Fertile Void
Quantum Listening from Ancient Earth to Spectral Densities.
Fertile Void is a series of events hosted by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). This year, Fertile Void takes place during Berlin Science Week, over the course of the Festival Centre weekend, from 6–8 November 2026. Contributors including Nicole L'Huillier, Amanda Piña, Carolina Cifras, Muindi Fanuel Muindi, Sha Xin Wei, and Cécile Malaspina approach quantum listening across performances, keynote conversations, workshops, sonic essays, and discussions.
HKW PRESENTS FERTILE VOID
Fertile Void looks at the promises and narratives of quantum science and technology as embedded in ritual, cosmologies, sensorial practices, and materials. Through artistic intervention, discourse, performances, and workshops, Fertile Void investigates how different ways of knowing and being can contribute to understanding the social realities that emerge from quantum theorems, just as they become actualised by technology and new materials.
This year’s programme looks at the reorganisation of the senses at quantum scale, giving particular focus to the constant vibrational movements of all material—an acoustic continuum that quantum biology suggests might have played a role in the oxidation of ancient earth. More recently, quantum acoustic experiments have allowed scientists to ‘listen’ to particles within computers built to hold superposition, the phenomenon in which a particle or wave can exist in a combination of possible states until measured. Tracing these phonons (quantised vibrations) and the ‘spectral density’ they demonstrate—the distribution of energy across frequencies—seems to actualise what was once theory: listening to quantum particles as a way of listening to many, overlapping fields of possibility. Contemporary scientific discourse thus moves towards, and possibly updates, composer Pauline Oliveros’s proposition of ‘quantum listening’ as an intentional, attentive form of engagement that requires an openness to different forms of interpretation. Shifting between poetic interpretations and scientific observations this year’s programme asks: Might the sonic be a place from which another, or many other worlds become possible?
Made possible by
Schering Stiftung
