The Sound Practice Research course 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 supported by an international team of faculty and guest contributors, the programme provides an interdisciplinary framework that brings together cultural studies, musicology, visual art, music, performance, artistic research, media production, and methodologies of contemporary and experimental composition.
Students engage critically and creatively with sound and listening, developing individual and collaborative approaches to sonic conceptualizing, making, and investigation. This two-year Master’s programme approaches sound as an autonomous artistic medium that extends beyond music. While sound serves as its point of departure, it is by no means its sole destination: music is understood as one of many possible modes of expression within an expanded 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 cultures 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.
Other focuses are the creation of site-specific and experimental installations, performances, and instrument building. Through this combination of technical skill, artistic exploration, and critical reflection, the program moves fluidly between music, sound art, performance, architecture, media, and theory.
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 such as Music, Acting and Performing Arts, Design, Photography, Dance and Theatre 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, 2027 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: Lennart Pimpl – Harry Schnitger – Eunice Maurice – Silja Beck – Shortwave Collective – Vanessa Arndt – Ericka Manuel Villatoro Guzman – Victoria Tomaschko – Julian Petrich – Agnes Zimmermann – Sound Practice Research