Det var en træt, men glad Pauline Hall, der 10. juni 1953 smilede ud mod Dagbladets læsere (Norges tredjestørste avis, red.). Over en helside får hun en stor del af æren for, at »et nyt syn på musik er ved at blive skabt« i Norge, og at »folk har overvundet frygten for nye klange«. Baggrunden for euforien hos dem, der flankerer hende – violinisten Ernst Glaser, dirigenten Øivind Fjeldstad og formanden for Tono (Norges svar på Koda, red.), Erling Kjellsby – er et opbud af ny musik fra store dele af verden ugen før. Som leder af Ny Musikk, den norske afdeling af International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), har Hall været vært for organisationens årlige musikfestival. Resultatet i Oslo er så vellykket, at det også i udenlandske medier bliver omtalt som et vendepunkt.

Hun er blevet kaldt en af de bedste inden for sit felt. Alligevel er den kosmopolitiske komponist, maler og lydpoet Lily Greenham (1924-2001) næsten fuldstændig ukendt i Danmark. Dét til trods for en omfangsrig og alsidig produktion af originale værker, der – i en periode, hvor der fandtes meget få kvindelige danske elektroniske komponister – forener lydpoesi og elektronisk musik. Men af den lange række af kompositioner, Greenham skabte fra 1970’erne og frem, er kun ganske få udgivet.

Lavalampen kaster et pink skær ud i soveværelset, en svag summen, det tager lidt tid inden væsken inde i lampen bliver varmet op og boblerne begynder at dele sig. Et sted i det pink mørke til venstre for mig ligger et lille barn. Det rører på sig, giver lyd fra sig, det er svært at beskrive, det lyder som en prusten, det nedadgående forløb som afslutter hestens vrinsk, mere og mere insisterende, en slags crescendo som hiver mig op af søvnen, lag for lag. Den lille hest er sulten.

The following essay is derived from a lecture given in August 2019 as a keynote for the RE:SOUND Media Arts Histories conference in Aalborg, Denmark. At the invitation of conference chairs Morten Søndergaard and Laura Beloff, I had the honour of opening the event’s deliberations – which took place just before the start of a new academic year, in the early hours of the first day of the conference and in front of a group of people I respect, admire, and have now known for many, many years.

The work of digital artists and musicians is enabled by technological commodities that have problematic pasts. To utilize technical devices for creative, expressive ends is also to contribute to the cycle of production and obsolescence involved with global capitalism. A serious consideration of the electronic artist’s position within this framework invites an ethical examination of technologically-based practice in relation to the overall waste and exploitation that its connection to technological commodification entails.

In 1989 John Cage started working on a commissioned project for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) – a chance-derived, four-movement composition for museum entitled Rolywholyover   A Circus. This was a long-term performative, multicentred event for gallery installers, audiences, artworks, artifacts, scores, plants, stones, books, chess tables, chairs, and pieces of ephemera. According to Julie Lazar, the MOCA curator who worked with Cage on this project, while doing trials and preparations for Rolywholyover the artist composed two other compositions for museum. Both of these other works were smaller in scale: Changing Installation (1991) for the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and museumcircle (1991) for the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Neue Pinakothek in Munich.

In September 2012 I visited the now seminal exhibition Sound Art – Klang als Medium der Kunst at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. In my mind, I have returned to this exhibition continually ever since, and each time one installation stands out: Bruce Nauman’s Für Kinder. The piece is a stereo sound installation where Nauman’s voice is heard repeating over and over the words “für Kinder, für Kinder, für Kinder” with a strong American accent. The installation’s four speakers are hidden within the walls of a rectangular white space, which at the ZKM was sufficiently sealed from the rest of the surroundings to enact its own white cube both on auditory and visual levels.