Anette Vandsø

The commodification of silence responding to a disturbing environment is integrated in the growing attention economy. This paper suggests that the idea of silence embedded in these products preclude fruitful understandings of—and interventions in—theproblematics they address, and it proposes Cage’s silence as a more efficacious model for understanding our problems with a disturbing environment, and a better practice for intervening in it. Informed by Yves Citton’s ecology of attention the paper argues that Cage’s silence centers the interplay of attention, subjectivity and intentionality, as it takes play between us and the background, which to some extent produces us. And finally, it suggests that the Cagean practice of paying attention to this background is what Citton calls a “micropolitics of attention”, because it reveals the background as a battleground.

Med udgangspunkt i Olafur Eliasson og Minik Rosings is-installation Ice Watch (2014/2015) diskuterer denne artikel det forhold til tid, som kendetegner vores klimaforandrede virkelighed, samt hvordan denne forandring i vores kollektive fornemmelse for tid er knyttet til affekt. Artiklen argumenterer for, at tid og affekt er afgørende for Eliasson og Rosings værk – hvor vi både kan røre og blive berørt af tiden – og således centrale for værkets intention om at skabe opmærksomhed omkring klimaforandringerne

This theoretical article investigates context-based compositions where we cannot identify the real-world context from the sounds alone. Examples include Stephen Vitiello’sWorld Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd, Jana Winderen’sThe Noisiest Guys on the Planet, Jacob Kirkegaard’s4 Rooms, Christina Kubisch’s compositions based on observations of the Ruhr district, Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling’sThe Dark Side of the Cell(2004) as well as Andrea Polli’sHeat and Heartbeat of the City(2004) based on weather data from New York. The article asks how these compositions establish their relation to a specific context. How do they invite the listener to include his or her knowledge of specific contexts? The article suggests four relevant terms that are useful when studying this relation between text and context:paratext,intermediality,enunciationandmediality.

One of the newer tendencies in contemporary sound art is the use of scientific modes of data collection through laboratory set ups or field recordings, as it is for instance seen in media artist Anne Niemetz' and nano-scientist Andrew Pelling's The Dark Side of the Cell (2004) or Katie Egan and Joe Davies Audio Microscope (2000). This article tries to describe how the sound experience is conditioned by such art projects. The main argument in the article is that in such art projects we are not just experiencing ‘the world’, ‘the sound’, ‘the technology’ or ‘the listening’ but the mediating gesture happening between these positions. In order to describe this complex mediating operation the article uses a variety of media and intermedial theory particularly Lars Elleströms (Elleström, 2010) distinctions between qualified, basic and technical media. The latter is used to describe how the intermediality of such sound art projects is not just between conventional medias of art – a...

Den pandemiske periode tydeliggjorde fællesskabernes rodede, skrøbelige og besværlige mellemværender med lyd. Dét kalder på en ny dialog om vores fælles lydmiljøer. Med et begreb om sonisk medborgerskab udvider artiklen den forståelsesramme for studiet af lyd, der ligger i det klassiske soundscape-begreb som Murray R. Schafer udviklede det. Baseret på eksempler fra pandemiens periode foreslår artiklen, at Schafers idé om at ’stemme verden’ suppleres med en ’afstemmende’ tilgang.

Tid er en af de mest kostbare ressourcer, vi har i dag, og de faerreste foler, de har nok af den. Hver dag bestraeber vi os pa at folge med tiden i en stadig kamp for at na opgaver, deadlines eller sociale aktiviteter. Vores dognrytme forstyrres af et blat skaer, nar endnu en e-mail, nyhedsoverskrift eller opdatering kalder pa vores opmaerksomhed. Teoretikere som Jonathan Crary og Hartmut Rosa har ligefrem karakteriseret vores senmoderne samfund som henholdsvis 24/7- og hojhastighedssamfundet (Crary, 2014; Rosa, 2010).

JUNE 1-4, 2016 AARHUS UNIVERSITY, DENMARK The current art field is full of sound: audible and inaudible, infrasound, ultrasound, sound machines, sound installations, field recordings, digital sounds, biological sounds, sound walks, sounds from instruments, voices, nature, sonifications of data and so on. Sound art comprises a wide range of different artistic practices in which sound is a central element. It occurs in a variety of formats and contexts, crossing conventional boundaries between art genres and institutions. Despite this abundance of sonic expressions, sound art is still, as Christoph Cox noted in 2011, ‘profoundly undertheorized’.

Anette Vandsø: “Eating Denmark: The Implied Visions of ‘Another Denmark’ in the ‘Meat Ball Case’ from Randers and the New Nordic Cuisine”In January 2016 two very different food related events drew headlines in the Danish and the international press: On the one hand readers could read about the political agreement made by the local politicians in the Danish town of Randers, stating that all public institutions must serve pork, and on the other about the Danish elite restaurant and main exponent of New Nordic Cuisine, Noma’s massive success in Australia. This article investigates the salient similarities and differences between the way the two cases relate food and national and regional identity.

Although many studies have focussed on the visual and textual media practices surrounding the cultural commemoration of 9/11, few have examined the audio media practices related to the event. As a response to this lack the article is an analysis of Stephen Vitiello’s World Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd (1999) as it was installed at the MoMA PS1 memorial exhibition September 11 (2011) which explored the ‘enduring and far-reaching resonance’ of the attacks. The piece is analysed as what Pierre Nora calls a lieu de mémoire, with a specific focus on what we, in line with media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst, may call the technical ‘chrono-poetical’ folding of time. The aim of the article is to show how Vitiello’s work, due to its media specific archival practices, addresses the events of 9/11.

Lyden af Covid-19 Hvis 2020 har en lyd, må det vaere lyden af COVID-19, den nye Coronavirus som i foråret satte verden på den anden ende. Pandamien flåede verdens vaner i 1000 stykker med uoverskuelige konsekvenser for både enkelt individer, firmaer og verdensøkonomien. Men den kom også som en maerkbar forandring i vores auditive kultur. Den kom med en lyd. I mit netvaerk beretter nogen, at de har vaesentligt lettere ved at gå ud om dagen, fordi der er faerre indtryk, andre at de sover vaesentligt bedre om natten, mens andre opdager nye lyde i fravaeret af de gamle, hvilket giver en hvis uro eller bare kraever en tilvaenning. Flere af dem jeg har talt med i kraft af min roller som underviser og lydforsker fortaeller derudover, at isolationen saetter dem i et nyt og meget intimt forthold til hjemmets lyde. Det hjem, hvor man før brugte et afgraenset antal timer, hvoraf man sov i langt størstedelen, er nu blevet både arbejdsplads, fitnesscenter og legeplads. Og er man flere på matriklen, må man fordele rummene imellem sig, også lydrummene: hvem har ret til at SKYPE i stuen og fylde den med fagsnak, og hvem skal samtidig forholde sig tavs imens. Det seneste nye skrig At store samfundsaendringer fødes med et skrig er ikke noget nyt. Det er let at konstatere, når vi ser tilbage i historien for eksempel på, hvordan Industrialiseringen ikke blot revolutionerede vores produktionsapparat, men også byens hverdagslige lydtapet. Nye maskinelle lyde blev føjet til; damptogets repetitive hakken over jernbanesvellerne, symaskinens rytmiske støden og industriens metallyde og senere da forbraendingsmotoren blev opfundet, også bilmotorernes brummen, daekstøj og jetmotorens øresønderrivende fraesen. Nu er den pandemiske verdensomvaeltning vi står midt i forhåbentlig ikke en permanent krise. Alligevel kan på lignende vis beskrive Covid-19-skriget, der indebaerer lyde som: den ildevarslende hosten vi hører i køen i supermarkedet, det pludselige snirp fra de digitalt glitch i de virtuelle møderum mange af os nu må traede i, eller den karakteristiske klapren fra fingre over tastaturer og tunge åndedrag fra de mødedeltagere, som har glemt at slukke mikrofonen. En anden nytilføjelse til vores hverdag er den spillen op til faellessang ser overalt i verden ser fra altaner og baggårde. Det var den Canadiske komponist og lydforsker Murray R. Schafer (1933-), som beskrev Industrialiseringen som en sådan lydhistorie, og han gav også lydtapetet det rammende navn soundscape, som en lydlig pendant til landskabet. Schafer mente, at alle kulturer også altid var auditive, og at en verdensomvaeltende pandemi kunne høres ville ikke komme bag på ham. Når en så pludselig aendring i vores hverdagslige soundscape indtraeffer er det maerkbart: noget vi umiddelbart kan sanse. Således er virussen ikke blot noget, som forskere og laboranter ser via mikroskoper og testapparater, men også noget som civilbefolkningen sanser direkte og umiddelbart, som en maerkbar aendret stemning i den lydkulisse vi ellers var så vant til. Det chok, som har skyllet ind over landet, over os som gruppe og som individer med varierende udtryk og styrke skyldes måske ikke blot, at vi har laest foruroligende overskrifter, men også at vi sanser en maerkbar aendring i vores hverdagslige soundscape.
https://seismograf.org/artikel/en-ny-pandemisk-sanselighed

In January 2016 two very different food related events drew the main headlines in the Danish and the international press: On the one hand readers could read about the political agreement made by the local politicians in the Danish town, Randers, stating that all public institutions must serve pork, and on the other about the Danish elite restaurant and main exponent of New Nordic Cuisine, Noma's massive success in Australia. This article investigates the salient similarities and differences between the way the two cases relate food and national, regional and cultural identity. What kind of 'distinctions' between 'us' and 'them' are at play in the two cases? How is food used to draw lines of inclusion or exclusion? And what ideas about a future Denmark or North are at stake – not only on the symbolic level, regarding our cultural identity and, but also on the material level regarding sustainable food production and geopolitics? Instead of passing any normative judgment the article shows how ideas of inclusion and exclusion are playing a role in both cases (but in different ways), and how they ultimately both are a reaction to an outer pressure relating to globalization such as immigration, the homogenization and capitalization of food production and consumption.

”Mad er så pokkers banalt! […] Men […] mad er aldrig ’blot mad’. Om vi vil det eller ej, har det, vi spiser, konsekvenser for, hvordan verden ser ud. Og det har konsekvenser for, hvordan vi forstår den. […] Mad kan være politik. Mad kan handle om ansvarlighed, om bæredygtighed, om geografi og kultur”
- Olafur Eliasson 2010, 9.

1. Frikadeller og Nyt Nordisk Køkken
I januar 2016 tog to meget forskellige madrelaterede begivenheder plads i den nationale og internationale presses. Man kunne dels læse om den såkaldte Frikadellesag, som pressen døbte den politiske aftale fra Randers byråd om, at kommunale institutioner med madordninger skal sikre ”dansk madkultur som en central del af tilbuddet” samt, at de skal servere ”svinekød på lige fod med andre madvarer” (Randers byråd 2016: punkt 29). Aftalen kom i stand med et snævert flertal efter et forholdsvist langt forløb, som strakte sig tilbage til maj 2015, hvor det oprindeligt forslag om at sikre dansk madkultur blev stillet. Efter sommerferien 2015 foreslog Dansk Folkeparti en tilføjelse til aftalen om, at svinekød ikke bør udelukkes, hvilket Venstre tilsluttede sig i det endelige forslag (Hjort 2016). Og dels kunne man på samme tid læse om den succes, som den københavnske prisvindende restaurant Noma, med det erklærede nordiske køkken, høstede for sin pop-up restaurant i Australien – for eksempel at det tog blot fire minutter at få udsolgt på samtlige borde i de ti uger, restauranten havde åbent (Ritzau 2015).
Dagen efter nyheden om den politiske aftale fra Randers postede en af mine Facebook-venner menukortet fra Noma med et sarkastisk forslag om, at det var dén mad, man burde servere for børnehavebørnene, hvis man kerede sig om den danske madkultur. Denne lille facebook-opdatering illustrer dels, at samtidigheden, hvormed de to madbegivenheder ramte pressen gør en sammenligning oplagt, og dels, at der synes at være en afgrundsdyb modsætning mellem de to cases, som ellers har en beslægtet intention: nemlig at definere eller sikre dansk og/eller nordisk madkultur. Både i det politiske forslag fra Randers og i Det Nye Nordiske Køkken knyttes maden an til det særligt danske og/eller nordiske. Det politiske forslag om svinekød i dagsinstitutionerne i Randers formuleres direkte som et initiativ, der skal ”sikre dansk kulturarv” (Randers 2016, pnkt 29), og Noma, der er en sammentrækning af ordene nordisk og mad, og især de to medejere Réne Redzepi og Claus Meyer er hovedaktører i etableringen af Det Nye Nordiske Køkken på den nationale og den internationale scene. Særligt Meyer spiller en central rolle som ”feltkonstruktør” (Nickelsen og Scheuser 2009, 704). Han er sammen med Nordisk Ministerråd, Nordatlantens Brygge og Copenhagen Business School medarrangør på det store Nordiske Køkkensymposium, som afholdtes i 2004 med deltagelse af gastronomer, ernæringseksperter, fødevareindustrien og ministre, som daværende fødevareminister Hans Christian Schmidt, med formålet at udvikle Det Nye Nordiske Køkken. Her formulerede 12 nordiske kokke et manifest for dette køkken med 10 målsætninger, der kredser om bæredygtighed, dyrevelfærd, lokal produktion, med fokus på lokale, nordiske råvarer og traditionelle tilberedningsmetoder for at ”udtrykke den renhed, friskhed, enkelhed og etik, som vi gerne vil forbinde med vores region” (norden.org/”Det Nye Nordiske Køkkenmanifest). Initiativet bakkes op af Nordisk Råd, der laver en strategisk indsats omkring Ny Nordisk Mad, der har et mere bredt, demokratisk sigte end blot det elitære køkken, nemlig at udvikle Ny Nordisk Mad fra ”koncept til livsstil” med en strategisk indsats både udadtil (turisme, branding) og indadtil i forhold den offentlige sektor. Hensigten med Nordisk Råds strategiske indsats er at udvikle Ny Nordisk Mad som et policyværktøj, der både skal styrke den elitære madkultur (for eksempel via madkonkurrencer) og den bredere, demokratiske madkultur (norden.org, ”hvad er ny nordisk mad”). Således er både ”Frikadellesagen” og Det Nye Nordiske Køkken initiativer, som bakkes op af et politisk niveau, som bruger maden som del af en strategisk indsats for at bevare og udvikle national og regional identitet.
Men eftersom svinekød også indgår som en ingrediens i det Nye Nordiske Køkken, må man spørge, hvad det er for en modsætning, der egentlig er mellem de to initiativer. Hvad er det for forskellige ideer om det danske og/eller nordiske, som impliceres i de to cases? Og hvordan kan noget så banalt som det, vi spiser, indgå i symbolske forhandlinger om, hvad Danmark er eller skal være?

***

Del af udgivelsen "Et andet Danmark"
"Under overskriften Et andet Danmark? pejler Passage 76 den aktuelle debat om dansk identitet ved at forskyde interessen: I stedet for at gengive meninger om det danske, stiller nummerets bidrag skarpt på de former for tekster, hvori tidens ideer om Danmark og det danske præsenteres og udfordres. Både danskheden og debatterne om danskheden forandrer sig i disse år. Kunstens tekster blander sig med virkelighedens ideer og hændelser, og virkelighedens genrer er under forandring, inspireret af former og funktioner, som traditionelt har hørt kunsten til. Samlet set læser nummerets artikler på tværs af genrer og medier (fra romaner og lyrik over tv-serier til politiske og royale taler i traditionelle såvel som nye medier) for at blive klogere på, hvordan forskellige typer af tekster deltager i diskussionen af det danske; hvad deres former betyder for ideernes gennemslagskraft; hvordan de skaber eller udfordrer forestillinger om, hvem vi er, eller mere generelt: Hvordan forestillinger om et andet Danmark bliver til"

"The tape recorder [...] creates above all new conditions of observations" Pierre Schaeffer writes. This article picks up the theme of the link between listening and technology, and asks how contemporary sound artworks reflect the relation between technology and perception. It suggests that many contemporary sound art works explores the way digital culture conditions our listening acts. The article goes on to argue that art that lets us experience not only sound, but technological mediation provides insight into how we in the current digital culture are constantly sharing our perception of the environment with non-human listening machines

This theoretical paper investigates context-based compositions where we cannot identify the real-world context from the sounds alone. Examples include Stephen Vitiello’s Twin Towers Recordings, Jana Winderen’s The Noisiest Guys on the Planet, Jacob Kirkegaard’s 4 Rooms, Christina Kubisch’s compositions based on observations of the Ruhr district, Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling’s The Dark Side of the Cell (2004) as well a Andrea Polli’s Heat and Heartbeat on the city (2004) based on weather data from New York. The article asks how these compositions establish their relation to a specific context. How they invite the listener to include his or her knowledge of specific contexts? The article suggests four relevant terms that are useful when studying this relation between text and context, paratext, intermediality, enunciation and mediality.

Broadly, this article examines sound art works balancing at the intersection of technology, subjectivity and enunciation. On a more concrete level it analyses the technologically mediated acts of enunciation in different sound art works—Gilberto Zorio’s Microfoni (1968), Static Language Sampler’s Language Removal Service (2004), Luc Ferrari’s Far West News (1998–1999), Hong Kai Wang’s Music while we Work  (2011)—using Émile Benveniste’s linguistic theory of enunciation and Bernard Stiegler’s theories of technology and individuation. Each of these artworks adds to the understanding of this complex interconnectedness between sound (re)producing technology and subjectivity. The aim of the article is to show how this perspective can unfold the singular artworks but also their broader cultural implications. While doing so, the article engages theoretical and methodological issues raised for the emerging research in sound art. However, with its transmedial focus on acts of enunciation, the investigation also transgresses conventional distinctions between studies of words (enunciation) and music (for instance electroacoustic music) and sound art.

‘I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in’, states the American sound artist and composer Alvin Lucier (1931-) in his canonical piece I am Sitting in a Room (1970), thereby emphasising the very act of enunciation in which someone is addressing someone else in an individual speech act. Though the question of enunciation has been touched upon in several analyses of this piece, none of them have connected it to the strong and vast theoretical field established by the French linguist Émile Benveniste (1902-1976) and further developed by numerous phenomenologically-oriented analytical approaches, particularly in relation to literary and film studies.
By shifting our attention from the statement to the very act in which it is produced, the article aims not only to shed light on an essential part of Lucier’s artwork, but also to show how the theory of enunciation can prove fruitful in relation to sound studies as such. In conclusion, the article suggests that in addition to the text, the vocal performance and the recording can also be seen as communicative acts.

One of the newer tendencies in contemporary sound art is the use of scientific modes of data collection through laboratory set ups or field recordings, as it is for instance seen in media artist Anne Niemetz' and nano-scientist Andrew Pelling's The Dark Side of the Cell (2004) or Katie Egan and Joe Davies Audio Microscope (2000). This article tries to describe how the sound experience is conditioned by such art projects. The main argument in the article is that in such art projects we are not just experiencing ‘the world’, ‘the sound’, ‘the technology’ or ‘the listening’ but the mediating gesture happening between these positions. In order to describe this complex mediating operation the article uses a variety of media and intermedial theory particularly Lars Elleströms (Elleström, 2010) distinctions between qualified, basic and technical media. The latter is used to describe how the intermediality of such sound art projects is not just between conventional medias of art – as for instance text and sound – but between very different media aspects such as “sound” and “microphone” and “art”. On behalf of such an analysis the article claims that these art projects can be seen as an articulation of an auditory turn, in which sound no longer appears to be a transparent channel between us and the world, but rather a media conditioning that which is experienced.

Reportage fra SPOR festival for ny lyd- og tonekunst, 2011
Efter en ekstrem vellykket festival sidste år var mine forventninger til årets SPOR festival store, og de blev til fulde indfriet. Det lader til at temaet har været godt at tænke med for de Berlin-baserede kuratorer, Kammer Ensemble Neue Musik, Singuhr Hoehrgallerie og Ausland, for også dette års festival var fuld af stærke, vedkommende lydoplevelser

CTM 2015 – IONOSFÆRISKE SIGNALER OG LØST KURATEREDE LYDAFTRYK CTM (Club Transmediale) – Un tune. Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Hebbel am Ufer, Berghain, Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Berlin, 24/1-2/2, 2015. For 16. år træk bød CTM (tidligere Club Transmediale) festivalen på en blanding af work-in-progress, installationer, performances og høj koncentration af koncerter i et uklart og udbytterigt felt mellem "club" og avantgarde. Seismograf forsøgte at manøvrere sig gennem såvel de dagsbaserede som natlige soniske aktiviteter, der foregik i vidt forskellige institutionelle rammer

Anette Vandsø har været på to af Europas største kunstbegivenheder, Ars Electronica - festival for kunst, teknologi og samfund i Østrig samt kunstbiennalen i Venedig. Hun giver et indblik i den lydlige kunst, man her har kunnet opleve.

Ofte defineres lydkunst som noget, der falder mellem de henholdsvis auditive/temporale samt visuelle/spatiale kunstarter. Kaster man et overordnet blik på det aktuelle kunstfelt vil man dog hurtigt se, at en sådan definition ikke længere giver mening. I dag er den visuelle kunst fuld af lyd (og i øvrigt også af tekst, performance, elektronik og muld og meget andet) og musik er ikke længere kun fokuseret på det lydlige – hvis den da nogensinde har været det. Lydkunsten i dag synes med andre ord ikke at være 'in between categories', som Alan Licht formulerede det i 2007, men snarere all over the the place. I dag kan man opleve en lydligt orienteret, eksperimenterende kunst på udstillinger dedikeret til lydkunst, men derudover kan (og bør) lydkunst opleves i en penduleren mellem  scenerne for samtidsmusik, samtidskunst, performancekunst samt den meget diffuse scene for kunst og videnskab

The article asks in what ways the Japanese sound artist, Ryoichi Kurokawa’s audiovisual installation, Rheo: 5 Horisonz (2010), is “digital.” Using professor Lars Elleström’s concept of “mediality,” the main claim in this article is that Rheo not only uses digital technology but also interrogates digital mediality as such. This argument is pursued in an analysis of Rheo that draws in various descriptions of digital media by N. Catherine Hayles, Lev Manovic, Bolter and Grusin among other. The article will show how the critical potential in Rheo is directed both towards digital media as a language (Meyrowitz) (or a place for representation) and towards the digital as a milieu (Meyrowitz) or as our culture (Gere). The overall goal of the article is not just analyse this singular artwork, but also to show how sound art can contribute to our understanding of our own contemporary culture as a digital culture.

(Read the entire article here: http://seismograf.org/node/6605)

Over the past 70 years, the idea of a stable relationship between the musical work of art and its context has been a key problem. The question of autonomy has always been at the core of the discursive practices of music (Loesch 2004), but since the 1950s, the matter of text versus context has been explicitly debated and negotiated in both art and the theories of art, and the opposing positions are still more radicalized.
On the one hand, we see a cementation of the ideas of autonomy in this period. This can be seen, for instance, in the theoretical positions within high modernism which praise the idea of music as an ‘absolute monade’ (Adorno 1974: 26). It can also be observed in the institutionalization of music analysis as an autonomous category that requires a strict distinction between 'the music itself' and 'external factors' (Bent and Pople, "Analysis") and in the development of different, formalistic analytical approaches such as the 'Schenker analysis', 'set-theory analysis' etc. (Samson 2001).
On the other hand, in the same period we see an overwhelming amount of avant-gardistic experimental music and sound art that constantly challenges the idea of a stable threshold between the artwork and its context. In electroacoustic music and sound art, sonic contexts are collected via field recordings and integrated in the sonic texts, either with a focus of the objet sonore (Schaeffer, 2004) in itself or in an investigation of the sociality of those sounds (Kim- Cohen 2009) . And, many artworks are disseminated into a situative context as seen in happenings, events and social experiments within sound art (Nyman 1974; Foster 1996).
Since the 1990s, this tension between music and context has resulted in numerous academic considerations regarding the status of the musical work of art (e.g. Goehr 2002; Middleton 2003; Talbot 2010). The rise and institutionalization of popular music studies, sound studies, performance studies etc. have also challenged the idea of autonomy from within the academic disciplines; both the autonomy of the work of art, the autonomy of the field of music and accordingly, the autonomy of musicology as a discipline (Middleton 2003).
If we look at the current field of contemporary music, the relationship between music and context seems to have developed into a fruitful area for creative practices. For instance, in 2013 the theme of the Danish SPOR festival for contemporary music and sound was: “.... the relationship between sound and context – between sound, and those things that surround the sound itself, such as silence” (SPOR webpage: theme_2013). In accordance with this theme, the festival presented a variety of, more or less, open works that involved their immediate contexts in different ways.
This article asks: What are the consequences of this naturalization of the open work? How can we understand the current situation in relation to the tradition for open artworks, happenings, events etc. in the avant-garde? The article claims, that with SPOR, we see a transition to a post-Cagean aesthetic where the open work is no longer primarily a negation of the conventional work category, but instead a positive horizontal expansion into the social situation. The notion of 'post-Cagean aesthetics' has been introduced prior to this article (Kotz 2001). However, in this article I wish to try and narrow down a more specific definition of what such an aesthetic entails. The following analysis investigates the specific dispositions at SPOR that have lead to this post-Cagean aesthetic, which reformulates the correlation between text and context. In other words: How can a festival for contemporary music and sound art not only reflect, but also actively change the field it represents? Finally, the article attempts to conclude how this post-Cagean aesthetic changes the ontology of music: what is a musical work when it is inseparable from its context? Is there any difference between music and sound art, when music is something that constantly opens up to the world of sounds around music? And if not, how should musicology respond to this development?

Hvis vi vil forstå den nyeste musik og dens forhold til musikhistorien eller de typer af oplevelser, den tilbyder, eller hvordan musikken afspejler og interagerer med det omkringliggende samfund, så kræver det, at vi får en mere helstøbt forståelse af forholdet mellem værk og handling. Og det kræver især, at vi forstår, at handlingen er en dimension af musikværket og musikværket en dimension af handlingen.
Det er denne udfordring, nærværende bog tager op.Den sætter grundlæggende spørgsmålstegn ved forholdet mellem værk og handling. Den viser, hvorledes man kan gøre den musikfrembringende handling til en videnskabelig kategori, som man kan teoretisere over på et generelt niveau, og som man kan anvende som en analytisk optik på enkelte musikværker eller musikalske fænomener.

Sounds of waves breaking on a shore, of thunderstorms with quiet falling rain, of whale song or rainforest animal life. Sound recordings of nature have been an integrated part of our everyday cultural representations of nature since the late 1960s, and today they play a pivotal role in our common imaginaries about nature. Typically we encounter such soundings in meditation sound tracks, sound machines and various genres of music, with nature being represented as a pastoral world (Michael 207), and a pristine “other” that we should preserve and venerate.
Natural sounds are also the main ingredient in many recent art/science projects. But when American sound artists such as Andrea Polli, Raviv Gancrow, Joe Davies and Katie Egan invite us to listen to global warming, infrasounds in the upper crust of the earth, or the undecipherable sounds of living cells, nature is not presented as a serene, peaceful sanctuary. Instead, the disturbing, rumbling and indistinct soundings in these art projects embed their listener in the deep, dark inside of nonhuman forces that we do not normally sense. These examples resemble Timothy Morton’s description of “art in the age of ecological awareness,” which is “a demonic force, carrying information from the beyond, from nonhuman entities such as global warming, wind, water, sunlight and radiation” (Realist 22).
The following essay will discuss how the art works produced by the artists mentioned above relate to Morton’s idea of dark ecology. The purpose is not to explain Morton’s thinking, but rather to explore this new ecological aesthetics, which is present in current American sound art/science projects, and to ask what cultural changes it expresses, as well as considering how it might contribute to new understandings or imaginaries about nature.