IONOS (II)

Maia Urstad: IONOS – Music in the Ether (2025)
Radiophone Konzertinstallation für zwei Performer:innen und einen Amateurfunker
Radiophonic concert installation for two performers and an amateur radio operator

Uraufführung / World Premiere

Sofia Jernberg (Stimme / Voice)
Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen (Percussion)
Erik Chancy (Amateurfunker / Radio amateur)

Carsten Seiffarth (Kurator / Curator)

The artist Maia Urstad, who lives in Bergen, Norway, works at the interface of sound and visual art. Technological progress and communication technologies are omnipresent themes in her projects. The radio is often the central acoustic, visual, and conceptual element and a simultaneous metaphor for the transience of current technologies. Urstad's radiophonic concert installation IONOS at Designhaus Darmstadt explores the fascinating world of amateur shortwave radio and features two musicians and amateur radio operators from Darmstadt and Norway.

Worldwide, communities of enthusiasts for this over 100-year-old, analog low-fi technology still exist. DXing (DX: distance) attempts to receive or communicate with distant radio stations. Short waves are sent into the sky and reflected by the ionosphere, allowing the radio signals to travel great distances. Amateur radio also plays a communicative role in the event of a catastrophe.

IONOS is based on a concert piece of the same name that premiered at the Norwegian festival Borealis in 2023. In the newly composed hybrid of concert installation and installation, Maia Urstad combines live radio transmission and reception with pre-recorded soundscapes and sounds from two live musicians, created in a joint process on site. A short-wave antenna is installed in the garden, via which the amateur radio operator – at his local radio station in the house – constantly receives sounds from the ether and sends them out.

IONOS creates a global radiophonic listening situation – for Urstad a kind of ‟ether song", a mix of signals and noise determined by atmospheric conditions. This ether song is projected into various rooms of the building via a loudspeaker system installed throughout the space, in which visitors can position themselves for different listening perspectives.

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

Live installation
The installation will be performed live by musicians and radio broadcasters on 25, 26 and 27 July, following which IONOS will be open to visitors as a radiophonic sound installation until the end of the summer courses.

The exact times for the live performances and tickets for specific time slots will be available as of 15 June 2025.

Sound installation
The radiophonic sound installation from 29 July can be visited free of charge and without prior registration. Opening hours will be communicated on 15 June.