Room with Strings (Raum mit Saiten)

​Interactive Sound Installation
22 September 2024, 14:00–16:00
PROGR Performance Space 369, Bern
 

Room with Strings invited children, adults, and seniors alike to enter, explore, and co-create a shared acoustic atmosphere through touch, play, and listening.

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Designed by Barbara Balba Weber and Mehdi Hesamizadeh, the installation stretched very long strings across the room and onto resonating objects. These unconventional instruments responded to the subtlest of interactions—pulls, plucks, vibrations—requiring attentiveness and slowness. The entire room became an interdependent body of sound, shaped by the actions of its participants.

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The event was part of Das Lotter-Orchester, Weber’s ongoing instrumental theater project developed for and with older people who have limited access to experimental cultural creation. At the heart of the project is the transformation of discarded everyday items and broken instruments into musical objects that serve as portals to memory, storytelling, and communal exploration.
 

Room with Strings echoed this philosophy by offering a prototype for participatory, non-competitive sonic experience. Instead of stage and audience, there was only shared presence. Instead of noise, a whispering field of vibration. No performance—just play.
 

The installation reflects the project’s deeper aim: to make contemporary artistic practices—those inspired by Dada, Fluxus, and experimental music—accessible to people with little formal exposure to them, especially seniors. It also served as a gentle training ground, a poetic sketch of how listening, dialogue, and improvisation can strengthen community ties across generations.