In Japan, Austria is celebrated as the land of music. The Austria Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, titled “Composing the Future,” uses the unifying theme of music to collaboratively create a fascinating future composition with its guests.
The pavilion presents ideas and concepts that contribute to responsible and sustainable future development, demonstrating Austria’s commitment to shaping the future of humanity through the interplay of nature, tradition, and innovation. This commitment is artistically expressed through a musical journey* that intertwines Austria’s rich cultural heritage with its vision for a sustainable future, using music as a bridge between tradition and innovation.
Visitors embark on a musical journey that begins with the elegance of Viennese classical music and progresses to the modern musical era. This evolving musical soundscape reflects Austria’s legacy in an immersive auditory environment, aiming to engage visitors deeply on a personal level and inspire enthusiasm for a future where tradition and innovation coexist harmoniously.
We are especially proud to be responsible for the sound scenography, as sound plays a central role in creating the pavilion’s immersive experience, working in harmony with the scenography designed by our partner facts and fiction.
Experience how field recordings, data-driven music, and human creativity converge to create immersive soundscapes that evoke profound emotional connections. Let yourself be guided through realms where ones and zeroes mix with notes and rhythms, where the natural world sings its stories, and where the human imagination knows no bounds.
An invitation to explore the depths of experience through sound.
Have you ever been so captivated by a piece of music that everything else seems to fade away?
Perhaps it’s the melody that transports you to another time or the rhythm that stirs emotions you can’t quite explain. We’ve all experienced moments where sound doesn’t just fill the background—it becomes the experience itself. These instances highlight the true power of immersion, where we are fully absorbed and emotionally connected.
But what does immersion truly mean? The term originates from the Latin word immersio, meaning “to submerge.” Historically, it symbolized a deep dive into an experience to grasp its profound meaning. Over time, the concept has evolved, and today, “immersion” is a buzzword used in various contexts, sometimes lacking precision. To fully appreciate its impact—especially in the realm of sound—we must revisit and understand the essence of immersion.
Sound naturally surrounds us, creating immersive experiences often without our conscious realization. Unlike visual stimuli confined to our line of sight, sound envelops us from all directions simultaneously. This omnipresence allows sound to engage our emotions and draw us into experiences deeply.
To illustrate how sound achieves such profound immersion, let’s consider two distinct projects: the Austria Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka and the MINESET Museum in Limburg. Each employs sound uniquely to immerse visitors, exemplifying different facets of auditory immersion—one through (abstract) music, the other through concrete, hyperrealistic soundscapes and sequential storytelling.
Immersion Through Abstract Musical Narratives
The Austria Pavilion, themed “Composing the Future,” offers an immersive journey guiding visitors from Austria’s classical music heritage to modern innovations. Immersion is achieved by transforming visitors from passive listeners into active participants in a captivating musical narrative.
Visitors begin in a concert-like setting where a self-playing grand piano performs a newly composed piece in the Viennese classical style. The authentic piano sound, enriched by orchestral accompaniment, establishes an emotionally resonant atmosphere and introduces motifs that flow through the exhibition.
The journey culminates in a space with a futuristic instrument where up to four visitors can remix the earlier motifs with contemporary electronic sounds. This interactive experience transforms them into co-creators, fostering a deeper personal connection to the music and the narrative.
By progressing from passive listeners in a realistic concert setting to active co-creators in an innovative environment, the Austria Pavilion immerses visitors through the seamless integration of sound and physical space. It demonstrates how the combination of musical performance and setting can evoke emotions and involve visitors directly in the narrative, enhancing immersion through deeper personal engagement.
Hyperrealism and Sequential Storytelling
In contrast, the MINESET Museum employs sound to create a concrete and narratively immersive experience rooted in Limburg’s mining heritage. Immersion is achieved through hyperrealistic soundscapes aligned with a story that unfolds as visitors move through the space.
Visitors traverse a 1.7 km path where each room features soundscapes that recreate the ambiance of an operational mine. Authentic sounds—machinery, dripping water, or a radio—combine with the museum’s physical environment to immerse visitors in the mining setting. Spaces like the director’s office, the showers, and operational areas feature unique soundscapes, each offering a distinct perspective on an unfolding incident in the mine tunnel.
The sound narrative is not static but develops over time, with each room presenting a different part of the same evolving story. As visitors move through the museum, they encounter the incident’s progression from normal operations to an emergency, experiencing it through the distinct lens of each space. The soundscapes shift accordingly—starting with routine noises, moving to tense silences, and culminating in the chaos of alarms, frantic phone calls, and emergency responses. This temporal progression mirrors the dynamics of the incident, with each environment reacting to it in real time.
By aligning the auditory experience with their physical movement through the space, the museum engages visitors on a sensory and emotional level. They aren’t just hearing about the incident; they’re experiencing it as it happens. The combination of realistic sounds and the tangible environment makes visitors feel as though they are part of the unfolding story, enhancing immersion through direct engagement with both sound and setting.
Immersion Requires a Paradigm Shift
To truly embrace immersion—in its most authentic sense—we must shift our perspective on content creation. It’s not just about adding more visuals or using the latest technology; it’s about rethinking how we engage the senses to create a complete and profound experience.
Just as the Austria Pavilion and the MINESET Museum prioritize sound as a central element of their immersive strategies, we need to recognize sound not merely as a supplement to visuals but as a central pillar of immersive experiences. This requires moving beyond traditional approaches that often prioritize visual elements, embracing instead a sensory-centric methodology that fully leverages the power of sound.
We are excited to present PULS, a sound and light installation that artistically explores human mobility within the city. Premiered during the Festival of Lights in 2024, PULS encapsulated a day in urban life—from morning to night. Suspended beneath the steel viaduct of the historic Siemensbahn in Berlin, the 15-meter-long installation juxtaposes the historic railway structure with its modern artistic expression.
At its core, PULS features a complex polyrhythmic sequencing machine whose patterns echo the dynamic movements of people. The installation comprises 80 LED tubes that echo the viaduct’s original blue hue, establishing a visual connection with the surrounding architecture. Complemented by a multi-channel sound system, PULS offers an acoustic journey inspired by soundscapes of trains. The sound design interprets the daily cycle of urban mobility, including morning, rush hour, midday, blue hour, and night, providing a layered auditory experience.
At Expo 2025 in Osaka, the Luxembourg Pavilion invites you to experience “Doki Doki – The Luxembourg Heartbeat.” Inspired by doki doki—the Japanese expression for a heart beating with excitement and curiosity—our studio is designing the sound scenography to enhance the ambiance of Luxembourg’s story told in three acts. Our musical score connects each act with an underlying tune, yet creates a unique atmosphere in each space. This way, visitors are consistently immersed in the Luxembourg Heartbeat, fully engaging in the experience.
The musical score, developed by Luxembourgish composer Claude Zeimes, in close collaboration with the Team of the Luxembourg Pavilion (GIE), together with jangled nerves and us, connects each act with an underlying tune, yet creates a unique atmosphere in each space. This way, visitors are consistently immersed in the Luxembourg Heartbeat, fully engaging in the experience.
We are thrilled to announce that we are providing the sound scenography for the upcoming permanent exhibition at Haus der Geschichte Bonn (House of the History). Building on our successful collaboration*, we are proud to contribute a holistic approach to the new permanent exhibition, creating a rich and engaging exploration of Germany’s contemporary history.
After 30 years and over 14 million visitors, the previous exhibition “Our History: Germany since 1945” has closed. The grand opening of the new exhibit is scheduled for December 2025. The new exhibition will offer an emotionally engaging and media-rich experience, showcasing German contemporary history with innovative displays and captivating objects.
*Since September 17, 2024, the temporary exhibition “After Hitler: The German Confrontation with National Socialism” explores how different generations engage with this crucial chapter of history.
The MINESET Museum in Limburg revitalizes the region’s mining heritage by transforming the former mining complex into an immersive, multi-sensory experience. Spanning a 1.7 km footpath through the industrial buildings, visitors step into the moment right after the mine closed in 1989 and experience the emotional world of the miners.
Central to this journey are hyperrealistic soundscapes, which evoke the atmosphere of the moment immediately after the mine’s closure. Visitors hear the humming of machines, a radio playing, and water dripping in the showers—sounds that linger long after the miners have left the site. These soundscapes create a deep sensory connection to the past, making history feel immediate and real. This auditory experience is complemented by audio-visual art installations, which offer abstract depictions of the miners’ emotional world. This way, the tangible sounds are bridged with the intangible emotions of the miners.
Together, the hyperrealistic soundscapes and art installations are synchronized with a dramaturgy, orchestrating a cohesive and immersive sonic narrative that guides visitors through the miners’ world. As visitors move through the museum, the synchronized sonic narrative unfolds an incident in the mine tunnel, with soundscapes dynamically shifting to reflect events. This orchestrated narrative deepens visitors’ emotional and sensory connection to the exhibit, creating a unified and engaging journey through Limburg’s mining heritage.
Talking at TED
We’re pleased to share our talk from TEDxBerlin, where we participated in the event themed “Music Is Unstoppable.” Our talk, titled “Symphony of our World,” dives into our specific projects, focusing on emotive sonification to give an emotional perspective on the meaning of data and tell compelling stories. Following our performance at the 40th anniversary of TEDTalk in Vancouver, we were invited to bring our insights to Berlin. While the video from our Vancouver performance will be published at the end of summer, we hope you enjoy this presentation from Berlin.
Myriad. Where we connect.
Enjoy the trailer to the exhibition of this cross-media installation that tells the stories of animal migrations and their challenges in the Anthropocene era.
The installation is divided into four chapters, each narrating the tale of different animals species residing in Water, Air, and Land, and the profound impact of the Anthropocene on their lives. With each chapter the soundscape undergoes a transformation, adapting its characteristics to reflect the element being portrayed.
Designing a Weather Machine
HYDROSFEER is an immersive sound and kinetic installation that captures the dynamic energy and unpredictability of a thunderstorm, unfolding in three distinct stages: the building phase, the mature phase, and the dissipating phase. This piece explores the natural progression of a storm, simulating its lifecycle within a controlled environment.
At the heart of HYDROSFEER is a sophisticated sound engine, we meticulously designed for the artist Boris Acket. The engine utilizes white noise as its primary sound source to recreate the intricate sounds associated with each phase of a thunderstorm. This auditory experience is further enhanced by a kinetic sculpture, which introduces a compelling visual element to the installation. The sculpture, composed of semi-transparent fabric, is manipulated by software-controlled winches to create wave-like patterns that mirror the turbulence and fluidity of a storm.
The system is intentionally configured to be beyond the artist’s control, ensuring that each storm passing through the space is a unique and unpredictable event. The interaction between the soundscape and the kinetic sculpture immerses the audience in the visceral sensation of a storm, blending auditory and visual elements to convey the raw power of nature.
HYDROSFEER was prominently featured at Dark Rooms Berlin, hosted at the iconic Kühlhaus Berlin. This exhibition provided an ideal setting for the work, allowing audiences to experience the unpredictable beauty of a thunderstorm within an urban environment.
Unlock the Symphony of Information
Imagine listening to the subtle shifts in whale song as an indication of changing ocean temperatures. As the melodies rise and fall, you intuitively grasp the warming trends of the sea, feeling the urgency and impact in a way a graph could never convey. This is the magic of sonification—transforming cold, hard data into an immersive auditory experience that makes complex information both comprehensible and emotionally resonant. By making complex datasets audible, sonification imbues data with emotional meaning, allowing listeners to connect with the information on a deeper level.
Sonification's ability to turn data into meaningful soundscapes can be applied in various contexts, from scientific research to public awareness campaigns. This dual potential—analytical and emotional—highlights the versatility and impact of sonification.
TUNING INTO DATA.
Sonification aids scientific analysis by providing an additional sensory modality for researchers, helping to identify patterns and trends that might otherwise go unnoticed. For instance, in seismology, researchers use sonification to detect earthquake tremors by converting seismic data into sound, allowing for quicker pattern recognition (source, source). This form of analytical sonification enhances data interpretation and allows scientists to make critical observations efficiently. While AI and neural networks can now detect patterns in large datasets, making this type of analytical sonification less critical, the communicative power of sonification remains unmatched in evoking emotional responses.
In contrast, emotional sonification seeks to create a personal connection with the data, making abstract information feel immediate and real.
A compelling example is NASA's sonification of astronomical data. By translating data from black holes and galaxies into sound, NASA has created experiences that allow us to "hear" the universe. As Sarah Kane explained at the January 2023 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, “Astronomy is a leading field in sonification, but there’s no reason that work couldn’t be generalized” (source). These auditory representations help both scientists and the public better understand cosmic phenomena while also evoking a sense of wonder and awe (source, source). However, while NASA’s sonifications are designed to communicate scientific data accurately and engagingly, they can be further expanded artistically to explore deeper emotional responses.
MUSICAL TECHNIQUES IN SONIFICATION
The “For Seasons” project exemplifies how sonification can transcend traditional scientific communication by transforming data into musical compositions that deeply resonate with audiences on an emotional level. Numerous data visualizations have been created to highlight the urgency of climate change action. Yet, despite their creative and beautifully designed charts and graphs, they rely on visual interpretation and still require an analytical thought process. In contrast, music directly engages our emotions without the need for an additional cognitive step. In the “For Seasons” project, temperature anomalies were translated into variations in harmonic shifts that could be immediately felt. Additionally, the decline in bird and insect populations was represented with fewer notes in the musical motifs, making the data both audible and emotionally impactful. This approach demonstrates how sonification can be used to communicate messages and abstract information by weaving data into the experience and its dramaturgy, creating a richer and more engaging atmosphere.
Sonification can transform data into immersive auditory experiences through various creative techniques. Parameter mapping sonification is a sophisticated method that uses algorithms to generate complex soundscapes reflecting data nuances. This technique was employed in the “For Seasons” project, where temperature anomalies, among other parameters, were translated into variations in harmonic shifts, making the data both audible and emotionally resonant.
COMMUNICATING THROUGH SOUND
Sonification elicits emotional responses, which gives it significant potential in communicating complex topics effectively and reaching a wider audience. By turning abstract theoretical concepts into tangible auditory experiences, sonification can make difficult information more accessible and engaging.
Public awareness campaigns can use sonification to highlight pressing issues, making them more immediate and compelling to the public. By turning numbers into sounds, sonification offers a sensory experience that is both intuitive and emotionally engaging. As the field evolves, it holds the promise of transforming how we understand and interact with data, offering new ways to tell stories, raise awareness, and inspire action.
In educational settings, sonification can turn abstract equations into engaging auditory experiences, helping students grasp difficult concepts (source). By making complex scientific concepts more accessible, sonification not only educates but also inspires action and awareness.
