- Nika Schmitt
- 1d
- 1 min read
2025
55x85x500cm, galvanised steel, Megaphones (8), stepper motors(8), drivers(2), microcontrollers(2), amplifiers(1), condenser microphones(2)
fc: Simon Vogel
The sound installation stille laute marks the opening of the Bonn Beethovenfest 2025. The Beethoven Foundation Bonn will exhibit the work for three months in the pavilion-like entrance area of the Universität / Markt underground station, opposite the Kreuzkirche, as the concluding project of its 15-year initiative soundforum 'bonn hoeren'.
In 'stille laute', Schmitt focuses on everyday noises and sounds that create expectations without fulfilling them. Two towers to the left and right of the pavilion staircase are equipped with rotatable loudspeakers that align themselves in the space, move, and pause. These loudspeakers capture both their surroundings and the sounds of their own mechanical motion and play them back immediately.
The continuous presence of people moving up and down the stairs constantly reshapes the acoustic environment of the station entrance. Footsteps, voices, brief pauses, each of these elements is recorded, reflected, and made audible again through the rotating speakers. No words or announcements emerge from the speakers. And yet they remain present: a faint hum, an electronic whirring, the sound of readiness, announcing something that never arrives.
The speakers listen and allow us to listen along. The installation invites a brief pause, mirroring the speakers’ own movements, to explore the subtle boundary between noise and communication. In this way, stille laute accompanies the daily passage through the space with a fragile, fleeting sonic trace, a fine acoustic layer between function and attention.
