— Syllabus Excerpt —

Course Description

This course explores the cultures, histories, movements and mindsets embedded throughout the material infrastructures of music (and sound). With a vast media archaeological perspective we investigate the intersections between technological practices and sound (and music) while grounding our inquiry in the ethos of reverse engineering and the spirit of empowerment found in DIY / open source cultures. Through student led research, (group) reading and conversations, we will explore the material politics embedded in music (and sound) as a way to imagine new perspectives to incorporate into practice.

Learning Approach

Open Art and Music Cultures is a student-driven, discussion-intensive seminar grounded in collective inquiry and critical reflection. I’ll be doing most of the talking in the first session — from there, the course unfolds through a mix of discussion, mini-lectures and collaborative exploratory exercises.

Goals

At the end of the term, students should be able to:

• • – Ask critical questions about the intersections of technology, sound, culture, society and ecology.
  • – Identify and analyze the embedded material politics in musical and sonic technologies.
  • – Imagine and propose alternative, more open and equitable approaches to art-making, sonic practices and cultural production.
  • – Reflect on how their own artistic/sonic practices engage with material infrastructures, critically examine their methods, and articulate the intentions behind their creative and technical choices.
  • – Leave the course with greater confidence, precision, and skill in critically engaging with sound technologies and infrastructures in both research and practice.

Course Requirements

Reading, active engagement and consistent presence are mandatory. This course is built around reading together, asking questions, and making sense of complex ideas as a group. Some texts you come across may feel dense or unfamiliar (that’s part of the nature of academic writing). Don’t worry if things don’t click right away! Confusion is a valid starting point (and often where the most interesting conversations begin). Our shared annotations and class discussions are designed to support this process, so your questions and reflections are essential!

Note

The collective annotation assignment and general student led orientation of this course is borrowed from the work of one of my mentors, Jonathan Sterne (✝), he passed away in March 2025 🙁 Jonathan was deeply committed to building generous, collaborative academic environments within the Sound Studies milieu — in that spirit, my hope is that this course creates space for curiosity, collaboration, and alternative ways of thinking about sound/art/music in its many forms and contexts.

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Open Circuit : A Participatory Sound Happening 

Hosted by Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Students (UdK) | Collaborative DIY Practice

Friday 8 May / 17–20h / Flutgraben e.V. / Free!

Mehrzweckhalle, Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin

Open Circuit marks the culmination of the Collaborative DIY Practice workshop: a rigorous hands-on introduction to DIY electronics and sound. The event presents a Fluxus-inspired participatory happening emerging from a week of collective making, where students explored sound by opening up its physical infrastructures through deconstruction, reverse engineering, and material-led experimentation.

In Collaborative DIY Practice, participants investigate how electronic components behave when approached with curiosity rather than formulas and equations. Drawing on media-archaeological methods, feminist hacking strategies, and post-digital methodologies, the workshop demystifies sound technology through bottom-up material engagement. Troubleshooting becomes an improvisational technique, a way of listening to materials and following where they lead. 

The happening presents a constellation of live and participatory encounters that braid performance, participation and fun electronics into an open, collective experience — come join in!

Artists: Anaparn Pinpradub, Trevor Doherty, Francesco Fasciolo, Jae Shik Kim, Daniel Krumland, Grace Lu, Marianthie Makropoulou, Marina Mason, Louis Quek, Nithin Shamsudhin, Elisa Visca, Yuchin Chen

Instructor: Darsha Hewitt

Special Thanks to Flutgraben e.V. !

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Summer Term 2026 | Phase: Focus Module: Practice
Course Title: Collaborative DIY Practice | Workshop | May 4-8, 2026
Instructor: Darsha Hewitt (She/Her)  Email: studio@darsha.org  

Course Description
Collaborative DIY Practice is a rigorous hands-on introduction to DIY electronics that creates empowering encounters with sound by opening up its physical infrastructures. Drawing on media-archaeological approaches, feminist hacking strategies, and post-digital methodologies, this workshop demystifies sound technologies through direct material engagement. Participants will learn through deconstruction, reverse engineering, and playful material-led exploration (rather than memorizing equations and formulas).

Taking place at the Mehrzweckhalle at Flutgraben e.V., the workshop provides an open and supportive learning environment where students gain practical knowledge about tools and techniques for intuitive experimentation, develop troubleshooting skills, and discover how electronic components actually behave through lively hands-on inquiry.

Inspired by Fluxus Happenings and Hack Lab formats, we will learn, build, eat, and collaborate together each day, culminating in a public participatory event on May 8th. This collective presentation will invite audiences to experience sound as a spontaneous, multidisciplinary, and collaborative practice.

This workshop is for students who want to explore collaborative art-making methods where experimentation, risk-taking, and discovery shape the process. No previous experience with DIY electronics is required—people who consider themselves beginners are especially encouraged to join.

Since we will be staging an event, it is especially useful if everyone brings diverse skills and perspectives to the course, whether that’s soldering experience, conceptual thinking, organizational abilities, documentation skills, or simply enthusiasm and willingness to try new things.

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Artist Residency, Grundschule an der Hasenheide & Schule im Nibelungenviertel Bernau (DE), 2025/26

A school-based artist residency programme placing working artists directly in Brandenburg classrooms. Through an open studio model, pupils and teachers visit the atelier, observe artistic practice in action, and participate in hands-on creative work. MAX is an initiative of the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, continued and developed by the Plattform Kulturelle Bildung Brandenburg, and supported by the Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur Brandenburg, Schering Stiftung, EWE Stiftung, and Liebelt Stiftung. The programme was awarded the Zukunftspreis für Kulturbildung by the Kulturstiftung der Länder and Deutsche Bank Stiftung in 2018.

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A hands-on sonic happening and installation in which visitors collaboratively built an immersive sound environment and jewelry using basic electronic components and e-waste — part of WRO’s Instrumentarium series reimagining the piano as an ecological and artistic object.

What is the sound of one popcorn popping?
If you were a kernel, how would you pop?
What happens when we all pop together?

Popcorn in Training is a hands-on happening that transforms into a sound installation, inviting the public to collaboratively build an immersive sonic experience while exploring the material foundations of electronic music: wires, resistors, capacitors, and chips.

Our handmade square-wave oscillators echo the metronomic knocking and tapping of the deconstructed piano. Together, participants create a soundscape where pops, clicks, and squeaks slip in and out of sync, sparking unexpected encounters with harmony and happenstance.

This work encourages playful experimentation with DIY electronics and dynamic troubleshooting as an improvisational approach to experimental music-making. The project draws on media archaeology while demystifying technology through direct material engagement.

The public is invited to actively participate in building circuits and/or cable necklaces or simply drop in to listen as the installation evolves. The event kicks off with the pop of the first oscillator and gradually builds over the course evening.

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Popcorn Ausbildung — Open Hertzlab
Workshop / Performance, ZKM Hertz-Lab, Karlsruhe (DE), November 2025

A participatory happening presented as part of the Giga-Hertz Festival for Electronic Music and Sound Art

Wie klingt ein einzelnes Popcorn, wenn es platzt? Und wie verändert sich dieser Sound in einem Kollektiv?
In diesem Workshop-Sound-Happening bauen die Teilnehmenden mit selbstgebastelten Rechteckoszillatoren eine lebendige Klanglandschaft auf. Gemeinsam erschaffen wir eine experimentelle Mehrspur-Drum-Machine, bei der Knackgeräusche, Klicks und Quietschen synchron und asynchron ineinanderfließen und so unvorhersehbare Begegnungen von Harmonie und Zufall hervorrufen. Die Veranstaltung beginnt mit dem Knacken des ersten Oszillators und steigert sich im Laufe von drei Stunden allmählich.

Bei „Popcorn in Training” wird das spielerische Experimentieren mit DIY-Elektronik und improvisiertem Troubleshooting als improvisatorischer Ansatz für experimentelles Musizieren gefördert. Alle, die sich für Klang, Elektrizität und Popcorn interessieren, sind willkommen – insbesondere Anfänger:innen!

—

What is the sound of one popcorn popping? If you were a kernel, how would you pop? And what happens when we all pop together?
This hybrid workshop / sonic happening invites you to collaboratively build an immersive sound experience using handmade square-wave oscillators. Together, we create an experimental multi-track drum machine where pops, clicks, and squeaks slip in and out of sync, sparking unexpected encounters with harmony and happenstance.

“Popcorn in Training” encourages playful experimentation with DIY electronics and dynamic troubleshooting as an improvisational approach to experimental music-making. Open to anyone curious about sound, electricity, and popcorn – beginners especially welcome!

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A major group exhibition centred on the Fluxus collection of gallerist Inge Baecker, presented alongside contemporary artists responding to this legacy.
Featuring new work “Anleitung zum anhören Kaputter Musik” — a sound and material response to Milan Knížák’s pioneering “Destruierte Musik.”

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HOW WE MET

08.11.2025—01.02.2026
Kunstmuseum Bochum
Kortumstraße 147
44787 Bochum, Germany

Opening
Friday, 07.11.2025, 19:00
20:00 – Performance by Taka Kagitomi, Growth Ring of Vibration

Rooted in the spirit of Fluxus, HOW WE MET transforms the museum into a lively space for encounter, sound experiments, and playful construction—where community, transience, humor, and utopia meet. The show brings together works and documents from the museum’s Fluxus collection alongside newly created site-specific structures and films. An accompanying action program, HOWWEEEEE, activates the exhibition with workshops, open mics, performances, and city walks.

New productions by
Taka Kagitomi, Darsha Hewitt, bureaumilieux (Jean-Michaël Taillebois & Sébastien Tripod) & Mélissa Rouvinet.

With thanks to Kunstmuseum Bochum and partners.

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Exhibition at Flutgraben, Berlin
September 12 – 21, 2025

THE DELUGE is an exhibition project that fills the presentation spaces of Flutgraben with a flood of artistic positions and their publics. Taking a literal understanding of the building’s name and playing with its mythical dimension, THE DELUGE gestures toward floods (and graves) both allegorical and actual.

At this time of ecological transformation and global political uncertainty—when historical power structures are being transfigured in radical and uncertain ways—the urgency in artistic practice has rarely been more palpable. THE DELUGE brings together diverse voices for shared reflection and discussion.

Contributing Artists

Tarek Abbar, Thomas Bayrle, Gerry Bibby, Erik Bünger, Eric D. Clark,
Mikala Hyldig Dal, Marta Dyachenko, DJ Puddle, Fehras Publishing Practices,
Pyrolator, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Gudrun Gut, Janice Guy, Darsha Hewitt,
Olga Hohmann, Travis Jeppesen, Mischa Leinkauf, Simon Mann,
Matthias Krause Hamrin, Kirsi Mikkola, Thomias Radin, Michael Sayles,
Margot Schmitt, Wieland Schönfelder, Pola Sieverding, Stephanie Stein,
Christoph Steinmeyer, Tommy Stöckel, Maria Turik, Lauryn Youden,
Ekrem Yalcindag, Theresa Weber

Curated by Lee Plested
in collaboration with Matthias Krause Hamrin

Opening Program

Friday, September 12, 2025

• 6 – 10 PM · Exhibition Opening

• 8 PM · Performance by Olga Hohmann

• 10 – 2 AM · Afterparty featuring Eric D. Clark

Flutgraben e.V.
Am Flutgraben 3
12435 Berlin, Germany

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August 28th – November 9th 2025
Total Babes
Autumn Exhibition 2025

The exhibition Total Babes invites viewers to explore themes of softness, power and feminine energy in contemporary art. At its heart, the exhibition examines the multifaceted nature of cuteness, the divine feminine and the animistic belief that (mother) nature is a living, dynamic entity. These concepts are viewed through the lens of how they manifest in people, places and things, particularly at a time when feminine archetypes are reemerging and reshaping our understanding of identity and balance.

Bringing together works across a range of mediums, Total Babes presents diverse interpretations of archetypes, mythological figures and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. Through these varied perspectives, the exhibition offers an engaging and thought-provoking exploration of vulnerability, strength and empowerment by opening a portal to bring the ethereal down to earth.

The featured artists are:
Berglind Ágústsdóttir | Hrefna Sigurðardóttir
Darsha Hewitt | Svava Skúladóttir
Dýrfinna Benita Basalan | Róska
Gunnhildur Hauksdóttir | Gunnþórunn Sveinsdóttir
Hildur Ása Henrýsdóttir | Kíkó Korriró
Hulda Vilhjálmsdóttir | Kjarval
Veronica Brovall | Sóley Eiríksdóttir

Curated by Jasa Baka and Petra Hjartardóttir.

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