Center For Mind, Brain, And Culture

Ivana Ilic | Music Theory, Emory UniversityJasna Veličković | Composer and Performer"How Do We Know It's Music? On Musical Capacities of the Electromagnetic Field" What happens when the electromagnetic signal is not only deliberately made audible, but also exploited with a specifically musical aim? In this presentation, I investigate the distinctively musical use of electromagnetism in art from the 1960s until the present day. The two case studies include the works by Christina Kubisch (b. 1948) and Jasna Veličković (b. 1974). While the two artists share a commitment to a modernist quest for new sounds, they investigate the musical capacities of the electromagnetic field in distinctive ways. Kubisch operates primarily as a sound artist, within the audio-visual realm. Her installations include induction coils whose sounds are picked up by the visitors through specially designed headphones. The “musicality” of those works arises from the visitors’ movement within the exhibition space and appears as a complete