On Tour: Symphony of Encounters

The participatory music installation Symphony of Encounters was first presented to the public at the Opéra Garnier, Palais Garnier, in Paris in October 2022 and has been touring Europe and the world ever since.

Symphony of Encounters at the Opera Nova Festival, Prague 2024

The composer Rupert Huber developed the work Symphony of Encounters in collaboration with the AVL Cultural Foundation, AVL and Graz University of Technology. The music installation, which uses sensors to detect visitors' movements, brings musical objects to life and sets them in complex interactions with each other. As an exemplary art & science project, the installation once again illustrates the fruitful synergies that arise in the intersection between art and science.

Symphony of Encounters was first presented to a large Austrian and international audience in 2023 at the Klanglicht art festival, which takes place annually in Graz, the home city of the AVL Cultural Foundation. Exhibited in the Wundergarten of the Graz Museum Schlossberg – one of sixteen locations at the time – the installation delighted around 100,500 visitors of the three-day light and sound festival.

Symphonie der Begegnung by Rupert Huber © Luke Goodlife for Klanglicht 2023

In summer 2024, Symphony of Encounters performed in the foyer of the Czech State Opera as part of the Opera Nova Festival. For the contemporary festival in Prague, which showcases Czech and international opera innovations, the installation was adapted for the rich musical history of the location. New musical motifs, interpreted by the Czech opera singer Vanda Šípová, were integrated into the installation.

As a manifesto for the intellectual inventiveness and creative power of humans, Renée Gadsden curated the group exhibition “F.E.A.R. KI: Friend, Foe and Fact”. Symphony of Encounters was one of the displayed works. Rupert Huber was one of the twenty Kunstverein members whose artistic positions were presented in the show. The exhibition accompanied the 110th anniversary since the Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt was handed over to the Kunstverein Kärnten.

Since its premiere in the French capital in 2022, Symphony of Encounters has been on tour. The music installation has been shown in various cultural institutions, at artistic festivals, at international conferences and in European embassies.

In May 2025, Symphony of Encounters was presented outside Europe for the first time. The sound installation was showcased in Tokyo, Japan, as part of the Economic Forum. The forum was part of the Austrian Trade Mission, held on the occasion of the Austrian Nation Day at the EXOP 2025 Osaka and the visit of Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen.