One of the ways that Turmoil exists within us is through a broken dialogue between expectations and reality, as much on an personal level as on a larger social and political scale. Puncturing through the messiness of our daily lives to occupy our senses with brazen messages, this kind of disconnect is exploited by the many forces competing for our attention or sympathy. Masterful or clumsy, informed or blind, subtle or shriekingly loud, our own physiological and emotional responses are being weaponized against us to confuse, intimidate and entice.

To cope with the stress of overstimulation, we erect boundaries and dampen our senses just to temper the turmoil. We have been doing this for so long that we have forgotten how to truly listen. During CTM, MONOM – Berlin's Center for Spatial Sound and home to the 4DSOUND spatial sound system – will become a place to switch off unwanted disturbances and immerse oneself in rich and vivid sonic worlds that will reopen our ears and awaken our senses.

Sound is a medium that we experience with our entire body. Similarly, the 4DSOUND system is a habitable instrument that merges with and decentralizes the performance space, allowing for sound to come from all around us and move through us. Experiencing sound in this way opens us up to emotional and physical responses inscribed in our ancient and recent memories, providing an opportunity to experience our senses as a gateway to more meaningful connections between inner and outer space and to transcend the turmoil.

To this end, for CTM, MONOM has commissioned Gaika, Pan Daijing, FIS, and TCF to use the 4DSOUND system to build intensely visceral experiences that will range from calming and hypnotizing to thought-provoking and radical.

Artist and researcher IOANN will present "Imagining the Hyperspace", a work he developed during a residency at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest. The work seeks to reveal the multidimensional nature of listening by exploring complex 4-dimensional geometrical shapes in sound. Listeners will in turn become aware that the construct of space we perceive is an attribute of our consciousness, and that this perception can be altered.

Finally, on the festival’s first weekend, composer John Connell and art director Florence To will give the German premiere of "NOQTURNL", an overnight performance exploring the threshold between waking and dreaming, developed in collaboration with the Spatial Sound Institute since 2014. To and Connell immerse participants in a spatial field of sound and light designed to open access to the hyper­-lucid: the imaginative and highly receptive state of intelligence available within the dreaming mind.