Music is based on the interaction of humans and sounding instruments in a specific context, i.e., a social, cultural and architectural space. Years of artistic practice often lead to close functional and affective relationships with the objects involved -- with acoustic instruments, but also with other technical devices. These resonant working relationships between human and non-human actors can take the form of a kinship relationship, but can also be of a negotiating or even confrontational nature, or take on ritual and spiritual forms.

How does the use of technology in contemporary artistic practices change when the interaction is expanded from a purely analytical or control perspective to include kinship, negotiation, confrontation, deception, seduction, abuse, etc.?

In the multi-year artistic research project "Spirits in Complexity – Making kin with Experimental Music Systems", the central hypothesis is that through a deep understanding of the "personal" properties of music technology, new forms and qualities of artistic expression are unleashed that would otherwise be unattainable.
One of the methods of this project is to explore feedback as a means of subtle contact.

We focus on the relationship of material/structural/algorithmic properties and the influence of human partaking within a system of reciprocity through feedback. Its specific potential lies in the fact that self-resonance (or cross-resonance among more participants) is of utmost sensitivity, and emergent phenomena might be exposed which are otherwise inaccessible.
We explore minimal forms of human interaction, towards the osmotic border between sensing and sense, or touch and thought.

The series of performed installations "Dirty Spaces" has been developed and presented in the last months in order to investigate the research subject in artistic practice.