Thies Mynther

Thies Mynther is a German composer, lyricist, producer, and transdisciplinary artist working across music, theatre, film, and audiovisual systems. He lives and works primarily in Hamburg and Berlin.

Since 1989, he has contributed to over one hundred album releases. As a member of bands such as Phantom/Ghost, Stella, and Das Bierbeben, and through work with artists including Miss Kittin, Chicks on Speed, and Dillon, he has performed more than 1000 concerts in a wide range of contexts.

His work has evolved from an  interest in musical approaches beyond the classical European tradition of harmonic functionality, including electronic club music and other non-linear musical languages. This led to work in sound design and film scoring in the early 2000s.

Around 2010, his focus shifted toward theatre, driven by an interest in the structural and dramaturgical role of music within staged performance, including a long-standing engagement with American musical theatre. Since then, he has worked as a composer, musician, and musical director in a wide range of productions.

His theatre work has been realized with directors including Nicolas Stemann, Sebastian Baumgarten, Bastian Kraft, Brit Bartkowiak, and Ulrich Matthes, as well as with groups such as Showcase Beat Le Mot. It has been presented at venues including Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Kampnagel, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Akademie der Künste, HAU Berlin, and the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava.

In 2014, as part of Retrospectres, a joint performance by Phantom/Ghost and Cosima von Bonin at Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Kampnagel Hamburg, and mumok Vienna, a songbook with 22 selected compositions by the group was published by Galerie Buchholz.

In 2016, he created I Know It When I See It with Jason Danini Holt, a theatrical work examining pornography through the biography of Georgina Spelvin, presented at the International Summer Festival at Kampnagel.

In 2017, he continued his work with Showcase Beat Le Mot and initiated the production platform Fairy Bot together with filmmaker Sandra Trostel, focusing on cross-media and narrative formats. In the same year, he received a prize in the Wave Field Synthesis Composition Contest organized by Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

In 2018, he composed the soundtrack for All Creatures Welcome (dir. Sandra Trostel), co-produced and co-wrote the album and performance Add Land with Tellavision, created the music theatre work This Machine Kills with Veit Sprenger at HAU Berlin, and contributed songs and score to a stage adaptation of Panikherz by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre.

In 2019, his work included compositions for the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow and performances and texts for Theater im Pumpenhaus and the Flurstücke019 Festival in Münster. A mechatronic street performance in this context led to an exhibition at Kunsthalle Münster.

During 2020–21, a series of telematic works emerged, including the Corona Improv Sessions, Pajama Opera, Coronopera, and Year of the Bug. These projects addressed networked performance and the transformation of musical and visual practices under conditions of distance and latency.

In parallel, his work expanded into audiovisual and installation-based formats. These include Moon Machine, a mechatronic sound sculpture and performance system; Klimaton – Arctic≈2020, a data-driven audiovisual instrument based on climate research; and Erik/Prince Is Dead – A Fever Dream Letter Scape, a hybrid film work.

n 2023 he established a filmic and musical format combining animation, composition, and speculative narrative with Zoopticon – Songs from a Posthuman Ark together with Sandra Trostel and Jon Frickey.

In 2024, his work included the stage production Frankenstein (Theater Augsburg), combining composition with AI-based visual processes in a theatrical context. In parallel, Zoopticon – Songs from a Posthuman Ark continued its international festival run, receiving several awards, including the DEFA Promotion Prize at the International Short Film Festival Dresden, following earlier recognitions such as Best Animation Film at Curtas Vila do Conde and the WDR Award at KFFK Cologne.

Alongside these works, his musical practice extended into more immediate and politically inflected forms. With Der Untergang*, a collaborative music project situated between electronic production and text-based songwriting, he engages with contemporary political and social tensions in a more direct and collective format.

Across different contexts, Thies Mynther's  work further articulates a trajectory between staged performance, filmic composition, and musical production, with an increasing focus on the role of artificial systems within these processes.

Since 2025, this line of inquiry has continued in Purple Mirror, an ongoing musical work exploring composition as a reflective practice in dialogue with artificial intelligence. Rather than treating AI as a tool, the project approaches it as a responsive system within which musical structures, voices, and identities are negotiated.

Fields of Practice

Composition and songwriting
Music production and arrangement
Theatre composition and musical direction
Film scoring and sound design
Audiovisual installation and performance
Hybrid and telematic formats

Selected Projects (Music, Film, Performance, Installation)

Zoopticon – Songs from a Posthuman Ark (film / animated musical)
Moon Machine (mechatronic sound sculpture and performance system, with Tobias Euler, Veit Sprenger)
Klimaton – Arctic≈2020 (data-driven audiovisual instrument, with Adnan & Nina Softić et al.)
Erik/Prince Is Dead – A Fever Dream Letter Scape (film / audiovisual work)
This Machine Kills (music theatre performance, with Veit Sprenger, HAU Berlin)
All Creatures Welcome (film, dir. Sandra Trostel – soundtrack)
Add Land (album / performance, with Tellavision)
Panikherz (theatre production – composition and songs)
I Know It When I See It (theatre production, Kampnagel)

Distributed Collaborations (2020–21):
Corona Improv Sessions, Pajama Opera, Coronopera, Year of the Bug

Purple Mirror (ongoing musical work exploring composition in dialogue with AI systems)

Theatre (Selection)

Composer / Musical Director for productions at:

Deutsches Theater Berlin
Schauspielhaus Hamburg
Kampnagel Hamburg
HAU Berlin
Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Akademie der Künste Berlin
Staatstheater Mainz
Slovak National Theatre (Bratislava)

Collaborations with directors including:
Nicolas Stemann
Sebastian Baumgarten
Bastian Kraft
Brit Bartkowiak
Ulrich Matthes

Film and Moving Image (Selection)

All Creatures Welcome (Sandra Trostel, 2018) – soundtrack
Die Anruferin (Felix Randau, 2007) – music
Landjäger (Lilli Thalgott / Hidden Hitchcock) – soundtrack
Ein Endspiel (Hidden Hitchcock) – soundtrack
Erik/Prince Is Dead – A Fever Dream Letter Scape (film work)
Zoopticon – Songs from a Posthuman Ark

Installations / Audiovisual Works

Moon Machine (2019–2020) – exhibited at:
Flurstücke Festival Münster
Kampnagel Hamburg
Ars Electronica Linz
Kunstverein Hamburg
Mousonturm Frankfurt

Kunsthalle Münster (2020)

Klimaton – Arctic≈2020 (installation / instrument)
presented at Silent Green Berlin and other contexts
Kunsthaus Hamburg (Politics of Love, incl. Zoopticon)

Retrospectres (with Phantom/Ghost & Cosima von Bonin)

Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Berlin – 
Kampnagel Hamburg – Retrospectres
mumok Vienna – Retrospectres

Galerie Buchholz – publication and presentation context (Phantom/Ghost Songbook)
Museum Ludwig Cologne – performance context
Galerie Buchholz Berlin – performance context

Exhibitions and Festivals (Selection)

Ars Electronica (Linz)
Kunsthalle Münster
Kunstverein Hamburg
Kunsthaus Hamburg
Kampnagel International Summer Festival
Flurstücke Festival Münster
Silent Green Berlin
nternational Music Video Competition – Erik/Prince is Dead Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen ,  2020
Kasseler Dokfest

Awards

Sound Design Award, LIAFF (London International Animation Festival), 2025

Best Animation Film, International Competition
Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival, 2023

WDR Award
KFFK Cologne International Short Film Festival, 2023

DEFA Promotion Prize (Animation)
International Short Film Festival Dresden, 2024

Special Mention
Ale Kino! International Young Audience Film Festival, Poland, 2023

Shortlisted
German Short Film Award

3rd Prize, Wave Field Synthesis Composition Contest
Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, 2017

Selected Festival Screenings

Curtas Vila do Conde International Film Festival (Portugal), 2023
KFFK Cologne International Short Film Festival (Germany), 2023
DOK Leipzig – International Competition Animation (Germany), 2023
Uppsala Short Film Festival (Sweden), 2023
Curto Circuito (Spain), 2023
Festifreak – La Plata (Argentina), 2023
CutOut Fest (Mexico), 2023
Short Waves Festival (Poland), 2023

International Short Film Festival Dresden (Germany), 2024
ITFS Stuttgart – International Festival of Animated Film (Germany), 2024
GO SHORT (Netherlands), 2024
Filmfest Bremen (Germany), 2024
Flatpack Festival (UK), 2024
Les Intergalactiques (France), 2024
Animator Festival – Artificial Empathy Competition (Poland), 2024
Kyiv International Short Film Festival (Ukraine), 2024
Nordische Filmtage Lübeck – Forum deutscher Kurzfilm (Germany), 2024
Open Eyes Filmfest (Germany), 2024
Open Air Filmfest Weiterstadt (Germany), 2024
Glasgow Science Festival (UK), 2024
Cardiff Animation Nights (UK), 2024
Weird Market – Animation & New Media (Spain), 2024

Mutoscope Short Film Festival (France), 2025
SEEYOUSOUND – International Music Film Festival (Italy), 2025
Filmfest Schleswig-Holstein (Germany), 2025

Publications

Phantom/Ghost Songbook (Galerie Buchholz, 2014)
22 selected compositions published in the context of Retrospectres

Music / Discography (Selection)

Over 100 releases since 1989

Bands and projects:
Phantom/Ghost
Stella
Das Bierbeben
Superpunk
Glove

Collaborations with:
Miss Kittin
Chicks on Speed
Dillon
Tellavision

Selected labels:
Ladomat
Mute
Dial
BPitch Control
Bureau B
Tapete Records
Fairy Bot Recordings

Collaborations (Selection)

Sandra Trostel
Veit Sprenger
Jon Frickey
Adnan & Nina Softić
Cosima von Bonin
Jason Danino Holt

Technical and Artistic Tools

Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Nuendo
Melodyne, Reaktor, SuperCollider
QLab, Resolume, DaVinci Resolve
AI-assisted and generative systems
Telematic and distributed performance environments

Languages

German (native)
English (fluent)

WIKIPEDIA

Verantwortlich:

Fairy Bot Productions
Thies Mynther
Billwerder Neuer Deich 72
20539 Hamburg

Kontakt:
E-Mail: ThiesMynther@gmx.net