sample&hold #9
Clara Maïda & Pedro Oliveira
11/5/2025, 6 PM

The connection between humans and machines is a fundamental principle of electronic music. Two former scholarship recipients present this connection in very different ways: In a new multichannel piece, Pedro Oliveira focuses on special Mel filters, which are used in everyday life for speech recognition, among other things. Clara Maïda presents a spectacular new work featuring robotic, sounding pendulums, video projection, and multichannel audio.

6 – 7 pm
Work presentation & discussion with Clara Maïda (composition) und Matthias Kubisch (programming/3D printing)

7:30 – 8:30 pm
Clara Maïda: Pendel(a)utom@t (music installation) (UA)

8:30 – 9:15 pm
Concert 
Clara Maïda: (a)utom@ton (musical piece, 15’)
Pedro Oliveira: DESCOMPASSO (for subharchord)

Pedro Oliveira
Sound artist working with echo, distortion, and feedback as material explorations of the limits and failures of machine listening. Through live performances involving analog synthesis as well as manipulation of voice and text, his practice focuses on the productive intersections of listening and the body as a site of struggle for identity, migration, and belonging. Currently guest faculty in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at Universität der Künste Berlin. Holds a PhD from UdK Berlin.

Clara Maïda
Clara Maïda lives in Paris and Berlin and is a composer (instrumental and electroacoustic music). She holds a PhD by publication in Composition from the University of Huddersfield (UK), a Master in MusicTheory, a French National Diploma in Piano Teaching, and a Bachelor Degree in Psychology.  She was guest composer of the Artists-in-Berlin programme of the DAAD for one year. Laureate of severalinternational awards and grants, she received commissions from many institutions and ensembles, including Arditti Quartet, Donaueschinger Musiktage, GRM Paris and ECLAT Stuttgart. She has held residencies in several electroacoustic studios, published monographic CDs and articles in reviews and books. She taught as a guest professor while giving lectures, seminars, and masterclasses internationally. Her transversal research is at the intersection of composition, psychoanalysis, Deleuze’s philosophy and nanosciences. She names her music a "nanomusic".

Clara Maïda
Conception of the project, electroacoustic music composition, realization of the animated video, design and drawing of the robotic installation and pendulums, final painted décor of the pendulums

Matthias Kubisch
3D co-design, 3D printing, and programming of the pendulum

Commission: French Ministry of Culture / SCRIME–University of Bordeaux (2020) and Art Zoyd Studios (2024). Composer-in-residence: SCRIME (2024), Art Zoyd Studios (2024), GRAME (2024), and E-Studio of the Akademie der Künste (2025). Laureate of IMPULS NEUE MUSIK (2024)