Floating

This is an Extract from the Premiere of my new solo performance "Interdimensional Generated Space", premiered in October 2022 at Panke Culture in Belin, as a part of the series (Von Antennenwäldern und Wellenozeanen) . 

A research-intensive piece focusing on the transcendental phenomenon of the Northern Lights. 
The planned performance uses the implement of self-made recordings from the Northern Lights, in combination with self-made crystal radio, plus light, detectors, and motors, to simulate a technological audio-visual version of Northern Lights in the performance space. “Interdimensional” specifically refers to the movement of energy between modes of perception. One part of this energy come from the composed mixture of “natural cosmic voices”; and another part is coming from the electromagnetic forces generated and captured in real time during the performance. The piece make full use of the contrasts of the invisible processes, to create a new experience of space, time, and human scale. 
This is an attempt to achieve a unique sonic dialogue 
between “Natural” and “Technological” world, a reflection on Nature that is imitated by technology in an anthropogenic age.

This project was kindly supported by Musikfonds & Neu Start Kulture
Photo credit : Alex Conu
Live recordings by : Roy Carroll

Interdimensional Generated Space_ Extract Live Premiere@Panke Culture, Berlin 2022

[PCLLP 019] AtOm AnT - GaLaKtIkA [2022] Teaser coming soon

[PCLVA 014] VA - Fourteenth Listen [2022] Teaser

Costest

Abby Lee Tee/Philip Sulidae, Troca Iônica

We animals not only live in different spatial scales, but also in different temporal scales. The smaller a creature and the faster its metabolic rate, the slower it perceives light, movement and sound. The installation takes the habitat of a meadow as a starting point to let us shift from human to other perceptions of time.

The playback speed of different animal recordings is globally slowed down, continuously from 100% to 10% and accelerated again to 100%. The signals of the animals repeat continuously and always remain in the same position in space. Due to the varying speed, new frequencies and details of the signals become audible. The cycle lasts 30 minutes (in this excerpt the cycle has been accelerated to 4 minutes). The frequency of the light color is also subtly slowed down and sped up again. The recorded animals are ordinary: birds (gorcrow, blackbird, yellowhammer, great tit), wild bees, grasshoppers, bats, mice, a deer, and a human, as well as a church bell in the distance. The installation offers a psychosonic therapy for "species loneliness"— that "sense of isolation and sadness that comes from human alienation from other species and their extinction" (Robert Macfarlane). The work invites us to experience biodiversity as a multiplicity of being-in-the-world while discovering shared commonalities across species.

The high-resolution field recordings were made on a meadow in my home village of Lobsann (Alsace, France), a meadow in St. Imier (Jura, Switzerland), and isolated archival recordings of other animals from these habitats. The recordings from St. Imier were made during an artist residency at "La Dépendance" in the summer of 2022.

Realized at ZiMMT Leipzig, December 2022

Interspecies Fusion Frequency (accelerated excerpt)

Thousand of sand fleas (talitrus saltator) were eating a large jellyfish on the beach at Oleron island (France). We put 2 hydrophones inside to listen. We can hear the fleas jumping around but also the waves from the inside perspective of the jellyfish.

Recorded with 2 Aquarian H2a on a Mixpre 6-II with Grégoire Chauvot at Oleron island in 2022.

Thousand of fleas eating a jellyfish - w/ Grégoire Chauvot

LUDWIG BERGER - SPECIES LONELINESS
Cat #: OUS051
Release date: March 29, 2024
Distributed by Kudos: https://kudosdistribution.co.uk
Label Bandcamp: https://ousooo.bandcamp.com

«I wanted to revisit the sound worlds of 1970s eco-horror films, a time of growing fears about environmental consequences. Today, we no longer fear the revenge of frogs or insects; we are mourning their vanishing. My music channels the eerie, anticipatory dread of those films into a contemporary lament for what’s been lost and a search for what might still be restored.» — @ludwigberger

Leading up to his first ‘fictional’ album «Garden of Ediacara», which will be released on May 3rd via -OUS,  landscape sound artist Ludwig Berger presents the EP «Species Loneliness».

Building on an extensive and acclaimed body of work in sound art, field recordings, installation and performance, as well as music for film and theatre, the EP «Species Loneliness» and the subsequent  album «Garden of Ediacara» mark a shift in Berger’s creative work. But as he enters the realm of ‘fictional’ music by engaging with environmental emotions, he still relies on his far-reaching practice as a close listener and archivist of unheard sounds.

With «Species Loneliness», Berger explores a yearning for interspecies connection on a damaged planet. The six track EP presents a set of muted songs that are haunted by echoes of eco-horror and eco-gothic films of the past century, while interwoven raw field recordings create the space to breathe. The tracks center around the term of «Species Loneliness» — an ecological form of isolation and solitude. It expresses the feeling of homesickness while being at home, arising from the loss of natural habitats and the decline of biodiversity. Through layers of degraded samples, eco-nostalgia runs through the EP, longing for meaningful relationships obscured in the shadows of the Anthropocene.

Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist, educator and musician. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables intimate and playful sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. In his musical work, Berger produces sonic eco-fictions with processed and synthetic sounds.  He has composed sound and music for award-winning films and theatre pieces and curated the landscape sound festival ‘Sonic Topologies’ in Zurich. He is also founder and curator of the label Vertical Music, which releases field recordings and experimental music. 

Berger holds degrees in electroacoustic composition, as well as musicology, art history and literature. As a sound researcher and teacher at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich from 2015-2022, he studied the sonic dimension of Japanese gardens, alpine glaciers and urban landscapes, which among other things led to the release of the acclaimed album trilogy ‘Melting Landscapes’, ‘Dammed Landscapes’ and ‘Buried Landscapes’.

CREDITS
Written and produced by Ludwig Berger 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Album cover by Paulin Rogues

Species Loneliness

Sea of Decay

Buy on Bandcamp

Ludwig Berger - Species Loneliness - 1 - Sea Of Decay

IN+AROUND –OUS w/ Ludwig Berger Edit 14-04-2024

Revised version of "Traces: for Electric Organ, i-Phone Videos, Objects and Electronics". (The first iteration was presented at KM28 in Berlin on April 24, 2019, as part of "Very Organized"  a concert of works for electric organ by a group of Berlin-based composers. ) Variation 2 is part of an immersive multi-channel work that is currently in progress.

Traces: Variation 2

sonic ecologies 
🎐🦑💧👂🕷️🌵🔊

Interspecies Fusion Frequency (accelerated excerpt)

Ludwig Berger

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