Thom Kubli (born 1969, Frankfurt am Main) is a Swiss-German composer and artist known for installation art and sculptures that often deploy sound as a significant element, using digital technologies and material configurations that increase the viewers' spatial perception.
In 2012, he produced the piece Black Hole Horizon[7] in cooperation with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as part of a further production stipend at EMPAC.
Black Hole Horizon was presented at Kunstverein Ingolstadt (2015), Ars Electronica in Linz (2016), FILE-Festival in São Paulo (2017), and The Lowry in Manchester (2017).
Since 2003, Thom Kubli has been working as a composer, director and author for several European broadcast stations such as WDR, SWR, ORF and SRF.
In 2003 he received a stipend from Junge Akademie der Künste in Berlin and won the first prize in the ‘Interaction’ category at the Viper Festival in Basel, Switzerland.
After further research and development, Black Hole Horizon was presented at Ars Electronica in Linz (2016), FILE in São Paulo (2017)[9] and The Lowry in Manchester (2017).
The installation piece consists of a flotation tank, a sound composition, an archive of audio performances by the artist, and a context table filled with books referring to the theme of weightlessness.
Within the sensory deprivation tank, the audience listens to an underwater sound piece that invokes micro-gravity as a model for explorative political thought.
The composition frames a period of silence and sensory deprivation with a spoken word intro and outro that is played back via an underwater sound system.
In a dense arrangement, he juxtaposes small noises from daily private routines with the sounds of the urban exterior that are filtered through the apartment's physical properties.
Based on a digital image of a monochrome blue painting by Yves Klein, Kubli projected an acoustic interpretation of the visual parameters onto the exhibition space.
Monochrome Transporter was presented at Eyebeam in New York City (2005), followed by exhibitions at Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh (2005) and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand (2006)[16] This large-scale installation piece consists of a miniature radio broadcast station that operates multiple senders on various frequencies and an assemblage of up to 60 radio receivers that are positioned in an exhibition space.
Deterritoriale Schlingen overrides the signal of the local radio stations with its own broadcast, establishing an information sovereignty within the realm of the exhibition site and its neighbouring facilities.
The disposed sound materials are field recordings of cultural environments and events, fragments of pop music and electronic beatloops, and excerpts of post-structuralist speeches.
The audience can interact within the installation setting by retuning reception channels of individual radio receivers and thus alter the acoustic experience within the space.
Due to the transient nature of the objects, Kubli freshly produced Virilio Cubes for shows at Kunsthalle Darmstadt (2004), Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2007), and Laboratorio Arte Alameda in Mexico City (2009).