MUSIC FOR THE INNER EAR
-an explosion of sonic potentiality
On 22 October 2018 Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard presented the final results of the artistic research project Music for the inner ear.
The presentation took place at RMC in Copenhagen, and the opponents were Søren Kjærgaard - pianist, composer and associate professor at RMC (DK), and Anne Helen Mydland - vice dean and professor of art with a specialization in ceramics and clay from the department of contemporary art at Bergen University (N).
Central questions revolved around the context of the works. Was it music? Was it painting? Was it sculpture? And also the context of the artist himself - was Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard acting as a composer or a visual artist? And in the latter case, what would the context of his work then be?
Also questions about the ability to generate imaginary soundworks in relation to memory and remembered sounds were discussed.
Some of Løkkegaard’s text works dealt with timespans almost ungraspable for humans - and a potential in his work was seen here in terms of raising the question: What are humans capable of grasping?
Reflecting upon these questions, Løkkegaard found himself oscillating between the positions mentioned above. As a default within his praxis, he would see himself in a constant oscillation between the domains of sculpture, painting, text and music - being a composer, a visual artist and an author at the same time. The oscillating state was also to be found within the specific pieces that would inhabit multiple states at the same time - as music described in text would be in constant fluctuation between alphabet, word, language and meaning, and between the state of a book, a score, written text and imaginary music.
A fluctuation very similar to that of the superposition found in quantum mechanics.
Just as warm plasma within a supercollider would burn and collapse if it ever were to leave the magnetic field and touch the walls of the collider, so would the work of Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard.
Løkkegaard’s work hovers in a magnetic field between the positions of music, sculpture, visual work, installation, composition, sound art and visual art. If his works were to be approached from one position only, they would close in on themselves.