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What is the sound of one popcorn popping?
If you were a kernel, how would you pop?
What happens when we all pop together?

Popcorn in Training is a hands-on happening that transforms into a sound installation, inviting the public to collaboratively build an immersive sonic experience while exploring the material foundations of electronic music: wires, resistors, capacitors, and chips.

Our handmade square-wave oscillators echo the metronomic knocking and tapping of the deconstructed piano. Together, participants create a soundscape where pops, clicks, and squeaks slip in and out of sync, sparking unexpected encounters with harmony and happenstance.

This work encourages playful experimentation with DIY electronics and dynamic troubleshooting as an improvisational approach to experimental music-making. The project draws on media archaeology while demystifying technology through direct material engagement.

The public is invited to actively participate in building circuits and/or cable necklaces or simply drop in to listen as the installation evolves. The event kicks off with the pop of the first oscillator and gradually builds over the course evening.

Darsha Hewitt (CA/DE) is an interdisciplinary artist investigating the material politics of sound (and music), with a focus on empowerment and agency within technological environments. Through installations, illustrations, how-to videos, and performative workshops, she creates spaces for critical engagement with the entanglements between humans, technology, and ecology.

Working through a media-archaeological lens, she deconstructs disregarded technologies to expose systemic power dynamics embedded in socio-technical infrastructures. Her practice renders these forces tangible and opens pathways for reclaiming, repurposing, and rethinking technological practice. Alongside reverse engineering, restoration, and aesthetic experimentation with decomposing music technology, Darsha engages with diverse technical communities—including retired engineers and technicians—to learn disappearing techniques. She integrates these methods into her practice and shares them within the broader art/technology milieu.

Darsha presents her work internationally, notably at Ars Electronica (AT), Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art (HR), Hong Kong City Hall, Halle 14 – Centre for Contemporary Art (DE), MU Artspace (NL), Urbane Künste Ruhr’s Grand Snail Tour (DE), The Museum of Arts and Design (USA), Hartware MedienKunstVerein (DE), Gaîté Lyrique (FR), Deichtorhallen (DE), Kampnagel (DE), Modern Art Oxford (UK), transmediale / CTM Festival Berlin (DE), and WRO Media Art Biennale (PL). She is a recipient of stipends from Stiftung Kunstfonds, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Akademie der Künste, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her projects have been commissioned by institutions such as transmediale, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT, UK), and the European Media Art Platform.

Her signature DIY electronics and experimental approach to sound pedagogy have been profiled in forums such as Chaos Computer Congress, Make: magazine, and, most recently, in Garnet Hertz’s book Art + DIY Electronics (MIT Press, 2023). She has held academic positions including Artistic Associate in Media Art and Design at Bauhaus University, Fellow at The Institute of Digital Sciences Austria with Ars Electronica, Guest Faculty in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts, and guest professorships in New Media at Kunsthochschule Kassel and in Sound at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. She is currently a Lecturer at the Tangible Music Lab — University of Arts Linz.