Since 2016, Anton Bruckner University has hosted the Sonic Saturday as part of the Ars Electronica Festival. This year, the event expands into a two-day meeting featuring spatial sound concerts, live performances, and sound installations. The gathering invites people to meet on an informal basis, through listening, experimentation, and shared affect, bringing together artists and researchers in electroacoustic music, sonic art, and spatial audio practices.
In line with Ars Electronica’s 2025 theme PANIC – yes/no, we listen through the crisis—not to calm it, nor to amplify it, but to sense how sound both conceals and reveals.
In the face of ecological, political, and social collapse, sound may act as a carrier of panic, a tool for pacification, or an agent of denial. Is spatial audio the new velvet curtain offering comfort while the walls crack? Or can it carve out spaces for dissonance, for listening against the grain?
Audible Denial, Sonic Unheard explores these tensions. As artists and listeners, we inhabit paradoxes: we perform while the ship sinks, compose while structures fail, and tune our ears to what remains unheard. In this context, does the digital music environment become a sanctuary, a spectacle, an aesthetic pleasure, or even an acoustic blindfold?
Through the textures of electroacoustic music and spatial sound, we invite reflection on the forms of listening that may be complicit with denial, the sounds that are erased, filtered, or conveniently forgotten, and the subtle shifts in perception that occur when we start listening to what was previously suppressed. Sonic art traces the contours of panic, not to explain it but to stay close to its pulse.
Curated by Volkmar Klien and Enrique Mendoza
Artists’ meeting overview:
FRI 5.9.2025 15:00–21:00 | Anton Bruckner University
15:00–20:00 Listening Room (ProduktionsStudio)
15:00–20:00 Sound Installation (Kleiner Saal)
15:00–20:00 Interactive Environment (Studiobühne)
15:30–17:00 Film Projection ¡Que Viva México! (Sonic Lab)
17:00–17:30 Mobile Live Electronics Performance (ABU Garden)
18:00–19:00 Sensory Code Concert, multichannel experience (Sonic Lab)
20:00–21:00 Postdigital Lutherie Concert (Live) (SonicLab)
SAT 6.9.2025 11:00–21:30 | Anton Bruckner University
11:00–14:00 Tangible Music Lab Brunch (Tabakfabrik)
15:00–20:00 Listening Room (ProduktionsStudio)
15:00–20:00 Sound Installation (Kleiner Saal)
15:00–20:00 Interactive Environment (Studiobühne)
16:00–17:30 Rheometer Concert curated by C-LAB Taiwan Sound Lab (Sonic Lab)
18:00–19:00 Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts Concert (Sonic Lab)
20:00–21:30 MEDIUM SONORUM concert (Sonic Lab)
