Home to the world’s most advanced spatial sound system built by 4DSOUND
WHAT IS MONOM?
With the opening of MONOM at the historic Funkhaus on December 1st 2017, Berlin gains an experimental performance venue and state of the art spatial sound studio.
At the heart of MONOM is the 4DSOUND system. 4DSOUND is a creative and technical collective exploring spatial sound as a medium, collaborating with over 100 artists during a decade long period of research, experimentation and public performances. This one of a kind instrument immerses up to 400 people inside 48 omnidirectional speakers suspended throughout the venue, extending to 9 powerful subs submerged beneath an acoustically transparent floor.
WHAT IS THE 4DSOUND SYSTEM?
The 4DSOUND system is a spatial instrument. It provides a flexible, intuitive control platform for artists from different performative disciplines to experiment and express their ideas with a new dimensionality. An integrated hardware and software system, 4DSOUND creates a fully omni-directional sound environment in which you do not hear sound coming from speakers: instead, sounds appear in the space as independent physical entities. The 4DSOUND system cultivates a social listening space in which the listener and performer can interact, moving freely to explore a new physical environment of sound.
ARTIST RESIDENCIES AND COMMISSIONED PERFORMANCES
MONOM commissions artist residencies and public performances that will explore the possibilities of spatial sound as an expressive medium.
Beyond unprecedented real time control over sounds parameters, 4DSOUND pioneers the harmonious integration with any and all interfaces – movement, light, virtual augmented reality, bio-feedback, metric or brainwave providing an opportunity for artists to collaborate and combine sensory dimensions in effect to compose, and perform a live ecosystem.
MONOM will use this powerful integration as a summons to bring together not only sonic artists and musicians across genre and styles but also artists and technologists across disciplines – solidifying MONOM as one of the world’s premier immersive experience laboratories.
Endeavouring to work outside of the limiting frameworks of genre and style, and to set no limits on the conceptual ambition of any artist, our growing family is sketching the outline of genres emerging, illuminating the richness of the Berlin art scene and contributing to its present and future development.
EXPERIENCE
At MONOM the audience is enveloped completely within the artwork, enticed as active listeners to explore a shifting sonic landscape made up of dynamic sound arrangements that play with the laws of perception, and entirely subvert them.
From a single syllable floating in the breeze to a hurricane of choirs, from gentle waves of polyphony to lorries of bass that crash through the body of the room, audiences can expect experiences ranging from the most subtle and nuanced to the most intensely visceral, from healing and meditative to thought provoking and radical.
MONOM GRAND OPENING SERIES
To celebrate the grand opening of MONOM Berlin’s centre for spatial sound we will offer performances on 1st & 2nd December with four world premieres celebrating and showcasing the diversity of artists Croatian Amor, Helm, PYUR and Thomas Ankersmit who have been brought together by a common desire to explore the potentials of spatial sound as an expressive medium.
Purposely sculpted for this occasion and currently in development, each sonic artwork will be composed using the 4DSOUND system during their residencies at MONOM.
Second in the three part series is a collaboration with 4DSOUND. On the 9th & 10th December, MONOM will present lectures and a retrospective exhibition of sound sculptures that were created for the 4DSOUND system by a range of artistic collaborators from the field of music, sonic arts and immersive technologies. The retrospective, curated by 4DSOUND’s founder, Paul Oomen, provides a perspective on the past five years of innovative sonic practices in the emerging field of spatial sound.
The final installment on the 14th December is a world premiere composition by long-standing supporter and 4DSOUND pioneer, Max Cooper. Since 2013 Max has composed several pieces on the system. This will be the next stage in the evolution of his body of spatialised sonic artworks. The night will be supported by Berlin based Italian minimalist electronic artist, Caterina Barbieri whose 2017 record ‘Patterns of Consciousness’ received critical acclaim and who is currently undergoing a residency at MONOM.
PARTNERSHIP
Spatial sound is steadily gaining recognition as a new medium. It is a creative discipline that opens up ways of expression and communication with sound that were not previously possible, allowing listeners to further their understanding of space and to develop more subtle, complex and intensive levels of awareness within space. Over the next decade spatial sound will develop into an established area of study with increasing influence on a range of scientific, socio-cultural and artistic areas.
Using the epic coordinates of Berlin, MONOM aims to engage a wider audience in the potential of spatial sound as a more visceral and human way of experiencing art and music.
To this end MONOM has been formed in partnership with 4DSOUND and the Spatial Sound Institute, Budapest, 4DSOUND’s facility dedicated to the research and development of spatial sound. As a facility dedicated to this new discipline, the Institute is a catalyst for emerging applications with spatial sound.
In addition to presenting MONOM’s own commissioned performance residencies in Berlin, MONOM will host monthly Spatial Sound Institute and 4DSOUND developed programs.
