Soviet sponsorship for sonic research led to the invention of the first electronic instrument, the theremin, in 1920. In St Petersburg, the Floating Sound Gallery, Russia’s first sound-art platform, picks up where these avant-garde experiments left off.

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Russia has a formidable legacy of sonic experiments conducted in the avant-garde and hopeful 1920s. In the first years following the revolution, the eminent researcher, physicist and inventor Lev Theremin, in whose honour the Theremin Centre was named, was touring the land of the Soviets with his brilliant invention — the thereminvox, history’s first electronic musical instrument. Around the same time, the prominent composer and music theorist Arseny Avraamov was conducting his Symphony of Sirens in Moscow and Baku; this work utilised factory sirens and machine noise in lieu of musical instruments. But the situation in the country was changing rapidly, and by the 1930s, sonic experimentation had been completely and definitively excised from the Soviets’ list of legitimised artistic practices…

“Seeing sound: The gallery where the sonic dreams of the Soviet avant-garde live on”, Sabina Minalto, The Calvert Journal.