The Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) – in cooperation with the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) of the EU – is investing 40 million euros in the expansion and modernization of existing as well as in the acquisition of new high-quality (digital) research infrastructure within the framework of the call for proposals “(Digital) Research Infrastructures”.

The cooperative infrastructure research project “ÆSR Lab – Applied/Experimental Sound Research Laboratory” of the University of Applied Arts, the mdw (Artistic Research Center and Department for Composition, Electroacoustics and Tonmeister_innen-Education) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Phonogrammarchiv) was selected for funding.

The ÆSR Lab is a three-part, mobile and modular sound research laboratory at the interface of art and science, which as an infrastructure – with precise instrumentation and state-of-the-art technology – promotes interdisciplinary research and artistic design and helps to open up the development and testing of new technologies.

At mdw, the sub-project “ÆSR – sound projection laboratory” will now be implemented in the years 2023–2026 under the direction of Thomas Grill. The system to be developed within the framework of research and teaching will enable new and unconventional forms of spatial acoustic design for musical composition and performance.