Conferences and Symposia

In the Master’s programme in International Media Cultural Work (IMC), international symposia and conferences play a major role. This kind of transdisciplinary professional exchange is a key objective of the degree programme. All these events combine theory and practice, encompassing both artistic/aesthetic and discursive approaches. They reflect not only the programme’s focus on research and creation, but also emerging new directions in design, technology and discourse, and the ways in which IMC, its lecturers and its students seek to critically engage with them.

All IMC symposia and conferences place an emphasis on strengthening innovative media production and fostering it through original and in-depth theoretical debates, and vice versa.

Ex\\Immersio Conference Series

Ex\\Immersio has been a series of conferences since 2019, which aims to go against the grain: its name expresses a figure of thought that pursues a critical intellectual and artistic discourse on the popular term ‘immersion’, scrutinising this ubiquitous and overused term. By questioning and analysing its axioms and implicit assumptions, Ex\\Immersio seeks to foster critical artistic and philosophical perspectives, as well as alternative—and perhaps innovative—paradigms for the production and reception of intellectual and aesthetic knowledge.

• 2019 Ex\\Immersio (1): Dissemination
• 2020 Ex\\Immersio (2): Media Aesthetic Education
• 2021 Ex\\Immersio (3): Media as Environments: Production and Facilitation
• 2022 Ex\\Immersio (4): Digital Pathways to an Ecology of the Senses
• 2023 Ex\\Immersio (5): “Is there love in the immersive embrace?”
  Speakers: Dominik Breinlinger, Prof. Sabine Breitsameter, Prof. Thorsten Greiner, Jan Jacob Hofmann, Julian Kemper, Maren Kießling, Aleksandar Vejnovic, Robin Wiemann
• 2024: Ex\\Immersio (6): Soundscapes in Change. On Listening and Sustainability
  Speakers: Sara Bouslama, Prof. Sabine Breitsameter, Julian Kämper, Felix Kruis, Avan-Nomayo Ikponmwosa, Prof. Eric Leonardson, Teresa Otsa, Prof. Dr Thomas Pleil, Lasse-Marc Riek, Klaus Schüller, Dr Claudia Tittel
• 2025: Ex\\Immersio (7): Taking up the Thread – Moving out of Established Confines
  Speakers: Dr Judith Bihr, Prof. Sabine Breitsameter, Fadia Elgharib, Avan-Nomayo Ikponmwosa, Dr Sarah Niazi, Klaus Schüller,

World Soundscape Conferences

In 2012 and 2018, two World Soundscape Conferences took place under the scientific and artistic direction of Prof. Sabine Breitsameter, endorsed by the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and attended by hundreds of participants from all over the world.

• 2012: The Global Composition. Conference on Sound, Media, and the Environment
  Keynotes by Gernot Böhme, Ioanna Etmektsoglou, Helmi Järviluoma, Derrick de Kerckhove, Bernie Krause, R. Murray Schafer, Katerina Tzedaki, Hildegard Westerkamp
• 2018: The Global Composition. Conference on Sound, Ecology, and Media Culture
  Keynotes by Milena Droumeva, Ioanna Etmektsoglou, Maria Klatte, Eric Leonardson, Walter Tilgner, Hildegard Westerkamp
  Prologue (in absentia) by R. Murray Schafer