Ioana Vreme Moser
flirtatious electronics and whispers of inconspicuous events.
Participations
Perikon Smelters (2026)
Selected Artworks
Arsenic Ballerinas
Fluid Anatomy
Warble Boys
Perikon Smelters
Mineral Amnesia
Nautophone Telecom
Fluid Memory
Links
instagram
vimeo
Bio
Ioana Vreme Moser (b. 1994) is a Romanian sound artist based in Berlin engaged with hardware electronics, speculative research, and tactile experimentation.
Her practice uses deliberately rough electronic processes to extract different materialities of sound, placing components and control voltages in direct interaction with her body, organic matter, found objects, and environmental stimuli. From these volatile encounters, sound emerges as a carrier of personal narration and critical observation, tracing the histories of electronic technologies, their production chains, wastelands, and entanglements with the natural world.
Amongst many others, she has performed and exhibited at Ars Electronica (AT), ZKM Karlsruhe (DE), The National Gallery of Denmark (DK), Fonderie Darling (CA), CTM Festival (DE), Rewire Festival (NL), Akademie der Künste Berlin (DE), Vancouver New Music (CA), Manifesta 14 (XK), SFX - Alternative Space Loop (KR), Eigen+Art Lab - Transmediale, Berlin (DE). In 2025, she was double-awarded an Award of Distinction in the category of Digital Musics & Sound Art, Prix Ars Electronica for the work Mineral Amnesia and an Honorary Mention in the category Artificial Life & Intelligence for the work Fluid Anatomy.
Installation: Perikon Smelters | Responsive Dreams 2026
Perikon Smelters delves into the accidental occurrence of radiosensitive minerals with peculiar electrical phenomena to create a sound installation that resonates through and within crystalline formations. Pieces of zincite (Zinc Oxide), a red ruby crystal born from human intervention and a predecessor of the transistor, are converted into crackling amplifiers. From the first accidental mine fire to the first electronically generated sound, Perikon Smelters traces the fascinating history of this mineral’s crystallography entangled with human error and sets to voice minerals that scream at the attentive, yet unstable touch of a needle.
Zincite is a scarce antropogen neither natural nor artificial. Found in tiny bits on meteorites, its formation on Earth is shaped by man-made accidents. Some of the first oscillating crystals were born in mine fires in New Jersey, where zinc ores were accidentally fused with manganese and iron impurities, making them semiconductive. A contact between ZnO and pyrite makes a screaming tone as observed in 1907. Pikard G.W. names it Perikon, opening the doors for other experimenters like Oleg Lossev to use zincite to produce electronically generated sound, way before the acknowledged invention of the transistor. Perikon Smelters inspires sculptural circuits from Crystondyne (Losev’s early oscillator) to exalt inanimate semiconductors with 2 simple parts: a coil and a capacitor.
When touched with electricity, the minerals generate tones and amplify crackles through their accidentally fused inner impurities.
Between 1980 and 2004, a flawed furnace in Olawa was clogged with an uncanny number of large crystals formed continuously as zinc vapours met with oxygen unintentionally. The work collects colourful specimens from this recent crystalization event and pairs them with historical matches like sulphides, galena and pyrites. One can say that these crystals form through human activity, but in a pique of him. With Olawa’s smokestacks repaired, the precise mechanism of ZnO sublimation remains a mystery, and no one knows when or if zincite will ever form again to oscillate. The work peeks at the fragile circumstance of Zincite formation and its ignored relevance in the history of digital technology to ponder upon the entanglements between human error, technological advancements and resulting shifts in Earth’s geologies.
10 oscillatory mineral sound objects. Olawa Zincites, Romanian Galenas and Bulgarian Pyrites
Keywords: Perikon, pique, technological anomaly, early transistor, human intervention, zinc oxide, macro crystals, crystalline electrical phenomena, cat’s-whisker, radiosensitive, Antropogen, heterodyne, Pyre, Galvanized, Ore, Smolder, Mountain Vein, scratchers
Credits: Work commissioned for Places of Care by Marginal funded through AFCN (National Romanian Cultural Funds).
Technical support: Dorian Largen, Wouter Jaspers, Sabina Suru.
Mineral Amnesia - Ioana Vreme Moser
