Austrian composer, violinist, and sound artist Mia Zabelka makes chemical processes sensually tangible through her music. Her works are acoustic experiments in which microtonality, extended playing techniques, which she calls “sonic body impulses”, and electronics become tools to make her vision of hidden vibrations of matter audible.
She understands sound not only as an artistic medium but also as a physical and biological phenomenon. With a radically exploratory approach, she traces the music of molecules, navigating frequency spaces where – beyond traditional harmonies – the invisible is revealed: the movement of atoms, the oscillation of chemical bonds, the whisper of organic processes.
Zabelka goes even further. In her exploration of these microstructural sonic landscapes, she seeks access to something that points far beyond the human – a possible acoustic encounter with the essence of super intelligences.
Her music poses questions such as: What do thought processes sound like when they elude our logic? What can the smallest building blocks of life tell us about higher forms of consciousness? Zabelka’s sound art, which she calls “Multiversal Music”, is a speculative acoustics of the future – sensual, investigative, transdisciplinary.
Her work operates at the crossroads of music, physics, biology, and technology – far beyond conventional musical aesthetics. Terms such as “molecular language microstructural sonic landscapes” or “the sound of matter” not only reflect Zabelka’s transdisciplinary ambition but also her visionary approach to sound as a medium of insight.
Sound as Molecular Language
The Sound of Matter
Austrian composer, violinist, and sound artist Mia Zabelka conceptualizes sound as a molecular language, rendering chemical and physical processes sensually perceptible through her artistic practice. Her compositions function as acoustic laboratories, wherein microtonality, extended instrumental techniques—termed “sonic body impulses”—and electronic modulation serve as instruments to sonify the imperceptible vibrational patterns of matter.
Sound, for Zabelka, transcends its role as a purely aesthetic medium to become a site of inquiry into physical and biological realities. Driven by a radically exploratory ethos, Zabelka engages with the acoustic dimensions of molecular phenomena, mapping frequency domains that evade traditional musical structures. In doing so, she unveils the hidden dynamics of atomic motion, molecular oscillations, and organic rhythms—phenomena typically relegated to scientific abstraction.
Her artistic research seeks to bridge these inaudible realms with experiential sound, constructing what might be termed “microstructural sonic landscapes”.
Beyond this, Zabelka´s work ventures into speculative dimensions of cognition and intelligence. Through the exploration of subatomic and biochemical sonic signatures, she invites auditory encounters with hypothetical higher intelligences.
Her compositions pose critical questions: How might the cognitive processes of post human or nonhuman entities manifest sonically? What can the most fundamental units of life reveal about advanced consciousness?
Zabelka’s sound art represents a speculative acoustics of the future—sensuous, investigative, and rigorously transdisciplinary. Her practice situates itself at the nexus of music, physics, biology, and emergent technologies, advancing an artistic paradigm wherein sound is not only heard, but also known—as a vehicle of epistemic and ontological insight.
Mia Zabelka employs the term “multiversal music” to articulate her distinctive artistic methodology, which integrates scientific inquiry, technological innovation, and sonic experimentation. She is credited with coining this concept to frame her transdisciplinary approach to music-making, one that transcends conventional genre boundaries and disciplinary silos.
Zabelka describes “ multiversal music ” as “the code of the future“ suggesting that it serves as a speculative framework through which alternative, post-human or evolved modes of existence can be imagined and sonically expressed. Her practice is situated at the intersection of art and science, engaging with phenomena such as particle oscillation, modulation, and transformation on both conceptual and auditory levels. Utilizing extended techniques on the violin, real-time electronic processing, and a method she refers to as “sonic body impulses “ Zabelka constructs immersive auditory environments that render abstract scientific processes tangible through sound.
In this context “multiversal music” functions not merely as a stylistic label, but as a critical, imaginative tool for exploring the future of human perception and intermedial communication. Thus, the term encapsulates her broader aim to position music as a transdisciplinary epistemology, one capable of bridging the realms of empirical knowledge and artistic intuition.