Technologies of Touch seminar
Touch is a fundamentally human gesture that reflects not just our capacity for compassion and care, but also of resistance and aggression. Touch is an important device in music and music performance, as musicians have a certain touch on their instruments. In the contemporary everyday however, touch has been appropriated by the technologies of late Western capitalism, making human contact standardised and reductive. Smartphones use touchscreens and biometrics to identify and track us. The nature of this interaction remains poor as it takes place on a Cartesian plane and only allows access to screen-based media. Digital touch, we argue, is brittle and lacks subtlety and sociality. How might we reclaim the sensuous and expressive dimensions of touch?
In this seminar we will explore concepts of touch in music performance, investigating polyphony (Jessulat), electronic textiles (Greinke) and interaction (de Campo). Students will work on concepts and prototypes for performances and design artefacts.
The three disciplinary strands will run in parallel, however, students are invited to attend sessions offered in the other departments. There will also be opportunities to attend additional sessions on topics adjacent to the overall seminar theme. The seminar emphasises independent organisation, and proactive and self-motivated work.
Outcomes of the seminar (work developed in groups or individually) will be performed and exhibited during Rundgang 2026:
Saturday 18 July 2026, 20:00 - 21:00
Drop-in performance in Konzertsaal
Hardenbergstraße Ecke Fasanenstraße
10623 Berlin
Participants: Aard Hoeskstra, Alina Nazari, Benjamin Molnár, Binderiya Amgalan, Eneko Lacalle Berasategi, Esther Kontarsky, Gabriel Pech, Helen Hines , José Manuel Bendezú, Joshua Bräucker, Konstantin Hübner, Lisa Baurmann, Niki Mitakidou, Rafael Bürgisser, Ruben Kotkamp, Ricardo Rodrigues, Susanne Höpfner, Timon Teichmann
With guest lectures by nikita maj doehring and guest input from Sabine Huschka.