Symposium: “Zukunftsmusik—What the future might sound like”

The Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden is pleased to present “Zukunftsmusik—What the future might sound like”, a symposium sharing the ideas and research topics explored during Esmeralda Conde Ruiz’s 2022 residency at Technische Universität Dresden (TUD).  

The symposium will be held in German and English. Livestream via YouTube and Zoom (code: TP?NF9Bd).

Esmeralda Conde Ruiz is the third resident artist at Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden. Together with scientists from a wide range of disciplines at TUD and external partners, including Hellerau—European Center for the Arts and the Dresden University of Fine Arts, she has spent the last 6 months conducting artistic research and reflecting upon digital infrastructures, in particular the significant environmental impact of artificial intelligence. Her body of research draws attention to the invisible and barely tangible world of our digital data and the virulent future technologies, highlighting the role and influence of humans in this constantly changing world.

The symposium includes contributions from speakers at the intersection of music, technology, computing, and artificial intelligence. From artistic, humanities and engineering perspectives, participants will discuss implications of “Zukunftsmusik.”[1]

Panelists and speakers:
Esmeralda Conde Ruiz, Artist/Composer, Schaufler Residency@TU Dresden 2022 / Prof. Carsten Nicolai, Artist, Musician, Professor for Art with a Focus on Digital and Time-based / Media, Dresden University of Fine Arts / Prof. Orit Halpern, Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change, Institute of German Studies and Media Culture, TUD / Jun. Prof. Miriam Akkermann, Junior Professor in Empirical Musicology, TUD / Prof. Ercan Altinsoy, Chair of Acoustics and Haptics, Institute of Acoustics and Speech Communication, TUD / Natalie Sontopski, Associate fellow Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden/Research associate Komplexlabor Digitale Kultur, Hochschule Merseburg / Prof. Roswitha Böhm, Vice Rector for University Culture, TUD / Kirsten Vincenz, Spokesperson Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden/Director Office for Academic Heritage (Kustodie), TUD / Gwendolin Kremer, Curator Schaufler Residency@TU Dresden / Dr. Julia Meyer, Deputy Director General, Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB).

About Esmeralda Conde Ruiz
Esmeralda Conde Ruiz is a Spanish award-winning interdisciplinary composer and artist who lives and works in London. She specialises in creating artworks that focus on human voices and life experiences. Her site specific compositions evolve from a visual starting point and develop into sound landscapes with rhythmic patterns. In her often multilingual compositions she interacts with light and dark, colour, staged elements and moving image. She explores the boundaries of choral composition, which she transforms musically and visually, decoding them and transposing them into new contexts.

Conde Ruiz has worked with choirs from Ecuador to New York, to Syria and Sydney. Her experience ranges from creating and directing the 500 amateur choir who performed at the 2016 opening of the Tate Modern Turbine Hall in London to writing a composition for 350 child singers from 7 different countries in multiple languages for Dresdner Philharmonie.

In 2020 Conde Ruiz founded the “E Ensemble”, an online ensemble of singers from all over the world. Together with the ensemble, she is exploring ways to compose music specifically for performing online in the digital space and exploring the sonic qualities of technology and voice.

About Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden
The Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden is a project of TUD and THE SCHAUFLER FOUNDATION. It serves as a platform for trans-disciplinary research and cooperation: artists and researchers from different disciplines come together to question current technologies and their impact on our modern world.

The artist in residence programme enables artists to become part of the TUD´s scientific community and jointly conduct research with scholars from various fields—both with the graduate students of the Schaufler Kolleg@TU Dresden and with STEM-subject scientists. The Residency is also connected with TUD´s Office for Academic Heritage, which has been supporting and initiating artistic research for many years.

In 2024, all four artists from the Lab’s first funding phase will have a joint exhibition at SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen, the museum of THE SCHAUFLER FOUNDATION.

[1] Zukunftsmusik is “future music”—something whose realisation still lies in a distant future, which must still be considered utopian.

Image captions: The artist in the server room of TU Dresden´s Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) / Server rooms of ZIH, TUD / Cooling infrastructure of the server rooms of ZIH, TUD.