SONIC WRITING & SOUNDINGS 2025
19.07.-02.08.2025
3D-AUDIO ART LAB: SONIC LISTENING (26.07.25, 21:00, Bessunger Knabenschule)
Listening I: Michael Augusto Magán Palomino (Sonic Writing & Soundings)
Listening II: María Gabriela Rubio Hernández – La Larva (Sonic Writing & Soundings
LA LARVA
Insects and Cadaveric Decomposition
Insects are an extremely diverse group of organisms – especially flies, beetles, bees, ants, and wasps. For many of these species, dead bodies represent an energy resource, and from the moment of death, they initiate a transformation process known as cadaveric decomposition.
This process involves a breakdown in the body’s integral balance, and insects play a crucial role as decomposers. Moreover, insects can reveal information about the location where a body – was found or where it had previously been.
In certain cases, the study of insects can even suggest the cause of death.
The presence of insects becomes especially important when human remains not being found weeks or months after death, as they may be the only remaining evidence that allows forensic investigators to estimate the time of death.
Amat García, Eduardo Carlo, y Luz Miryam Gómez Piñérez. La entomología forense como evidencia científica en Colombia: métodos, estudios y prospectivas. Derecho probatorio contemporáneo: prueba científica y técnicas forenses, Sello Editorial Universidad de Medellín, 2012.
This piece was premiered in the Forecast Forum in Berlin, 19 July 2025.
MARÍA GABRIELA RUBIO HERNÁNDEZ
María Gabriela Rubio Hernández is a composer from Bogotá, Colombia. She works in the field of contemporary music, covering a broad spectrum: choral music, improvisation, interdisciplinary projects, dance, theater and educational programs.
María Mercedes Carranza: El canto de las moscas
for performative use in the piece La larva
A Mario Rivero
Canto 3 TAMORALES
Bajo
el siseo sedoso
del platanal
alguien
sueña que vivió.
Canto 4 DABEIBA
El río es dulce aquí
en Dabeiba
y lleva rosas rojas
esparcidas en las aguas.
No son rosas,
es la sangre
que toma otros caminos.
Canto 12 PAJARO
Si la mar es el morir
en Pájaro
la vida sabe a mar.
Canto 15 CALDONO
¿Quién
llega a Caldono enciende
el fuego fatuo
y convoca
a los gusanos?
English translations by Gabriela Rubio
To Mario Rivero
Canto 3 TAMORALES
Beneath
the silky hiss
of the banana grove
someone
dreams they once lived.
Canto 4 DABEIBA
The river is sweet here
in Dabeiba
and carries red roses
scattered on its waters.
They are not roses,
it is blood
taking other paths.
Canto 12 PAJARO
If the sea means death
in [Pájaro]
then life tastes like the sea.
Canto 15 CALDONO
Whoever
arrives in Caldono
lights the will-o‘-the-wisp
and summons
the worms.
MICHAEL AUGUSTO MAGÁN PALOMINO
Born in 1995 in Huancayo, Peru. Michael Augusto Magán Palomino studied music composition at the Universidad Nacional de Música del Perú. He also completed private studies in conducting, electro-acoustic music and music education. He is interested in sound experiments, both instrumental and electronic. His pieces have been performed and premiered at concerts, festivals and competitions in Peru, Mexico, Argentina and Korea. He currently works as a freelance composer and participates in many interdisciplinary projects, including the audiovisual experimental duo Pareidolia Espectral. He also runs the cultural space Nodo Sonoro in his home town.
BEATNYK
beatnyk is a sound artist based in New Delhi, India, working at the intersection of sound art, design and technology, in conjunction with natural soundscapes and live performances. His musical practice focuses on listening as an act of preservation; he creates works that encourage audiences to listen more attentively to both a natural and a technologized soundscape.
PREAMBLE
Preamble is an aural conversation – an invitation to listen. Layering ecological sounds, voices, texts, ambient melodies, and ravey rhythms, the piece is shaped live through improvisational coding. At its core are recordings from my work on Palestine, layered with the fading presence of birdsong – a reflection on both political resistance and ecological loss. Near the end, my father‚s voice reciting the constitutional preamble offers a moment of quiet clarity – a call for unity and shared responsibility. Preamble explores the interconnectedness of all things: human and non-human, personal and political, sound and silence. It‘s an attempt to create an immersive, ever-shifting soundscape.
beatnyk
Preamble was performed by beatnyk on 25 July 2025 in the 3D-Audio Art Lab Darmstadt.
The electronic music of artists from the Global South is still largely unknown in Europe today – despite the increasing reception of musical practices from this region in recent years. In 2019, we therefore decided to curate a project to address this desideratum together with the German musician, producer, label operator and conceptual artist Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF Poemproducer), who lives in Finland, and Cedrik Fermont (C-drík, Kirdec), who was born in the Republic of Congo and who, in addition to his various musical activities, also founded and now runs the large online platform Syrphe. After two appearances of Sonic Writing & Soundings in 2021 (online) and 2023 (in Darmstadt), three new electronic music musicians largely from the Global South will be invited to the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2025: Michael Augusto Magán Palomino (Peru), Padmanabhan Janarthanam – beatnyk (India) and Maria Gabriela Rubio Hernández (Colombia). The artists will work together during the first week of the Summer Course (20-27 July), presenting their projects and working methods to each other and sharing them with the Summer Course community. The residency program provides for the artists to get to know and use the diverse offers of the Darmstadt Summer Course academy and festival program, to actively participate in it and to take advantage of the exchange with the international community.
