S+T+ARTS ReSilence Residency Artist Tim Otto Roth Exhibition

Theatre of Memory. World premiere of neuro-acoustic sound network by Tim Otto Roth

Exhibition: January 12 – February 3, 2024
Opening: January 11, 6.30 p.m.
Artist talk: January 20, 4 p.m.Artist talk: January 20, 4 p.m.

A unique, and technically innovative sound installation is celebrating its premiere turning the oldest academic building in Berlin into a music theatre: the Theatre of Memory brings a stunning loudspeaker orchestra on stage creating a real time music based on cutting edge neuroscience. This literally mind-blowing work was created as part of ReSilence project.

In the auditorium of the Tieranatomisches Theater (Veterinary Anatomy Theater) in Berlin, the “Theatre of Memory” forms an extraordinary microtonal ensemble: 70 spherical, colourfully illuminated loudspeakers ‘listen’ to each other and excite or inhibit each other via their characteristic sine tones, analogous to nerve cells. The dynamically changing, rhythmic tone sequences and sudden cluster outbursts are not predetermined by a score, but are created through acoustic self-organisation. Complex tone networks are constantly auto-generated by this feedback in space and reforming themselves through sonic interventions.

In the immersive sound laboratory, current neuroscientific research can not only be experienced, but music literally becomes nervous: an entire room is transformed into a network of interacting sounds that reflect the fundamental processes in nerve cells that make us sentient and thinking beings. The walk-in sound space composed of communicating loudspeakers not only makes it possible to immerse yourself in the network structure, but also to interact with it via tones and noises. This constitutes a novel paradigm of composition thinking music as feedback network driven by excitation and inhibition: Once you get a feeling for the processes, the “Theatre of Memory” allows you to make music in a completely new way – music that gives you an idea of the cognitive processes that remain a mystery to us in their complexity.