Catalogue > At random

The work “What Is It (not) Like to Be a Bat?” is an artistic interpretation of the famous paper “What Is It Like to Be a Bat” (1974) by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel. The work consists of a self-built headset which uses three ultrasonic sensors and a gyroscope, translating the data in real-time into sound — analogous to the sonar of a bat — creating an interactive musical “Bat-Theme”. Hence, it is not only questioning the hard problem of consciousness, but also the urge of science, philosophy and technology to solve it, which might be impossible by nature.

Leon Eckard (*1995) is a Germany-based media artist and musician. He studied Music and Media at the Robert-Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf and the Universitat de Barcelona with Jazz-Guitar as his main subject. Since 2022 he studies at the University of the Arts Berlin in the class Generative Art and is part of the collective S4NTP. Leon Eckard’s works and performances have been shown in numerous exhibitions and festivals such as xCoAx, New Now Festival and CTM Vorspiel. His artistic field develops between installative, interactive and generative art and music, as well as performances with self-developed systems. In his works, Leon Eckard deals playfully with the ideas of perception, consciousness and emergence, while exploring new ways of creating and improvising sound.