Spatiality, along with AI, are at the forefront of current research in music and sound art. Berlin-based artists Verena Lercher and Gerriet K. Sharma, are leading explorations in these areas. Join us for a conversation between Lercher and Sharma in discussion with Dugal McKinnon, sonic artist and Associate Professor Te Kōkī NZ School of Music. As artistic researchers, Lercher and Sharma work with the revolutionary icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO), the creative application of which has been spearheaded by Sharma. In this talk Lercher and Sharma discuss the ways their individual backgrounds inform their work with sound, space and advanced sound tech.

Verena Lercher and Gerriet K. Sharma’s visit to New Zealand has been made possible by the generous support of the Goethe-Institut New Zealand.

Verena Lercher is an artist currently based in Berlin. With an extensive background in theatre, Lercher’s practice since 2016 has included sound and media art, and more recently AI art. Her work with sound, and in particular with the icosahedral loudspeaker (IKO), is opening up novel perspectives on how voice in live performance can establish new conditions for understanding the live and the meditated, the real and artificial. Having completing postgraduate studies in exMedia at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM, DE) in 2022, Lercher is a current PhD candidate at the University of Roehampton London.

Gerriet K. Sharma is a Berlin-based composer, sound artist, and artistic researcher specialising in spatial sound practices. Sharma’s sound compositions using the IKO played a significant role in establishing this distinctive 3D sound projector as an artistic tool. Since 2022 Sharma has been a guest professor for experimental sound and X-spaces at University of Arts & Design (HfG/ZKM) Karlsruhe. In 2020, he initiated the Special Interest Group on Spatial Aesthetics and Artificial Environments within the Society for Artistic Research (SAR), and co-founded spæs: Lab for Spatial Aesthetics in Sound at Funkhaus Berlin, and was part of the lumbung radio project at documenta XV. In 2017 and 2018 Sharma was a DAAD Edgard Varèse guest professor at the Technical University Berlin, and in 2008 was the recipient of the German Sound Art Award.

Dr Dugal McKinnon is the Deputy Director of the New Zealand School of Music and Co-Director of the Lilburn Studios for Electronic Music. He is a composer and sound artist.