The Acousmatic Lectures are a series of discursive, acoustic undertakings that take the Pythagorean acousmatic model as a starting point for constituting a new type of interaction between speaker and listener. The term “Acousmata” references a Pythagorean tradition according to which only Pythagoras’s most devoted students were allowed to see and visually perceive him during his lectures. Newcomers were made to sit before a curtain concealing the master’s physiognomy. Students were therefore left without any visual information and had to try to follow the lectures solely by attentive listening.

No microphones and/or amplifiers are used during the Acousmatic Lectures. In this way, the natural volume of the speaker’s voice and its tonality are better able to convey his or her physical presence. Here, the voice is understood as an acoustic space that is definable in myriad ways, where physical and affective communicational idiosyncrasies can be transformed. The lectures are academic in nature—a deliberate choice of the artist and initiator of the project, Mario Asef. The speakers are academics and scholars who talk about their specific areas of expertise. The intention is to observe what impacts the acousmatic settings have on participants, and specifically without the influence of any artistic or aesthetic sensory effects.

A project by Mario Asef in cooperation with Errant Sound , supported by the Schering Stiftung and Bezirksamt Pankow von Berlin, FB Kunst und Kultur.