The Discourse programme focuses on multiple threads related to »Contact.« Online sessions at CTM Part 1 presented the Research Networking Day, a talk with Black Swan to launch their project »Prototyping Sonic Institutions,« and an artist talk with the Radio Lab Kontinuum winner Jonathan Chain Reus.

Part 2 in May kicked off with two MusicMakers Hacklab Input talks on musical collaboration. A number of speakers also explored the rich and inextricable interactions between music and sociality, asking how music cultures actively shape social life, and vice versa. Another thematic module explored how we might make stronger and more compassionate contact with our surroundings and other, more-than-human entities. What modes of listening are relevant and urgent in our present moment?

CTM 2022 – Contact: Lectures, Talks & Panels

Saturday 29 January 2022
CTM 2022 – Contact
Online

Presentations and discussion by Caroline Ford DeCunzo, Michelle/Min Lai, Nele Möller. Hosted by Sabine Sanio.

Also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MqLboEGmHA

Programme

00:00 Introduction by Sabine Sanio (UdK Berlin University of the Arts)

02:50 »Playing the Field: Inheritance in Field Recording Practice«
By Caroline Ford DeCunzo (Mills College, Oakland, US)

20:15 »New Tropicalities, Ghosts in the Post Plantationocene: The Consideration of Indonesia, Magic, Apocalyptic Infrastructure and the Oil Palm«
By Michelle/Min Lai (artist/scholar, Berlin, DE)

38:49 »The Forest Echoes Back: Receiving and Transmitting Forest Conversations Through an Ecology of Listening«
By Nele Möller (University of Leuven & LUCA School of Arts, BE)

57:07 Discussion session and Q&A

The Research Networking Day (RND) is an exchange platform for students and researchers from different graduate and postgraduate programmes traversing the fields of audio, arts, media, design, and related theoretical disciplines. Each module regroups three short presentations followed by a discussion round. In collaboration with Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Paderborn University, and the German Association for Music Business and Music Culture Research (GMM).

CTM 2022: Research Networking Day 3 – The Sound of Nature

Sunday 30 January 2022
CTM 2022 – Contact
Online

Presentation and launch by Black Swan, in conversation with Ollie Zhang

Also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKb9za47twU

This edition of CTM's Rethinking Music Ecosystems programme invites Black Swan to concoct another participatory experiment, this time with the extended music community. Employing decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) infrastructure and thought in a bid to realise new ways of creating work, Black Swan will work with a number of resource-pledging silent stakeholders. Using the collective’s digital toolkit, including a quadratic voting application known as Cygnet, participants will collectively decide how to disseminate and allocate the resources pledged to the project. The concepts that drive Black Swan are rooted in open source interdependency, collaborative institutional formations, and intersectional access.

This public presentation and Q&A kicks off Black Swan's project at CTM, which will continue throughout the year.

CTM 2022: Prototyping Sonic Institutions

Sunday 6 February 2022
CTM 2022 – Contact
Online

Jonathan Chaim Reus in conversation with Eleni Ikoniadou

Also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGyK7F21cKE

Jonathan Chaim Reus has been selected as winner of the 2022 Kontinuum call for generative sound work and will modulate a singular audio channel over a period of one year with his work »In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit.« In this talk, Reus will expand on ideas behind the work, which explores intergenerational thinking and voice synthesis.

The concept of inter-generational thinking is present in many traditional cultures across the globe, but has been most famously espoused by the Iroquois political doctrine The Seventh Generation Principle, that emphasises political decisions must be made considering their effects seven generations into the future. However, we live in a time where short-term thinking is the cultural norm, a reality that is exacerbated by the accelerating pace of information streams on social media and the pervasive move-fast-break-things philosophy of those who build and promote these platforms.

»In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit« will be a long-duration generative radio broadcast meant to modulate the attention of the listener, to allow the savouring of slow speech and audible nuance. The stream, which can be heard anytime via a public web portal, will feature an artificial broadcaster, a bespoke voice synthesis system that utilizes current deep learning techniques in voice synthesis and style transfer to be able to shift fluidly through speech and song, words and soundscapes, reading the text as if tracing slowly over the letters, probing them and unsettling them. Visitors may also add their own feelings towards time, responsible decision making, and what it means to be a good ancestor.

CTM 2022: In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit

Monday 23 May 2022
CTM 2022 – Contact
AL Berlin

Korhan Erel

Korhan Erel hosts a participatory discussion starting with their personal practice as an improviser playing electronic instruments and the principles they adhere to onstage. This will include Erels’s collaborative work with the trio The Liz (DIY mixed-media theater production), electronics-building duo Nervous Entanglement (with motor control, robots with modular synths, and sensor-enabled music), and more. Expect interactive conversation and hands-on examples.

The talk launched the Hacklab 2022 week, where a group of fellows selected via open call explored and realised new collaborative musical ideas.

CTM 2022 MusicMakers Hacklab Input Talks

CTM 2022: Music Makers Hacklab Input 1 – Collaboration, invention, and improvisational practice

Monday 23 May 2022
CTM 2022 – Contact
AL Berlin

Kimia Bani & Ben Osborn (Open Music Lab)

What does it mean to mix music education and activism? How can spaces for music-making be inclusive and respond to crises in sustainable, enduring ways? And whereas music technology’s history often centered on established, privileged institutions and individuals, how might we more actively collaborate across different musical cultures, backgrounds, styles, and individual voices? Kimia Bani has been both a participant in Open Music Lab and an instructor; Ben Osborn is the space’s co-founder and co-director. They’ll share their experiences and explore how we can all play together in new ways.

The talk launched the Hacklab 2022 week, where a group of fellows selected via open call explored and realised new collaborative musical ideas.

CTM 2022 Festival Discourse

CTM 2022: MusicMakers Hacklab Input 2 – Shared spaces for music creation

Berlin’s CTM Festival supports an open, networked, mutually-collaborative, global music culture through its yearly 10-day festival as well as countless collaborative and research initiatives, co-commissions, concerts, and other constantly-evolving formats. The 2 decades old festival stands out for its conscious pairing of daring artistic content and adventurous club experiences with an in-depth discourse programme, framing today’s sounds and music cultures within a shifting, hybrid global society.