An immersive space of sound and vibration, merging art, science, and touch – creating an inclusive musical experience accessible not only through hearing, but through other senses as well.
Sub_bar is a free-form playground for merging acoustic subfrequencies and haptic art, and at the same time a pioneering series of events created by the Berlin-based Eufonia Festival. It explores music, bass vibrations, the sense of touch, and spatial experience—inviting everyone to meet, interact, and experience music in an innovative, inclusive, and immersive way—transcending the boundaries between club culture, musical experimentation, media art, and performance.
At the same time, it is an emerging movement of artists and researchers investigating the physical, musical, and cultural nature of human contact with low frequencies and vibrations—pioneers of change in music production and education, shifting from sound to vibration.
This new form of experience, focused on subfrequencies and subwoofers, enriches the cultural landscape with narratives and sensations never encountered before, opening the door to a new form of ritual: fleeting, transcendental, and inclusive.
Francesco Spaggiari is an artist, music producer, and creative with a career spanning electronic music and exhibition curation. His work explores the interaction between various cultural stimuli, drawing from his studies in communication and his deep curiosity about psychology and perception. This broad interest led him to expand beyond music production and, in 2019, found Eufonia, an interdisciplinary festival centered on sound, spanning diverse topics: biology, physics, aesthetics, musicology, neurology, psychology, archeology, architecture, technology, activism between others and formats, including sound installations, panel talks, keynotes, rituals, concerts, gaming, and scientific & artistic experiments.
Francesco has collaborated on numerous projects at the intersection of science and art, from neuroscience to astrophysics. In 2011, he worked with AlphaWave to develop a sound/EEG game designed to train players in maintaining Alpha wave activity. After the Eufonia Festival, he curated the online interview series “Clubbing: Deconstructed” for Google Arts & Culture, exploring the deep connection between clubbing and ancient rituals, highlighting their solid links and striking similarities. He also created the interactive “Larghissimo” installation with the Institute of Astrophysics of Portugal (IASTRO). This piece used 16 speakers to generate a sound field, with the movement of people entering the installation serving as input to slow down the tempo of arpeggiators playing from each speaker, sonifying the effect of mass on spacetime and the creation of gravitational waves.
Since 2021, Francesco has focused on developing Sub_Bar, both as an artistic practice and a sustainable infrastructure to ensure its continuous and international existence, a necessary step for it to be recognized as “music” by Deaf communities.
Eufonia Festival was nominated in 2020 for the Breakthrough of the Year Award by the Falling Walls Foundation but was canceled three consecutive times due to the pandemic. Sub_Bar was nominated in 2022 for the Social Innovation Award by the European Investment Bank Institute.
Across his past, present, and future work, Francesco thrives on the challenge of creating tools that empower societies, are ethically beautiful, and inspire cooperation, aligning existing conditions to generate greater value across disciplines and fields.