Sergej Maingardt is a composer and media artist whose music creates spaces for listening and reflection: on how technology, media and power shape the way we live, perceive and listen today.
Under the term transdigital composition, he treats sound as a musical event, a spatial material and a means of knowledge at once. His works address surveillance and the data economy, the imagery of pop culture, the media presence of violence and generative AI. In SMOG, four performers use electromagnetic coils to read out the hidden fields of computers; Blindfolded, for VR headset, headphones and loudspeakers, tests the boundary between human perception and virtual space; pieces such as It's Britney, bitch! and Hero_In dissect the gestures of pop and rock. His current work focuses on voice and authorship in the age of AI.
Each project takes the form its question demands: concert works for ensemble and orchestra, music theatre, dance, VR, installation and work with self-trained AI systems. Commissions and co-productions have come from the German Music Council, SWR, HELLERAU and Münchner Kammerspiele, among others; his music has been performed by ensembles and soloists such as Ensemble Garage, Ensemble Handwerk, ensemble electronic ID, the Cologne Guitar Quartet, Paulo Álvares and Sebastian Berweck.
Dance is a central strand of his work. He has composed the music for more than 15 full-length dance productions, many of them with choreographer Anna Konjetzky, presented at Münchner Kammerspiele, Saarländisches Staatstheater, Staatstheater Braunschweig, tanzhaus nrw, PACT Zollverein and Dansehallerne Copenhagen. Running was nominated for DER FAUST, the German national theatre prize. Lighting, a co-production with the Vietnam National Opera and Ballet and the Goethe-Institut Hanoi, toured seven countries from Panama to Pakistan, and Move morph and more has been performed more than 150 times in Denmark. Precious Camouflage, created with Charlotte Triebus for five AI systems and dancers, premiered at tanzhaus nrw and ZKM Karlsruhe.
RUSH, a work on the protest movements of the 21st century for large orchestra, amplified ensemble and electronics, was commissioned by the German Music Council and toured with the German National Youth Orchestra under Lothar Zagrosek. The music theatre 1984 at Staatstheater Darmstadt unfolds in an immersive sound system, and Echtzeitgefühlhas reached more than 50 performances at Deutsche Oper am Rhein. IS – Deutsche Räuber im Dschihad received the Theatre Prize of the City of Cologne. A portrait CD, НЕФТЬ – straight run, appeared in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik; Deutschlandfunk and BR-Klassik have devoted radio portraits to his work.
His works have been presented at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, IRCAM ManiFeste, Gaudeamus, the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, the Darmstadt Summer Course, ACHT BRÜCKEN and Ultraschall Berlin, at ZKM, HELLERAU, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf and Kölner Philharmonie. His music theatre and dance works have been part of the repertoire at Staatstheater Darmstadt, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Saarländisches Staatstheater, Staatstheater Braunschweig and Stadttheater Ingolstadt, among others. In total, his works have been performed more than 500 times in more than 25 countries: throughout Europe, as well as in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Fellowships include the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo at Casa Baldi. In 2027, DUST for the Quasar Saxophone Quartet premieres in Kiel.
At Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Maingardt researches generative AI and its impact on perception, authorship and aesthetic production, combining theory with artistic research on AI models for sound developed by himself. From 2021 to 2023 he was Visiting Professor for Transdigital Composition at the University of Music and Dance Cologne; since 2025 he has supervised an artistic doctoral project at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan. He lives in Cologne.
