Sono Sensing – Is It Alive

Category: sound installation, creative coding, electronics
Exhibition dates: November 2022, January and June 2023
Artistic collaborator: Alifiyah Imani (Sono Sensing Collective)
Venues: HilbertRaum (Berlin), Pandora Art Gallery (Berlin), UNESCO World Heritage Zollverein (Essen)

Is it alive is a speculative listening prototype and thought experiment based on sound, life, and electromagnetic induction. It explores the potential for sound to influence both the external environment, and of the relation(s) between sound, and the concept of a soul.

Through the plasma speaker of a DIY Tesla coil placed inside an enclosed object, listeners are provoked to wonder, whether what they are listening to can be considered a living entity? When you take something out of its presumed context, can it still have a soul? The experiment does not aim to clarify an ambiguous reading with a straightforward yes or no. It asserts the change of what exists and asks us to reflect on our own nature in order to comprehend the peculiarities between the material and immaterial forms.