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again and again, during many conversations, how totally different these chains of associations can be. Question from the audience: Is that only the case with this exhibition – or does it generally happen that the sound unleashes such associations?
RL: That’s always the case, even with the music by «to rococo rot». The music is received in a variety of ways, sometimes in totally contradictory ways: while one person hears countless rhythms, another hears only surfaces! And I ask myself, What is it that these people hear? Does it depend on their stereos, on their ears? […] But all this is selected consciously. In our music pieces, you always experience an intense reduction: the omissions make the listeners do some of the developing for themselves. The listeners or viewers are always a part of the exhibition. They even play a role during the concerts. We react strongly to our listeners.
IA: To get back to your work with everyday sounds – an awareness or receptiveness directed toward sounds and objects, something which stands out in your work; in one way or another, this seems to connect with Musique Concrète. In 1950, there was a
piece by Pierre Henri and Pierre Schaeffer, a symphony entitled «Pour un homme seul,» made up entirely of sounds either consciously or unconsciously produced by the human body. I remember hearing a tape made a few years ago that picked up on this concept a second time; it dealt only with noises produced by the human body. But now I don’t remember who made it…
RL: I do. Does anybody else remember? It was by Matmos, two guys from San Francisco, who also collaborated with Björk. They made a CD with noises taken from operating rooms: sucking out fat deposits, the scraping sounds of scalpels and so on…
IA: Okay. That would be a 1990s version of Musique Concrète! As «to rococo rot,» what kind of reference do you make to Musique Concrète, if there is one?
RL: There is no real reference [2]. In the early stages of Musique Concrète, there were several techniques used to make everyday sounds unfamiliar. The goal not being to simply combine them and to let them exist as they were, but rather to achieve a certain anonymity,