Fertile Void

Fertile Void  looks at the promises and narratives of quantum science and technology as embedded in ritual, cosmologies, sensorial practices, and materials. Through artistic intervention, discourse, performances, and workshops, the programme investigates how different ways of knowing and being can contribute to understanding the social realities that emerge from quantum theorems, just as they become actualized by technology and new materials. In 2026, Fertile Void: Quantum Listening from Ancient Earth to Spectral Densities takes place during Berlin Science Week. As part of the collaboration, HKW also becomes the festival centre of Berlin Science Week during the same period, from November 6–8.  
 
This year’s programme looks at the reorganization of the senses at quantum scale, giving particular focus to the constant vibrational movements of all material—an acoustic continuum that quantum biology suggests might have played a role in the oxidation of ancient earth. More recently, quantum acoustic experiments have allowed scientists to ‘listen’ to particles within computers built to hold superposition, the phenomenon in which a particle or wave can exist in a combination of possible states until measured. Tracing these phonons (quantized vibrations) and the ‘spectral density’ they demonstrate—the distribution of energy across frequencies—seems to actualize what was once theory: listening to quantum particles as a way of listening to many, overlapping fields of possibility. Contemporary scientific discourse thus moves towards, and possibly updates, composer Pauline Oliveros’s proposition of ‘quantum listening’ as an intentional, attentive form of engagement that requires an openness to different forms of interpretation. Shifting between poetic interpretations and scientific observations this year’s programme asks: Might the sonic be a place from which another, or many other worlds become possible?