Lecture Sound Ruins
Tobias Koch
10.01.2023, 6 pm, Mittlere Lichtbrücke

Sound moves between and through walls, it disturbs and permeates structures that may appear static and solid. Our awareness of a space or proximity to others is influenced by the sound that fills the environment. We rely on acoustic indications to help us recognize how sound physically resonates within spaces, to help us locate ourselves within a greater social, historical, and energetic tapestry. In this lecture, Tobias Koch will talk about his work as a sound artist and his interest in the role architecture played in the development of ancient music and musical thought and vice versa–how form, aesthetics, and function of ancient architecture were strongly tied to sonic experience. Sound and listening can help us to contextualize historical eras within a larger sensory and emotional framework, and his work is an attempt for historical understandings beyond the more conventional academic ways of rereading and revisiting history.

Tobias Koch is a musician, composer and sound designer who works across performing arts, film, visual arts and music production. He studied Audiodesign, Composition and Music Theory at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel. His works in the field of performing arts have been presented at documenta 14 Athens and Kassel, MoMa New York, Tate Modern London, Centre Pompidou Paris, Maxim Gorki Theater, and Volksbühne Berlin among others. Films with his sound design have been at various international film festivals such as Film Festival Cannes, Locarno Film Festival, IFFR Rotterdam, and Toronto International Film Festival among others. His own work Such sweet thunder was awarded the Young Choreographer's Award 2019 at the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna.

The event is a part of the seminar Scenography in the present - künstlerische Strategien für performative Raumentwürfe, organised by Prof. Constanze Fischbeck and Ebba Fransén Waldhör, within the framework of the 30 year anniversary of the HfG. The lecture will be held in English.