Biodukt at Ars Electronica 2021 // Sound Park – auditory scenes
In a world dominated by visual stimuli, auditory perception can be an oasis of calm. The Sound Park – in the Kepler Garden at Johannes Kepler University Linz – offers the opportunity to relax and engage in an active listening process. Visitors are invited to close their eyes and let a sonic awareness of a space unknown to them emerge. The venue offers the opportunity to leave the physical festival site and relax in imagination through listening.
Linz, In Kepler’s Gardens
Thu Sep 9, 2021, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Fri Sep 10, 2021, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Sat Sep 11, 2021, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
Sun Sep 12, 2021, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Biodukt
Martina Testen (SI), Simon Šerc (SI)
This land between the worlds is that inexplicable place we all recognize once we experience it, but its nuances slip away and shape-change if one tries to pin them down, except when we use poetry, music, dance, or story. There is speculation that the immune system of the body is rooted in this mysterious psychic land, and also the mystical, as well as all archetypal images and urges including our God-hunger, our yearning for the mysteries, and all the sacred instincts as well as those which are mundane. Some would say the records of humankind, the root of light, the coil of dark are also here. It is not a void, but rather the place of the Mist Beings where things are and also are not yet, where shadows have substance and substance is sheer. One thing about this land is certain, it is old, older than the oceans. It has no age; it is ageless. Archetype exists everywhere and yet is not see-able in the usual sense. What can be seen of it in the dark cannot necessarily be seen in daylight.
So, to further our kinship relationship with the instinctual nature, it assists greatly if we understand stories as though we are inside them, rather than as though they are outside of us. We enter into a story through the door of inner hearing. The spoken story touches the auditory nerve, which runs across the floor of the skull into the brainstem just below the pons. There, auditory impulses are relayed upward to consciousness or else, it is said, to the soul … depending on the attitude with which one listens. Ancient dissectionists spoke of the auditory nerve being divided into three or more pathways deep in the brain. They surmised that the ear was meant, therefore, to hear at three different levels. One pathway was said to hear the mundane conversations of the world. A second pathway apprehended learning and art. And the third pathway existed so the soul itself might hear guidance and gain knowledge while here on earth. Listen then with soul-hearing now, for that is the mission of story.
