A look back on five years of emerging spatial sound practices in 4DSOUND.

Carefully selected by its founder, Paul Oomen, MIRA Berlin partners with 4DSOUND and schedules a program within it’s extensive catalogue. Counting close to a hundred spatial sound productions to date, the retrospective exhibits fifteen sound sculptures created by artistic collaborators from the fields of music, technology, architecture and media arts – ranging from some of the earliest experiments to most recent works.

As it was founded in 2007, during the past ten years 4DSOUND has enabled vivid sonic environments that blur the boundaries between the real and the imagined: the world of sound we know, and a world beyond. It has been developing and refining the technology to create, perform and experience sound spatially. The exhibited works question the ways we experience reality through listening. Is the reality we hear based on what we know and assume about the world around us? Can a single sound in space embody a personal memory, a political conflict, fear of the unknown? What are the sounds that inhabit our environments? Can we listen from within them? And then what do we perceive?

The retrospective provides a present perfect of spatial sound – the coming-of-age of a creative discipline that opens up ways of expressing and communicating with sound that were not possible before. It seeks to unveil something of the beauty and complexity of this new medium, that we are only on the verge of starting to understand.

Featuring works by such great artists like Murcof, J.G. Biberkopf, Peter Van Hoesen, Koenraad Ecker, IOANN, Alyssa Moxley, Shaun Crook, Maxime Gordon, Casimir Geelhoed, John Connell, Paul Oomen & Edgard Varese.

Photos by Becca Crawford 

If you are looking for sound experiences and want to live them first-hand, come to MIRA Berlin next 5 May at the breath-taking Funkhaus.