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In collaboration with Miiqo Studios, we developed Sounds of the Unseen—our artistic contribution to THE HERDS, a public art project that traces a 20,000 km journey from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle.
To accompany this epic migration, we created a generative soundscape that draws on over 6.5 billion animal movement data points, provided by Movebank and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. Shaped by real-time weather and local ecology, the soundscape evolves continuously. It gives voice to endangered and extinct species, creating a sonic memory of biodiversity on the move.
It’s more than an ambient score—it’s a living composition, a data-driven requiem, and an invitation to tune in to the more-than-human world.
Special thanks to the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior for granting access to this remarkable dataset.
SOUNDS OF THE UNSEEN is guided by real movement data from animals on epic journeys—birds crossing continents, whales navigating oceans, land mammals roaming vast terrains. Rather than following individuals, we hear an entire ecosystem in motion. Each sonic layer reveals a different part of the story.
Behind the scenes, a custom-built sound engine interprets each data point in real time, translating patterns of movement into musical gestures. Instead of fixed melodies, it produces evolving textures—shaped by movement data, local conditions, and the rhythm of the seasons.
At the foundation lies a deep, continuous drone—like the Earth’s heartbeat—shaped by the activity of land-dwelling species. The more movement is detected, the more the harmonies shift and evolve.
Above this base, higher-pitched tones respond to animals in the air, while a third, fluid voice traces movements in the sea. Here, pitch glides reflect the distance traveled since the last signal—longer journeys stretch the tone, shorter ones keep it close and tight.
Every GPS ping—every sign of life—nudges the composition forward, subtly altering mood, pitch, and texture. The soundscape mirrors not only individual movement but also the larger, cyclical rhythm of seasonal migration. These patterns form the dramaturgical backbone of the piece, dividing the composition into four chapters, each representing a season. Each chapter carries its own chord progressions and tonal center, reflecting the shifting emotional and environmental conditions that accompany migration across the year.
For the composition, we worked with a cleaned and curated dataset of around 2 million animal movement points, representing a full year of migrations across land, sea, and air. This data is sonified in real time over a three-day journey, with seasons unfolding in fast-forward. After three days, the cycle begins anew—yet the piece never repeats itself. The engine processes each moment live, so the composition remains fluid, nuanced, and always slightly different.
As the piece travels along an imagined path from the Congo Basin to the Arctic Circle, it adapts to its virtual surroundings. The calls of animals over tropical forests sound different from those in polar landscapes. The system reacts to changes in species, direction, and even weather. You might hear rising wind, distant rain, or sudden stillness.
Like the animals it follows, the soundscape is never fixed. It is responsive, ephemeral, and deeply attuned to the living rhythms of the planet. SOUNDS OF THE UNSEEN forms a sonic memory of migration—a requiem for vanishing patterns, and an invitation to tune in to the more-than-human world.
PHOTO CREDITS
1) Kinshasa - Congo Basin (c) Berclaire for The Walk Productions // 2) Manchester City Centre (c) David Levene // 3) Medina. Marrakesh, Morocco. (c) Oussama Oulhiq // 4) HM King Charles meets THE HERDS at Lancaster House (c) Jaber Ahmed (DEFRA) // 5) Makoko River, Lagos. Photograph by Kashope Faje, for 88 Life Studios // 6) Venice, Italy. Photography by Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia // 7) Paris, France. Photography by David Levene
Which emotions lie behind political speeches?
Throughout history, spoken words have moved our emotions. Despite today’s technological advances, they remain just as powerful—now amplified by the mass media. Words do more than share information; they shape how we see the world, reinforce beliefs, and influence our emotions.
Nowhere is this more evident than in political speeches. These are not just statements of policy but carefully crafted narratives designed to resonate on a deep emotional level. A political speech is an attempt to construct a shared worldview, to define what is true, what is urgent, and what must be done. It is language at its most persuasive, applied at the highest level of influence.
BEHIND THE WORDS translates the emotional layer of political rhetoric—from across the spectrum—into an immersive audiovisual experience, allowing visitors to explore the power of language beyond the words themselves.
EXPLORE THE AI-ANALYSED SPEECHES
Focusing on the last five years of presidential campaign speeches in the Western Hemisphere, the installation presents the political spectrum in three distinct rooms—left, center, and right. Each room immerses visitors in the emotional landscapes that define these social spheres, revealing the persuasive power of language.
To do so, the installation draws on an AI-driven analysis of sentiment and five key emotions—joy, anger, sadness, disgust, and fear—alongside indicators such as hate speech, race-related stress, truth benchmarks, and automated fact-checking.
The data output is then translated into a musical and visual score, allowing visitors to both hear and see how the speech unfolds paragraph by paragraph. Rather than passing judgment, the installation invites reflection—showing how easily emotions can overshadow facts and prompting us to question when persuasion crosses the line into manipulation.
Through shifting light and sound, visitors physically experience the emotional contours of each speech. This sensory immersion highlights the unseen forces that influence our political realities. Only by recognizing the role of emotions in shaping our views can we begin to look beyond them.
BEHIND THE WORDS premiered in 2025 at Dark Rooms Hotel
GEFÜHLSRAUSCHEN, a collaboration between Studio TISH (Yves Peitzner) and KLING KLANG KLONG, is an interactive installation that transforms neural activity into a shared experience of sound and light. Using EEG sensors, the system interprets brainwave patterns associated with emotional states and translates them in real time into a continuously evolving musical composition and responsive lighting.
Up to three visitors sit in a circular setting, each connected to a sensor system that detects their neural activity. These signals are mapped to musical motifs distributed across three instruments: piano, bass, and strings. Emotional states such as joy may generate bright, lyrical phrases; melancholy leads to sparse and fragile textures; discomfort introduces low, tense, dissonant layers. As the neural patterns shift and converge, the composition reshapes itself — not into one dominant mood, but into a complex, collective emotional expression.
What unfolds is a living musical dialogue that evolves with the presence, perception, and emotional interplay of those within it.
EXCERPT 1
EXCERPT 2
The piece premiered at the opening of Nürnberg Digital Festival NUEDIGITAL 2025
Since spring 2025, the Austrian Pavilion at Expo in Osaka has welcomed international visitors into a multisensory experience shaped by architecture, narrative – and sound.
For Composing the Future, we created an immersive sound scenography that guides visitors on a musical* journey from Austria’s classical heritage to contemporary innovation. The spatial sound layers move fluidly with the exhibition, shaping atmosphere, dramaturgy, and emotion.
A glimpse of this experience is now available online:
This year at the Lost Art Festival in Berlin, the CX Collective premieres its first collaborative work: CHAMAECHORIE – an immersive installation featuring artificial tumbleweeds, laser-defined borders, and shifting air currents. The piece explores the delicate tension between movement and restriction, drawing poetic connections between natural forces and human-made boundaries.
The CX Collective was formed by five students from Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF through the interdisciplinary course “CX Project,” hosted by the university’s Creative Exchange Studio. Throughout the process, KLING KLANG KLONG supported the team with conceptual and technical mentorship – helping shape the experience from early sketches to immersive execution.
Our involvement is part of our ongoing commitment to supporting emerging artists through academic collaborations – as we do, for example, with students from HDM.
We’re proud to accompany new voices on their creative journeys and look forward to seeing Chamaechorie come to life at Lost Art Festival.
Experience how field recordings, data-driven music, and human creativity converge to create immersive soundscapes that evoke profound emotional connections. Let yourself be guided through realms where ones and zeroes mix with notes and rhythms, where the natural world sings its stories, and where the human imagination knows no bounds.
An invitation to explore the depths of experience through sound.
Have you ever been so captivated by a piece of music that everything else seems to fade away?
Perhaps it’s the melody that transports you to another time or the rhythm that stirs emotions you can’t quite explain. We’ve all experienced moments where sound doesn’t just fill the background—it becomes the experience itself. These instances highlight the true power of immersion, where we are fully absorbed and emotionally connected.
But what does immersion truly mean? The term originates from the Latin word immersio, meaning “to submerge.” Historically, it symbolized a deep dive into an experience to grasp its profound meaning. Over time, the concept has evolved, and today, “immersion” is a buzzword used in various contexts, sometimes lacking precision. To fully appreciate its impact—especially in the realm of sound—we must revisit and understand the essence of immersion.
Sound naturally surrounds us, creating immersive experiences often without our conscious realization. Unlike visual stimuli confined to our line of sight, sound envelops us from all directions simultaneously. This omnipresence allows sound to engage our emotions and draw us into experiences deeply.
To illustrate how sound achieves such profound immersion, let’s consider two distinct projects: the Austria Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka and the MINESET Museum in Limburg. Each employs sound uniquely to immerse visitors, exemplifying different facets of auditory immersion—one through (abstract) music, the other through concrete, hyperrealistic soundscapes and sequential storytelling.
Immersion Through Abstract Musical Narratives
The Austria Pavilion, themed “Composing the Future,” offers an immersive journey guiding visitors from Austria’s classical music heritage to modern innovations. Immersion is achieved by transforming visitors from passive listeners into active participants in a captivating musical narrative.
Visitors begin in a concert-like setting where a self-playing grand piano performs a newly composed piece in the Viennese classical style. The authentic piano sound, enriched by orchestral accompaniment, establishes an emotionally resonant atmosphere and introduces motifs that flow through the exhibition.
The journey culminates in a space with a futuristic instrument where up to four visitors can remix the earlier motifs with contemporary electronic sounds. This interactive experience transforms them into co-creators, fostering a deeper personal connection to the music and the narrative.
By progressing from passive listeners in a realistic concert setting to active co-creators in an innovative environment, the Austria Pavilion immerses visitors through the seamless integration of sound and physical space. It demonstrates how the combination of musical performance and setting can evoke emotions and involve visitors directly in the narrative, enhancing immersion through deeper personal engagement.
Hyperrealism and Sequential Storytelling
In contrast, the MINESET Museum employs sound to create a concrete and narratively immersive experience rooted in Limburg’s mining heritage. Immersion is achieved through hyperrealistic soundscapes aligned with a story that unfolds as visitors move through the space.
Visitors traverse a 1.7 km path where each room features soundscapes that recreate the ambiance of an operational mine. Authentic sounds—machinery, dripping water, or a radio—combine with the museum’s physical environment to immerse visitors in the mining setting. Spaces like the director’s office, the showers, and operational areas feature unique soundscapes, each offering a distinct perspective on an unfolding incident in the mine tunnel.
The sound narrative is not static but develops over time, with each room presenting a different part of the same evolving story. As visitors move through the museum, they encounter the incident’s progression from normal operations to an emergency, experiencing it through the distinct lens of each space. The soundscapes shift accordingly—starting with routine noises, moving to tense silences, and culminating in the chaos of alarms, frantic phone calls, and emergency responses. This temporal progression mirrors the dynamics of the incident, with each environment reacting to it in real time.
By aligning the auditory experience with their physical movement through the space, the museum engages visitors on a sensory and emotional level. They aren’t just hearing about the incident; they’re experiencing it as it happens. The combination of realistic sounds and the tangible environment makes visitors feel as though they are part of the unfolding story, enhancing immersion through direct engagement with both sound and setting.
Immersion Requires a Paradigm Shift
To truly embrace immersion—in its most authentic sense—we must shift our perspective on content creation. It’s not just about adding more visuals or using the latest technology; it’s about rethinking how we engage the senses to create a complete and profound experience.
Just as the Austria Pavilion and the MINESET Museum prioritize sound as a central element of their immersive strategies, we need to recognize sound not merely as a supplement to visuals but as a central pillar of immersive experiences. This requires moving beyond traditional approaches that often prioritize visual elements, embracing instead a sensory-centric methodology that fully leverages the power of sound.
We are excited to present PULS, a sound and light installation that artistically explores human mobility within the city. Premiered during the Festival of Lights in 2024, PULS encapsulated a day in urban life—from morning to night. Suspended beneath the steel viaduct of the historic Siemensbahn in Berlin, the 15-meter-long installation juxtaposes the historic railway structure with its modern artistic expression.
At its core, PULS features a complex polyrhythmic sequencing machine whose patterns echo the dynamic movements of people. The installation comprises 80 LED tubes that echo the viaduct’s original blue hue, establishing a visual connection with the surrounding architecture. Complemented by a multi-channel sound system, PULS offers an acoustic journey inspired by soundscapes of trains. The sound design interprets the daily cycle of urban mobility, including morning, rush hour, midday, blue hour, and night, providing a layered auditory experience.
At Expo 2025 in Osaka, the Luxembourg Pavilion invites you to experience “Doki Doki – The Luxembourg Heartbeat.” Inspired by doki doki—the Japanese expression for a heart beating with excitement and curiosity—our studio is designing the sound scenography to enhance the ambiance of Luxembourg’s story told in three acts. Our musical score connects each act with an underlying tune, yet creates a unique atmosphere in each space. This way, visitors are consistently immersed in the Luxembourg Heartbeat, fully engaging in the experience.
The musical score, developed by Luxembourgish composer Claude Zeimes, in close collaboration with the Team of the Luxembourg Pavilion (GIE), together with jangled nerves and us, connects each act with an underlying tune, yet creates a unique atmosphere in each space. This way, visitors are consistently immersed in the Luxembourg Heartbeat, fully engaging in the experience.
We are thrilled to announce that we are providing the sound scenography for the upcoming permanent exhibition at Haus der Geschichte Bonn (House of the History). Building on our successful collaboration*, we are proud to contribute a holistic approach to the new permanent exhibition, creating a rich and engaging exploration of Germany’s contemporary history.
After 30 years and over 14 million visitors, the previous exhibition “Our History: Germany since 1945” has closed. The grand opening of the new exhibit is scheduled for December 2025. The new exhibition will offer an emotionally engaging and media-rich experience, showcasing German contemporary history with innovative displays and captivating objects.
*Since September 17, 2024, the temporary exhibition “After Hitler: The German Confrontation with National Socialism” explores how different generations engage with this crucial chapter of history.
The MINESET Museum in Limburg revitalizes the region’s mining heritage by transforming the former mining complex into an immersive, multi-sensory experience. Spanning a 1.7 km footpath through the industrial buildings, visitors step into the moment right after the mine closed in 1989 and experience the emotional world of the miners.
Central to this journey are hyperrealistic soundscapes, which evoke the atmosphere of the moment immediately after the mine’s closure. Visitors hear the humming of machines, a radio playing, and water dripping in the showers—sounds that linger long after the miners have left the site. These soundscapes create a deep sensory connection to the past, making history feel immediate and real. This auditory experience is complemented by audio-visual art installations, which offer abstract depictions of the miners’ emotional world. This way, the tangible sounds are bridged with the intangible emotions of the miners.
Together, the hyperrealistic soundscapes and art installations are synchronized with a dramaturgy, orchestrating a cohesive and immersive sonic narrative that guides visitors through the miners’ world. As visitors move through the museum, the synchronized sonic narrative unfolds an incident in the mine tunnel, with soundscapes dynamically shifting to reflect events. This orchestrated narrative deepens visitors’ emotional and sensory connection to the exhibit, creating a unified and engaging journey through Limburg’s mining heritage.
