EchoChamberMusic

Sitting in an echo chamber you don’t hear much, but the little you do hear is amplified in the extreme. In social media the effect is similar: our own opinions are reflected back to us hundreds of times, thereby reinforcing them. Opposing voices are silenced by algorithms. This effect in social networks is named after a room which amplifies acoustics: echo chamber.

Together with the sound artist Cathy van Eck, the adventurously experimental quartet DieOrdnungDerDinge search with their usual wit and humour, for connections and parallels between echo phenomena in acoustics, the media and music.

In which echo chambers are we trapped in daily life? Which algorithms can be written for them? How could they sound? And is it perhaps possible to programme a concert to exactly fit the preferences of the audience using an algorithm?

DieOrdnungDerDinge draws on contemporary music, for the most part especially commissioned for EchoChamberMusic, in order to explore echo’s many facetted voice. The ensemble also explore the echo motives of Renaissance and Baroque music, which already hundreds of years ago used this phenomenon as inspiration for canons and fugues. Naturally the greek myth of Echo and Narcissus is also investigated and reinterpreted.