves as well and each other, but also points towards multiple feedback loops of information that travel across wood, strings, silicon, computer code and human perception and cognition.

How do I sound?
When do I sound how?
And why should I even?
Do I want to sound or is hush and silence also part of my expression?
What does “authentic” mean?
How do I connect with / to myself?

We will sound / sing / babble / talk in the room … everything that one’s own voice likes and can give. And for your “like to give” and “can give” I have one or the other good tip.

• Discovering your own sonic possibilities by conveying vocal technical knowledge
• Joint body, breathing, and voice exercises
• Creative handling of improvisation instructions
• Experiencing a direct connection between “mood” and “voice”, influencing both through exercises / playful-creative experiments / music pieces and / or performances (duos, trios, quartets, solos, …)

Welcome are all who already work with their voice and feel addressed by this announcement!

Bring along: your own voice, possibly also your own poems / lyrics to spontaneously set to music.

The workshop will be given in German, English summaries can be provided if necessary.

The workshop has to be cancelled due to Corona

Workshop in German language. For details see German version.

Due to Corona the workshop will take place digitally and be postponed by week.

Workshop & discussion with Susanne Brian (Authentic movement) and Rainer Stolz

Event in German language. For more information see German version.

All we need to improvise is already present within us!

That is why this workshop is not about learning things anew, but about setting free (hidden) existing potentials and sharpening our “antennas”. Exercises and games help to focus our awareness: on intensive listening, on joyful experimentation, on interaction in the group, on sound combinations and the flow of time.

A colourful selection of sound generators is available as instruments, just waiting to be explored and played with. Own instruments can also be used.

The workshop offer is directed at

• Newcomers, even without any previous experience
• advanced improvisors who want to deepen their experience and
• people who are looking for inspiration for their professional work.

Due to Corona lockdown, the workshop has to be postponed to 10–12 September 2021