Florian Dombois, Triple Instruments, 2019, Photo: Florian Amoser, ZHdK
In this interview, Florian Dombois and I reflect on his pioneering role in the field of artistic research and the path that led him there. “I had doubts about geophysics and the approach of the natural sciences from the very first semester, but I couldn't bring myself to drop out,” he says, looking back on the beginning of his studies. I have been working with Florian as his research assistant and co-curator of the annual Wind Tunnel Festival at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) since 2022. Together with our colleague Berit Seidel from the artists collective U5, we explore strategies, methods, and formats of being-in-the-world within our academic and artistic practices. Florian has been an artist and professor in the Research Focus on Transdisciplinarity at ZHdK since 2012, where he leads artistic research projects and founded an artistic PhD program. His artistic practice dates back to the 1990s, the founding years of artistic research. For us, it seemed a fitting moment to reflect on Florian’s work and take a step back to consider the early introduction of what is now a highly discussed field — artistic research.
Helene Romakin: You can look back on a transdisciplinary education and career that you have built up since the 1990s in various institutions and as an independent artist: You first studied geophysics, then moved into cultural studies before directing your career toward the fine arts. Could you explain what interests motivated you to pursue the different disciplines in your education?
Florian Dombois: It was a search, a development that required detours: I enrolled to study geophysics and philosophy at the Technical University of Berlin in 1986. At that time, the HdK, now the Berlin University of the Arts, painting of the group Neue Wilden was on the agenda. Their return to figurative panel painting did not interest me for various reasons. I was looking for the energy in volcanoes and earthquakes. I wanted to relate to our environment and our Earth. Chernobyl happened in the third week of my studies. In the “project lab”, a self-directed practical course in physics, we had access to Geiger counters and immediately started measuring: the moss on the roof of the physics building. When the first rain came and with it the fallout over West Berlin, it was almost unbearable how much the measuring device rattled. You couldn't see anything special, it was just the news and this measuring device that showed us that our lives were in danger.
HR: That must have been an incisive experience...
FD: Yes, and I experienced the measurement as a peculiar mixture of empowerment and powerlessness. Philosophy helped me to endure the reductionism of geophysics, in which everyone articulated so differently from the art world, in which I had grown up. I had doubts about geophysics and the approach of the natural sciences from the very first semester, but I couldn't bring myself to drop out. On the one hand, I was too interested in the theories of tectonics; I was and still am grateful for the ability to read the formative dynamics in the landscape. On the other hand, none of the things that excited or worried me at heart had any place in the seminars, lectures or textbooks. What was important to me, what was scary, what was moving, remained unspoken, repressed, even actively excluded. I had to build my own spaces.
HR: The first projects in which you worked across disciplines and created these new spaces of possibility were nevertheless in a science center for geophysics.
FD: Yes, I tried to bring the two realities together. During my internship at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, I laid out a cable in a square with a side length of 1 km for our measurements. I walked the straight line through the terrain over hill and dale and thought of Richard Long's „A Line Made by Walking“ (1967). Or at the University of Kiel, when I was a tutor for potential theory, I had the group draw and calculate the electric field lines from Walter De Maria's „The Lightning Field“ (1977). My fellow students didn't care, but for me it was my source of energy. After I finished my diploma in 1992 "On free oscillations of compact objects", I wasn't convinced by the constant insistence that science was neutral and not morally responsible for environmental disasters. I began to study the forms of representation of the sciences and their epistemic implications and limitations. This led to my dissertation on the question “What is an earthquake?”
Florian Dombois, Surf, installation view, 2006, Fotografie: Helmut Kunde, Kiel
HR: Did you find support for your approach in academia and the arts?
FD: My geophysics professor, Jochen Zschau, declined to supervise my doctorate, citing his lack of expertise, which led me to seek guidance from Hartmut Böhme at the newly founded Institute for Cultural Studies at Humboldt University. There, I used my dissertation to explore my doubts about science through comparing earthquake representations which led me to invent my own form of depiction, the audification of seismic signals, developing listening to scientific data as an alternative understanding of "nature".
And this new data sound world made it clear to me what I wanted to do artistically: build sound installations and bathe in the seismic-sonic material. I wanted to hear what was going on in the Earth. I discovered the different timbres of the various stations, their daily and seasonal fluctuations („Surf“, 2006). The seismic detail became increasingly interesting, the many versions of hiss and crackle. I built a 5.1 channel installation through which I could expose myself to the “Ring of Fire” from Hawaii (Circum Pacific, 2003). In 2010, I accessed data from the 2004 Sumatra earthquake—known for the devastating tsunami it triggered—and used its months-long global aftershocks as the basis for my seismic sound work „Free Oscillation“ (2010). This enormous natural oscillation of our planet, was a provisional conclusion to my seismic sound work. I felt like being silent.
Florian Dombois, Seismic Stations, screen shot, 2002
HR: Looking back, what methods, thought processes and perhaps even ways of thinking would you say you took from geophysics into your art practice? And vice versa, what artistic approaches influenced you during your training in geophysics and cultural studies?
FD: In the natural sciences, I learned the value of research projects where participants synchronize as a collective, designing and carrying out a shared choreography over time, while learning from each other. Geophysics taught me to think in vast dimensions of time and space and find these concepts reflected in the small, concrete. It sparked my interest in instruments that reveal phenomena beyond our senses. Additionally, I discovered how a compelling narrative can shift perception.
And conversely, from the side of art, Fluxus made a strong impression on me; some of the exhibitions of my childhood, such as documenta 5 (1972), „SoHo – Downtown Manhattan“ (1976), and „Für Augen und Ohren“(1981) at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. I saw many happenings. I think that much was initiated in 1970s art that was not continued, "a route not taken," as Philip Ursprung has called it. I believe I am traveling that road further, even if in a different terrain and with a different vehicle .
HR: Could you elaborate on that? Which path that was not taken do you mean?
FD: What interests me about the 1970s is the spirit of awakening, the idea of thinking about art beyond the artifact and beyond the museum space. Art concerns my entire existence in this world. Through it, I engage with questions of our time and attempt to open up the realities in which I want to live . Art challenges me to repeatedly track down and illuminate my own blind spots, to think the world differently, to open my perception and sensitivity, to educate myself. It involves a renunciation of stability and security — a fragile free space that I am given and that I must simultaneously create for myself. In this, artifacts or products play a role, but they are not the sole aim for me.
HR: With your career path, you were right in the middle of the zeitgeist: you are a pioneer of artistic research between art and science, a movement that took shape in the 1990s. How did you experience the early days of this shift in art, and how do you view the current discourse on artistic research?
FD: You’re right, the 1990s marked the beginning of artistic research. In the Artistic Research issue of Texte zur Kunst (2011), Tom Holert pointed out that artistic research was also a consequence of institutional changes at art academies, which were granted the right to award doctorates. That is certainly one of the forces still at work today. But in the 1990s, there was also a growing rapprochement between the worlds of art and science. It seems to me that back then, many were concerned with discovering the sciences as an aesthetic space. For me, this was good on the one hand, because I could raise my concerns within an artistic context. On the other hand, this encounter between art and science does not go deep enough when it copies surfaces. It is not a matter of style or even a kind of exoticism. I try to ask more fundamental questions, even if this makes my work harder to read: How can we learn from the sciences' experience with the research format without becoming complicit in their claim to be the sole explainers of the world? How can we dare to trust art again, to take it seriously as a societal force?
Florian Dombois, Using Audification in Planetary Seismology, 2001
HR: Your early works like "Circum Pacific 5.1" (2003) and your doctoral dissertation (1998) focused on how seismological data is represented, particularly through auditory perception. What sparked your interest in the auditory approach to the environments?
FD: One possible beginning was in the summer of 1993, when I was sitting in a lecture on the topic of "Hearing and Seeing." Out of the blue, I noticed the striking similarity between a seismic curve and a sonogram. Since I couldn’t program well enough myself and didn’t have any money, it took a small odyssey of persuasion before I was finally able to listen to my first seismogram in a friend's apartment. The computer speakers were far too small, but the sonified earthquake sounded incredibly powerful. It had a presence that could not be compared to the drawn seismogram. Thanks to the sonified data, I was able to understand the Earth as a resonant body. In what I call "Auditory Seismology," it is about making seismic phenomena experientially accessible — where fear and terror, human beings and their emotions, have a place. When listening to seismic signals, every location on the globe has its own specific sound; everything at once and superimposed. An infinite melody.
HR: At some point, your interest shifted from earthquakes to wind. Do you remember when exactly that happened?
FD: In 2011, I was an Artist in Residence at MIT — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ute Meta Bauer had asked me to engage with the MIT art collection on campus and to create a new version of „Angeschlagene Moderne (Struck Modernism“, 2010 onwards). During that process, I came across the old Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel from 1939. I discovered flow visualizations and their aesthetic potential. Gradually, I found more and more material showing how wind tunnel research influenced the artistic avant-garde of the early 20th century.
When I started my position at ZHdK in 2012, I wanted to pursue artistic research in a field that wasn’t directly connected to my exhibition practice. That decision had institution-critical reasons. It was important to me to continue working on the topic of time. Wind, like seismic activity, is a global phenomenon that knows no national borders. And our atmosphere is under threat from environmental impacts. Thus, moving from the underground to the adjoining airspace made artistic sense to me. However, I couldn’t maintain the distance. By now, I feel that wind (and water) is the perfect medium for me — from an artistic, scientific, and ecological perspective.
Florian Dombois, Wind Tunnel, ZHdK Zurich, 2012
HR: Over the past ten years, you have engaged with the wind in several works and long-term installations. A wind tunnel model has been standing on the rooftop of the Toni-Areal at ZHdK for quite some time. Could you tell us about the creation and construction process of the wind tunnel? How is it used?
FD: My professorship at ZHdK since 2012 is called "Experimental Systems of Transdisciplinarity." It’s about the material and immaterial conditions under which transdisciplinary exchange can succeed. To achieve this, I use a center that is empty, because if you truly want to bring scientists and artists into resonance, you must not place a theme between them. You have to center something invisible, something difficult to articulate, something that demands shared imagination. The test section in the wind tunnel is such an empty center. The wind tunnel is a sculpture made of wind. My team and I built it very slowly. It was about a collective building process. I acquired funding for artistic-scientific research projects at the Swiss National Science Foundation. Thanks to these projects, I was able to create jobs. The wind tunnel is my attempt to create a real place for art at the university.
Wind Tunnel Festival, ZHdK Zurich, 2023
HR: In 2022, we initiated the Wind Tunnel Festival together with Berit Seidel. What was originally intended to be a one-off event has now took place for the fourth time in May 2025. How would you describe the festival? What makes it special for you?
FD: You saw that the wind tunnel has the potential for a festival format. The trigger was that one evening in December, when we played our own songs of sadness for each other in the wind tunnel that moved us to tears. On that evening, we cried a lot. It was beautiful, being emotionally together, feeling supported, having trust, and showing our vulnerability. That is our foundation for the festival, the carpet on which we stand. The guests, the audience, our team, with whom we meet in a liminal space make this festival special: between inside and outside, between a rooftop garden and a concrete terrace, between garage doors and theater curtains, between heaven and earth. We sit on and next to the wind tunnel, through which the wind gently flows, always circulating. The boundaries between art and science are blurry. For me, it’s important that after each input, we go outside in front of the tunnel, open the gates and curtains. We must connect the academic spaces with the world.
Florian Dombois, Triple Instruments, 2019, Photo: Florian Amoser, ZHdK
HR: Your other major artistic research project is the SNSF-funded "Triple Instruments. Through truth wind blows." What is this project is about?
FD: If you ask a scientist, "What is the wind?", they will probably explain the wind to you. If you ask an artist, "What is the wind?", they might sing about the wind. In this SNSF project, we make the wind sing. Technically, this works by flying kites on long piano strings that are looped into a string instrument on the ground. I call this "Triple Instruments" because its sound sets three actors into dialogue: (i) the wind in the kite and its hummer, (ii) the person at the ground instrument, and (iii) the string in between, the soul of the instrument. Every first Wednesday of the month, we go to the same spot in the Swiss mountains. I call it "public rehearsal" because you can't hold concerts with the wind. It blows or it doesn't, when and how it wants. There are no walls, anyone can join. We are mobile, yet site-specific. I always lose track of time. It feels healing. Sometimes I wonder if this is really my answer to the global environmental crises. And I believe, yes, it is.
Laboratorio Laguna, 2023
HR: At ZHdK, you established an artistic PhD program. In 2022, you also initiated the collaborative project "Laboratorio Laguna. PhD on Sail", which you founded together with Biennale Urbana (Giulia Mazzorin, Andrea Curtoni) and U5 (Berit Seidel). What does it mean for you to establish and advance artistic research within academia?
FD: I hesitated for a long time to engage with the individual artistic PhD. For me, artistic research thrives on collaboration among artists, not solitary work. Institutions love titles; and once they exist, they become an argument. But reality took over my resistance: From 2017 on, I began bringing emerging artists together. I actively excluded the idea of "knowledge production." An artistic PhD should advance the field of art — that’s my mantra. For that, we develop our own formats of "sharing", "challenging", and "passing on" to the artistic peers.
In "Laboratorio Laguna", we bring together a dozen PhD candidates from several European art academies. Venice is our method, not our subject. We sail with small boats into the lagoon, where we practice balancing. The constant tidal flow accompanies us, as does the shifting wind. In the various wave patterns, we learn to recognize the changing ground. We are embedded in a historical depth; we encounter pre-Renaissance geo-engineering and a republic that, in the late Middle Ages, was able to democratically choose and implement a transgenerational project to save the lagoon: the diversion of the rivers and their sediments.
HR: How do you see the future of artistic research?
FD: Two months ago, I read "Hospicing Modernity“ (2021) by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. I wish I had had this book during my dissertation: She analyzes the many problems of the „House of Modernity“ in great detail and how much our thinking is shaped by it. Because this thinking accompanies and conditions us precognitively, it is "faster than thought." All our ideas for solutions are saturated with the methods and concepts of "Modernity." Even the belief that there is a solution is modern. Oliveira says: It takes our collective effort to care for the doomed Modernity in the coming years until its end. When you ask me about my vision for artistic research, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt comes to my mind: “If you have visions, go to the doctor!,” he said. Of course, I have visions, that's the problem! We need to overcome individualism in art and free science from the tertium-non-datur. But that's still far too modern thinking. Oliveira says we need the 4Hs: humility, honesty, humor, and hyper-self-reflexivity. I guess somewhere in there lies the future.
Interview by Helene Romakin