Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist, musician and educator based in Montreal and Zurich. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables intimate and playful sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. In his musical work, Berger produces sonic eco-fictions with processed and synthetic sounds. He studied electroacoustic composition at the University of Music Weimar and Musicology, Art History and Literature at the University of Eichstätt. He also holds a teaching certificate from the Center For Deep Listening. As a sound researcher and teacher at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich from 2015-2022, Berger studied the sonic dimension of Japanese gardens, alpine glaciers and urban landscapes. He has composed sound and music for award-winning films and theatre pieces and curates the landscape sound festival Sonic Topologies and the experimental music label Vertical Music.
"Ludwig Berger is breaking the interspecies sound barrier" (Electronic Sound)
"Ludwig Berger is leading the way with his field recording work in so many ways.” (Harry Sumner, Sonospace)
"A musique concrete magician” (Gray Lee, Houdini Maison)
“The professor has a lot to teach, and brings a childlike wonder to his adult pursuits.” (R. Allen, A Closer Listen)
"Berger seems to find unusual pleasure in fairly dull source material” (Daniel Hignell Tully, Toneshift.net)
AWARDS
Best Sound - Highly Commended at Sound of the Year Awards 2023
Best Natural Sound - Highly Commended at Sound of the Year Awards 2022
A Closer Listen’s Best Field Recording & Soundscape Albums of the Decade (2019)
Honorary Mention Ars Electronica 2017
First Prize at "Grenzgänger in Music and Video", ICEM, Folkwang University of the Arts
Winner 14th Electroacoustic Composition Competition Música Viva 2013
Prize winner Banc d'essai 2014 (GRM)
GRAFE Kreativ Prize 2014
Winner Leipziger Hörspielsommer 2014
Honorary mention Sonotopia 2015 (Bonn Hören)
Short list Prix Pierre Schaeffer 2015
Short list Soundland Sound Art Commissions 2015
Sound Art Award Fliesstext10
Live at Botanical Garden Greifswald, Photo by Julien Bota
DISCOGRAPHY: FULL RELEASES
* Photosynthetic beats (forms of minutiae, vinyl, 2023)
* Pseudo-volcanic Voices (Institute of Landscape Architecture, Digital, 2022)
* Buried Landscapes ("Bodies of Water" Trilogy, Institute of Landscape Architecture, Vinyl, 2022)
* Dammed Landscapes ("Bodies of Water" Trilogy, Institute of Landscape Architecture, Vinyl, 2022)
* White Elephant (Gruenrekorder, digital, 2021)
* Gotthard Transect (Institue of Landscape Architecture, double cassette, 2021)
* Struck Modernism: Figure X A (Dinzu Artefact, Cassette, 2020)
* Cuyo (Sonospace, Digital, April 2019)
* Cargo (Canti Magnetici, Cassette, Jan 2019)
* Inumaki, Esuzaki (Vertical Music, Cassette, Jan 2019)
* The Capacity of Things to Act (Dinzu Artefact, Cassette, 2018)
* Melting Landscapes ("Bodies of Water" Trilogy, Institute of Landscape Architecture, Vinyl, 2018)
* A Year's Hours Behind my Father's House (Impulsive Habitat, Digital, 2014)
DISCOGRAPHY: COMPILATIONS
* upstream ensemble (contribution to collective piece by pablo diserens & the ocean comm/uni/ty) , forms of minutiae, digital, 2023)
* Kin (in Sampler "Exotic Ésotérique Vol.3" Arte Tetra, cassette, 2021)
* hotel bali-an resort shinjuku island tokyo - adult only $63 ($2̶6̶5̶) (in Sampler "possible moistures", forms of minutiae, digital, 2021)
* 2012 (in Sampler "Muted Stories (3)", and/OAR, Digital, 2019)
Live at Imatronic festival, GRM Paris, photo by Didier Allard ©Ina
PERFORMANCES, EXHIBITIONS, BROADCASTS (Selection)
XII International Architecture Biennale of São Paulo (Group Show, with Scanvision, 2020)
3331 Arts Gallery Tokyo (Group show, 2016)
Akousma Festival, GRM Paris (Performance, 2014)
Bayerische Staatsoper Munich (Installation, 2015)
British Library London (Performance, 2015)
DeutschlandRadio Kultur (Broadcast, 2015)
European Media Art Festival Osnabrueck (Installation, 2015)
Goethe Institute Lisbon (Performance, 2010)
Goethe Institute Marseille (Workshop, Lecture and Solo Concert, 2017)
Goldsmiths London (Installation in Group Show, 2015)
Helsinki Music Centre (Performance, 2014)
Kunstmuseum Luzern (Performance, 2020)
Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts (Performance, 2017)
Landesmuseum Zürich (Permanent installation, 2019)
Matrabox Montreal (Installation, 2015)
MDR Figaro (Radio Broadcast, 2015)
Münchner Kammerspiele (Audio installation, 2021)
Musica Viva Festival (Solo Concert, 2014)
Musikfestival Bern (Performance, 2020)
Nationaltheater Mannheim (Theatre Music, 2015)
Radiophrenia Glasgow (Radio Broadcast, 2017)
Relincha Festival Chile (Performance, 2015)
Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast (Performance, 2015)
Seoul International Computer Music Festival (Performance, 2015)
Tsonami Festival Chile (Radio broadcast, 2021)
Venice Architecture Biennale (temporary installation at French pavilion, 2023)
ZKM Karlsruhe (Performance, 2014)
COURSES & LECTURES
Elective courses and seminar weeks at ETH Zurich, 2015-2022
Invited Artist in Sound Arts BA at Valais School of Art (EDHEA), 2022-2023
Guest Lecturer Sound Arts, University of the Arts Bern, 2020-2023
Lectures and Workshops at Kyoto Institute of Technology (2015-2019), Berlin University of the Arts, Zurich University of the Arts, Sound Studies Lab Copenhagen, Rhythmic Music Conservatory Goethe Institute Marseille, University of Würzburg, University of Bern, Bauhaus University Weimar, Filmhaus Köln, Ausstellungsraum Klingental Basel, Sound Unlimited Basel etc.
Workshop at Kyoto Institute of Technology, Photo by Christophe Girot
MUSIC AND SOUND FOR FILM AND THEATRE (SELECTION)
Crying glacier (Documentary, directed by Lutz Stautner), 2023 (location sound, sound design and mix)
Not Just Roads (Documentary, directed by Nitin Bathla & Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou), 2020 (Sound design and mix)
Fieldworking (Documentary, directed by Laura Harrington), 2020 (location sound, sound design, mix)
Zustand und Gelände (Documentary, directed by Ute Adamczewski), 2019 (Music & Score)
Die Unverheiratete (Nationaltheater Mannheim, directed by Florian Fischer), 2015 (Music & sound design)
Der Fall M. (OFS / Kammerspiele München, directed by Florian Fischer), 2014
Cassy - Meditations on the Dancefloor (Documentary, directed by Marietta Kesting), 2014 (Music & sound design)
Medusa´s raft (Video Installation, directed by Stracke/Seibt), 2013 (Sound)
Claudiu & The Fish (Short film, directed by Andrei Tanase), 2013 (Music)
Weil ich dich nicht mehr liebe (Video Installation, directed by Stracke/Seibt), 2013 (Sound design)
Simultan (Video Installation, Simultanhalle Köln, directed by Stracke/Seibt), 2013 (Sound design)
The End (Video Installation, Haus der Kunst München, dir. by Stracke/Seibt), 2012 (Sound design)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
"The sounds of melting landscapes. Facing the crisis with sonic intimacy", in "Landscapes of water. (Co)Designing Hope in the Climate Crisis", ed. by Laura Cipriani, Routledge (upcoming)
"Knowing a Place by Ear. Approaches to the sonic research of landscapes", in "Researching Otherwise: New Directions in Landscape and Urban research", ed. by Nitin Bathla, gta Verlag (upcoming)
„Der Proximity-Effekt“. In: INSERT. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries, 5, sich verlandschaften – in relationalen Praktiken, 2024.
"Photosynthetic Beats", in: Sound, Fiction, Occupation, The Ball Theater, "Architecture d’aujourd’hui", Special issue, 2023
"White Elephant. Notes on an entangled field recording", in: Field Notes ed. by Gruenrekorder (Daniel Knef and Lasse-Marc Riek), January 2021.
“Listening Through the Bog” (with Lee Patterson) in Fieldworking, ed. by Laura Harrington, 2020
"On Only Dogs" with Florian Fischer in: "Out of Space : Sensory Practices and Placemaking, ed. by H. Schulze and C. Brosius, Paragrana ed. De Gruyter, 2019.
“Sampling Kyoto Gardens” (with Nadine Schütz and Matthias Vollmer) in Pamphlet 21, gta Publishers 2017
"Blue Hour Observatory" in Trans 30: Color with Lara Mehling (ETH Zurich biannual publication), 2017
“Les traces d’une année derrière la maison de mon père”, in Sonorité 10, Lucie éditions Nîme, 2015
“Observer, Jouer et recréer l’environnement”, in Sonorité 9, Lucie éditions Nîme, 2014
Recording Morteratsch glacier, Photo by Lutz Stautner
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