Dhvāni 2025

Dhvāni means ​“reso­nan­ce” in Sanskrit. Resonances bet­ween soun­ding objects and bet­ween peo­p­le are the star­ting point for this instal­la­ti­on by Indian-born artist and thin­ker Budhaditya Chattopadhyay. As part of the Hear Here Festival 2025 of STUK Leuven, the project was exhibited in STUK’s cour­ty­ard. A web was stret­ched with hund­reds of cere­mo­ni­al bells and other instru­ments, such as wind chi­mes and ghun­groos. By means of a self-built arti­fi­ci­al intel­li­gen­ce sys­tem, this resoun­ding net­work res­ponded to human pre­sen­ce: foot­steps, voi­ces, hand clap­ping. Through machi­ne learning, the inter­con­nec­ted sys­tem impro­ved its per­for­man­ce over the six weeks of Hear Here, cre­a­ting a beyond-human reso­nant orga­nism. In this way, ancient musi­cal tra­di­ti­ons were linked with con­tem­po­ra­ry tech­no­lo­gies, invi­ting visi­tors to lis­ten empa­the­ti­cally and step out­si­de their judg­men­tal ​“ego”.