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 researches since 2011 in theory and practice this perspective’s consequences for sound and music composition, audiovisual media design, everyday life aesthetic and cultures of visual and auditory perception. The Lab explores this idea in the face 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 area of work, which is open for student researchers as well as to accomplished scientists and artists, debates about new digital technologies are as important as investigating terms like ecology, value systems as well as notions of knowledge and cultural concepts. These discussions result in audio compositions, installations, audiovisual productions, performances and movies plus scholarly and scientific research on sound design, cultures of perception and media production aesthetics. An important role here play Acoustic Ecology, Media Aesthetic Education, and Artistic Research. 
The SEM-Lab collaborated with Sony Music (Hamburg/Munich), the Center for Art and Media ZKM (Karlsruhe), the McLuhan-Salon (Toronto/Berlin), the Hessischer Rundfunk (Frankfurt), the Planetarium Jena, Schott Music International (Mainz), the Festival Internationaler Waldkunstpfad (Darmstadt), the German Tonmeistertagung and many other institutions. 
Artistic and intellectual findings of these activities are continuously reflected and refined in the Ex\\Immersio Conference Series. 

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