Sonic communication Imagine an orchestra in which the musicians do not play according to notes, but instead play a very individual tone when they have been sufficiently stimulated by the tones of other musicians. This is exactly what happens with the Sonapticon: the dynamically changing, rhythmic tone sequences and cluster-like bursts of sound are the quasi-social product of acoustic communication between loudspeakers distributed throughout the room.
Light as complementary dramaturge When a loudspeaker joins in the communication, not only its characteristic sine tone is emitted, but it also flashes in white. Even if a speaker does not play a sound, the changing colours reveal the complementary play of mutual excitement but also inhibition. The walk-in, immersive sound space thus becomes an electro-acoustic music theatre that gives the impression of being a living organism through the breathing colours.

Playing and composing music with networks Once you have got a feel for the self-organising processes, you can play and compose music with the loudspeaker orchestra in a completely new way. Depending on the composition, the speakers are assigned new microtonal tones and are linked to other speakers - but the actual piece is formed in the spatio-temporal interaction. In this way, music radically shifts from a pre-composed sound sequence to a spatially performative result of an interacting sound network that is anything but random. As a result, composition turns into a process of creating networks and the associated conceptualisation of events, exciting but also inhibiting certain sound interactions through external stimuli, which can also originate from visitors or musicians.
When music & art are getting nervous The Sonapticon is literally nervous, as the way in which sounds stimulate and inhibit each other reflects fundamental electrophysiological processes in nerve cells that make us sentient and thinking beings. This neuronal jam session thus implicitly provides an idea of the dynamic feedback processes that underlie all cognitive acts, including music-making, and whose complexity remains a mystery to us.

Innovation From the electronics to the polycarbonate housing, the loudspeaker sculptures were developed in-house by imachination labs. Energy-saving microelectronics are responsible for analysing the frequency (FFT) of the microphone recording. The core of the Sonapticon is a biological neuron model that was specifically implemented in the firmware. The sound laboratory thus becomes a counter-model to AI, which despite its massive resources cannot structurally create anything new: The 70 interacting loudspeakers not only illustrate the neurological foundations of biological intelligence, but also show how these neuromorphic networks create unprecedented music with minimal resources.

Sonaptic mobilization: Theatre of Memory The Sonapticon was realized for the first time in 2012 as a large-scale studio version with 43 speakers in the context of a residency at the Klangdom at the ZKM Karlsruhe. The most recent version makes the whole system mobile, flexible and even more immersive creating custom made audio-neuron sculptures distributed over the whole space. Here, the imachination labs enhanced the loudspeaker sculptures, which were already successfully used for the sound installation [aiskju:b] emitting tones in 360 degrees. The electronics is extended by two special microphones, so the speakers can record sound in real time triggering the neuron model running autonomously on the speakers' micro processors. Above all, the colour illumination indicates the type of neuron and the current state of excitation.

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Premiere @ TAT Berlin The Theatre of Memory will premiere with a presentation of 70 audio neurons in the Tieranatomische Theater in heart of Berlin from 12 January - 23 March 2024.
The Theatre of Memory is part of the programme of the successful exhibition The Brain in Science and Art at the Berlin Museum of Medical History. The exhibition runs until September 8, 2024.

MPI-EA Frankfurt The Theatre of Memory is co-funded in the context of a ReSilence residency funded by the STARTS program by the European Commission. Part of that residency will be a follow up presentation at the Max-Planck-Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt from 15-28 February 2024.

Peri-Sonapticon A first pilot project with 40 audio-neurons was funded in 2021 by the Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien as part of Neustart Kultur with project funds from the Bundesverbands Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler.

The Sonapticon - space as an acoustic network

Most people do know feedback in acoustic systems as a cascading effect of a microcophone in combination with a loudspeaker as explored artistically by Jimmy Hendrix with his guitar. The Sonapticon uses a similar but different scheme. The basic unit of the Sonapticon are audio neurons interconnected not by wires but by sound transmitted in space. An audio neuron registers impulses spikes) from its acoustic environment by a microphone and fires its own impulse by a loudspeaker. The clue of that system is that every neuron gets assigned a sine tone with an individual frequency.

In the conference paper Sonapticon - space as an acoustic network you will find further reflections on the project idea.

The principals of biological neurons

Biological neurons are interconnected by organic wires and communicate by short electric impulses, so-called 'spikes'. On the left you see a simple scheme of how a neuron works: The incoming electric impulses are summed up and change the membrane potential of a neuron. There are two different types of incoming spikes: if the spike increases the membrane potential, the sending neuron is called excitatory, if it decreases the potential, the sender is called inhibitory.
In the absence of external input, the membrane potential decays to a resting potential which is marked by the green ring. A neuron sends out an electric impulse, it 'fires', when the incoming impulses from other neurons force the potential over a certain threshold, here indicated by the red ring. After having fired the neuron is not excitable for a certain period of time and the potential goes back to the resting potential.

Acoustic & in silico deceleration

This simple interaction scheme is the basis of all nervous activity. It is still an enigma how these interactions form something like a simple thought in our brain. With latest microscopic techniques you can observe in vivo in small probes of neuronal tissues how firing neurons self-organize and create synchronized activity patterns. Unlike in in vivo neural tissue, where neuronal interactions occur on the timescale of milliseconds, the in silico technique of the Sonapticon allows us to decelerate all biological processes. This generates an environment where spectators can identify and understand intuitively the causal relationship between integration and initiation of spikes on a single neuron level.

Two basic sonaptic components

Consequently the Sonapticon is a system of a decelerated synthetic neurons which allows for a real time interaction with neuronal dynamics and control of the biological parameters. The Sonapticon combines two basic components:
- digital in silico methods, with latest mathematical models of biological neurons (e. g. the conductivity based model b Alain Destexhe) and
- an empirical environment (the Klangdom) using acoustics as an analogue space of experimentation and interaction.
Furthermore, using sound waves as the transmitting medium, the quasi-living Sonapticon evaporates the requirement of a well defined input-structure, like e.g. the sensory system of the human that feeds information into its brain. The borders between inner world and outer world wear out, as individual neurons in this artificial brain can be directly stimulated by playing the corresponding frequencies!

Sound analysis

Looking to a sound spectrum you see that most sounds do consist of a broad band of frequencies. But sine tones oscillating at a single frequency show up characteristic peaks in a spectrum. This is how you can simply connect the audio neurons: Every audio neuron registers a specific set of frequencies assigned to other neurons. These frequencies are marked as yellow and blue lines in the spectrum. If an audio neuron registers a significant steep peak at one of these lines it interprets this as impulse of a connected neuron and the line blinks in red. As you see in the change of the audio neuron's potential peaks at the blue lines are interpreted as excitatory and detected pitches at the yellow lines are interpreted as an inhibition. On the bottom you see a plot with the history of the changing potential which helps to understand the dynamics of an individual neuron.

The PC version

Principally every computing device with a microphone and loudspeaker can function as an audio neuron to be it a laptop, a tablet computer or a smart phone. In August 2012 a first performance did take place at the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience on the Campus of the Charité in Berlin. The visitors installed a little software to be it for PC or Mac and changed their laptops with small external speakers into acoustic neurons. Step by step a network of twenty acoustic neurons was built up, exploring the changing dynamics by adding further neurons.
Above all the Sonapticon invites to interact with the system in all a different forms. An instrument like the singing saw producing clear sine peaks resulted to be a perfect device to explore the system's resonances.

Proof of Concept at the Klangdom at ZKM Karlsruhe

He has shown the functioning of the Sonapticon in collaboration with the neuromathematician Benjamin Staude as a guest artist of the ZKM Karlsruhe demonstrated. In 2012, the successful premiere took place in the Klangdom there with 43 studio speakers involving three piccolo flutists for the IMATRONIC Festival.

Impression from the premiere of the Sonapticon with the three piccolo players Ay-Ling Yang, Eric T. and Anna Buck (from left) standing aournd the floor projection in the Sound Dome/ ZKM Karlsruhe, November 2012.

Technical realization for the Klangdom

In the ZKM's Klangdom the audio analysis uses a frame work based on MaxMsp programmed by Holger Stenschke. The adaptation of the neuron model and the composition frame work was realized in Python by Benjamin Staude. For the visualization Tim Otto Roth used Gem in combination with Puredata.

History

Already since 2007 Tim Otto Roth has been experimenting with the acoustic translation of self-organization principles. In collaboration with the group ?'XL, he worked in 2008 with a specially created project choir on the translation of so-called cellular automata to the singers of the choir: Music of Life. In 2011 he transferred the concept of these to strings in a concert at the ZKM Karlsruhe. The idea for the Sonapticon emerged from a conversation with Eugenio Fava, a neurobiologist then conducting research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), after the first choir concert at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. At the invitation of Ludger Brümmer, the director of the Institute for Music and Acoustics, he finally got the opportunity together with the biomathematician Benjamin Staude and the sound engineer Holger Stenschke in the Klangdom of the ZKM to turn the idea into acoustic reality. The development of the Sonapticon is documented in a blog.
Until now, a presentation has been linked to a large-scale studio like the Klangdom, as the whole activity is still elaborately controlled by a central computer. The Peri-Sonapticon makes the whole system mobile and flexible, in that each Audioneuron sculpture itself performs the sonic processing on a microprocessor.

Tim Otto Roth

The conceptual artist and composer Tim Otto Roth combines art and science in a novel way. With his expansive sound sculptures such as Heaven's Carousel (2014), consisting of 36 rotating loudspeakers, and the aura calculata water organ from 2016, he has succeeded in opening up new aesthetic experiences and thus new avenues for art by engaging with contemporary scientific research. In his compositional work, Roth uses space as an (additive) synthesizer in which tones emitted by acoustic sources distributed throughout a space fuse into site-specific sounds. Apart from his special method for spatializing sound, he focuses his work on microtonal scales whose "harmonics" can be derived from specific physical processes. In June 2018, his sound installation SMART>SOS celebrated its premiere at IRCAM – Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Since summer 2018, he has been showing the immersive sound sculpture [aiskju:b], which consists of 444 illuminated loudspeakers and is played with data from the IceCube observatory, at the Kulturkirche St. Elisabeth in Berlin-Mitte, at the Reaktorhalle in Munich and at the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen.
www.imachination.net

Transdisciplinary symposium on neuron-aesthetics

Since ancient times, the representation of perceptions, thoughts and biographical episodes in memory has been associated with a theatre: consciousness as a stage on which the contents of memory are enacted. With the Theatre of Memory, a corresponding music-theatrical orchestration was created for the Tieranatomisches Theater (TA T) in Berlin.

Transdisciplinary ties will be established by an accompanying symposium on 26./27. January that will bring together scientists and stakeholders from the life sciences and humanities, but also from music. Together, they will explore in dialogue the neuro-theatrical boards that, in Friedrich Schiller's proverbial sense, mean and construct the world. The focus here is on the idea of "neuron-aesthetics", which, unlike neuroaesthetics, does not primarily address cross-brain interaction patterns, but formulates a paradigm shift that goes hand in hand with the microscopic focus on single-neuron research. One of the key topics of the symposium will be memory, the 'Godot' of our neuronal theatre. Here, the music comparisons repeatedly used in neuroscience point to the importance of the spatial and temporal interplay of neurons: "much like a group of musicians in an orchestra who need to be coordinated to create a harmonic symphony, activity of neuronal ensembles must be precisely synchronized to form intact memory." (Kol & Goshen 2021).

The neuron doctrine, which understands neurons as actors in the theatre of memory, will not only be questioned from a physiological perspective, but also contextualised in terms of the history of science and reflected upon from a philosophical perspective: It will be asked whether the world stage we experience and the underlying cognitive processes can be reduced to neurobiological processes. In addition, the interaction of music with neuronal networks and the conception of music as a spatio-temporal sound network will be discussed. The conference thus also responds to the current debate on artificial intelligence by emphasising the fascinating symphonic complexity of living intelligence.

Conception: Prof. Dr. Christoph Ploner, Tim Otto Roth und Miriam Seidler in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Petra Ritter, Prof. Dr. Thomas Schnalke and Felix Sattler.

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Program

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Symposium report

The intertwining of aesthetics and complexity already became apparent in the introduction by the speaker of the CRC 1315 Matthew Larkum (HU Berlin): The many variations of widely branching dendrite trees of nerve cells in the brain foreshadow the challenges of describing neuronal activity at the cellular level. Thus, he explicitly opposed simplistic approaches that reduce neurons to a single point.

Panel 1

AUDITORY-SPATIAL MEMORY | In the first session, an experiment with the audience in Livia de Hoz' (Charité Berlin) presentation Making sense of sound up (and down) the auditory circuit hierarchy was an ear opener: The experiment revealed that auditory expectations always shape what we believe to recognize in what we hear. She demonstrated that such expectations also influence the behaviour of mice and how the probability of certain neurons firing in different areas of the brain in these animals changes with varying pitch. In general, auditory processing in the brain is characterised by a complex interaction of different processing levels via mostly reciprocal feedback loops.

In his simulations in an anechoic chamber, Bernhard Seeber (TU München) focuses on how we can hear certain sound events in complex acoustic room situations and locate their direction. He emphasised the importance of the precedence effect in determining direction, in which it is crucial which ear receives a certain acoustic stimulus first, thus filtering out secondary reflections. However, reflections also help to give us an acoustic impression of the dimensions of a room and the nature of its surfaces in order to orientate ourselves. He also briefly presented a simulation environment developed in his working group, with which the audio neuron activity of the Theatre of Memory can be acoustically modelled in different rooms.

In the panel discussion moderated by Katja Naie (Schering Stiftung), Livia de Hoz and Bernhard Seeber emphasised the importance of motion and sudden changes in the acoustic environment for the comprehension of spatial conditions. Relatively quickly - within 1.5-2 seconds - people can acoustically adapt to new spatial conditions, which are characterised by a change in reflection behaviour. Seeber uses methods to fade out such reflections neuroacoustically in the development of cochlear implants as hearing aids when the algorithms amplify the beginning of an acoustically relevant signal, for example by inserting a short gap beforehand. It was remarkable that both panellists showed no personal but a scientific distance to music: 'I try to keep away from music as it is a mine field,' revealed de Hoz, who only uses music by Bach for her mouse experiments because of the variations of motifs in different pitches.

Panel 2

BODY AND MIND IN THE TUBE | Art literally framed both lectures in the second session. In his lecture Brain - Art and Freedom, John-Dylan Haynes (Charité Berlin) put the audience to the test with an upside-down section of a Turner painting, demonstrating that aesthetic judgements and preferences are highly individual, which is also reflected in different activity patterns in brain imaging. He presented in detail the imaging procedure using magnetic resonance imaging, which does not measure the activity of nerve cells, but rather the oxygen content in the surrounding blood vessels. The method therefore only has a limited spatial and temporal resolution, which is not technically but biologically determined by the size of the blood vessels: a so-called voxel comprises the activity of up to 1 million nerve cells. He sees the brain images made up of the voxels as 'statistical maps' that indicate probabilities. Individual perceptions of images, for example, but also the recognition of artistic styles can be derived and even predicted from their patterns. He clearly distinguished this predictability from a biased determinism, as postulated by Libet and others. For him, freedom is not based on a mind-body dualism, against which he explicitly argued in favour of monism. Rather, freedom is based on self-determination, which is based precisely on individual activity in the brain, which is shaped by learning processes.

What you see is what you get – this allusion to the early promise of computer user interfaces was translated to the neurosciences by science and medical historian Cornelius Borck (University of Lübeck): By contrasting examples from the history of brain wave recording using the EEG with the more recent functional imaging methods of MRI, he showed that the application of different technologies always determines the space of possibilities of what can be visualised. The never-ending oscillations in the EEG broke with established ideas such as the brain as a telegraph station. At the same time, the co-founder of critical neuroscience pointed out the continuity of the promises that recur with a new technology. With reference to Bertolt Brecht's 'Tales of Mr Keuner', he emphasised the proleptic structure of science, which adapts reality to conceptual models and not vice versa. Cornelius Borck framed his contribution visually with a brain section picture by Paul Flechsig from 1894, which he contrasted at the end with an adaptation in an oil painting by Martin Kippenberger from 1994. In contrast to more recent tendencies towards an ontologisation of culture in the neurosciences, he thus highlighted art as a challenge to scientific reflection.

The panel discussion chaired by Felix Sattler (Tieranatomisches Theater) was largely characterised by the tension between dualism versus monism. Cornelius Borck argued in favour of a dualistic separation between body and mind, not necessarily because he finds it convincing, but simply because he considers the monistic explanations to be too stupid. He also drew attention to a social dimension: thoughts are not to be located in the brain, but – insofar as they are semantically relevant – in our society and linguistic culture. In response to Hayne's final considerations, he pointed out that this collective dimension also answers the question of freedom. He understands this not as a matter of belief, but of attribution: in order for freedom and self-determination to be realised, the conditions for success must be created collectively. Haynes quoted the persistence of the separation of body and mind as perhaps due to the fact that, from childhood onwards, we first have to learn about our own bodies very indirectly. He also referred to the distinction made by ethological behavioural research between proximal and distal causes, which could help to differentiate neuroscientific discourses on embodiment or culture. He also recognises a linguistic challenge in the interpretation of brain images: For him, the inadequacy here is of a phenomenological nature, as phenomena have to be labelled with terms for analysis and not all nuances of experience can be articulated linguistically. From a technical point of view, he sees the problem with functional imaging that it is much easier to say something about the location than about the temporal dimension. In conclusion, Borck warned that the resulting iconic paradigm that 'there' is a demonstrable physiological process leads to a brain theory that this 'there' also constitutes the cause.

Panel 3

AESTHETICS OF SELF-ORGANISATION | In her lecture Calcium Symphony: Conducting Neuronal Trafficking for Synaptic Plasticity, Marina Mikhaylova (HU Berlin) focussed on the synapses, the interface of neuronal signal transmission. She demonstrated the complexity of the cell transport system, by means of which specific substances are channelled from the cell body of the nerve cell into the axons or dendrites. However, certain substances and structures can also be produced locally due to the large distances involved, such as the spine apparatus stabilising the so-called dentritic spines at specific dendrites. Calcium plays a conductor role in orchestrating the formation and stabilisation of this spine apparatus, which also controls the plasticity of the respective synapse and thus has an effect on the learning and memory function.

Tim Otto Roth stood in for Beatrice de Gelder, who was ill, and explained the concept of neuronaesthetics in more detail: In this context, he understands aesthetics primarily as a paradigm or thought style (Fleck). Starting from a development initiated by La Mettrie and Kant in the 18th century, he illustrated how a thought style only developed in recent history that first made complexity conceivable in various disciplines from the 1930s and 40s onwards and how this thought style ultimately culminated in cybernetics under the banner of feedback.

The topic of self-organisation dominated the discussion, which was chaired by Christoph Ploner (Charité Berlin): Mikhaylova pointed out that place and time are always crucial for the development of the many processes in the cell that are driven by self-organisation. In this context, the microbiologist argued in favour of having a closer look at the concept of 'unfolding', e.g. from a developmental biology perspective. When asked about the discrepancy between neurobiological systems and cellular automata, Roth advocated automata as prototypical models for self-organising systems. Even if these do not necessarily depict biological processes, their simplicity provides a fundamental understanding of complex network dynamics.

Abendpanel

SPATIAL TURN & RESONANCE| In the evening panel, 'a rarely heard fiery dialogue between art and science' (Cornelius Borck) unfolded between the musician Jan St. Werner and the neuroscientist and speaker of the CRC 1315 Matthew Larkum, who himself is active as a violinist in the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, among others. In his introduction, Tim Otto Roth introduced the special nature of Werner's work by describing his personal experience of the "Space Synthesis" exhibition at the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden: visually, the halls of the exhibition temple were largely empty, but three wave field synthesis loudspeakers filled the rooms with a walk-in ethereal soundscape. Jan St. Werner emphasised that he wanted to approach sound as something mobile and multi-perspectival. But the psychology of hearing and psychoacoustics are also important for his sound art work, which he understands as spatial research: He focusses on the space as an environment which, through its specific reflections and resonances, gives to an impulse its characteristic sound: "Art blossoms when it begins to speak to its surroundings, when it reacts, when the impulse creates a resonance". He also understands this resonance as a social experience in the collective experience and enjoyment of music.

Matthew Larkum agreed with the understanding of art as research, even if he objected that he wanted to leave art open to a certain extent and not understand it in that sense. He sees both science and art as being driven by the curiosity to find new questions rather than answers. In this context, he considers dissonance as positive: 'Dissonance is what drives us all the time.' For him, finding the right balance between expectation and surprise is the core of creativity. Alluding to Oswald Wiener, Jan St. Werner emphasised the importance of self-reflection: completely new things can be discovered through formalisation - especially in dialogue with others: 'What is actually overlooked in art is this kind of negotiation'.

When asked about an earlier statement that music is not complex in itself, but that you have to want to listen to it in a complex way, Jan St. Werner referred to Alvin Lucier's 'Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra' (1988) to illustrate that complex listening experiences can be created with very simple means such as a single triangle. Matthew Larkum described his chamber music ensemble's confrontation with Ludwig van Beethoven's Great Fugue. For him, gradually understanding the complexity of this piece has the metaphysical qualities of a revelation.

Panel 4

NETWORKS | Petra Ritter (Charité Berlin) introduced current research in the field of computational neuroscience in her presentation What can digital brain twins do?. The Virtual Brain developed by her and her team links the microscopic and macroscopic levels of observation and offers the possibility of generating personalised virtual brains with the aid of current models, mathematical tools and a patient's personal data. These 'digital twins' promise therapeutic optimisation for Parkinson's or epilepsy patients, for example, in order to simulate the effects of brain probes in advance. 650 such digital twins are also used for basic research in order to better understand how decision-making processes work.

The virtual models are also currently on show in three Berlin museums for public relations work.The digital twin, as media scientist Sebastian Gießmann (University Siegen) pointed out afterwards, is an example of a network, which he understands as hybrid, interconnected and fuzzy quasi-objects that integrate people, things, signs, institutions and spaces. Based on this definition, he gave a brief overview of the history of networks, starting with René Descartes' depiction of the brain and Denis Diderot's "D'Alembert's Dream". With regard to the questions of neural aesthetics, he emphasised the connections between neurophysiology and digital media technology in cybernetics, but also the connections between the natural and the technical in the discussions of the 1990s, which were constantly translated into each other and thus became indistinguishable. His lecture concluded with the question of whether we are currently experiencing a new layer of network history with machine learning and artificial intelligence, which is characterised less by a boom in the neuronal than by the fact that the central players are no longer to be found in science, but in the global data industries.

In the discussion moderated by Peter Bexte, various aspects of both presentations were addressed. Following Cornelius Borck's critical objection that the digital twin probably also serves the purpose of acquiring funding for brain research due to its publicity value, Christoph Ploner took a look into the future from a medical perspective: wouldn't the digital twin turn the digital world into a real-life arena for patients with extreme physical limitations and even lead to a possible continued existence in digital space? The fact that medical technology is already very advanced in the development of neuroprostheses, for example in the cochlear implants mentioned by Bernhard Seeber, was also confirmed by Petra Ritter, but she pointed out that the digital twin is a model, i.e. it is based on reduction and abstraction. It can therefore help to understand reality, but cannot replace it. Tim Otto Roth also picked up on this, addressing the question posed by Gießmann about neuronal aesthetics. The perceptron as a mathematical model of a neuronal network can never achieve the complexity of biological intelligence. Gießmann also confirms this with regard to current media network grammars. The reduction that can currently be observed in the media with regard to artificial intelligence is unthinkable in science and medicine.

Panel 5

MODEL & MINIMAL NETWORK | David Owald (Charité Berlin) gave insights into his current research on memory consolidation in the fruit fly (Drosophila) in his lecture How network principles enable sleep and memory in the fly. Based on the already completed mapping of the brain from 120 to 150,000 neurons, certain stimuli can be localised quite well. For example, his team was able to show how appetitive signals are processed in a comparatively minimalist network of around 40 neurons. These stimuli are stored during sleep. It is assumed that a ring of six neurones is responsible for this, among other things. During sleep, the neurones fire synchronously in a 1 Hertz rhythm and are overlaid by an inhibitory network that switches off external stimuli.

While David Owald's research group works directly on living organisms, the science historian Max Stadler took a look back at the history of neuroscience in his contribution Cell, material, modernity: model worlds of nervous biophysics based on the Hodgkin-Huxley model (1952). He emphasises that the technical experience gained by the two researchers Hodgkin and Huxley during the Second World War certainly helped to develop methods that made it possible to measure the action potential of neurons. However, it was not only the technical knowledge of the researchers, but a multitude of research in the field of electricity, surface properties and circuits in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the discovery of giant axons in squid that ultimately made the development of the Hodgkin-Huxley model possible. Stadler traced this process in his lecture using numerous examples and developments.

The subsequent discussion, led by Christoph Ploner, focussed the question of the impact of both technical innovations and everyday developments on research. It was emphasised that technology alone cannot bring about any further development in the field of science, as human creativity is always required in order to incorporate a new technology into research in a meaningful way. On the other hand, John-Dylan Haynes posed the provocative question of whether brain researchers are not always confronted with their own failure, as the brain is so complex that general statements cannot be made. Scientists therefore need to reflect on this in order to constantly rethink their subject and conduct research that scrutinises their own basic assumptions. David Owald could only agree with this: 'The greatest feeling of happiness comes when you disprove yourself [...]. That's the moment when you've found something new.'

A guided tour by the two curators Thomas Schnalke and John-Dylan Haynes of the exhibition Brain in Science and Art at the Charité's Museum of Medical History rounded off the symposium on a high note.

Thanks
As networking event sponsored by Stiftung Charité.

News

February 24 Theatre of Memory at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. The vernissage begins on 15 February at 7 p.m.

20 February 2024 How did you do you that?,Artist talk at Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankurt.

Symposium On 26/27 January 2024, an accompanying symposium invited to a transdisciplinary exchange. It brought together scientists and stakeholders from the life sciences and humanities, but also from the arts. Together, they explored in dialogue the neuro-theatrical boards that, in Friedrich Schiller's proverbial sense, mean and construct the world. Here, memory functions as the great unknown, the 'Godot'. How cognitive content is represented on the levels of cells and networks still remains a great mystery.

Publication Simulating, exploring and optimizing the spatial sound scene of the Sonapticon. Bernhard U.Seeber, Johannes Kurz, Tim Otto Roth, in: Proceedings of the 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association Forum Acusticum 2023, January 2024, pages 4321-4325.

Save the date Opening of the Theatre of Memory at the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin on Thursday 11 January 2024 at 6:30 p.m. with words of welcome by Prof. Dr. Christoph Ploner (Charité/SFB1315) and Dr. Elke Lange (MPI-EA) and an inaugural speech by Dr. Andreas Beitin (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg).

October 2021 After intensive months of preparation, on 3 October 2021 the Peri-Sonapticon celebrated a small world premiere at the imachination labs in Oppenau as part of a private view with friends of the studio. Special guest of the evening was the Strasbourg based musician Yérri-Gaspar Hummel, who excited the 41 audio neurons with his saxophone.

September 2021 The centerpiece of the new Sonapticon has gone into production: the boards for the audio neurons, which include microelectronics with a microphone, LED light and sound output.
Special thanks to: Benjamin Piltz (electronics and assembly), Manuel Prugel (programming) and Miriam Seidler (film).

April 2021 Funded by the Neustart Kultur program, a mobile version of the Sonapticon is currently being developed.
Performance dates will be announced here soon.

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Media Response

Wenn Lautsprecher hören, by the editiorial team, Offenburger Tageblatt, 20 January 2024.

27 October 2021, Vernetzt wie Nervenzellen, by Rainer Braxmaier, Offenburger Tageblatt

September 2019, Soundart edited by Peter Weibel shows on three double pages the Heaven's Carousel, the Sonapticon and the water organ aura calculata, MIT Press 2019.

April 2016, Seizing Attention: Devices and Desires, by Barbara Maria Stafford, Art History, Volume 39, Issue 2, pp. 422–427.

October 2015 Aura Calculata – die Klang- und Lichtkunst von Tim Otto Roth siedeln an der Schnittstelle von Kunst und Wissenschaft, by Helga de la Motte-Haber, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 05/2015, pp. 34-37

Artist collaborates with neuroscientist to build 'audio-neurons', Interview von Robert Barry, wired.co.uk, 10. Dezember 2012.

Hören, wie Nervenfasern sprechen, Acher-Rench-Zeitung 21. November 2012