Heike Sperling

Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts offers a unique master's degree program that enriches artistic jazz education in Germany. Their partner is the hr-Bigband – one of the world's most renowned ensembles of its kind.

Workshop @ HfMDK Frankfurt

What you need to start your communication with the public
December 15th,  2022

Fabulous Hendrika Entzian, professor for Bigband & Composition/Arrangement in Jazz and also current chair of the master's degree program in Big Band for players, writers and conductors at the prestigious Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, invited me to give a 2-days workshop on Public Relations.

Had the great pleasure to work with five exciting talents on their approach how to introduce their upcoming projects to the public. The students developed a new strategy to communicate their work, and started to widen the perspective on whom they are talking to e.g via social media platforms.

In short, the workshop strengthened self consciousness and empathy by asking, what do you want to communicate and to whom?

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Seminar @ Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln

Visual Music in the 1980s
June 7th,  2022

Jono Podmore, professor of Popular Music and chair of the master's degree program in Music Production at the prestigious Cologne University of Music, invited me to talk to his class about one of my favorite subjects, Visual Music. 

In my two-day seminar we considered a classic in the realm of Visual Music, the 1982 American experimental non-narrative film Koyaanisqatsi produced and directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke. Only a few months earlier on August 1, 1981 MTV (an initialism of Music Television) launched from New York City, and changed our perception of music forever. The students used both milestones to contextualize their own music and visualizations.

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Talk @ Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln

A Perfect Match? On the Alliance of Sound and Visuals
June 24th,  2021

Jono Podmore, professor of Popular Music and chair of the master's degree program in Music Production at the prestigious Cologne University of Music, invited me to talk to his class about one of my favorite subjects, Visual Music. 

In my lecture I focused on the significance of the close interrelation between sound and images. I showed many examples from fields like experimental film, music video, and installation art to argue that the highest quality in audiovisual productions is only achieved if sound and visual producer work together in constant communication and exchange.

As founder and chair of the Visual Music concentration at the Institute of Music and Media (IMM) at the Robert Schumann music academy I am also editor-in-chief of the highly praised Visual Music Archive online forum.

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Talk @ field notes / Initiative Neue Musik

Design brief - a useful requirement for visual communication
May 11th, 2021

Lisa Benjes, progam coordinator at field notes in Berlin, invited me to give an online talk for contemporary musicians. I will introduce a specific way to brief designers as a tool to optimize their visual communication in order to get in contact with their listeners.

Via field notes' website: "field notes is a central resource of information and mentoring for the contemporary music scenes in Berlin provided by inm – the initiative neue musik berlin e.V. Its goals are to strengthen and improve production conditions for the independent contemporary music scenes in Berlin, and to raise public awareness of social relevance of the art form."

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Jury member @ DAAD

Postgraduate Studies in the Fields of Fine Art, Design, Visual Communication and Film
April 29th, 2021

Had the great honour to serve as jury member alongside my wonderful colleague Uwe Reinhardt for the Postgraduate Studies in the Fields of Fine Art, Design, Visual Communication and Film committee at Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst [German Academic Exchange Service].

Via the DAAD's website: "The DAAD is an association of German institutions of higher education and their student bodies. Convening in a general assembly, they elect the Executive Committee which oversees the organisation’s day-to-day operations. Since it was founded in 1925, the DAAD has supported more than 2.6 million academics in Germany and abroad. It relies on a strong organisational structure, a worldwide network of partners and alumni and a motivated staff of over 900 employees."

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Being different, 1970-86 (1981) by Anna Oppermann, single canvas, photo emulsion on canvas, hand-coloured.

Workshop @ Academy of Art and Design Basel

TEXTFILMSOUNDZITIERCOLLAGEN
April 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th, 2021

Rasso Auberger invited me to give the 4-day workshop at HyperWerk (Institute for Postindustrial Design) in Basel. HyperWerk is one of the institutes of the Academy of Art and Design in Basel. The students at HyperWerk are trained in complex process design to initiate and shape the social changes of the future.

Had the great pleasure and honor of co-teaching with Ralf Neubauer.
We named our workshop TEXTFILMSOUNDZITIERCOLLAGEN, and introduced the students to the estate of artists such as Mark Leckey, Arthur Lipsett, and Anna Oppermann.

Ralf and I also invited Phantom Kino Ballett (Sarah Szczesny and Lena Willikens) to talk with us about their deep and transformative performances. We asked Lena and Sarah how they managed to evolve their content, visions, and techniques during the pandemic.
And finally we read All about love by bell hooks as well as This is water by David Foster Wallace with the students.
The students worked in teams to compose a found footage-based experimental short film.

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Talk @ Goethe-Institut

A Perfect Match? On The Alliance between Sound and Visuals
July 9th, 2019

Jörg Süßenbach, head of the music devision at Goethe-Institute Germany, recommended to invite me to give a talk on the relationship between sound and visuals on August 29th for an international congregation of Goethe-Institute members in Cologne.

The delegation will be in Cologne to attend the SoundTrack Cologne which is focused on music for images.

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On Silencing @ Brückenmusik 25

Symposium: On Silencing – Zur Produktion der Stille
June 22nd, 2019

Prof. Dr. Swantje Lichtenstein and I have been invited by Theresa Nink and Volker Zander to discuss my list of female composers during the Brückenmusik 25 – On Silencing symposium on June 29th in the infamous hollow block of Deutzer Brücke.

I started to research female composers in contemporary music (post WW2) for a seminar at Institute for Music and Media at Robert Schumann conservatory in Düsseldorf. During another of my seminars Elisa Metz, post-graduate students at the M.Mus. program Klang und Realität, created an amazing fanzine on the subject. It is called Grapefruits – in honour of composer/artist Yoko Ono.

Elisa Metz will join us for the panel on June 29th to present the first issue of her magazine plus a limited series of 30 shirts which have the names of many of the brilliant composers and sound artists from my list on them.

Via Wikipedia: "Ono's small book titled Grapefruit is another seminal piece of conceptual art. First published in 1964, the book reads as a set of instructions through which the work of art is completed-either literally or in the imagination of the viewer participant. One example is "Hide and Seek Piece: Hide until everybody goes home. Hide until everybody forgets about you. Hide until everybody dies." Grapefruit has been published several times, most widely distributed by Simon & Schuster in 1971, who reprinted it again in 2000. David Bourdon, art critic for The Village Voice and Vogue, called Grapefruit  'one of the monuments of conceptual art of the early 1960s'."

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Listening session @ NRW Forum Dusseldorf

Theatre and Technology congress
October 30th, 2018

Prof. Dr. Swantje Lichtenstein and I have been invited by Dr. Kathrin Dreckmann and Prof. Dr. Maren Butte to perform at the Theatre and Technology congress of the Society for Theatre Studies at NRW Forum Dusseldorf on November 10th. We asked fabulous composer Brigitta Muntendorf to join us via Skype from 4:3 Kammer Musik Neu festival in Hellerau.

Via NRW Forum Dusseldorf: "In the 20th century, so-called new or contemporary music has been influenced by composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others. For one of her seminars at the Robert Schumann Hochschule für Musik und Medien, communication designer Heike Sperling and artist Swantje Lichtenstein started to research the outstanding female composers of the 20th century (post–World War II). Their list exploded quickly, because an incredible number of great female composers can be found in the last century – but unlike their male colleagues they are not yet part of the 'canon'.
The Listening Session invites you to give those composers a (listening) space and to talk about their music. The two Düsseldorf professors will exchange thoughts with the renowned composer Brigitta Muntendorf via Skype, about those unheard composers, their aesthetics and techniques."

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Jury President @ Academy of Art and Design Basel

Diploma / Final exams
July 23rd, 2018

Prof. Catherine Walthard invited me to chair the diploma jury at the Academy of Art and Design in Basel. From September 10th until 13th 30 students graduate in Postindustrial Design at one of their institutes called HyperWerk. At HyperWerk the students are trained in complex process design to initiate and shape the social changes of the future.

"Study freedom, shape society. So the mission statement of HyperWerk, the Institute of Postindustrial Design. Here Design is seen as a procedural strategy which influences, and thus communicates, our lifeworld.
HyperWerk is a learning lab. It sees itself in a process of permanent change and responds to the ongoing changes in postindustrial society by developing innovative experimental designs, taking economic, ecological as well as social dimensions into consideration. The aim is to develop a wide range of competences that bring to bear as best as possible specific interests and individual skills, advancing them with the help of creative freedom, flexibility, initiative and teamwork."

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