At the start of 2027 I am moving from Berlin to Alto Minho, in the north of Portugal, and the Sonic Artefacts workshop moves with me.
For the past twenty years I have been on the move: playing concerts with different projects and people, organising, recording, taking up residencies, showing instruments at global trade shows and always coming back to Berlin. The older I get, the clearer it becomes to me that I have had enough of always being in the city. I love the people and places in Berlin, I love the memories and all the things I have done there with my friends and collaborators, but not the noise and the dirt. I also need space to build installations, and nowadays space in Berlin now comes at a premium, and support for artists like me, the ones on the fringes of the electronic underground, is waning.
I fell in love with Portugal some years ago, especially with the mountains and people of the north and through touring made a lot of new friends there. Alto Minho is quiet, rich in tradition and culture, with beautiful nature and clean streams. For someone who works with sound for a living, quiet is not a luxury but a working condition, the region is also close to Porto, where I collaborate on different projects together with experimental music and sound art collective Sonoscopia. Taken all together, it simply adds up to make the move.
For Sonic Artefacts little changes. The cork I make the Cortiça microphones from, comes from Portugal; from 2027 on so will the microphones, sensors and receivers. I am preparing myself for the big move at the moment and want to bring as little as possible from the old stock, so when you are in need of microphones or probes, or a Sonic Chessboard, please place your orders now!
Orders placed until 26 Dec 2026 will ship from Berlin, after which we will close the shop for a few weeks while we make our transition. I will reopen the webshop and ship out products as soon as the bench is running again, from mid January 2027. Many exciting new products are in the works, and I cannot wait to share them with you all!
The last sets made in Berlin are in the shop now.
Não existe um paraíso como o paraíso que se constrói com as pessoas que se ama!
Wouter