Muindi Fanuel Muindi
To quantise the world means to break it down into discrete units that can be counted and that count – thus fulfilling both meanings of the word: by making them countable, they acquire relevance. When the count approaches infinity, physicists apply a correction known as renormalisation: they draw a line, absorb the excess and ensure that their calculations add up.
If the granularity of the world is finer than their instruments can detect, they set a noise threshold – a limit – and treat everything below it as a tolerable deviation. Anything above the threshold, just as much as anything below it, is filtered out as noise. What happens when such quanta and data are not simply counted and analysed, but listened to?
This workshop by Muindi Fanuel Muindi draws on practices from the Black radical sound tradition that open up alternative approaches to quanta and data.
Polyrhythms, improvisation and collective music-making focus attention on relationships and patterns that ‘do not count’ in numerical analysis and are filtered out.
Using specially developed software, samplers, drum machines and synthesisers, participants transform economic and ecological datasets – including data on inequality, resource extraction and climate vulnerability – into sound. The data determine sequences of breakbeats, which the participants sample, edit and develop further through improvisation.
Drawing on Black sound traditions and Kodwo Eshun’s reflections on Afrofuturist sonic fiction, the workshop explores what becomes perceptible when datasets are viewed not as fixed objects to be analysed, but as material that can be heard and collectively reinterpreted. No prior musical or technical knowledge is required to take part.
Following the workshop, participants are invited to the ‘Pause on Quantum Matter’ lounge and reading area (Ceija Stojka Foyer in the entrance hall of the auditorium) to continue exploring open questions and ideas relating to quantum acoustics.
- Please reserve a place by emailing workshop.sciences@hkw.de
IN ENGLISH
Additional information
Dates
November 2026
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