LABYRINTHITIS

The Medical Museion in Copenhagen has commissioned Jacob Kirkegaard to create a work focusing on issues discussed at the conference "Art and Biomedicine: Beyond the Body" held in September 2007.

LABYRINTHITIS

For his new sound piece, Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: Labyrinthitis consists enirely of sounds generated in Kirkegaard’s own ears.

Deep inside the labyrinth of the inner ear in a spiral tube called ‘cochlea’ there are thousands of microscopic hair cells functioning as sensory receptors. When sound enters the ear, they begin to vibrate in the watery liquid surrounding them like underwater piano strings. Thus, the hearing organ does not only receive sound, it also generates it, just like an acoustic instrument. Some of the hair cells in the cochlea can change their shape to such an extent that they are enabled to move the basilar membrane and produce sound themselves. These faint tones resemble the sound of a tinnitus – and they can be recorded with a microphone in the ear canal.

Jacob Kirkegaard: LABYRINTHITIS

- Disorientation (Preludium)

- Vertigo (Canon)

- Nausea (Finale)

played on The Spiral Organ

Kirkegaard employs the Auditorium of the Medical Museion as well as the audience for his composition: His listeners become part of an interactive concert as their own auditory organs respond to the tones played out into the auditorium. The room, at the same time, turns into one big resonant labyrinth of sound.

Labyrinthitis is performed live in The Medical Museion, Bredgade 62, København, sunday september 2nd: 18:00, 20:00 og 22:00. For reservation send email to soundevent@mm.ku.dk.