Sonification of data lends science an aesthetic momentum, as it requires the perception of the scientist who, on his quest for knowledge, uses his sense of hearing. Just as scientific visualization addresses the eye, sonification addresses the ear.

And as artists are specialists in the realm of the visible and the audible, Berne's researchers at medical, natural- or social-science institutions work together with sound designers and visual-communication designers. Scientists measure values that are then either rendered visible or audible, depending on their characteristics and the problem under study.

There is an epistemological thesis behind this approach: We assume that the forms of scientific representation are in fact relevant to the results of the research. This prompts us to ask whether knowledge can possibly be formulated beyond the linguistic norms of science, especially via the vocabulary of the arts.

Doesn't the current debate about artistic research - and also art history - show us that there are, and always were, individual artists who have claimed that their artistic work was also research work? We feel that we are part of this tradition and try to live up to this claim, putting it into practice under the motto "Art as Research". How then should artistic research look that exists parallel to conventional scientific research and that experiments on new forms of portraying knowledge without losing the qualities that are specific to the arts?