Sound Practice Research
The Sound Practice Research course within the master’s program of the Institute for Pop minus Music at Folkwang University of the Arts is dedicated to the theoretical and practical exploration of sound and music in all its dimensions. Led by artist and musician Jan St. Werner and a prolific group of lectureres and guests it offers a unique interdisciplinary framework that spans cultural studies, musicology, sound art, performance, aesthetics, artistic research, media production, popular and experimental composition. Students engage critically and creatively with sound and listening, developing individual and collaborative approaches to sonic conceptualizing, making, and investigation. Our Master’s program approaches sound as an artistic medium in its own right—one that extends beyond music. Sound is our point of departure, but not our destination: music is understood as one of many possible outcomes within a wider field of artistic, spatial, performative, and technological practices.
The program is grounded in both theory and experimentation. Students engage with contemporary art, sound studies, and popular culture through dedicated theory courses, while developing their own practice in production and rehearsal studios. Collective experiments in sound, performance, and listening form a central part of the curriculum.
We place particular emphasis on the relationship between sound, space, and architecture, exploring how sound shapes environments and how environments, in turn, shape perception. Workshops led by guest artists, composers, and researchers introduce diverse methodologies and perspectives, while excursions and field trips extend learning beyond the institution.
Students build instruments, develop installations, and create site-specific and experimental works. Through this combination of critical reflection, technical skill, and artistic exploration, the program supports practices that move fluidly between music, sound art, performance, media art, and beyond.
At the heart of the program is Folkwang University of the Arts, recognized worldwide as one of the most vibrant and prolific institutions for the arts in Germany. With its unique tradition of integrating different disciplines under one roof, Folkwang fosters a cross-disciplinary environment ideal for experimental sound work and research-led artistic practice.
To learn more about the tuition-free program and how to apply, please contact: soundpracticeresearch@folkwang-uni.de
Application period: January, 15 – March 15, 2026 https://pruefung.folkwang-uni.de/
“It’s generally taken for granted that music expresses certain ideas about culture. We listen not just for the artist’s voice or sound, but for the community they represent or address. But given that sound is innately porous and borderless, music also challenges and redefines community. Sound seeks to eavesdrop and blur, blend and devour that which is not itself. Music may depend on melody, rhythm, harmony, all signs of community. But it also feeds on difference, disharmony, noise. It is this latter hunger that needs more attention, more history. So does the politics of this hunger as it relates to cultural origins and cultural dispersion. Our goal is to study this sonic promiscuity. Not to discipline or erase it, but to learn from it as it provides a map of new cultural forms and new notions of time.“ – Louis Chude-Sokei for Sound Practice Reserach, 2025
Image Credits: Harry Schnitger – Eunice Maurice – Silja Beck – Shortwave Collective – Sound Practice Research – Vanessa Arndt – Ericka Manuel Villatoro Guzman – Lennart Pimpl – Victoria Tomaschko – Julian Petrich – Agnes Zimmermann