Documentation / Acoustic Horizon at UdK Berlin Art Award

Turn the horn, tune your ear.

Acoustic Horizon was nominated for UdK Berlin Art Award in May 2025 and installed at the main building on Hardenbergstraße 33, where it turned its focus inward—towards the institution itself.

It became a temporary listening center for the campus, asking:

Which sounds should we amplify in the institution?

Özcan Ertek – Acoustic Horizon, 2021

Interactive Sound Installation

Metal horn, compass sensor, speaker, amplifier, microcontroller

“Acoustic Horizon” is an interactive sound installation that deals with the acoustic relationship between the human and its environment. Using a soundscape approach, the installation reflects on both the history, present and possible future environmental quality of specific locations by actively blurring the boundaries of proximity and distance.

The installation consists of a hexagonal horn-shaped sculpture, transistors, solar panels, speakers, shakers and a location sensor (electronic compass) that can be rotated.

A rotating metal horn, situated at the center of UdK, plays different soundscapes depending on its direction. Each orientation corresponds to an institutional barrier, spatial injustice, or socio-political tension referenced in the Critical Diversity Policy Strategy for Antidiscrimination and Diversity published by the Berlin University of the Arts.

Originally conceived as a nomadic instrument for listening to distant soundscapes, the installation now turns inward—toward the very institution in which it stands. It is a site-responsive structure that listens and reacts to the sound environment it inhabits.

From wheelchair ramps to protest archives, from testimonies of exclusion to calls for change, the horn curates what is often left unheard. It channels voices of protest, care, language, and demand—rendering the institution itself audible through its contradictions.

Which sounds should we need to amplify in the university?

video by @cihankucuk_

Thanks a lot to Madoka for her presence

produced in the context of “Island of Things”, Summer 2021, @newmediaclass_udk @s4ntp_gencomp

“Acoustic Horizon” will be activated next week at @baerenzwinger.berlin as part of “Relations of Place.”