Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi

Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi Uses the Sounds of the Cosmos to Create an Abstract Synthesis of Art and Science

Hidden Motion Sensors in an Immersive, Multi-sensory, Single-Room Environment Trigger NASA Audio Recordings of the Sun, Earth and Planets

"The knower of the mystery of sound knows the mystery of the whole universe." -- Hazrat Inayat Kahn (1882-1927), founder of the Sufi Order in the West

NEW YORK, JANUARY 11, 2011 -- MomenTech has released plans for Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi ("Symphony of the Cosmos No. 1: Master of the Game"), an interactive, immersive, site-specific, multi-sensory, single-room installation/environment that is dominated by a glowing, translucent, room-filling sphere, the entire surface of which is covered by live analog television static.

Hidden throughout the room are motion sensors that trigger various sounds recorded by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) from the cosmos, such as the sounds emanated by Jupiter that were recorded by the Voyager I spacecraft. As visitors move through the room -- which is lit solely by the static of the central sphere -- their motions activate the sensors, creating a spontaneous "live" performance using the sounds of the universe.

Making connections between art, music, science, literature, spirituality and our cosmic origins, Magister Ludi -- the first installment of a series of Kosmossinfonien -- presents an imagined version of the mysterious, eponymous game in Hermann Hesse's magnum opus Das Glasperlenspiel ("The Glass Bead Game").

MASTER OF THE GAME

The work's epithet, Magister Ludi (Latin for "master of the game"), comes from an alternate publication title of Das Glasperlenspiel. This phrase can also be seen as a pun: lud- is a Latin stem meaning both "game" and "school."

Book cover of Das Glasperlenspiel by Hermann Hesse (Fretz & Wasmuth Verlad AG, first edition, 1943)

"I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, every symbol and combination of symbols led not to single examples, experiments and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge," wrote Hermann Hesse in Das Glasperlenspiel.

"Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, to be nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling an exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created."

According to Wikipedia, "The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date, centuries into the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century." The "exact nature [of the Glass Bead Game] remains elusive...The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics."

Magister Ludi is MomenTech's interpretation of Hesse's Glass Bead Game, presenting an interactive and meditative "game" that invites viewers to move around the room, triggering the sounds of the cosmos through hidden motion sensors. This immersive installation exists as a highly "abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences" as it presents the recorded sounds of celestial bodies -- and the Big Bang itself -- assembled as a living and breathing improvisational symphonic work, created by a new creator -- the Self (i.e., visitors/participants).

Suggesting the primacy of the Self (as both participant in and author of the sounds of the cosmos), Magister Ludi shows that the "master of the game" is just as much the divine "One" as it is the ego-self, and stands as an expression of a simple concept that is a scientific fact: We are stardust.

However, unlike the Glass Bead Game, in which "players make deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics," Magister Ludi offers players an opportunity to make deep connections between related topics (e.g., art, music, science, the cosmos, spirituality, etc.)

Time Magazine called Hesse's enigmatic game a "synthesis of human learning, which, in its subtlety, resembled both the chess game of master players and the improvisation of great musicians." Magister Ludi could be similarly described.

SOUNDS OF THE COSMOS

Audiowave of solar sounds (One Mode: l=1,n=20, nu=2.94-3.0 mHz) generated from 40 days of Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) data and processed by Alexander G. Kosovichev. (source: Solar Oscillations Investigation in the W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory of Stanford University)

The sounds of Magister Ludi are comprised of recorded sounds produced by the Sun, the Earth and the planets that have been collected by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and MomenTech's Very Low Frequency (VLF) Receiver.

In addition to these recorded sounds, Magister Ludi also includes live television static, the contents of which contain remnants of cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) that were formed around 13.7 billion years ago at birth of the known Universe, the Big Bang.

The behavior of CMB photons moving through the early universe is analogous to the propagation of optical light through the Earth's atmosphere. Water droplets in a cloud are very effective at scattering light, while optical light moves freely through clear air. Thus, on a cloudy day, we can look through the air out towards the clouds, but can not see through the opaque clouds. Cosmologists studying the cosmic microwave background radiation can look through much of the universe back to when it was opaque: a view back to 400,000 years after the Big Bang. This “wall of light“ is called the surface of last scattering since it was the last time most of the CMB photons directly scattered off of matter. When we make maps of the temperature of the CMB, we are mapping this surface of last scattering (source: NASA)

A wide variety of tonal variations have been recorded in outer space. "Sometimes they sound like ocean waves or like popcorn popping," writes Prachi Patel of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in the NASA article, Tuning in the Sounds of Space. "They can even sound like a hissing snake."

One distinct group of sounds featured in Magister Ludi is the unique series of recordings created from NASA's Voyager I and Voyager II missions as the spacecraft traveled around the planets and moons in the Solar System.

The Voyager 1 robotic space probe was launched by NASA on September 5, 1977 to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space. Operating for 33 years, 4 months, and 5 days, the spacecraft receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. It carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, spoken greetings from the people (e.g. the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the United States, and the children of the Planet Earth) and a medley, "Sounds of Earth", that includes the sounds of whales, a baby crying, waves breaking on a shore, and a variety of music. (image source: NASA)

"The complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from solar winds and planetary magnetosphere create soundscapes which are at once utterly alien and deeply familiar to the ear," according to an All Music Guide review of the 1990 album NASA Voyager I & II: Space Sound Recordings.

"Some of these sounds are hauntingly like human voices singing, giant Tibetan bowls, wind, waves, birds and dolphins. Voyager has left our solar system forever. The sounds on these recordings will never be made again in our lifetime."

MomenTech's Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi brings these sounds to life within the context of a sensory immersive site-specific installation that is fully interactive.

SPHERICAL HARMONICS

Throughout human history, most known societies have reported of a "universal sound" or something akin to spherical harmonics, which are used to compute the atomic orbital electron configurations as well as representation of gravitational fields, geoids, cosmic microwave background radiation and the magnetic fields of planetary bodies and stars.

Visual representations of the first few spherical harmonics. Red portions represent regions where the function is positive, and green portions represent regions where the function is negative. (source: Wikipedia)

In ancient Indian metaphysics, this "universal harmony" is known as Nāda, the spiritual sound that fills the entire cosmos. With this yogic system, there are two categories of music -- anahata (internal music) and ahata (external music).

Within the room that houses the installation of Magister Ludi, the cosmic ahata sounds mix and mingle with the anahata sounds created by the breathing of the individuals experiencing the piece.

THE ONE

Plato referred to spherical harmonics at the end of the 13th book of The Laws: "Every figure, every row of numbers and every assemblage of harmonious sounds, and the accordance of the cycles of the celestial bodies and the One as an analogy for all which is manifesting itself must become exceedingly clear to him who is searching in the right manner. That of which we speak will however come to light if one strives to recognize all, while not losing sight of the One. It is then that the connecting link of the ones named will come to light."

In bringing the aural atmosphere of our larger cosmic surroundings into close focus, Magister Ludi helps to bring participants in harmony with the Chinese concept of "Tao" (the way, or path).

Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi marks a significant development in MomenTech's specific exploration into the nature of static and the larger ongoing investigation of the origin of the cosmos. Earlier works in this line of inquiry include The Field Experiment and The Field Experiment Osnabrück.

For more information on Kosmossinfonie Nummer 1: Magister Ludi, please contact MomenTech at m01123581321345589144@gmail.com.