20th Long Night of Science 2024
09 – 10 November 2024, Experimental Hall, Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources, RWTH Aachen University
Concert installation · choral singing · water experiment

Photos by Philip Kistner

Research, music and media art merge in WASSERBAUMUSIK. For one weekend, the experimental hall of RWTH Aachen becomes a suspended landscape of sound, light and water. Researchers, the Collegium Musicum Aachen choir, and Wellenbad meet in a shared space of experiment and performance. Between the long experimental flumes, shifting situations of concert, installation and observation emerge.

Live electronic music meets choral works from Monteverdi to Cage, alongside sounds, data and voices. Sensors originally designed to measure water levels are repurposed as playable instruments – hand movements shape sound, measurement data becomes audible.

The flumes themselves become active agents: they flow, speak, respond to light and sound. Across eight audio channels, an immersive acoustic current emerges in which science and music dissolve into one another.

09–10 November 2024
20:00, approx. 3 hours
scientific · shifting stages · exploratory

Wellenbad – concept, direction, live electronics, flume texts, video projection
Chor des Collegium Musicum RWTH – vocals
Tobias Haussig – vocal ensemble direction
Ilka Seifert – concert design
Inge Zeppenfeld – MörgensLab direction
Dr.-Ing. Elena Klopries – coordination (senior researcher)
B. Sc. Kristian Brodersen – coordination & technical direction (head of experimental hall, measurement technology)
David Bollig, Anne Mozer, Dr.-Ing. Harish Selvam – researchers
Stefanie Roesner – narrator (flume texts)

Free admission, no registration required
In cooperation with the Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources RWTH and MörgensLab of Theater Aachen.
With special thanks to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Holger Schüttrumpf and his team

A space of measurement and music.
Between data and bodies, water begins to listen.
And everything that flows stands still for a moment.