The SONDA festival was born out of pure enthusiasm. It all started with a rather random encounter between an avid music nerd with no musical education (Jan Lichý) on the one hand and an established artist with rich professional experience and academic background (Jiří Y Suchánek) on the other. The synergy of this encounter gave birth to the idea of organizing a progressive interdisciplinary showcase that seeks to broaden horizons, entertain, connect, and push boundaries, and which aspires to make a great addition to the local cultural scene.

The SONDA festival sets out to explore the vast territory of experimental electroacoustic music, live electronics, audio-visual performances and sound art and dive deep into its captivating corners. In acoustically exceptional spaces, the festival will present the work of artists who combine the medium of sound, light and moving image in an unconventional way, reflecting the latest audio-visual technologies, as well as proven analogue methods. In addition to established artists from the domestic and international scene, SONDA will provide a space for presenting artistic ideas of the emerging generation of musicians, composers, multimedia and sound artists. Many works are custom made for the festival as part of an unrestricted and non-hierarchical collaboration between artists across different disciplines.

The festival's dramaturgy emphasizes strong and refined artistic approach, as well as unorthodox methods of working with the medium used. At the same time, it does not hesitate to present the content in a manner that is also accessible and attractive to a wider audience.

The first edition of the SONDA festival will take place on 12 November 2022 at the Brno Observatory and Planetarium. Capitalizing on the specific visual and acoustic properties of the planetarium dome, the festival will feature musical performances, AV shows, light and multimedia installations and artistic interventions. The lineup of the first edition includes five foreign and local artists - Tomoko Sauvage (JP), David Granström (SWE), Tadej Droljc (SLO), Jiří Y. Suchánek (CZ) and Tomáš Vtípil (CZ). The festival will also present the work of an international collective of artists brought together by the Trychtýř Project. The group, by means of jam sessions, is putting together brand-new artistic content to be presented in the form of AV performance in the planetarium building and interventions inside the premises of the observatory. 

The SONDA Festival is organized by the SVITAVA - transmedia art lab z. s. with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the South Moravian Region.