Photos courtesy of Petri Henriksson.

Instead of presenting the Science Poems book from A to Z, we decided to do it through chemical substances and compounds from NH to OH in respect to NH4Cl + C2H5OH, the drink recipe of the evening.

NH4Cl + C2H5OH is a mix of Ammonium Chloride (NH4Cl), the building material of carbon black coloured Finnish candy called salmiakki [something most Finnish people remember making in their chemistry classes at school] and Hydroxyl-Carbon compound (C2H5OH) also known as alcohol.

Following this pattern, here’s a summary of the evening:

NH (Nitrogen + Hydrogen = Ammonium) stands for National Herbarium such as The Komarov Botanical Institute Herbarium in Russia, which hosts a collection of over seven million specimens of plants and fungi, many of them digitised in the institute’s virtual library from which Anna presented her selection.

Photo courtesy of Petri Henriksson.

Cl (Chloride) is for Celestial, or Céleste. Accordingly, Anni, in Paris at the moment, read mnemonics for remembering planet names on Skype. One of them went like this: Mon Vieux Tu M’as Jeté Sur Une Nouvelle Planète. However, as it was announced, the mnemonic was perhaps a little old-fashioned since Pluto was recently deemed not a planet at all. In 2006, The International Astronomical Union expelled it from the planetary club, calling it a dwarf planet not big enough to clear smaller bodies close to it.

Photo courtesy of Petri Henriksson.

C (Carbon) stands for Cargo cult science, a term coined by physicist Richard Feynman in the 1970s to negatively characterise research in the soft sciences (e.g. psychology and psychiatry) which he deemed pseudo-scientific. In addition to his science critique, Feynman is known for popularising the field of physics with accessible explanations. Inspired by his stories about a teeming nano-world for a 1983 BBC interview ‘Physics is Fun to Imagine’ as well as Yoko Ono’s proposal pieces for the artist’s book Grapefruit, Jenna presented her interpretations on Feynman’s thoughts as event scores to create an experience of science.

H (Hydrogen) is for Hollow sphere – particularly one composed entirely of carbon. We read about this sphere, buckminsterfullerene, from the glossary of the Science Poems book:

Buckminsterfullerene or buckyball (C60) is the smallest carbon molecule, fullerene, in which no two pentagons share an edge. It is also the most common in terms of natural occurrence, as it can often be found in soot. The structure of C60 is a truncated icosahedron, which resembles a soccer ball. The molecule was named by scientists after Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), an American architect, author and futurist. He developed numerous inventions, the best known of which is the geodesic dome shaped like a fullerene. The American sci-fi author Bruce Sterling (b. 1954) later coined the neologism buckyjunk, referring to future, difficult-to-recycle consumer waste made of buckminsterfullerenes.

OH (Oxygen + Hydrogen = Hydroxyl) stands for Laurie Anderson’s track ‘Let X=X’, starting from its third sentence, “Oh boy. Right again…”, marking the end of our presentation.

Photo courtesy of Petri Henriksson.

Finally, we made NH4Cl + C2H5OH and listened to Martti Kalliala’s ‘DNA Junk’ (download by right clicking), a base pair sequence of non-genomic DNA translated into notes through MIDI and played by a Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser.

In the BBC footage, Feynman wonders how some people find sience so easy, and others find it dull and difficult – like children, for instance. “In the case of science, I think one of the things that makes it very difficult is that it takes a lot of imagination,” he says. “It’s very hard to imagine all the crazy things that things really are like. Nothing’s really as it seems. [...] But I find myself trying to imagine all kinds of things all the time. And I get a kick out of it.”

Exploring our place in the cosmos, the following transcripts and performance instructions aim to create an experience of science.

Water drop piece

Richard Feynman: “You see a little drop of water, a tiny drop. [...] The atoms in it attract each other. They like to be next to each other. They want as many partners as they can get. Now, the guys that are on the surface of the drop have only partners on one side, so they’re trying to get in. You can imagine this team of people all moving very fast, all wanting to get as many partners as possible, and the guys at the edge are very unhappy and nervous, and they keep on pounding in. And that’s what makes the drop a tight ball instead of flat – surface tension.”

Take a mannerism from an atom in a drop of water.
Gather a group of people in the same room for an hour.
Remain surrounded by a person on each side of you at all times.

Rubber band piece

“Most elastic things like steel springs and so on are nothing but this electrical thing pulling the atoms a little bit apart when you bend something, and then they try to come back together again. But rubber bands work on a different principle. There are some long molecules like chains that are kind of kinky and knocked about in shape. When you pull open the rubber band, the chains get straighter but they are being bombarded on the side by other little atoms trying to shorten them by kinking them, so they’re trying to pull back. [...] I’ve always found it fascinating to think, that when rubber bands are sitting on an old package of papers for a long time, holding them together, it’s done by a perpetual pounding, pounding, pounding of the atoms against these chains, trying to kink them for a long time, trying to hold this thing together.”

Wear a rubber band on your waist.
Eat a sandwich.
Think about the atoms that are pounding on your stomach.

Mirror Piece

“You look in a mirror, and let’s say you part your hair on the right side, but the image has its hair parted on the left side. So, the image is left and right mixed up. It’s not top and bottom mixed up because the top of the head in the image is still up there at the top, and the bottom of the feet are on the bottom. But how does the mirror know how to get the left and right mixed up but not the up and down? [...] It takes a lot of fiddling to describe what a mirror does. If you wave this hand, the waving hand in the mirror is right opposite it. The hand in the East is the hand in the East and the hand in the West is the hand in the West, and the head that’s up is up and the feet that are down are down. Everything’s really alright. But what’s wrong is that if this is North, your nose is to the North of the back of your head but in the image, the nose remains to the south of the back of the head. So, what actually happens in the image is neither mixing up the left and the right, nor the top and the bottom, but the front and back have been reversed. The nose of the image is on the wrong side of the head. Now, when we think of the image, we think of it as another person. And if we think of the normal way that a person would get into that condition over there, we don’t think of the idea that the person has been squashed and pushed backwards forwards with his nose and his head, because that’s not what ordinarily happens to people.”

Mirror all photographs of yourself on Photoshop.
Destroy the originals.

Swimming Pool piece

“If I’m sitting next to a swimming pool and somebody dives in [...], I think of the waves that are formed in the water. When lots of people have dived in the pool, there’s a great choppiness of all these waves all over the water. And to think that it might be possible that in those waves there are clues to what’s happening in the pool. [...] Someone with sufficient cleverness could just sit by the pool and figure out who jumped in; where, and when, by the nature of the irregularities and the bumping of the waves. [...] When we’re looking at something, the light that comes out is waves – just like in the swimming pool. It’s just that it’s in three dimensions.”

Look at the waves in a swimming pool.
Imagine what caused them.
Reconstruct that movement.

Astronomy
Anna Ahonen and Katariina Lamberg – Higgs Boson, 2010, Digital print

Anna Ahonen & Katariina Lamberg: Higgs Boson (2010), digital print, 80x120cm

Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model in particle physics. Experimental detection of the Higgs boson would help to explain the origin of mass in the universe. It is currently searched using the particle accelerators of CERN but it has yet to be observed in the physical world. If the Higgs boson cannot be found to exist, the current cosmological and physical models must be radically reassessed – and our conception of reality will change.

“The idea is to give attention to a phenomenon we find fascinating, to convey its mysticism to others,” Anna Ahonen and Katariina Lamberg explain. “Natural sciences encompass many intriguing and beautiful things that usually remain within books and the dedicatees. We, however, didn’t want to make a scientific or theoretical representation of a scientific thing, but rather use the facts as a starting point for a work of imagination.”

Anna Ahonen (b. 1981) and Katariina Lamberg (b. 1977) form a multidisciplinary design studio Ahonen & Lamberg founded in Paris, 2006. They are also co-founders and art directors of the Dossier Journal.

Biology
Nene Tsuboi – Brain Drawings, 2010, Ink and pencil on paper

Nene Tsuboi: Synapse (2010), ink on paper, 40 x 30 cm

The altogether six brain drawings – Brain Forest, Miracle of Brain, Dopaminergic, Neuron, Synapse and Dopamine – explore the scientific aspect of human feelings, experiences and perceptions. They were inspired by the love stories of a Japanese writer Shungicu Uchida that Nene Tsuboi has been working with.

“I wasn’t so much into science at school, but when I read an essay written by a Japanese brain scientist Ken Mogi some years ago, I became a big fan of brains,” Nene Tsuboi says. “I like the way he crosses over the borders of art, science, philosophy and religion in his books, radio shows and blogs. What intrigues me the most about brains is that we don’t know that much about them yet,” Nene Tsuboi says. “Everybody has one but they still haven’t been totally understood by anybody.”

Nene Tsuboi (b. 1976) is a Japanese graphic designer and artist living in Helsinki since 1999. She started her work as an illustrator with ANTEEKSI design collective in 2001, and later founded NOW architecture and design office with architect Tuomas Toivonen.

Chemistry
Martti Kalliala – DNA Junk, 2010, Audio

Martti Kalliala: DNA Junk (2010), audio 33 min.

DNA Junk is a base pair sequence of non-genomic DNA translated into notes through MIDI and played by a Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser. DNA – the storage for genetic information in all living things – consists of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine (A, T, G, and C) molecules. The sequences of these four bases, A, T, G, and C, determine how you differ from other living things. So, for instance, the raw data needed to construct a particular human being is a 3 billion character long sequence of these four letters. If this is translated into notes as such, it produces a near infinite monophonic melody with seemingly little variation.

“It’s been known since the early 1980s that the construction of DNA and musical composition bear similarities in their repetition processes,” Martti Kalliala explains. “However, I thought it would be interesting to bring the concept into my ‘home’ domain of techno/house/electronic dance music, and make something that’s actually meaningful in this context – not only conceptually but musically too.”

Martti Kalliala (b. 1980) is an independent architect and musician who is currently touring the world with his electronic music project Renaissance Man. Having worked amongst others with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture and NOW, he is also editing a publication on twelve pragmatic utopias for Finland.

Earth Sciences
Miska Knapek – Windtracing, 2009, Real time digital visualisation

Miska Knapek: Windtracing (2009), a real time visualisation on a computer screen

The animation draws the story of the wind’s movement, taking place in Helsinki over one year. It narrates the hidden life of the wind with a pencil-thin grey line moving in the same direction and with proportionally similar velocity as the current of air. The larger line on the screen shows a close-up revealing the wind’s more intimate movements.

“There’s a slight existentialist moment in the process of working with real-time data – even if you make rules for how the data is going to be shown, you never know what you’re going to get,” Miska Knapek says. “You could say that I got into meteorology through seeing what the wind data does: how temperamental the wind can be, how different seasons affect it, and so on. The stereotypical idea of the wind is that it either blows or it doesn’t, and that it’s this static, lifeless thing that goes in one direction at a time. But when I got the Windtracing running, I saw a movement that reminded me of a dancer. I had to sit down for an hour or so to only watch it go.”

Miska Knapek (b. 1975) is a Danish interaction designer and artist living and working in Helsinki. Growing up by the sea, wind has always been a part of his life. Miska’s spatio-temporal work opens new windows to the world.

Physics
K.I. Kinnunen – Faraday Suit, 2010, Clothing of copper silk plain weave, silk metal organza, boiled metal wool, carbon net, etc.

K.I. Kinnunen: Faraday Suit (2010), copper silk mix (vest) and ESD protective cotton with carbon fibre jersey mix (multi-purpose garment). Photo courtesy of Justus Järnefelt.

Faraday Suit is a series of clothing bridging technoromanticism and retreat. Exploring the invisible electromagnetic environment it resonates with everyday life through pieces functioning as interfaces between the built electrosphere and our internal world.

“The design for the series came about through exploring electromagnetism, electromagnetic spaces and wearables in those spaces,” K.I. Kinnunen describes. “I also looked into conducting materials like carbon and metal fibres as well as intact and layered surfaces. I like to call the end result a wearable tale, or functional fiction in the spirit of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s thinking (see OK Do’s interview with Dunne & Raby). This is because Faraday Suit plays with the idea of functional fashion design by inventing new motives of use through creating, for example, natural spaces with association to insulation from the electromagnetic environment.”

K.I. Kinnunen (b. 1984) is a fashion designer based in Helsinki. Having graduated as Master of Arts from the School of Art and Design at the Aalto University early this summer, Kinnunen spent last spring working with Haider Ackermann in Antwerp. At the moment, she is designing mini-collections for her portfolio as well as made-by-order pieces for private clients.

Cross-disciplines
Kaarle Hurtig and Simo Vassinen – Welcome to Parasite, 2010, Photography and text

Kaarle Hurtig & Simo Vassinen: Welcome to Parasite (2010), photography and text

by sherabbi, Nov 20, 2009 12:00AM (5 member comments)
Actually, the symptoms have progressively worsened: diarrhea/IBS, sharp pains on my left side. Nausea, UTI/Bladder Infections – chronic; these do not respond well to antibiotics (I was in Emergency in Brasilia a few days later with IV antibiotics). Weight gain, insomnia, Acid Reflux, dizziness, Respiratory Problems/Infections, DX with asthma in 2003, then COPD in 2006. I have NEVER smoked.
–
[Our] modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travellers’ tales. (…) The perfumes of the tropics and the pristine freshness of human beings have been corrupted by a busyness with dubious implications, which mortifies our desires and dooms us to acquire only contaminated memories. (C. Lévi-Strauss: Tristes Tropiques)
–
Welcome to Parasite investigates parasitology through anthropology and a metaphor of a paradise lost. “People travel across the seas in search of themselves, for realness and for belonging,” Kaarle Hurtig and Simo Vassinen say. “Every now and then, a parasite follows us home. There’s a microscopic worm that eats our insides, reminding us of false dreams and vanity, and leaving an emptiness that’s hard to shake off. But we would still rather stay inquisitive than stop. Claude Lévi-Strauss talked about the “sadness of the tropics” and the disenchanting side of exploration. Thor Heyerdahl’s eagerness was naive at times, and Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti was romanticised and corrupt. Our work is about this battle of curiousity, amazement and melancholy.”

Science Poems artists: Anna Ahonen & Katariina Lamberg (portrait by Spela Kasal), Nene Tsuboi (portrait by Hertta Kiiski), Martti Kalliala (portrait by Paavo Lehtonen), K.I.Kinnunen, Miska Knapek and Simo Vassinen & Kaarle Hurtig (portraits by H. Kiiski).

The full length interviews with the artists are included in the Science Poems book along with various other poetic writings and images about science by OK Do and friends. The book, designed by Åh, is available online at Napa Bookshop as well as at the 0fr bookshop, La Librairie du Palais de Tokyo, Librairie Flammarion at the Centre Pompidou and Yvon Lambert in Paris; AA Bookshop, Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery, Artwords Bookshop Hackney and b store in London; Kiasma (Mannerheiminaukio 2) and Napa Gallery (Eerikinkatu 18) in Helsinki; do you read me?! (Auguststrasse 28), Pro qm (Almstadtstrasse 48-50) and Motto (Skalitzer Str. 68) in Berlin as well as NEW ACCIDENT (233-1 Jyouhoku) in Komatsu, Ishikawa.

A hill with a hole. "Paper architecture" by Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin from the book Brodsky & Utkin: The Complete Works (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003).

The backward world

Recently in Shanghai, I saw many people walking backwards on the street and in the parks. As it turns out, they were following the footsteps of a mythic Chinese immortal, who could do it faster than the eye could see. In China, in addition to healthy exercise, walking backwards is also considered akin to a karmic reverse, allowing the walker to correct mistakes and sins of the past. But what is the world like in reverse?

All the time in the world

The weekend never ends in Berlin. There is no financial or social pressure to practice the everyday, so the outgoing Berliners work together to make the city more enjoyable, distorting time and typical etiquettes. In Berlin, a night out can stretch over days, weeks, and even years. As quantum physicists would say, probability is all we ever know about when it will come to an end.

Dream world

Last year, I read The Book of Scotlands, in which Nick Currie aka Momus uses negative space, or Ma in Japanese culture, to discover what his native country of Scotland could  become through writing about everything except the place itself. Like the surrealists – or Soviet “Paper Architects” ignoring the boundaries of possibility and gravity in their 1980s designs – Momus recognises the omnipotence of the imagined. “Every lie creates a parallel world; the world in which it is true,” he says.

The text was published as part of physics studies for the Science Poems book.

"The artist gives tools for people to view reality more acutely." –Marc-Olivier Wahler

Could you name 3 interesting and meaningful areas or concepts in which art and science meet?

Marc-Olivier Wahler:

1. Science fiction

Remember when Blade Runner had to decide whether he was a replicant or a human being? I think it’s exactly like art. Visually, there was no difference between a replicant and a human being so his decision was totally subjective. From the moment he decided that he’s not a human being anymore, he completely changed his state of mind. And when you decide that for instance a table is a piece of art there’s no going back either.

2. Quantum physics

Quantum physics is concerned with multiple realities – or according to another interpretation there is only one reality but an infinity of universes. If parallel universes existed, it would mean that in those everything would be visually identical while aspects such as gravity and density might vary. I like to picture a replicant of our universe, society, environment and art where gravity is slightly different.

3. Electromagnetics

One of the main topics of my curatorial practice this year. I think that the visitors of Palais de Tokyo mostly focus on the artworks, but for me what happens in between is totally part of the exhibition, too. What I’m talking about is the empty space or the negative space around the objects on display. In physics, this space can be called the electromagnetic field. I mean, an artwork is not only about its material form but also about the aura and the radiation it can emit.

Cream, whole milk, sugar, egg yolks, green tea powder and vanilla sticks – the ingredients for Misty green sundae.

In ice cream, all the building materials of food – fat, sugar, proteins, water and air – play their part (see e.g. Anu Hopia’s book Kemiaa keittiössä in Finnish). All the standard states of substance come together in ice cream: it is a solution (sugar dissolved in water), a suspension (mixture of solid and liquid), a foam (mixture of air and liquid) and an emulsion (mixture of fat and water). In addition, water takes three different forms in ice cream: solid (ice crystals), liquid (the part that’s left unfrozen) and vapour (steam in the air bubbles). The complexity of its structure makes ice cream a perfect research subject for molecular gastronomy, a scientific discipline that studies the physical and chemical processes that occur while cooking.

Mixing the ingredients.

While molecular gastronomy seeks to investigate and explain the chemical reasons behind the transformation of ingredients like, for example, why different cooking temperatures make different eggs, it also looks at the social, artistic and technical components of culinary phenomena at large. The term “Molecular and Physical Gastronomy” was coined in 1988 by a Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and a French physical chemist Hervé This. “I think it is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés,” Kurti explained his interest in molecular gastronomy. In addition to his studies in ingredients, Kurti also worked on new cooking techniques such as making meringue in a vacuum chamber or cooking sausages by connecting them across a car battery.

“It is a sad reflection on our civilization that while we can and do measure the temperature in the atmosphere of Venus we do not know what goes on inside our soufflés.” – Nicholas Kurti

While it feels natural that chefs are fascinated about things like the structure of food or new methods of approaching ingredients, the public interest towards molecular gastronomy seems to be increasing as well. “People are interested in the origins of food – in what they put in their mouth – and molecular dishes often look impressive,” restaurant Luomo’s Jouni Toivanen says. “On the other hand, I’ve heard people refuse to eat molecular food, thinking that it’s something artificial or dangerous. To them, I’ve explained that they are made out of molecules themselves.”

Cooking the mixture in a vacuum bag in 82 °C water for 12 minutes.

Toivanen got interested in molecular gastronomy by working in Spain for a year and getting to know Ferran Adrià‘s late El Bulli restaurant. “However, while Adrià draws on the food industry in new additives for dishes, I prefer Heston Blumenthal‘s [the owner of Fat Duck] approach which looks into existing ingredients and what new things can be done with them,” Toivanen explains. Blumenthal, like Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, works together with a chemist. In their case, scientific food discoveries are made in a true cross kitchen.

Sieving the cooled-down mixture for the blender.

Toivanen’s small kitchen laboratory in Kruununhaka, Helsinki, has discovered dishes such as a forest granita with spruce buds, berries, steaming dry ice and forest scent, or ‘Organic egg 64,7°C’. While Adrià defines his cooking as deconstructivist, Toivanen talks about re-creating stories with his food, like taking people mentally to the forest, while they’re actually having dinner in his restaurant.

Almost ready.

Misty green sundae

0,5 l cream
0,5 l whole milk
10 egg yolks
2,5 dl sugar
3 pcs vanilla sticks (with seeds squeezed out)
One teaspoon of green tea powder
Roasted halva crumbs

Mix everything together. Cook the mixture in a vacuum bag (or bain-marie) in 82 °C water for 12 minutes. Cool the liquid down (ideally letting it marinate over night in the fridge), sieve it and pour it into a blender. Add liquid nitrogen (-156 °C) into the mix while constantly stirring the liquid (alternatively, use an ice cream maker or put the liquid into the freezer giving it an occasional stir until frozen). Scoop the ready-made ice cream and place it on a bed of roasted halva crumbs.

Adding the liquid nitrogen for a mist.

The waveform of the Science Poems mix.

The Science Poems mix sets out to explore the sound of science and the science of sound. The playlist ranges from sonic experiments and musical inventions to sounds and music deriving from science. But while science can be described as a systematic knowledge-base or a prescriptive practice, best sounds don’t usually make any sense. So listen, let dopamine set the mood and get lost in science.

Download the Science Poems mix here (by right clicking)!

Kraftwerk: Geiger Counter

Kraftwerk call themselves “music workers” somewhere in between musicians and technicians. 
In the spirit of the Science Poems mix, Kraftwerk’s 1975 concept album Radio-Activity has a twin theme being partly about radioactivity and partly about activity on the radio. Geiger Counter is a study on a radiation detector picking up more and more gamma rays as we go on with our mix.

The Eerie Sounds of Saturn’s Radio Emissions

This winter, Palais de Tokyo displayed a piece of sound art by David Allen as part of the Chasing Napoleon exhibition. It recreated Eric Saties’ piece Véritables préludes flasques (pour un chien) [Truly flabby preludes (for a dog) in French] in a literal manner: the preludes were played above the audio frequency of 20kHz. They were thus unperceivable to humans yet comfortably within the hearing range of dogs who are able to hear much higher sounds.

Well above the audio spectrum of Allen’s piece, The Eerie Sounds of Saturn’s Radio Emissions relate to the auroras of Saturn‘s poles. The emissions were recorded by the Cassini spacecraft and are to be found somewhere in between 30 and 80 kHz. Theyhave been made audible by shifting them downwards. As the changes in frequency are rather slow, the recording is also sped up altogether 22 times. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones is very similar to the Earth’s auroral radio emissions.

We included this track by the inspiration of Avaruusromua (Space Junk in Finnish), a weekly radio show on the Finnish national radio we both grew up with. Avaruusromua has presented musical visions beyond time and space for two decades already.

Bass Extreme & Techmaster P.E.B.: Bass Sweep

At the other end of our perceivable audio spectrum lies bass. Bass test tracks are used to test the low end, or bass response, of audio systems, particularly loudspeakers and amplifiers. They mostly concentrate on frequencies under 50 Hz where sound is more about feeling and less about hearing. Bass Sweep features two bass notes sweeping in stereo creating clashing harmonics and pulsating overtones. Note: you might not hear anything on your laptop speakers as their frequency response goes down to only around 150 Hz!

Kenji Kawai: M01 Chant I – Making of Cyborg

The year is 2029. Cyborgs are made to protect the increasingly information-oriented world from hackers. Kenji Kawai’s Making of Cyborg haunts like Ghost in the Shell, a 1995 science fiction anime film by Mamoru Oshii and the most impressive science poem that we know.

Timothy Leary: Trip: The Beginning of the Voyage (Heart Chakra)

Timothy Leary (1920-1996), an American writer, psychologist and futurist, urged people to embrace cultural changes through the use of psychedelics and by detaching themselves from the existing conventions and hierarchies in society. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic, spiritual and emotional benefits of LSD. This is one of the sound montages he recorded for accompanying the experiments in turning on, tuning in and dropping out.

Dopplereffekt: Z Boson

Like Russia in Winston Churchill’s words, Dopplereffekt is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. There is no absolute certainty about the individual(s) behind the music. However, Dopplereffekt is generally believed to be the producer and artist Gerald Donald who is also connected with the projects Der Zyklus, Japanese Telecom and Arpanet. He is also half of the late Drexciya. Although the musical style of Dopplereffekt has changed over time the artistic production has always had a strong thematic and conceptual affiliation with science, sexuality and politics.

Z Boson is taken from the album Linear Accelerator released in 2003 – just a few years after Dopplereffekt had become linked with the “electro revival” happening at the time. However, with Linear Accelerator this ended quickly. The album’s music took its conceptual cues from high energy physics and mostly also sounded like it. While Z Boson is one of the album’s more “approachable” pieces, its subject matter is not: z bosons are elementary particles that mediate the weak force, one of the fundamental interactions of nature.

Ataraxia: I Ching

I Ching, Book of Changes, is one of the oldest Chinese classic texts. It presents a system of cosmology and philosophy intrinsic to Chinese culture, centering around the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and the acceptance of the inevitability of change. Ataraxia, then again, is not only the pseudonym of the Moog-wizard Mort Garson but also a concept used to describe a spiritual balance or a state of perfection that is not possible for human beings to reach entirely. The track I Ching by Ataraxia was made in 1975 to accompany meditations.

David Rothenberg: Beezus, Beeten, Breep

Musician, composer, author and philosopher-naturalist David Rothenberg meditates by playing with a band of birds and crickets, and writes about the deep connections between humans and the natural world. Like evolutionists, Rothenberg has never been able to completely explain why birds sing and what their song means to both avian and human ears. It is an aesthetic and scientific mystery. “There is music in nature and nature in music. We can be immersed by both without needing to understand how the two are forever intertwined. It is enough to know that they are,” Rothenberg writes.

Laurie Anderson's debut album Big Science (1982) is minimalist and monochrome in sound. Photo by the courtesy of Nonesuch Records.

Laurie Anderson: Let X=X

Closing the circle, the arbitrary title of Laurie Anderson’s track Let X=X from her avant-garde debut album Big Science (1982) brings the words of John Cage to mind: “I love sounds just as they are, and they don’t have to be anything more than they are. I don’t want them to be psychological, I don’t want a sound to pretend that it’s a bucket, or that it’s a president, or that it’s in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound.”