Innovation you can touch: ligeti center celebrates successful open day
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The entire ligeti center opened its doors for the first time on November 22, 2025. Under the motto "Hands-on innovation", the interdisciplinary labs and projects offered a wide range of opportunities to try things out and get involved - with great success. A look back.
From remote-controlled robots to interactive installations, from healing soundscapes to palliative dramaturgy, from 3D audio to virtual reality: the ligeti center in Hamburg-Harburg impressively demonstrated just how broadly positioned it is at the open day. For the first time since its opening in May 2023, the interdisciplinary transfer center invited interested parties and cooperation partners to take a comprehensive look at all labs and projects.
After a consistently well-attended day, the team can look back on numerous inspiring discussions and exciting encounters. "The first open day of the ligeti center was a great success," summarize the project managers Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu (HfMT Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Robert Mores (HAW Hamburg), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thorsten Kern (TUHH) and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Sebastian Debus (UKE). "Throughout the day, we were accompanied by an interested and, above all, diverse audience from the Harburg neighborhood as well as from the entire city of Hamburg. We were particularly pleased that many guests visited the ligeti center for the first time and spent several hours at our interactive stations. This not only shows that we were able to offer an appealing, day-filling program. It also makes it clear that the ligeti center meets a real need for interdisciplinary formats that have not existed in this form in Hamburg until now."
"The open day makes it clear that the ligeti center serves a real need for interdisciplinary formats that have not existed in this form in Hamburg until now."
Arts and science in dialog
How do the arts and science meet - and what can they learn from each other? This question was addressed at the start of the day by Christian Carstensen (Head of the Harburg district authority), Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu (Director of ligeti zentrum), Prof. Dr. Sabine Maasen (University of Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Jan Philipp Sprick (President of HfMT Hamburg) and Margo Zālīte (theater director and sound artist; Sustainable Theater Lab). Moderated by freelance journalist Ulrike Henningsen, they discussed Hamburg as a science location, its potential and the role of the ligeti center as an interdisciplinary interface - between universities as well as between science and society.
Interactive stations on two floors
After the panel discussion, all the stations on the two floors opened around midday. In the large flex office on the 9th floor, guests were able to try out the interactive Dance Booth - a music installation that changes its rhythm by pressing buttons and the movements of the users. Meanwhile, various digital synthesizers were available in the conference room, while the painting robot from the Haptic Lab translated the generated sounds into images.
Project manager Dr.-Ing. Ornella Tortorici Pabst reports many exciting conversations at her station. She particularly remembers one synaesthetic visitor: "People with synaesthesia perceive sensory impressions in a linked way - they hear colors, taste sounds or see words in hues. In a way, the painting robot does something very similar: it translates sound into colors and patterns. The conversation offered fascinating insights and at the same time gave me new ideas for the further development of the painting robot."
The arts: analog, digital, virtual
From walk-in VR artworks from the Moving Sound Pictures project to the Spatial Sampler - an instrument that combines sound and movement in mixed reality in a new way: VR goggles opened up immersive, artistic worlds to visitors on the 10th floor.
"I would say that on average there were around ten people in the InnoLab at any one time," says Dr. Greg Beller, who not only presented his project, the Spatial Sampler, as a demo, but also gave visitors the opportunity to test the XR instrument for themselves afterwards. "I repeated the presentation about ten times throughout the day. The visitors seemed to be literally thrilled and were wide-eyed!"
While the Production Lab was transformed into a 3D audio listening room during the day, where musicians could also test their own sounds, the SPIIC+ ensemble brought the day to a convivial close with a musical performance in the late afternoon.
"The response to the day was really overwhelming," says Nadine Schwalb, Head of the Agency for Placement and Social Participation. "We were delighted that there were so many guests and that we were able to inspire such a diverse audience. The mix of children, families, students, senior citizens and people from the neighborhood made the open day a particularly enriching experience. We definitely want to repeat an event like this in the future."
Transfer between universities and into society
The ligeti center will continue to be interdisciplinary and innovative in the second half of the Innovative University funding phase. On December 3, 2025, for example, robots, musicians and employees of the center invite you to the stage show "Lost in Translation". The evening not only offers practical insights into current projects, but also unfolds an artistic-scientific dialog between music, robotics and experiments, in which interpretation and shifting meanings themselves become a performance.