Sina Fani Sani is a composer and guitarist based in Germany. His interests include different aspects of scenic and performative approach to the artistic practice. In his works often using a theatrical concept, he creates different psychological states for the performers in order to treat them as independent characters, he specially studies the similarities and differences between language and music, dealing with different layers of spoken and sung texts. Also, the microtonality and the relationship between acoustic and electronic sound are other exploration fields in his music.

He studied classical guitar and composition with Golfam Khayam at the University of Arts in Tehran and from 2017 composition with Claus Kühnl and Annesley Black at the Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main. Later, he earned his master’s degree in composition from the University of Music and Theater Hamburg in the class of Gordon Kampe.

Sina has been recognized with numerous international prizes and scholarships. Notably, he was awarded the prize of the opera competition NEUE SZENEN VI by the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Bach-Preis-Stipendium by the city of Hamburg in 2023. He has also received scholarships from the Deutscher Musikrat and the Deutsche Bank Stiftung, along with being a member of the “Akademie Musiktheater heute.” Recently, his new opera, D:/FACED, premiered at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin.

About the piece

A strange loop is a case of self-referential where the starting point object is affected or even damaged. A paradox can arise in this regard. Pulitzer Prize-winning cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, in his book “I Am a Strange Loop” (2007), defines “I” as a product of consciousness through a strange loop:

“The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one we both call “I”. An “I” is a strange loop in a brain where symbolic and physical levels feed back into each other and flip causality upside down, with symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.”

This piece is the second in a series aimed at demonstrating the interaction between our thinking process and the physical movement of our bodies. It explores how the abstraction of self-referentiality in our thinking can create a disconnect from reality.