“Soundcinema” Festival Düsseldorf: Full concentration while listening in 7.1

When the media scientist Maximilian Haberer (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf) founded “Soundcinema” in 2019, it was the first festival for “Recorded Sounds for experimental, electronic and electro-acoustic music and sound art” worldwide.

The organizing team, which has grown to three people, is also assured of this exceptional role in 2026: To date, there is no other festival with a focus on pre-produced music. The format is well received: Every year, “Soundcinema” attracts a diverse audience across all age cohorts and fills the hall at the Freie Forum Theater Düsseldorf.

The rooms are part of a concept that offers several unconventional settings: the theater space is a black box, dressed entirely in black, the stage is empty and can hardly be seen. Instead, there is a 7.1 system that is hardly noticeable with its dark speakers. 7.1 means that in addition to seven individually controllable speakers, three on each side, one at the front, there is also a subwoofer for bass frequencies.

This is the reception room for the festival and its sound compositions. Only a dim blue ceiling light dimly illuminates the room. The focus is on undistracted auditory reception. The one-day format thus follows the ideas of acoustics, a currently highly acclaimed field of music and sound research (originated in France in the 1950s), which pursues the invisibility of the sound source and the ideal of “pure hearing”.

“Soundcinema” is both a festival and a competition in which five participants compete in two categories (one with an annual changing theme, the other is free) with pre-produced pieces and are assessed by a three-member jury. There is also an audience award. All three prizes are worth 750 euros each. 700 submissions from all over the world prove that this is also valued by the international community.

Contributions come primarily as acoustic compositions, which bring together highly complex hardware and software setups in their purely electronic or electroacoustic pieces, recordings of analog instruments, field recordings. Terms such as “neural network”, “asymmetric buffering”, “granular synthesis” and of course “artificial intelligence” also took up a lot of space last Wednesday, at the eighth edition of the festival.

The fact that there are both super experimental, quite strenuous and challenging sound collages as well as more fun, more conventional vocal compositions lies in the vagueness of the specifications. This is a situation that is expressly welcomed by festival organizers and audiences.

It is precisely the variety, I learned from two visitors, that makes the “Soundcinema” so exciting: “You never know what will happen next.”

As a successful festival, “Soundcinema” Düsseldorf is proof that not only artists, but also curators and organizers want more experimentation.