Berlin Modular Music Culture – Aesthetic and Social Potentials

About

Artistic and scientific perspectives on modular synthesizers are combined in this workshop. The focus is not only on the aesthetic potential of using the devices, but also on the social dimensions of Berlin's synthesizer culture and its utopian, dystopian and heterotopian aspects.

Not least because of the extensive network in which hardware and software for music production is developed, tested and distributed, Berlin is a center of electronic music. International companies and small underground businesses, producers of both danceable club music and avant-garde concert music, live performance acts and multimedia projects interact here. Musical possibilities are explored in areas of complex social conflict (e.g. collective subculture vs. profit maximization; short-term market innovation vs. social-ecological sustainability). Here, analog, digital and hybrid synthesizer modules, which can be combined in a variety of ways to create musical systems, play a special role and are the focus of the workshop.

In extensive hands-on sessions with various modular synthesizer systems, individual projects can be developed under the guidance of the lecturers. Small groups can be formed according to musical interests and previous knowledge (beginners to advanced). Special excursions offer insights into the Berlin modular scene.

Course leader

Kim Feser and Jessica Kert

Target group

none (workshop for beginners of electronic music as well as for advanced students)

Fee info