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Queer Sonic Fingerprints

Isabel Bredenbröker (Bremen University)
& Adam Pultz Melbye

For the exhibition 'Out of Focus' at the RJM, we have generated a bespoke version of our interactive audio installation "Queer Sonic Fingerprint". This audio work was created collaboratively during research on queering ethnological museums collections. Queer Sonic Fingerprint was previously shown at Art Laboratory Berlin (2024) and sonically engages with ethnographic collection artefacts, hereby breaking with the visual primary and no-touch policy of museums. The work is based on a collection of 'sonic fingerprints' (also known as impulse responses)—sounds that represent the acoustic properties of items in different collections. These sounds populate a genetic algorithm, an AI tool coded by Adam Pultz for this purpose, that simulates kin relations. Through this algorithm, the sonic fingerprints of collection artefacts can reproduce, exchange acoustic properties, mutate and relate to each other. The genetic algorithm we have created, however, does not rely on a Darwinian model of evolution and kinship, but is instead queered, meaning that is inspired by work from the anthropology of kinship, queer kinship, speculative fiction, and alternative biological concepts such as epigenetics and endosymbiosis. Alongside the evolving sounds of new possible artefacts in this sonic ecology, the work features field recordings of museum spaces and depots, conversations with museum practitioners, private 'collectors' and other experts, as well as with people using artefacts that are commonly held in ethnographic museum collections today. Different to the live-generating four-channel version shown at Art Laboratory Berlin, you can experience it as a fixed-media piece on headphones at Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum. The work has been augmented with fingerprints of 8 artefacts from the collection of the RJM as well as atmospheric recordings of the museum and depot space in Cologne and conversation with conservator Kristina Hopp. You can explore information about all recorded artefacts in the catalogue and research files that form part of the work. 
To learn more about the process of recording and coding, please read our recently published „Ethnographic statement and instruction for Queer Sonic Fingerprint" in Anthropology and Humanism, which also features a recording of the installation as it sounded in the space of Art Laboratory Berlin. You can access the open access article here: https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anhu.70036
You can also listen to a conversation between Isabel and Adam alongside the recording of the work in this podcast that was broadcast on Cashmere Radio: https://cashmereradio.com/episode/cashmere-specials-queer-sonic-fingerprint-w-isabel-bredenbroker-and-adam-pultz/

Isabel Bredenbröker is a social and cultural anthropologist working between art and academia. They have worked with sonic and visual methods and produced exhibitions in museum and contemporary art contexts.

Adam Pultz Melbye is a double bass player, composer, and improviser working in the field of acoustic and electronic sound. Adam's work spans live performance, sound installation, sound for dance, theatre, film, multimedia, sculpture, algorithmic design, and instrument building. Adam holds a practic-led PhD in music technology from SARC, Queen's University Belfast.