al dente, 2026
40'
Production: Deutschlandfunk Kultur in collaboration with Studio für elektroakustische Musik, Akademie der Künste Berlin
Broadcast scheduled for May 2026 on Deutschlandfunk Kultur

Al dente is a composition developed through long-term sonic field research in a dental practice. The work is based on the construction of a conceptual musical instrument formed through the careful selection, arrangement, and temporal organization of recordings of dental sounds. It reveals both the audible and hidden acoustic layers of the space - from the low-frequency vibrations of idle machines to the circulation of air through hoses - as well as the intimate sounds of treatment within the oral cavity.

The composition unfolds as a non-linear, immersive listening experience in which the dental practice becomes a resonant body- a site suspended between origin, pain, healing, and societal transformation. Teeth emerge as anthropological relics: among the most enduring human remains, persisting long after the rest of the body has disappeared. They carry traces of identity, social belonging, and biography, linking the living body to deep time and to questions of what endures beyond individual life.

Within this acoustic environment, dental sounds function as symbolic interfaces to contemporary global uncertainty, oscillating between durability and fragility, control and exposure, care and threat. Organized as instrumental voices rather than expressive material, the recordings blur the boundary between documentation and composition. The familiar yet unsettling acoustics of dental procedures resonate as a shared, collective experience of bodily vulnerability, fear, and anticipation, while also reflecting broader political and social precarity - the fragility of institutions, authority, and trust in systems that govern life and well-being. Listening becomes an act of navigating these limits: between pain and relief, resistance and surrender, trust and fear, both individually and collectively.

At the same time, al dente frames sound as a practice of care. Dentistry appears not only as a site of intervention, but also as one of maintenance, attentiveness, and responsibility toward the body. By treating the act of listening itself as an instrument, the work reflects on how technologies of repair can be reoriented toward attentiveness and ethical presence. The title al dente refers to a condition of “not-yet-finished” - a threshold in which healing, technological transformation, and human vulnerability remain unresolved.