WHAT: Listening Sessions & Panel Discussion
WHEN: Saturday, February 1st, 2025
WHAT: Listening Sessions & Panel Discussion
WHO: MONOM, Venus Ex Machina, Walter Sallinen
TICKETS: €15
Since 2017, MONOM has collaborated with over 200 artists to create a rich archive of spatial sound artworks. These projects represent diverse perspectives and approaches, exploring the expressive potential of the 4DSOUND instrument, the evolving possibilities of spatial sound as an artistic medium, and the power of embodied listening experiences. MONOM has partnered with CTM Festival to present selected works from the spatial sound archive, featuring world premieres and Berlin premieres that highlight the breadth and depth of our collaborative projects.
The soundworks featured in these sessions were created during artist residencies at MONOM. Each artist brought a distinct creative vision, collaborating with MONOM’s team to explore and add another dimension to their practice.
During the sessions, we will also feature works created by MONOM, showcasing the studio's own concepts and lines of study.
On February 1, before the listening sessions begin, we invite you to a free panel discussion titled "Spatial Sound as an Artistic Medium." This conversation will bring together artists, producers and studios working in spatial sound to discuss its creative possibilities.
This latest programme marks over five years of collaboration between MONOM and CTM, and reinforces CTM’s ongoing interest in the evolution of spatial sound. Berlin is a growing hub for research and artistic creativity in spatial sound, which we aim to support through commissioned works, labs, and collaborations with partners such as d&b audio, Technische Universität Berlin, Usomo, and others.sions & Panel Discussion
Program
Saturday, February 1, 2025
16:30
Panel & Conversation
Topic: Spatial Sound as an Artistic Medium (45 min)
Free entrance
Session 1: 18:00
The Elements “Fire” MONOM (Listening Session) - Berlin Premiere (20 min)
Matrix of Modernity by Walter Sallinen (Listening Session) – World Premiere (60 min)
Ticket price for Session 1: €15
Session 2: 20:00
The Elements “Air” & “Aether”MONOM (Listening Session) - Berlin Premiere (20 min)
Marshlands by Venus Ex Machina (Listening Session) – World Premiere (40 min)
Ticket price for Session 2: €15
All the featured sound works were created in collaboration with MONOM Studio.
About MONOM
MONOM is a spatial sound studio and immersive art lab working at the intersection of music, art, technology, and storytelling. We transform listening into an active, multisensory experience, uncovering the hidden dimensions of sound and its profound ability to shape perception. Through our work, we aim to awaken a deeper connection to ourselves and the world around us.
From composers and filmmakers to sound designers, magicians, technologists, galleries, and cultural institutions, we collaborate with visionary creators across disciplines. Together, we are redefining the role of sound in contemporary culture, unlocking its potential to immerse, heal, and inspire.
About CTM – Festival for Adventurous Music & Art
CTM connects multi-perspective experiences, critical reflection, hedonism, and collaborative learning via a yearly festival and continuous collaborative projects, publications, commissions, concerts, club nights, and more. The festival's 26th edition will take place 24 January – 2 February 2025, presenting a myriad of experimental, personal, and emotional artistic practices that mirror a world in distress and uncertainty. Spatial sound is one of the ongoing threads within the festival programme, explored through commissioned works, labs, and collaborations. Concerts, club nights, workshops, artistic labs, and talks run across Berlin venues silent green, radialsystem, Volksbühne, MONOM, Berghain, Oxi, RSO.Berlin, Morphine Raum, and more.
About the artists:
Venus Ex Machina
Venus Ex Machina is the composition and production alias of Nontokozo F. Sihwa. She has contributed sounds and music to a range of projects spanning releases on labels such as AD93, NON Worldwide and Optimo Music in addition to installations for Hyperdub’s lauded ‘Ø’ series and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London. In 2021, she won the PRS Foundation Oram Award for innovation in music and sound technologies.
She has performed at numerous festivals and events across Europe including Berin Atonal (Berlin), Minimal Music Festival (Amsterdam), Rewire (The Hague), and Les Nuits Botaniques (Brussels). She has also lectured and given workshops at various institutions including Berklee College of Music, Slade School of Fine Art, Somerset House Studios, Tate Britain, The V&A Museum and for Creative Europe's SHAPE Platform. Clients for sync projects and commissions include notable entities such as Burberry, Star Alliance and the Royal Docks. She was also featured in ‘Sonic Futures’ - a documentary by FACT Magazine and the British Council.
Venus Ex Machina is currently engaged in a variety of commissions and collaborative experiments including development of a score for playwright Florence Keith-Roach, and a commission by American artist Victoria Rogers, focusing on music for dreaming. She is soon to undertake further studies at the National Film & Television School and work on her third album is also underway, and it will feature collaborators such as drummer Valentina Magaletti, cellist Amy Langley and violinist Florence Rutherford-Jones.
About the work:
Venus brought her boundless curiosity and exacting precision to MONOM’s monument of spatial
sound where she spent an intensive two weeks rewiring her compositional mind, resulting in the site-specific composition Marshlands which draws from her interest in futurism and posthumanism, and sketches around the outer bounds of the sonic possibilities of this imposing space.
Walter Sallinen
Composer and sound artist Walter Sallinen (FIN) is in a constant search for the affected surplus and sublimity in contemporary sonorities. His artistic work spans from spatial and installative sound rituals to graphically notated performances and acousmatic compositions. Since 2017, Sallinen has worked closely with dramaturg and writer Klaus Maunuksela (FIN), delving into an artistic aesthetic that seamlessly integrates text, sound, and multimedia. Sallinen’s earlier work at Monom, the underwater lamento ’From A Great High’, was premiered in 2022 as part of Vorspiel / transmediale & CTM Festival.
About the work:
Matrix of Modernity (2024) is spatial sound installation composed for the 4DSOUND 48.9
System, produced in collaboration with MONOM.This work explores human agency in the age of algorithmic control. The work's sonic and spatial foundation is built on a matrix formed by the sound system and the audience, allowing listeners to experience it by moving through the grid of speakers or positioning themselves at key intersections. Its rhythmic texture continuously evolves, using Steve Reich's 'phasing' technique to create a progressively shifting rhythmic network. Syllables and text fragments emerge and fade, representing modernity as a field of conflicting historical forces.The piece explores the human body as infinite potential, able to discern meaning even in noise.
Drawing on ideas from the xenofeminist manifesto by Laboria Cuboniks, the work celebrates impurity and alienation as sources of new ethics. Matrix of Modernity offers a sensory journey into the heart of hypermodernity, where language deconstructs and reshapes meaning, portraying the present as a construct of our actions and a force that shapes us.
This work continues Walter Sallinen and Klaus Maunuksela's exploration of large-scale sound compositions, following projects like *UXO* (2019, Helsinki Festival) and the binaural audiobook adaptationof Maunuksela’s essay novel Prosessi (2024).
FAQ
What will happen in the MONOM lounge?
Beverages will be served in the lounge before, during and after the listening experience.
Which payment method is accepted in the lounge?
Cash only.
Can I bring my dog?
Dogs are not allowed in the space.
Can minors join the experience?
These sessions are for visitors over 15 years of age.
Tickets:
If not sold out, tickets will be available for purchase at the door using a QR code, up to the venue's capacity limit. If you wish to pay with cash, please bring the exact amount.
Tickets are non-refundable, but they are transferable.
If you are experiencing financial scarcity and need help to afford the ticket, please reach out to us.
PLEASE NOTE
We recommend arriving 30 minutes before the start of the live performance.
Cell phone use is not permitted during the sessions.
Photos are allowed before and after the experience.
Silence is required during the listening experience, if you need to talk you are welcome to do it in the lounge area.
MONOM has a zero-tolerance policy for any form of abuse, harassment, or discrimination.
Ramps will be available in the studio for wheelchair users. While the lounge isn't directly wheelchair accessible, if you need assistance entering, the MONOM team is here to help and ensure a comfortable experience.