BIOSPHEAR – an immersive installation combining sound and botany in Dresden.

The pop-up installation BIOSPHEAR will take place on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th

September 2026 at the Regenwaldhaus 1 on the grounds of the Botanical Garden at

Stübelallee 2, 01307 Dresden, from 11 am to 6 pm on both days; admission is free.

‘BIOSPHEAR’ is an interactive musical installation designed to allow visitors to experience plants aesthetically in a novel

way. Using sensors and highly sensitive microphones

, electrical microcurrents and impulses from living plants are recorded and analysed.

These signals are translated into acoustic signals in real time using specialised software *).

Individual stations are brought to life through interaction with visitors;

which, taken together, creates an overall soundscape inside Rainforest House 1,

held together in an aesthetic context in an artistic manner by algorithms and through the

software programming employed.

Visitors can listen to the ‘voices’ of the plants and influence the sounds through touch

. The aim is to create an immersive sensory experience combining art, nature

and technology, in both an artistic and a scientific

sense.

The resulting soundscapes can be listened to after the installation has ended at

www.biosphear.art.

The project is co-funded by tax revenue from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and

the City of Dresden, with the kind support of the

Friends of the Dresden Botanical Garden e.V. and the Technical University

of Dresden.

*) in the sense of data sonification

_____

The project is planned and implemented by Dr Nico Steckhan (specialising in

sound art and interactive sensor technology) and Rafał Stachowiak, alias STACHY.DJ (musician and

media artist specialising in electronic soundscapes).

Dr NICO STECKHAN (1984, Dresden) is a biologist, bioinformatician and sound artist. He

works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (KI Group)

and at the Hasso Plattner Institute in the field of digital health technologies, and

conducts research into sensor technology, data science and interactive systems. In addition to over 70

scientific publications, he develops artistic projects at the interface

between nature, sound and technology, in which plants, data and music are translated into immersive

experiences.

RAFAŁ STACHOWIAK, alias STACHY.DJ, (1972, Gdańsk) is an active music producer,

composer, sound designer and video artist based in Dresden. Since 2020, he has been lecturing at

the BTU Cottbus, where he teaches practical music production using computers and

draws on current technological developments in the field of new media. Through

the Liquid Sound Club in Bad Schandau, which he co-founded and which explores the

perception of music underwater, he creates there as an artist - In -

Residence, he creates his own form and language of contemporary electronic music

beyond the mainstream; his versatile music productions are characterised by the

use of modern production techniques, which he conceives and implements in his Dresden recording studio

.