In their expansive sound performance Von Kartons und klingenden Dingen (WP), the duo Fromberg & Roigk explores the sonic potential of cardboard boxes. The boxes serve simultaneously as sound source, stage design, and walk-in resonating bodies, from which the two performers coax a fantastic world of sound using everyday objects and electronics.

The world premiere as part of Klangwerkstatt Berlin invites young and old alike to exciting sound experiences, and opens up a playful entry point for the audience to explore and make music with sounds themselves in the subsequent sound laboratory. Children (aged 5 and up) and adults can try out the noise-makers on the cardboard boxes and even crawl inside them to experience a different, thrilling listening perspective from within.

Daniela Fromberg & Stefan Roigk: Von Kartons und klingenden Dingen (2025)
Paper and cardboard are materials that are always and everywhere within reach, while at the same time offering an incredibly rich range of sounds. Resonance sounds produced directly on the surface of the cardboard using combs, brushes, whisks, metal rods, yoghurt cups, rubber balls, spinning tops, sponges, motors, strings, milk frothers or suction cups form the starting point of this composition.

The performers swiftly push cups, boxes and tins back and forth across the cardboard surface, letting the resulting scratching sounds merge with the snorting chatter of foam rubber brushes. The infernal/mysterious hum of sliding suction cups silences the delicate rustling of a soft flat brush, then interlocks with the spinning song of a whisk, while bouncing rubber balls punctuate the brief pauses as a counterpoint. Motors and wind-up toys scurry polyrhythmically up and down the cardboard surface, fading into sine waves that subtly diffuse through the material.

Following the concert performance, children and adults are invited in the participatory sound laboratory to independently and playfully explore the cardboard boxes in the hall with the various noise-makers. This opens up an active entry point into their own exploration and music-making. They discover what fascinating and mysterious sounds they themselves can produce with cardboard.

In the sound laboratory, one can also listen to the sounds from inside the box. This creates an immersive closeness in which the sounds envelop you: one is quite literally bathed in sound. Here, the absence of a visual component in particular leads to a highly concentrated yet mysterious listening situation. One is surrounded by the scrubbing rustle of a coarse woollen thread being drawn through the tubes of the corrugated cardboard, while a heavy wooden ball rolls with a thunderous rumble across the ridges of the cardboard from one side to the other.

Daniela Fromberg and Stefan Roigk have been producing collaborative intermedial installations and compositions since 2010, using artefacts from their everyday surroundings. Their artistic work also encompasses sculpture, musical graphics, performance and photography. They are the founders of geräusch[mu'si:k], an award-winning education programme for sound art.