Jacob Kirkegaard, uno de nuestros artistas sonoros favoritos, también estuvo en Tuned City, presentando su nuevo trabajo ‘Labyrinthitis’, basado en el fenómeno de las «emisiones otoacústicas», esto es, sonidos creados en el interior de nuestro sistema auditivo. En su web nos ofrece info detallada sobre este proyecto.

Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: His new work LABYRINTHITIS is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience.

LABYRINTHITIS relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called “distortion product otoacoustic emission” (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as “Tartini tone”.

By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortion effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived «intersubjectively»: inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, «objectively», into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone… until, step by step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea.

** Jacob Kirkegaard momentos antes de comenzar su performance en Nalepastraße.