UOAEI – HELMHOLTZ VOOCAAL : KITTLER’s FORMANT is a sound installation and at the same time the echo and the apparative traces of a discursive interconnection of central theoretical motifs from Hermann von Helmholtz’s On The Sensation of Tone (1862) and from Friedrich Kittler's Discours Networks 1800/1900, based on their experimental apparative and sounding evidence.

During the Biedermeier period, Helmholtz had the first synthesiser built. In doing so, he not only laid the foundations for his theory, which to this day creates the physical and mathematical prerequisites for electronic music production, but - according to Sonntag - also anticipated the sound of the pioneers of electronic music: Stockhausen's sine-tone-mixture-reverberating Study 2, which has its technical roots in radio and in research into synthetic speech generation, predates the analogue synth soundscapes of the Floyds and Tangerine Dream or the electro beats of Kraftwerk.

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag studied fine arts, art history, composition, philosophy and cognitive science, was a fellow of the Akademie Schloss Solitude and Villa Aurora, among others, and has received numerous awards, including the Cynet Award and the German Sound Art Prize. Sonntag founded his own laboratory for media technology research and development in 2000 and has been co-editor of Friedrich Kittler's Collected Writings since 2011.

Already in 2015, 2017 and 2021, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag explored the work of the Hermann von Helmholtz-Centre for Culture Techniques’ eponym in a trilogy of chamber operas created especially for the TA T. In Sonntag's new sound installation, he addresses another outstanding researcher at Humboldt-Universität: the literary scholar and media theorist Friedrich Kittler (1943 - 2011) was a professor at Humboldt-Universität from 1993 to 2009 and became Deputy Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz Centre for Cultural Techniques in 2001. Helmholtz and Kittler developed their thinking with and along the apparatuses they developed. In Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag's work, the traces of this thinking and its after-effects on music and theory can be perceived through the senses.

Curated by Felix Sattler

In cooperation with N-solab and Galerie Georg Nothelfer.