A spatial installation of 444 luminescent spherical loudspeakers suspended from the ceiling will alter the cultural church St. Elisabeth in the heart of Berlin this summer. Sounds travel through space – sometimes softly like a rain shower, at other times like an eruption, so the visitor feels invited to move and become immersed in the light and sound environment in the darkened space. Upon closer inspection, this fascinating instrument weaving microtonal sound carpets turns out to be an artistic-compositional interpretation of data from the craziest telescope in the world: the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which consists of 5,160 light sensors that are frozen deep into the 3 km thick ice glacier above the South Pole. In total they cover a full cubic kilometer of ice. The sensors record tiny light flashes, which are generated in the rare interactions of neutrinos, the so-called “ghost” particles. The measured spherical or track-like energetic motion is the basic inspiration for this exceptional psycho-acoustic sound experiment by the composer and conceptual artist Tim Otto Roth, who developed, with his team, from scratch a sophisticated electronics and designed the light sculpture like loudspeakers.

The project “AIS³ [aiskju:b]” by Tim Otto Roth is both a work of art and a psycho-acoustic basic experiment. The Schering Stiftung supports the project, since it brings together art and science in a work of sound art. The exhibition is accompanied by a series of lectures curated by the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton DESY in Zeuthen. In addition, leading experts from the sciences and humanities will gather for a tow-day symposium on September 14 and 15, 2018, to discuss the relationship of “Physics and Art(efact).”