Above all, the sounds opened up a new perspective of the picture for me, for example, the sound of writing, or the hatching sound of a hard wax crayon on paper. When the attention suddenly shifts from the visual to the acoustic in the process of doing and the hand seems to rhythmize itself.

If we call listening a cultural practice, then this usually happens at selected locations with a corresponding program. Here, listening becomes a musicalization practice under adjusted conditions. Everything is geared to this form of listening practice. The acoustics of the architecture, the seated posture, the stage presence of the action up to the well-temperedness of the performance with its aesthetic consequences for the social ritual.

However, to attempt to listen under the conditions of a desire for musicalization disturbed by distractions is a challenge. A loud room always awaits us, whereby "being loud" can be interpreted as broadly as "being quiet". What is meant is rather the competition of many parallel acoustic events, which force us to listen and listen again at the same time, i.e. demand permanent decisions as to where the ear consciously orientates itself in the next moment. In the diversity of perceivable things and audiovisual offerings, hearing happens in simultaneity. Simultaneity here means the conscious decision between listening and not listening. For example, to perceive the listen into a separated body sound, or random additions of acoustic events as an ensemble.

Another strategy is to listen away. The acoustic phenomena reach the ear as sound waves, but are probed, filtered and faded out by the consciousness. As a consequence of this observation, listening away seems to mean the same as not listening. Fortunately, however, it behaves quite differently.

The motive of not listening as a listening technique is more like allowing everything that is audible at that moment to happen. Concentrating on something other than what is audible means that what is currently acoustically present exists without being evaluated by consciousness and appears to be synonymous with each other. Only in this way does everything become really perceptible and I hear things that would otherwise remain unheard. Of course, in this state I no longer listen in the sense of communication. I am completely with myself and I listen away, far away and completely elsewhere and deep inside.

I understand this special disposition of simultaneous hearing and seeing as an independent artistic field of research. I create works that deal precisely with the specifically audiovisual.

Norderheistedt, May 2010