Music for the inner ear

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard

Our fantasy has crumbled - yet we must go into utopia to articulate alternative realities that will allow us to escape the current systems we are living in and by. What can we do if we only dream pragmatic and rational dreams that speak into already existing paradigms and systems? When a catastrophic or sudden event occurs we often say that reality exceeds fantasy, this being the exception of the norm, but what if reality exceeding fantasy is in fact the norm - and not vice versa? - what if our fantasy has crumbled in such a degree that we only are capable of imagining realities and solutions which already fit into a dysfunctional system? Are we doomed? - or do we dare to go full on into utopia? In the artistic research project; Music for the inner Ear - Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard looks into the realms of imaginary sound and sonic potentiality unfolded within different artistic domains - raising the questions; Is it possible to create imaginary music only audible for the inner ear of the listener & when does something actually exist? In the project the notion of potentiality is a main driver both in activating the listener but also simply by addressing the potential of potentiality.

MUSIC FOR THE INNER EAR

-an explosion of sonic potentiality

Below, I elaborate upon some of the sources that have informed this project in different ways. This is not a complete list and the names are not to be read in any form of hierarchical order.

Some of the people mentioned below have been great sources of inspiration in this project, in a very direct way even though their praxes might not be that of an artistic praxis. Others mentioned below, I consider my peers - they may not have necessarily had a direct impact on this project, but are none the less my fellow researchers in the field.

This section could have been written in a clear and less confused manner – I could have ranked my inspiration sources or picked out a few names and expanded on them - but that wouldn’t feel right. Then the project would be locked in a certain context, counteracting the essential agenda of this project, which is to wrestle these contexts.

Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment from 1935 now known as Schrödinger’s Cat, asks us to imagine the following scenario:

A cat is put inside a box alongside an unstable radioactive substance. A Geiger counter with the ability to break a fragile canister containing a lethal poison is also put in the box.

Then we are asked to consider the two following scenarios:

If the unstable radioactive substance decays - then it will be registered by the Geiger counter, which will then break the canister releasing the lethal substance, thereby killing the cat - BUT if the radioactive substance does not decay - nothing will happen, and the cat will live (and perhaps be slightly bored).

So when looking from the outside, we don’t know what has happened inside the box - the cat could be dead, but the cat could also be alive.

In other words the cat is dead and alive at the same time, and is hovering in what in quantum mechanics is referred to as a superposition.

When we look in the box, the superposition ceases to exist and the cat is either dead or alive.

The possible realities have collapsed into each other and have merged into one possibility or the other - one singular reality.

The multiversal reality has collapsed. Potentiality has disappeared.

We have gotten an answer.

The artistic research project Music for the inner ear deals with these transitions, between superposition and singular reality, between unstable plasmatic matter and solidified matter and between question and answer.

Besides from Schrödinger’s Cat and the philosophical framework of quantum mechanics as such - Catherine Malabou’s notion of the explosion as a creative force & Jean Baudrillard’s notion of Simulacrum (copies that don’t refer back to any original) are both relevant to the project = written descriptions of sound that do not refer to any physical manifestation of sound. This project’s interest in how language can create and shape reality is also informed by Michel Faucault, Judith Butler & Marshall McLuhan.

Plato’s notion of Ideas and that the physical reality is a poor copy of the Ideas has informed this project in relation to the interest in potentiality - a notion coined by Aristotle (who also coined the notion of Fantasia - relevant to this project) and later unfolded by Giorgio Agamben.

Gilles Deleuze’s notion of "body without organs" and the metaphor of the Dogon egg relates to the project as the term describes an undifferentiated, non hierarchical realm that lies deeper than the world of appearances, and so does Salomé Voegelin’s notion of Phenomenological possibilism (Sonic Possible Worlds).

The work of Marcel Duchamp, Laurence Weiner, Yoko Ono, Henry Cowel, Robert Ashley, John Cage, Nelson Howe, Pauline Oliveros and Henri Chopin also relate to this project: Duchamp’s work with his Sound Sculptures, Weiner’s Statements, Ono’s Grapefruit, Cowel’s The process of musical creation, Howe’s Fur Music, Ashley & Cage’s overall interest for activating the listener and "opening" up the act of performing music, Oliveros’ Sonic Mediations & Chopin’s typewriter works.

Rudolph Pfenniger, Oscar Fischinger and Wassily Kandinsky all worked (in different ways) with evoking the experience of sound through visual means, and relate to this project’s interest in evoking sound through drawing as demonstrated in the series of Immersive Sound works.

The work of Walter De Maria and Hanne Darboven points towards an interest in creating geographical landscapes demonstrated in Potential for 1000 recorders and the work of James Tenney has informed the physical sound of Tableaux du Son.

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MUSIC FOR THE INNER EAR