Photo © Spiros Karavas

Mia Zabelka’s artistic practice can be understood as a radical expansion of musical thinking. At its core lies her improvisational concept of “automatic playing,” which approaches music not as an abstract system, but as a physically generated, present-tense process. Sound emerges from gesture, movement, and immediate perception rather than from predefined structures, stylistic norms, or compositional dogmas. Inspired by automatic writing, she works without fixed parameters. The violin shifts from being a traditional instrument to becoming a sound machine—an interface connecting physicality, space, and electronics.

“Automatic playing” means allowing music to arise from the unconscious and from physical presence. Improvisation here is not mere spontaneity, but a form of language comparable to speaking itself. Decisions occur implicitly, shaped by experience and physical movement. The resulting sound worlds move beyond classical notions of harmony and melody. Diverse influences—ranging from noise, drone, and contemporary music to free jazz, punk, and metal—are not treated as separate genres but are filtered through the physicality and transformed into an organic, personal mode of expression.

A crucial component of this practice is the use of live electronics. Electronic tools are not decorative effects but direct extensions of gesture. Acoustic sounds are transformed, layered, distorted, or fed back in real time. The electronics respond to physical movement and expand it into the digital realm. This creates a networked sound system consisting of instrument, voice, computer, space, and feedback processes. Improvisation becomes a
relational field in which control is relative and musical hierarchies dissolve. In collaborative settings, authority is negotiated, responsibility is shared, and leadership remains temporary. In this sense, free improvisation does not merely symbolize democratic structures — it enacts them in sound and time.

Alongside her improvisational work, Mia Zabelka also operates as an electroacoustic composer. In works such as “Somateme” and “Photo-Tone,” she combines pre-composed electroacoustic layers with physically driven improvisation. Computer sounds, tape material, contact microphones, and digital processing are consciously composed and function as structural elements. Two levels intersect: a designed electroacoustic framework and the immediate process of automatic playing. Improvisation does not stand alone but unfolds
within an architecturally shaped sonic environment. In this way, her practice gains a compositional dimension without abandoning its process-oriented character.

The essence of her approach lies in the rejection of normative systems. The traditional concepts of work, stylistic purity, and hierarchical order are replaced by process, presence, and event. This stance also carries socio-political implications. As a woman working in the experimental and often male-dominated fields of noise and avant-garde music, she asserts physical presence, volume, and sonic intensity as performative gestures that challenge established gender roles. Technology, in her work, is not an instrument of control but a poetic extension of the human being.

The term “Multiversal Music” encapsulates this aesthetic philosophy. Rather than conceiving music as a closed universe governed by fixed laws, Zabelka understands it as a multiverse of coexisting realities. Acoustic, digital, stored, and performative layers operate simultaneously. Different genres appear as equally valid aesthetic worlds. Multiple temporalities - composed structure, improvisational present, feedback loops, and digital process time -unfold in parallel.

“Multiversal Music” thus describes a relational and open sonic practice. Music emerges not from unity but from multiplicity; not from control but from interaction; not from normativity but from the coexistence of physicality and technology. Within this complexity, sound becomes a space of radical presence and experiential awareness.

At first glance, the idea of the “sound of elementary particles” may seem metaphorical or scientifically exotic. Within Mia Zabelka’s conceptual framework, however, it is philosophically consistent. It connects ontology, mediality, and multiversality into an expanded understanding of sound.

Zabelka’s work operates across multiple scales. On the micro level, there is gesture: bow pressure, friction, breath, tactile contact. On the meso level, there are instrument, electronics, and spatial acoustics. On the macro level, her thinking extends toward cosmic and physical processes. The interest in elementary particles radicalizes this scalar shift: sound is no longer merely a cultural product but part of physical reality itself. “Multiversal Music” therefore does not simply mean stylistic plurality; it refers to the coexistence of multiple layers of reality.

In classical aesthetics, music is understood as human expression. Yet modern physics describes elementary particles not as static objects but as vibrations, energy states, or excitations of fields. If matter itself can be conceived as oscillatory, then sound becomes more than an artistic phenomenon—it becomes a structural model of existence. From this perspective, the human being is not the origin of sound but part of a vibrational cosmos. Zabelka’s interest in subatomic oscillations thus reflects a posthuman ontology: subjectivity is embedded within material processes.

Vibration emerges as the common principle linking all levels of her work. Bow against string, electronic feedback loops, digital modulation, and subatomic activity all operate through oscillation. “Multiversal Music” can therefore be understood as a continuum of vibration across scales—from the microscopic to the cosmic. Sound is not metaphorical but materially grounded.

This perspective also carries a media-theoretical dimension. Elementary particles are not directly audible; they are measured, translated into data, and potentially sonified. Reality is therefore always mediated. Zabelka’s artistic practice mirrors this condition: acoustic sounds are electronically transformed, data becomes audible, feedback systems generate new sonic realities. There is no unmediated “original.” Sound is relational, technologically processed, and co-produced by human and nonhuman agents.

In dialogue with new materialist thought, matter is not passive substance but active force. Sound, in this sense, is not representation but material event. Strings, circuits, electricity, space, and performer interact in dynamic processes of co-creation. Her practice resonates with process philosophy as well: reality is not stable being but continuous becoming. Form emerges temporarily; structures remain provisional; identity unfolds through process. Sound is event rather than object.

When extended toward the idea of higher-developed life forms, this thinking shifts from matter itself to the organization of matter. Biological systems are complex vibrational constellations: neural oscillations, electromagnetic processes, biochemical cycles. Consciousness can be understood as coordinated resonance. Musical performance creates inter-organismic synchronization—between performer and audience, between nervous systems and acoustic fields. In this sense, Zabelka’s multiversal sound spaces function as experiments in resonance across physicality and systems.

Her integration of physical gesture, live electronics, and feedback anticipates a co-evolution of biology and technology. Not as technological domination, but as relational expansion. If intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is likewise structured by energy, frequency, and resonance, then music may be understood as an organizational form of vibration rather than a uniquely human invention.

Ultimately, “Multiversal Music” proposes a radical thesis: matter vibrates, life organizes vibration, consciousness reflects vibration, and art shapes vibration. Across subatomic, physical, technological, and biological dimensions, oscillation becomes the unifying principle. Zabelka’s work can thus be read as an aesthetic modeling of a resonant, evolving cosmos—where sound is not ornament, but manifestation of relational existence itself.