Queer Sonic Fingerprint w/ Isabel Bredenbröker and Adam Pultz

The six-channel sound installation Queer Sonic Fingerprint, created by sound artist Adam Pultz and anthropologist Isabel Bredenbröker was recently produced in and shown at Art Laboratory Berlin. Queer Sonic Fingerprint speculatively imagines non-normative relations around cultural belongings in ethnological museums and beyond. The installation amplifies the collection‘s materiality through the impulse response recordings—or, more poetically, sonic fingerprints—of ethnographic objects. In the installation, the fingerprints are subjected to a genetic algorithm that continually produces new generations of fingerprints carrying the acoustic properties of their ancestors. Isabel and Adam describe the creation of the installation, discuss how sound may elucidate non-normative relations, and talk about why a queerfeminist critique of evolutionary computing is relevant and how it may produce new sonorities.

For a detailed step-by-step explanation of sonic fingerprinting and evolutionary computing, follow this link.

Biographies:

Isabel Bredenbröker is an anthropologist working between academia and art. They currently hold a postdoctoral faculty position at the Institute for Anthropology and Cultural Research, University of Bremen. Here, Isabel teaches film and multimodal anthropological methods while conducting research on swimming practices. Isabel’s work has focused on material and visual culture, specifically the anthropology of death, plastics and synthetic materials, anthropology of art and museums, queer theory and intersectionality, situatedness and autoethnography, colonialism, cleaning and waste. They have conducted field research in Australia, Ghana and Togo, Greece, South Africa and Germany. Isabel employs multimodal ethnographic methods and engages with different formats in the field of public anthropology: They have produced ethnographic films, worked with field recording and (co-)curated as well as contributed to exhibitions in museum and contemporary art contexts.

Isabel enjoys the collaborative production of works and collective exchange as a different way of engaging with knowledge, also in teaching. Their first monograph ‘Rest in Plastic: Death, time and synthetic materials in a Ghanaian Ewe community’ was published open access in June 2024 with Berghahn. Isabel is a co-convener of the European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA), an editor of The February Journal and a co-organizing member of the Network for Decent Labour in Academia (NGAWiss).

Adam Pultz Melbye is a double bass player, composer, and improviser working in the field of acoustic and electronic sound. Adam’s work spans live performance, sound installation, sound for dance, theatre, film, multimedia, sculpture, algorithmic design, and instrument building. They have performed and exhibited work in Europe, Australia, the US, and Japan, while appearing on close to 50 albums. Adam often performs with semi-autonomous feedback systems, such as the FAAB (feedback-actuated augmented bass). Adam holds a practice-led PhD in music technology from SARC, Queen’s University Belfast.