Teaching
Courses, syllabi, supervision, and selected student work within Sound Studies and Research-Creation.
Teaching Philosophy
My approach in Sound Studies is a critical and research-led exploration of sonic practices in art, design, and music, integrating philosophical, socio-cultural, and technical perspectives. I emphasize methods for contextualizing, reflecting on, and experimentally developing sound-related work, cultivating listening, observation, and sonic thinking to link perception with philosophical reflection. This processual approach encourages moving practice across contexts and media; using art writing and sonic-led thinking to articulate conceptual and practical frameworks; and supporting reflective, open-ended work responsive to individual research needs.
This philosophy is embodied in Sound and Research-Creation (SnRC), an ongoing initiative I have been developing since 2019 that operates both as a pedagogical framework and as a research-creation approach. At its core, SnRC encourages students to engage with sound not only as a medium but as a mode of inquiry capable of generating new insights into their artistic practice. By expressing aspects of their projects through sonic forms — such as audio essays, live broadcasts, or installation-based works — students are able to go beyond documentation, articulating ideas and affects that might remain inaccessible through visual or textual means alone.
In SnRC, these foundational practices evolve into experimental strategies: recontextualising field recordings, constructing immersive listening environments, weaving spoken word with soundscapes, or composing narrative-driven pieces that interlace theory and affect. Such approaches invite students to adapt their work to varied contexts, explore new modes of audience engagement, and test research-creation methods that align with their own trajectories. In this way, SnRC functions as a testing ground for the speculative-pragmatic approach I call trans-positioning: a process-led mode of adapting and reframing practice to generate new forms of expression and knowledge.
By positioning sound as a site of cultural, technological, and ecological entanglement, SnRC nurtures a critical dialogue on its agency, materiality, and potential to contribute to broader socio-cultural and artistic discourses. This integration of theory, practice, and reflective inquiry equips students not only to refine their sonic practices but also to use sound as a lens through which to reconsider their wider artistic research.
Current Courses
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Sounding Board: Articulating MA Projects
MA course complementing the MA Project requirement, supporting project development through peer dialogue, live radio sessions, and critical articulation.
Overview
Sounding Board: Articulating MA Projects is a conversational format that encourages students to reflect on and express their project processes in an open, dialogic setting. Drawing on the metaphor of the sounding board – as both a resonant space and a site for shared reflection – the course uses live radio sessions as a platform to explore current thinking, share formative experiences, and articulate the questions and insights emerging in their practice. Each session focuses on a different phase of the MA Project – from early curiosity and experimentation to stages of clarity, refinement, and emerging direction. The format supports reflection-in-action: voicing uncertainties, testing ideas, finding focus through peer dialogue, and making processes audible – thoughtfully and in public.
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DM Master Project (team-taught)
With Prof. Dennis Paul, Prof. Ralf Baecker, Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick, Prof. Peter v. Maydell.
Overview
Project-based studio with plenary critiques and one-to-one advising toward the MA Project exhibition.
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Introduction to Digital Media (team-taught)
With Prof. Peter v. Maydell.
Overview
Introduction to Digital Media, also know as IDM, in the Winter term 2025/26 is intended to give all first semester master students an overview of our program so you can make informed choices for a smooth start into your studies. Part of IDM will be a series of lectures (open to all members of HfK and Uni Bremen) by HfK and Uni Bremen faculty members, who will discuss their work in digital media and present their version of the scope, issues, problems, and challenges connected to digital media, both as a field of research and practice and as a program of studies. In an other part of IDM you will be introduced to facilities and resources at HfK and Uni respectively.
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BA Mentoring (individual meetings)
Mentor to select Bachelor students over the course of their studies.
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BA & MA Thesis Supervision (individual meetings)
Theses advising across Bachelor and Master levels.
Theses in progress (acting first supervisor)
Jorin Rathford (BA) · Andrea Alvarez Ortiz (BA) · Valentina Gaete Urrutia (MA) · Katja Striedelmeyer (MA)
Past Courses (selected, 2020–2024)
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Sound and Research-Creation
Interdisciplinary MA course where sound expands methods of artistic research and practice.
Overview
Sound and Research-Creation (SnRC) explores sound as both concept and method at the intersection of Sound Studies and Artistic Research. Combining theory and practice, the course introduces students to sonic theories, philosophy, and art writing, while fostering experimentation through listening, writing, and audio production. Early in the semester, students produce a short Loopholes podcast; the term culminates in a live broadcast on Radio Angrezi. Across these activities, participants develop their own conceptual and, where relevant, literal voice, discovering how sonic thinking can expand and transform their artistic or design practice.
For the full course outline, see the SnRC syllabus (Sample syllabus).
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Sonic Theories Aloud
Interdisciplinary MA course where sonic theory becomes practice through reflection and audio essay creation.
Overview
Sonic Theories Aloud is designed for students who are interested in sonic philosophies and sound-related art practices, who want to engage in critical reading, listening, and writing for audio production, and who appreciate a challenge, as the course content is demanding.
The course will introduce students to selected sonic theories in the first half of the semester, focusing on sonic ontology, epistemology, and methodology, which can serve as a resource for the creation of a 12-15 minute audio essay in the second half of the semester, to be broadcast on Radio Angrezi during Open House (Hochschultage) 2025. The audio essay can take a conventional or more experimental approach, possibly reflecting and presenting the student’s work (e.g., using your work to explore specific epistemologies of the sonic in your practice). What this means and how it can be done will be guided and part of the coursework (incl. audio production sessions, esp. for those less familiar with voice recording and post-production).
The aim is to engage with reading, writing, and exploring sound-text relationships as opposed to written forms of presentation – a new current in the dissemination of research in sound studies, sound art, or any theory-led art practice and practice-based researches.
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Advanced Sound Projects and Theories
Interdisciplinary MA course aligning theory, sonic-led practice, and in-class critique for developing advanced sound-based works.
Overview
This course is for the advanced student in sonic-related practices (i.e., practices that involve sound in one or the other way) who wants to develop a sound-based work and seeks regular critique from a group that is invested in exploring sound in its material and conceptual dimension. This means that the course is divided into a practice and theory section to discuss works in progress and related texts on sound, art, philosophy, and cognate fields.
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Un*ound Writing
Interdisciplinary MA course integrating theory, sound, and art writing through strategies of transcription, transformation, and fictioning.
Overview
When you cut into the present, the future leaks out. – William Burroughs
Cut-ups, sampling, and remixing might put you in touch with what you know (known knowns) and do not know what you know (unknown knowns) and do not yet know what you do not know now (unknown unknowns). This proposition is a derivative of Burroughs and Rumsfeld with a pinch of Speculative Pragmatism.
In this course, we will do experiments through text, sound, and speculative imagination. We seek to follow modernist notions of chance, repetition, and processual approaches by employing strategies of transcription (replication), transformation (plundering), and fictioning (mythopoesis) as a compositional method for experiments in writing – or, here, ‘un*ound’ writings from textual formats to audio (‘un*ound’ as in sound/unsound, creating a variety of meaning through aesthetic practices). Taking the lead by the likes of Kenneth Goldsmith (poet/artist) and Simon O’Sullivan (theorist/artist), we integrate theory and so-called ‘uncreative practices’ with your aesthetic explorations to see and hear what kinds of textual, visual, and sonic compositions might leak out in future. The intention is to encourage you to investigate alternative modes within your art practice and research interests.
This course is designed for individuals who are interested in artistic research and writing, more generally, in combination with art practices cutting across the sounding arts (music, sound art, radio), net art, and theory-fiction, more specifically.
Given the current constraints, there will be meetings on MS Teams with discussions, works-in-progress critiques, and joint listening and perhaps viewing sessions (streamed via Twitch). Self-study and self-motivation will be a crucial elements in producing projects; however, I will offer additional one-on-one supervisory meetings online when needed.
Areas of Supervision
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Sonic art practices (incl. audio-visual and performative practices); Artistic research; Art writing; Continental and process philosophy.
Serving as first or second supervisor for BA and MA theses.
Completed BA and MA theses (2020–present)
Parastou Heydari Aghdam (MA) · Nilufer Musaeva (MA) · Salgado Harres (MA) · Hsun Hsiang Hsu (MA) · Pablo Ruano (MA) · Vivian Hernandez Ramirez (MA) · Giulia Valenti (MA) · Francisco Posada (MA) · Anna Angold (BA) · Sina Behnke (BA, ID) · Nicolò Cervello (MA) · Hakeem Adam (MA) · Rami Abadir (MA) · Bruno Christofoletti Barrenha (MA) · Iulia Radu (MA) · Manana Kobakhidze (MA) · Nadine Jochens (MA) · Daria Sazanovich (MA)