The Speculative Sound Synthesis workshop, set up at the impuls Academy 2025, addresses sound artists, computer music composers and performers who are committed to critical, speculative approaches at the intersection of art and technology, and who are engaged in practices that question, challenge, criticize, deconstruct, recompose, reformulate, shift, dislocate, endanger or reject established standards of sound synthesis and (music) technology. The workshop is part of the artistic research project “Speculative Sound Synthesis”. The aim of this project is to rethink and recompose the relationship between technology and artistic practice in an attempt to unleash aesthetic potentials of sound synthesis that would otherwise remain unknown or hidden within the technological apparatus. In this aesthetic destabilization of analogue and digital sound technologies, speculation is the primary method.

The workshop begins with an internal presentation by the tutors and all participants of their work and their Speculative Synths. Each Speculative Synth are then the focus of an extended session. Participants works with the synths, translating it into their environments, re-composing it, juxtaposing it with others, and collectively exploring their musical, compositional and performative possibilities. Participants are invited to develop and share in an atmosphere of collaboration and experimentation. The tutors take an active part in this process, not only guiding and suggesting, but also each offering a synth for the group to experiment with.

Benedikt Alphart and Lars Tuchel take part this year in the Speculative Sound Synthesis workshop as part of their Ulysses Journeys.

Date of workshop: 18 February – 23 February 2025, daily 10.00 – 18.00

Date of presentation: 23 February 2025, 14.00 and 16.00

Venue: IEM Cube, Inffeldgasse 10/3, 8010 Graz

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