the grand concert of the world

• Jakob Böhme

  De Signatura Rerum

  • conceptualizes all of Being along model of a musical instrument
  • body is sounding board, form and materiality is tuning which accounts for the characteristic expression that the thing can have
  • theory of understanding - we understand an untterance when it strikes our inner bell - co-vibration - resonance
  • things affect each other through communication
  • coherence of the world = grand concert

• modern art,

  • a new aesthetics has developed, which has the concept of atmosphere as its core. An aesthetic of atmospheres offers the extraordinary advantage of taking up a wide range of everyday experiences. It allows us to communicate easily about phenomena like a serene valley, an oppressive thundery atmosphere, or the tense atmosphere of a meeting

• atmosphere: phenomenon of the in-between - between subject and object, combining once separated aesthetics of production vs reception

  • experienced as impressions, with a tendency to induce a certain mood

• aesthetic of production - generators of atmospheres - objects, arrangements, light, sound

  • read qualities as ecstasies - ways in which things step out of themselves and modify the sphere of its presence

• light as atmosphere, atmosphere in church spaces…music…atmospheres of interpersonal communication

• aesthetic conquest of acoustic space

  • sampling techniques today make all kinds of acoustic material usable for compositions
  • in the past, music was a temporal art - unity, bound to rhythm -
  • music as spatial art, filling a space via resonance
  • space as an essential dimension in the creation of music - this can become the key dimension of a musical work instead of time
  • the character of a space is responsible for how one feels in that space
  • the sound of a region mediates one’s sense of home
  • a landscape is no longer restricted to the visible
  • character of acoustic atmospheres of physical spaces matters

• music of the soundscape

  • Soundscape - project by R. Murray Shafer to research the world of natural sounds, like the acoustics of a city, etc.
  • diversified musical material, and discovered the world’s inherent musicality
    • Roaratorio - John Cage
  • Sam Auinger - transforms sounds on site, not through sound files
    • turns sounds into tones with a resonating body, like a resonance tube (reminds me of wind chimes, things that harness the natural)
  • tonality = basic mood of a landscape, sound of pipes, brakes on a train

• pieces of the grand concert of the world - not as God would hear it, but tuned for our ears and therefore turned into music

• platonic period has ended

  • modern artworks are no longer about the representation of something but about the experience of seeing - impressionists, etc.
  • music has always been non representational
  • “it is hearing itself that matters and not hearing something”
  • one is “outside” while hearing - we typically presume that hearing is an internal participation - but sounds are heard outside, the body itself is a space that resonates with the voices and tones

• Conclusion

  • music has been diversified - music has become a component part of the environment, something atmospheric
  • Soundscape promoted acoustic atmosphere as the essence of music
  • the voices of things and the concert of the world matter more
  • we must ask “which acoustic characters the spaces we live in should have”

• causal, semantic, reduced listening

• sound has diff cultural meaning

• agency → voice

• part of grand concert

• a silent spring - rachel carson - chambers - 1960s -

  • fluxus - artistic movements
    • joseph buoys?
    • happening arts
  • social sculpture - society is the most important art

• sound is always an element of space

• everything is interconnected

• vik muniz