Soundscape & Environmental Media Lab (SEM-Lab)

International Media Cultural Work (IMC) explores media as environments. It thus goes beyond the common notion that media are merely tools or vehicles. Rather, it conceives them as procedural worlds whose structures are defined and constituted by communication technologies and their configurations.
Inspired by this approach, IMC’s SEM-lab has been conducting research since 2011 into the theoretical and practical implications of this perspective for sound and music composition, audiovisual media design, the aesthetics of everyday life, and the cultures of visual and auditory perception. The Lab explores this idea in the context of the latest technologies and media, in particular 3D audio, 360° film, projection mapping, sensors, digital networks, augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
Within this field of work, which is open to student researchers as well as established scientists and artists, debates on new digital technologies are just as important as exploring concepts such as ecology, value systems, notions of knowledge and cultural concepts. These discussions result in audio compositions, installations, audiovisual productions, performances and films, as well as scholarly and scientific research into sound design, cultures of perception and the aesthetics of media production. Acoustic Ecology, Media Aesthetic Education and Artistic Research play an important role here.
The SEM-Lab has collaborated with Sony Music (Hamburg/Munich), the Centre for Art and Media ZKM (Karlsruhe), the McLuhan Salon (Toronto/Berlin), Hessischer Rundfunk (Frankfurt), the Jena Planetarium, Schott Music International (Mainz), the International Forest Art Trail Festival (Darmstadt), the German Tonmeistertagung and many other institutions.
The artistic and intellectual findings of these activities are continually reflected upon and refined in the Ex\\Immersio Conference Series.

Studio director: Prof. Sabine Breitsameter
Technical director: Lab Engineer Robin Wiemann M.A.