Sonar, Sanar y Soñar" - Klang, Heilung und Träume

Besuch in der Kardiologie des Weimarer Klinikums

Gongs, drums, mantras, overtone singing, and breathing techniques – cultures around the world have long used sound and voice in rituals and healing practices. Healing through vibration is among the oldest practices in human history. Even today, the body, heart, and brain respond immediately to sound.

In the project module “Sonar, Sanar y Soñar – Sound, Healing and Dreaming” (Summer Semester 2025), we explored these interrelations on a journey between personal perception and the perception of our acoustic environments, as well as through the rhythms of healing institutions.

Throughout the semester, a series of encounters gradually led us toward a deeper understanding. On April 29, actress Anna Windmüller guided a “Breathing Journey,” inviting us to attune to the inner rhythms of breath and body. From May 12–15, we traveled on an excursion to the Kulturhaus Wahrenberg, where walks through the landscape, listening to trees, and communal exchange created space for both collective and individual projects. It was there that the first ideas for the exhibition later presented at the Mini Sound Festival began to take shape.

On June 10, Florencia Curci and Tatiana Heuman joined us as part of the new Sonic Talks series with their project “SiestAria: Rhythms of Rest” — a guided collective siesta in which listening, dreaming, and resting became tangible forms of resistance against the logic of urgency and productivity. Within a live sound environment composed of shruti box, radios, field recordings, and electronics, participants were invited to lie down and drift.

On June 24, Kennedy Kathy visited with a workshop and radio conversation that expanded our perspectives on voice, ritual, and sonic imagination.

Our explorations also led us into medical and scientific contexts. During a visit to the cardiology department of the Weimar Clinic, we reflected on the close relationship between rhythm, vibration, and healing in clinical practice. On May 27, the renowned neuroscientist Wolf Singer visited the Faculty of Art and Design. In his lecture, “Oscillations, Waves and Interferences as a Lingua Franca of the Cerebral Cortex,” he described how brain activity is structured through rhythmic oscillations and wave-like interferences. In contrast, he discussed the digital, hierarchical logic of artificial neural networks and so-called large language models, emphasizing that the brain operates in an analog, highly dynamic manner — a system that may inspire the development of new, more efficient forms of artificial intelligence. His interdisciplinary approach connected neuroscience, computer science, and sound, opening new perspectives on rhythm, cognition, and healing.

The project module concluded with the Mini Sound Festival, where students presented their works in close dialogue with the course module “Hearing is touching at a distance.” Through practical exercises, excursions, and conversations, a fabric of inner and outer listening emerged — raising the question of what role sound can play in shaping spaces of well-being, and what dreams of healing worlds might be imagined within it.