[Off-ICMC] Ctrl+Alt+Music: The Science Slam on Music in the Digital Age

 

Curtain up for new sounds, science, and research! At our Science Slam, the field of computer music is presented in clear, engaging, and entertaining talks. Speakers have ten minutes to try to score as many points as possible using PowerPoint presentations and (live) music. The audience decides who wins. 
 
Registration required here

 

Program Overview

Virtuosity: A Delightful Visualised
Karl F. Gerber & Karina Erhard

Now My Life Is Sweet Like Cinnamon. Complete Control? Between X-Box, Keyboards and dance mats
Victor Gelling

Let’s Play with Space Instruments
Kiyoshi Furukawa & Takayuki Hamano

Sonic Earth: A Real-time Journey Through Environmental Data
Riccardo Mazza

Musical Chemistry: The Periodic Table in Light and Sound
Walker Smith

 

About the presentations, artists & performers

Karl F. Gerber & Karina Erhard:  “Virtuosity: A Delightful Visualised”

Especially in these times of ubiquitous AI hype, audiences attending live electronic music performances want to feel confident in the performers’ direct, unadulterated virtuosity. How? 

About the artists & performers

Since 2019, Karl F. Gerber and Karina Erhard have been working as a duo at the intersection of composition, improvisation, electronics, and performance. Their focus: the interplay between human and machine as an immediate sound experience. Central to their work are Gerber’s automated “author instruments”—ranging from violin and zither to recorder and talking drum—enhanced by sensors and interactive systems. The pieces emerge experimentally through a blend of construction, programming, and improvisation and have been presented internationally at festivals such as NIME, CMMR, and the ICMC.
Works such as “Limit,” “Produktionsmittel,” and “Corporeality – in Honour of Harry Partch” combine flutes, microtonal instruments, and automated sound devices; in “Four Strings not for Strings,” even PlayStation controllers become instruments. Several awards—including prizes at CMMR and Matera Intermedia as well as film awards in Bangkok—underscore their international impact.
Gerber has been developing real-time music-mechatronic systems since the 1980s, while Erhard is active as a flutist in the contemporary music scene and has performed as a guest artist at the Munich Biennale and the Darmstadt Summer Courses, among others.

 

Victor Gelling: “Now My Life Is Sweet Like Cinnamon. Complete Control? Between X-Box, Keyboards and dance mats”

“I am the musician with a calculator in my hand.”  

That’s more or less how Kraftwerk described themselves—and many other computer geeks who sit in front of their computers day in and day out, constantly asking themselves the same question: How do I control a sound that doesn’t have to follow any physical laws?  

Controllers and interfaces are precisely those buttons, pads, and objects used not only to build electronic sounds but also to play them. They translate touches, movements, and sometimes even chance into sound. Some resemble instruments, others more like tools or toys.  

This talk is about how these things work and why they’re so exciting for many musicians. What actually happens when you move a knob? How does that become music? Where does technology end and expression begin? And do we even need to separate them anymore?  

“And when I press this button, it plays a little piece of music!” 

About the artist & performer

Victor Gelling (born in Berlin in 1998) is a composer and improviser. Using stringed instruments—including the double bass, tenor banjo, pedal steel guitars, as well as synthesizers and self-programmed computer software, they create sounds ranging from jazz and noise to electric cowboy songs and complex music, which can be heard in works with NOW MY LIFE IS SWEET LIKE CINNAMON, the Antiphon Orchestra, the alternative country band Slowklahoma, solo works, or their performances with the Jorik Bergman Trio. Victor studied jazz double bass and improvisation at the HfMT Cologne. Victor serves on the board of the Kölner Jazzkonferenz e.V., is a member of the impakt collective in Cologne, and manages the collective’s own label, impakt-records. Concert tours have taken him throughout Europe, North America, and South America. Festival appearances include the Acht-Brücken-Festival in Cologne, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music, Cologne Jazzweek, and the Festival de La Habana de Música Contemporánea (Cuba).

 

Kiyoshi Furukawa & Takayuki Hamano: “Let’s Play with Space Instruments”

Kiyoshi Furukawa and Takayuki Hamano have developed a software that uses audience members’ smartphones as instruments, thereby creating a spatial orchestra.  Instead of passively listening to music, it allows people in the audience to interact musically with one another and connect. 

About the artists & performers

Kiyoshi Furukawa studied composition with Isang Yun at the Berlin University of the Arts and with György Ligeti at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater. He has received numerous awards and scholarships. He was artist-in-residence at the ZKM (Germany). On the occasion of the opening of the new ZKM building in 1997, Furukawa was commissioned to conceive and compose a multimedia opera titled “To the Unborn Gods.” Since 2000, he has been a professor in the Department of Intermedia Arts at the Tokyo University of the Arts.

Takayuki Hamano is an associate professor of computer music at Kunitachi College of Music. He holds a master’s degree from the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the Tokyo University of the Arts. He is also CTO of the technology company coton, which aims to integrate music technology into society. Recently, he has been involved in the development of collaborative creative systems for music education.

 

Riccardo Mazza: “Sonic Earth: A Real-time Journey Through Environmental Data”   

Sonic Earth is an interactive journey that transforms environmental data into a vibrant musical landscape. The audience experiences a “sonic journey around the world,” in which a live connection to weather stations and satellite APIs captures temperature, humidity, and pollution levels from various corners of the globe and transforms them into musical compositions where the wind shapes the textures and the climate determines the harmony. Sonic Earth explores how technology can help us reconnect with the Earth through the universal language of sound. 

About the artist & performer

Riccardo Mazza is a composer, sound artist, and researcher specializing in how we perceive sound. He teaches New Technologies at the School of High Musical Specialization (APM) in Saluzzo and is the founder of Experimental Studios in Turin. Throughout his career, he has worked on innovative technologies for cinema and music, collaborating with renowned artists and developing software for immersive audio. His latest project, Sonic Earth, has been presented worldwide.

 

Walker Smith: “Musical Chemistry: The Periodic Table in Light and Sound”

What would atoms sound like? Is the periodic table a musical instrument? Do Helium atoms have dance parties? In this presentation, the rainbow-clad “musical chemist” Roy G. Biv takes you on a journey through the through the sounds of the molecular world. Using data sonification, he translates the light frequencies released by atoms into sounds that we can hear, creating a unique microtonal chord for each element. Showcasing his Interactive Musical Periodic Table, he will show how he has used these light frequencies from elements to design musical timbres, scales, chords, and full compositions. He will also discuss how his sonification approaches consider human auditory perception, and the design of sonic transformation strategies that allow us to hear more details of these sounds while preserving their core harmonic character. As the world’s first “musical chemist,” he extends sonification into (per)sonification, bringing the sounds of the molecular world to life through Helium Dance Parties and Magic Alchemical Drum Sets. 

About the artist & performer

Walker Smith is the world’s first “musical chemist.” Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, he is currently a PhD candidate in computer-based music theory and acoustics at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). He earned dual bachelor’s degrees in chemistry and music composition from Indiana University Bloomington. He creates educational multimedia performances that merge music and science, including “The Sound of Molecules,” which he has performed for thousands across the United States and Europe. As part of a Fulbright scholarship in the Netherlands, he developed the Interactive Musical Periodic Table, a project featured at a meeting of the American Chemical Society and by more than 50 international news outlets. In summer 2025 he was a resident artist/researcher at the Ligeti Zentrum in Hamburg. There, he developed a new show titled “The Well-Tempered Periodic Table,” combining sonifications of chemical elements with acoustic instruments, audience interaction, and lighting design. He has presented his sonification research and compositions at conferences and festivals including AudioMostly, the International Conference on Auditory Display, Sound and Music Computing Conference, International Computer Music Conference, and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival. He has also contributed a book chapter to Advances in Quantum Computer Music, edited by Eduardo Miranda. His main research and performance practice explore the scientific, educational, and musical possibilities of turning the periodic table into a musical instrument and making molecular music. Walker is a Goldwater Scholar and Knight-Hennessy Scholar. 

 

The Off-ICMC

Music is what brings us together, even when everything else pulls us apart.
Music everywhere—it is part of our everyday lives. And yet, we’re hearing it performed live on analog instruments less and less. Instead, it often reaches us through speakers or headphones, as files, from the cloud. What does music mean to you? What does it sound like today? Where does it begin—and where does it end?
The ligeti center invites you to listen more closely and discover new sounds—to explore, experiment, and play. This year, ICMC HAMBURG 2026 revives an old tradition: the Off-ICMC, a free and accompanying festival curated for the general public and anyone curious about computer music.

All Off-ICMC events are free of charge.