art and philosophy – Mario Asef

The Acousmatic Lectures are a laboratory for investigating phenomena that are directly related to voice and its research-based, artistic, and social dimensions. The Acousmatic Lectures have roots in discursive practices and propose a listening experience based on the Pythagorean acousmatic model: a mode of presentation in which the speaker is hidden from the public. The term references to a Pythagorean tradition according to which only Pythagoras’s most devoted students were allowed to see and visually perceive him during his lectures (Mathematikoi). By contrast, newcomers were made to sit in front of a curtain concealing the master’s physiognomy. Students were therefore left without any visual information and had to try to follow the lectures solely by attentive listening (Akousmatikoi).

The Acousmatic Lectures are a laboratory for investigating phenomena directly related to acoustic information and its research-based, artistic, and socio-political dimensions. The conveyance of information between speaker and audience, as well as the surrounding context, is stripped of any extraneous visual aids and the setting is created by acoustic means alone—through speaking and listening. No technological amplification is used for the Acousmatic Lectures. In this way, the natural volume of the speaker’s voice and its tonality are able to convey their physical presence more closely. Here, the voice is defined as an acoustic space that is capable of transmitting a wide variety of physical and affective communicational idiosyncrasies. The emphasis in these lectures is placed on the dialectical investigation of abstract linguistic information and on the voice’s own sensory acoustic information, confronting the audience with what is most central to this project: listening.

The speakers are academics and scholars who talk about their specific areas of expertise. The intention is to observe what impacts the acousmatic settings have on participants, and specifically without the influence of any other effects.

The aim is to develop a critical tool for listening and apprehension that can be used for artistic and/or analytical, research-based purposes. The Acousmatic Lectures’ simple but rigorous setting requires participants to summon all their possible auditory abilities to help define both the physical presence of the speaker and of the surrounding space. The lecture functions in part as a guiding element that describes the space acoustically, integrating the physical and spatial presence of the participants. As a result, the process of listening branches out into various directions, requiring one to constantly choose what to listen to (the properties of the voice in the particular space? The hum of the space in general? The shifting of bodies on my side of the curtain? My stomach growling?).

The performative character of the Acousmatic Lectures condenses the classic academic lecture scenario into an acoustic experience that functions both informationally – on a linguistic level – as well as qualitatively – on the affective level of the voice – and is capable of transforming the situation, content, and space. These aspects are made legible through the ways in which the voice’s acoustic characteristics interact with the surrounding space. As such, the lectures might be experienced as a means for determining the interaction and transference of linguistic and affective sensory information. Already Iamblichus in the late 3rd century was aware of the active engagement within the Acousmatic situation: ”The philosophy of the Acousmatics [akousmatikon philosophía] consists of oral instructions without demonstration and without argument: e.g., “In this way one must act.” (Iamblichus 1975. chap. 18, §82)

We know little about the actual functions of Pythagoras’s acousmatic veil, but we can experiment with the effects of the “acousmatic curtain.” If we consider the acousmatic curtain as a medium, we are able to ask: What kind of transformative function does it fulfil? How does it influence voice, language, and sound, or the relationship between the speaker and their surrounding space? And what is the Pythagorean curtain capable of today?

Lecturers:

Sven Spieker / Sabeth Buchmann / Federico Geller / Birgit Schneider / Hans-Jörg Rheinberger / Marcus Gammel / Markus Gabriel / Mladen Dolar / Alex Arteaga / a.o.

more infos >
https://acousmaticlectures.com/

Publication

The book is conceived as a working tool that connects reflections on the topic with their media and spatial relevance. The layout of the book is intended to express the two sides of the curtain that separates the audience from the lecturers at Mario Asef‘s Acousmatic Lectures. To the left and right of the text column, wide margins are left blank, which are meant to provide space for Asef‘s drawings and diagrammatic interventions, but also for comments of the readers.
This creates a third narrative that runs parallel to the contributions of the authors gathered here.

Two fold-out, color double-pages in the middle of the volume show the curtain of the Acousmatic Lectures. Within this curtain we gather responses in English from selected participants of the series. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (2017), Alex Arteaga (2017) and Mladen Dolar (2021) exemplify their experiences with their lectures in the context of Asef‘s project.
Printed on the back of the curtain are two sound maps that refer specifically to the lectures of philosopher Markus Gabriel and Mladen Dolar. All contributions in this part of the book are provided with QR codes that allow online access to the corresponding Acousmatic Lectures.

Editors: Sven Spieker, Mario Asef 2023

Authors:
Alex Arteaga, Mario Asef, Johannes Block, Sabeth Buchmann, Mladen Dolar, Bernhard Dotzler, Wolfgang Ernst, Tim Hagemann, Bernd Harbeck-Pingel, Irene Lehmann, Jurij Murašov, Deniza Popova, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Sabine Sanio, Holger Schulze, Sven Spieker, Mai Wegener

more infos >

NEW BOOK RELEASE! Akusmatik als Labor: Kultur–Kunst–Medien
S. Spieker, M. Asef (Hrgs.). Verlag Könighausen Neumann

Listen to the Acousmatic Lectures online!
visit the official page > http://www.acousmaticlectures.com

Interview für w/k Zwischen Wissenschaft & Kunst – Online-Journal (German)

or download PDF here

Alex Arteaga, Acousmatic Lecture rehearsal 2017

Maniere Noire Berlin

I often think that there is no explanation needed to understand the very essence of the real. Its inconsistency. Its sharpness. In this way working with language presents a struggle. Language is uncomfortable terrain for expresing ideas beyond that terrain. However the deft use of language can be a strong instrument for mastering reality. Language is a tool, which allows us to navigate the real world.

 ”Objekte sind operationale Relationen im Prozess des Sprachhandelns” (Objects are operational relations within the process of verbal activity) is the title of my exhibition at the Maniere Noire Berlin. We enter the exhibition space and see to our left a sentence painted on the wall with a brush that reads: “Der Boden der tatsachen ist ein Spinnennetz” (The ground of facts is a spider web). We can compare the relational structure of the consistency of our truths to nets made of thin threads connecting the facts that support our reality. We walk on safe ground, when we move from fact to fact, we might think. But it is fragile ground constructed of words and symbols; a text; the narrative that built our reality. The gaps between those symbols however are what becomes relevant here. We are confronted with a kind of perforated reality which we move though ignoring the openings.

Statements –installation view, Maniere Noire, Berlin–

There is a fan plugged in on the same wall. It is on and the wind it’s producing is strong.

On the opposite wall we read: “Eine These ist ein japanischer Garten” (A thesis is a Japanese garden). So the land we are walking on is drawing us through a pathway especially designed to show us a specific articulation of the space that is equal to the linguistic articulation of our thoughts. Meaning: A thesis is a spatial/linguistic articulation of some truths. And of course our truth is the consistency we build between the physical and the mental world. The path is our truth: the narrative through which we see the world.

On this wall another identical fan is blowing wind in the opposite direction. Our hair swirls…

Is this a visual symmetry built out of asymmetrical assertions? A garden, a thesis, a spider web, the ground of facts; these terms are scattered throughout the space.

A framed drawing is hanging on a third grey wall. The drawing shows four interconnected equations as follows: “an image is a diagram – a diagram is a narrative – a narrative is a machine – a machine is an image” There lines connect inter-equational terms. We speculate on the legitimacy of those equations until we realize they function as a way of defining their own function within the drawing. Meaning; the drawing is defining itself. The drawing itself is an image that is a diagram and a narrative and a machine at once. The work becomes self-referential.

Lines, pathways and spider webs form the narrative of our physical and mental reality. On this aspect of the exhibition Ernesto Estrella asked: “what does a line think?” He has previously discussed the issue of “…where the line appears…” and that it “… seems to have the function of bringing back language a little closer to its materiality, even to remind those inked decisions that there is a void around them, that “…Those lines need to be handled with care, and cannot always be trusted. So the best thing we can do is to approach the ear, the eye, and ask them what they are thinking in there. For there will be no better clues for understanding and enjoying the unbalanced garden they are part of.”

Statements –detail, Maniere Noire, Berlin–

In Jorge Luis Borges tale “The Disk” an old man asks a woodcutter for asylum. He said he was the king of the Secgens, of the Odin people, and had lost his kingdom. He said he would prove it. Then he opened his hand to show something to the woodcutter who, seeing nothing, touched it and felt something cold and saw it glitter. ”It is the disk of Odin,” the old man said in a patient voice, as though he were speaking to a child. “It has but one side. There is not another thing on earth that has but one side. So long as I hold it in my hand I shall be king.“ I may add: …not even a drawing.

It becomes evident that the show is centered on the interface and the interconnection between words-images-objects. Each work defines itself while defining this relationship. So, for example, the invitation card for the exhibition with the title tells us what is actually happening in the space: Objects are operational relations within the process of verbal activity.

As Humberto Maturana notes: “there are no objects outside the field of language”. So Henri Lefebvre’s idea that our cities are texts within which we are moving around is not a metaphor but a fact. And yet they are more than just texts. Urban landscapes respond to a narrative, which we are supposed to interact with. And so we do.

	Links – Mario… on Ink and Dead Organisms on…
	Links – Mario… on Ein Tag am Strand
	Ink and Dead Organis… on Ein Tag am Strand
	Ein Tag am Strand… on Ink and Dead Organisms on…
	Rebecca Gellar on Faraway, So Close!