SoundScene

04/02/2025

🎉 Sound Scene 2025: Connected Artists Announcement 🎉

We are thrilled to share the exciting lineup for Sound Scene 2025: Connected!

🍄🍄 This year, we celebrate working together — symbiosis, partnerships, and the ways differences can be complementary and lead to a more vibrant world. 🌱🌱

Installations:
Echo Nexus - David Cardona, Alvaro Morales, Anna Schwartz

Touch - Katrin Enni

We are a Pattern - Duncan Figurski

Control - Emily Francisco

Housework Commons - Jocelyn Ho, Bryan Jacobs, Margaret Schedel

Tag Team - Synthador, Roman Martinez

Workshop/ Installation:
A Thousand Mornings - Double Yolk Collective: Beccy Abraham, Laura Coe, Alan Kuang, Albert Zhang

Performances:
Audio Flux Circuit 5: In 3D - Julie Shapiro, John DeLore, Eric Drysdale

Below the Surface - Farida Hughes, Matt Keown

The Power of Sound! Harmony & Dissonance Surround Us - Estephanie Rose, Manuel De La Luz, Iliana Garabyare

I Resist This - Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, Leo Grierson, Peter Pattengill

Kimyan Law Live - Kimyan Law

✨ Join us at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
May 31 - June 1

is a free, all-ages celebration of sonic and sensory arts m featuring artists from Washington, D.C. and around the world.

🎨 Shoutout to .design for designing this year’s stunning poster, capturing the beauty of symbiosis in the natural world.

💻 For updates visit: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/event/sound-scene-2025-2/



Image Description:
Multicolor foraging mushrooms burst out of the center of the Sound Scene: Connected poster for 2025. Patch cables and contact microphones from the audio world bloom in a root system below the mushrooms. The poster is hand drawn and says Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden below the mushroom root system.

10/09/2024

📣 We have returned from break and are ready to launch our 2025 RFP!

Sound Scene returns May 31, 2025 ✨

Sound Scene will explore the power and necessity of working together (symbiosis, partnerships, pairs, besties, teamwork), including the contrasts, complements, and collaborations that enrich our world.

Through interactive sound art installations, small group workshops, and live performances of dance, music and boundary busting expression, this multisensory art festival will highlight that which is shared.

✅ explore the RFP and leave any questions in the comments

✅ mark your calendars for Wednesday, November 13 for an RFP info session (more information to come!)

✅ RFP deadline is December 22

In the meantime keep listening! More to come. 🎧✨

06/18/2024

We are so excited to welcome Heike Kaltenbrunner!

EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT | HEIKE KALTENBRUNNER | SOUND SCENE 2024: SOLSTICE | STATE OF THE ARTS NIGHT

WHEN? June 22-23, 2024
WHERE? Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

Join us for an unforgettable sound experience at SoundScene featuring the Austrian sound artist Heike Kaltenbrunner!

Sound Scene returns to the Hirshhorn Museum with the theme Solstice, and 50 artists from around the globe to celebrate sound through multi-sensory art installations. What does balance sound like? What is illuminated by sunlight? What finds peace in darkness? This annual sound art festival features interactive artworks, live performances and small group workshops. Also, enjoy a one-night-only evening of cross-cultural inspiration when artists from the European Union will come together with Sound Scene artists during the State of the Arts Night X Sound Scene on Saturday, June 22 from 5:00PM until 11:00PM (registration recommended).

We are proud to support Heike Kaltenbrunner, who presents her sound installation close| distant. This walk-in installation is based on the sound instrument Proximity Organ, which is a combination of pipe organ and theremin. The pipes act as sound generators as well as proximity sensors, they create a variety of sounds and noises when visitors get closer and with changing air flow. Also, participants will be guided by Kaltenbrunner to create soft tones, hums and hisses to orchestrate an original and collaborative soundscape in a workshop.

Learn more here: https://soundscenefest.org/2024-festival/

06/14/2024

Hello sound friends! 🎧✨

We are just about a week away from Sound Scene at Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and we've been posting on that other Meta platform...

Sound Scene returns to Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden June 22 + 23, 2024.

Come celebrate summer solstice with 50 artists from around the globe and enjoy extended evening programming on the longest days of the year!

What does balance sound like? What is illuminated by sunlight? What finds peace in darkness?

Join us for this annual sound art festival featuring interactive artworks, live performances and mall group workshops.

Sound Scene is all ages, all free, all welcome! ASL interpretation available on-site all day.

Our friends at the Hirshhorn have been keeping this link up to the minute for you:

https://hirshhorn.si.edu/event/sound-scene-2024-solstice/ follow for registration and schedule updates- see you soon!

12/02/2023

Our 2024 RFP is due December 22, 2023. There's still time!

Thinking about applying? Visit our submission guidelines here:
https://soundscenefest.org/submit/

11/01/2023

✨🎧✨ Good morning Sound Scene artists and future Sound Scene artists ✨🎧✨

Our 2024 RFP is now open! Hit the link in bio for answers to all your questions!

Our theme is 🌞 Solstice 🌞

What does balance sound like?
What is illuminated by sunlight?
What finds peace in darkness?

Our programming will stretch late into the evening this June with extended Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden hours. 🌙✨

We look forward to reviewing your ideas!

10/27/2023

✨🎧 Happy Friday, sound family! This week we are considering discordant, surprising, potentially uncomfortable sounds.

How do you lean into a sound that might be startling? 🎧✨

Sound Scene returns to Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden June 22 & 23, 2024. Our annual request for proposals opens next week on November 1st and our Creative Advisory Committee is ready to review your 2024 ideas.

(First time artists should definitely apply.)

In the meantime, keep listening— even if it’s uncomfortable.

🎥: Carolyn Zaldivar Snow
Workshop: Theremin, Doris Chrysler, from Sound
Scene 2022 (check out The NY Theremin Society)

Visit our website www.soundscenefest.org for more information!

10/06/2023

✨🎧 What are you listening to this weekend? Where are you listening?

Do you hear the ocean? Songs? Commuter trains? Your heartbeat? Crickets?

Did you capture the sound? In memories, a field recorder, a tape loop?

Sound Scene returns to Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden June 22 & 23, 2024. Watch this space as we prepare our annual call for proposals over the next weeks! (First time artists should definitely apply.)

In the meantime, keep listening. ✨🎧

📸: Anthony Washington
🎧🎛️➿: DOWM (Stefan Tiefengraber), from Sound Scene 2023

*Made possible through generous support from the Austrian Cultural Forum Washington.

10/01/2023

✨🎧 Happy Sunday, sound explorers! ✨🎧

Looking for us?
We missed you too.

Sound Scene returns to Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden June 22 & 23, 2024 and we can’t wait to see you! Watch this space as we prepare our annual call for proposals over the next weeks.

In the meantime, keep listening. ✨🎧

📸 : Anthony Washington
👩🏽‍🚀🧑‍🚀👨‍🚀: Overview, (Interactive Installation) The Brayver Concern (James Garver and Rebecca Bray), from Sound Scene 2023

08/24/2023

Dear DCLL collective and Sound Scene community,

It is with a heavy heart that we write to inform you that this weekend, a beloved community member, Barry Schmetter, unexpectedly and suddenly passed away.

If you attended Sound Scene or a Listening Lounge, you likely met Barry. He was a frequent Sound Scene artist, listening lounge contributor, generous volunteer and our Virtual Sound Scene Technical Director throughout the pandemic. He was deeply involved across the D.C. arts community as an organizer of the DC Modular Synth Collective and event director of the 1,300 artist Artomatic festival. His own artistic interests (often under the moniker Resonant Space) spanned from sculpture to ecoacoustics, photography to modular synths. His easy laugh, infectious smile, and insatiable curiosity enriched our creative, communal, and personal lives and we are heartbroken and shocked by his passing.

We invite you to celebrate Barry's life this Sunday at Rhizome DC, from 12-4 pm. We will have food and drinks, flowers, and noise makers because Barry was the life of the party. All are welcome. Please RSVP so we can get a food count: https://www.punchbowl.com/parties/aca4119d34ed13372162

Barry loved to make noise. We hope that you'll take a moment today to listen to the environment around you, fill it with noise, and reflect on how Barry's work may have affected you. We also hope to honor Barry at Sound Scene 2024 and will share more information when we have it.

Our global sonic community is inextricably linked in ways large and small; while we often celebrate together, we now must grieve together. We send each of you our care with this difficult news.

In loving memory of Barry.
-Ian and Jocelyn

06/09/2023

Saying goodbye for now (but we know what happens "after the end")!

With gratitude to our 2023 partners Goethe-Institut Washington Austrian Cultural Forum Washington Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

We are looking forward to 2024 and will share our call for proposals in the fall. (Watch this space!)

Until next time-- keep making noise!

06/02/2023

It’s So Hard to Talk to You (Performance)
SIFU SUN

Striking, enduring, and destructive, the artist SIFU SUN works through physical and literal barriers in the piece “It’s so hard to talk to you.” Drawing inspiration from the Birth of Venus and the transition into motherhood, SIFU attempts to connect the selves through the looking glass.

Inspired by the struggle of acclimating after giving birth and becoming a single mother, It’s So Hard to Talk to You is a reflection of what is lost and gained through motherhood.

SIFU SUN writes, “Before baby was born, I was told to prepare for my death, the end of all that I know, so in that this performance is an attempt to further repair the disconnections caused by that medical professional and my own personal traumas. Giving birth has given me the chance to re-parent the self while parenting a child.”

Poised to be witnessed,
to repair the disconnections
from
persistent traumas
And
Contradicting pleasures
Through the inner and outer eye.
-SIFU SUN

The audience is invited to throw flowers on the stage and towards the artist as a sign of honor, gratitude, respect.

Live Performance:
June 4, 12 pm - Plaza

Sound Scene is free and open to the public. Open Saturday, June 3 and Sunday, June 4 from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Full festival schedule at www.soundscenefest.org