A MAZE. / Berlin 2026

Qualia combines different new-media practices and perspectives, rethinking how realtime simulations can intersect with live music performance. The result guides the audience on a pilgrimage into the inner world of an organism, an agent revealing its hidden systems, symbols and hierarchies raising the question: what is it like? The characteristics of mental states are often described to carry an explanatory gap in which we struggle to tell about experiences to others. This ontological shock cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any means other than direct experience. Simulating empathy in this, is an attempt to directly understand and relate to the qualia of another's experience, bridging the gap between multiple, separate inner worlds.