Prof. Dr. habil Sabine Sanio UdK Berlin
Bernhard Rietbrock ZHdK Zürich
Jan Thoben UdK Berlin
Prof. Volker Straebel UdK Berlin
Prof. Dr. Dieter Mersch ZHdK Zürich
Prof. Dr. Jörn Peter Hiekel ZHdK Zürich

This research project focuses on the conceptual innovations in experimental music and sound art since the second half of the 20th century. Its radical claim to material and media exploration fundamentally puts the traditional strategies of art music up for discussion. On the one hand, there are changes in ideas regarding the compositional material, the performance situation and the category of space, and on the other hand, the question of the role of technical media in music practice and reception grows increasingly more important. This research project reacts to these developments by making the innovations described above comprehensively fruitful for the first time in a theoretical perspective. An "aesthetics of the real" is to be established. Current musical positions that approach the inaudible and problematize the role of the listener, will be examined. 

From the perspective of listening, sound is the Other: In this respect sound is a Real in music. It is by no means merely acoustic, but represents a complex intermodal phenomenon with visual and haptic qualities. Furthermore, the increasing experiential orientation of music causes a general revaluation of the dimension of space, a further indication of fundamental changes in the appearance and reception of contemporary music and sound art. Finally, media-reflexive strategies play a decisive role in the artistic questioning of the real, as they identify the audible and the inaudible in media-technical dispositives as discursive disciplining. 

With reference to philosophical and aesthetic theories on the Real and the event (Lacan, Badiou, Mersch), the fundamental interpretation of the Real by Lacan is to be examined for its viability. The research project is interdisciplinary. It aims to develop an aesthetic of the real in experimental music and sound art from the perspective of music and media studies, performance studies and philosophy. The study is subdivided into the following topics: "Musical Construction of the Real", "Musical Media Reflexivity (Media Music)" and "The Real in Aesthetics".