Name: Imm004 | Intro [3 minutes] | from Shibboleth — I peep the ocean through a hole of ... by Eiki Mori by By immeasurable
Duration: 3 min

Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands
by James Hoff

Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands is an autobiographical record, comprised of four songs that Hoff refers to as ambient media. Each track is composed from sources drawn from his own involuntary aural landscape, specifically musical earworms and tinnitus frequencies.

Neither sound nor a daydream, the earworm (or stuck song) emblematizes music as a commercial form—immediate, ubiquitous, and persistent. Likewise, tinnitus is inaudible and unscrupulous, manifesting across a spectrum of frequencies at will. The cognitive swirling of these phenomena provides an ambivalent, internal soundtrack that scores a person’s movement through the world.

Those suffering from tinnitus or those who have grown accustomed to the “Tinnitus Effect” in movies will likely recognize the buzzing pitches on the record, but will likely not recognize the songs. Distorted and distilled, Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands features altered versions of four commercial pop songs: Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Having been haunted by these songs on and off for years, Hoff tweaks the tracks, transposing and recomposing them for orchestral instrumentation. Speaking back to these involuntary echoes, these tracks go to great lengths to obfuscate their sources; to be sure not to simply re-introduce each earworm, as though they were samples. Otherwise, what’s the point? No one needs another stream.

Besides, earworms are not music, although we perceive them as such. They are non-cochlear and exist as an affective force that is neither subjective nor objective, which is to say they are an invasive—and alien—phenomenon. Like tinnitus, they are aggravated by economic, social, and environmental forces as well as emotional states, mental health, and aging. Hoff doesn’t underplay his own struggles with mental health in discussing the record—noting a long history of depression and its acuteness over the last few years, which serve as the backdrop to the composition of this record.

Scratch any pop song hard enough and you’ll find sadness underneath it. Subdermal, the songs on this record evoke a type of ephemeral weariness and despair. By recasting the original songs through their shadowy doubles, Hoff provides a window into the dark core of pop music. At the center of which lies capitalism’s desperate attempt to replicate itself through a cheap high built on echoing refrains. Just below the surface the listener finds a hangover of shadows dancing through the mind.

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James Hoff is an artist living and working in New York. He has exhibited and performed internationally. He co-founded Primary Information in 2006 to publish historical and contemporary artists’ books.

JAMES HOFF 'Everything You Want Less Time' (SP151)

If the repeat of the sound is music, and the repeat of the voice is a song, this work asks the origin of music and song.
A voice that doesn't know what language it is in.
Unfamiliar intonations.
The language that is grammatically correct but doesn't make sense, Or syntax error.
But the Shibboleth is a secret word that can only be shared by those who understand the word.
Hence, it is impossible for those who do not belong to a particular community to understand it.
The language that has not been stripped of meaning, but have hidden meaning.
It may have been a word of hope for a comrade who was once in a crisis.
And maybe it's the voice that couldn't be the words of prayer.
But that voice may eventually turn into a song.

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[Comment by Eiki Mori]

Mot de passe―Shibboleth


From the exhibition title - the word ‘Shibboleth’, what would you imagine?

The 15 shibboleths written down for this installation do not really stand for symbolic things or events. They are more of subtle emotions and feelings, or day-to-day sight of daily experience that pass by so easily, that haven’t even been verbalized yet.

I asked 25 friends with totally different backgrounds―ages, language, nationality, religious beliefs and sexualities― to choose their favorite phrase to recite. Though the words emanated are unreliable and vulnerable for its unfamiliar language, they are also fresh and straightforward, like the babbling of a baby.

All that could be done was to read each word with your heart, under the anxiety of not knowing how your imitation of the language and its pronunciation will be taken, or how much it would make sense. Their voices were recorded in such situations.

A secret word that consists of two verses with different depths of depiction, that comes back and forth in the flow of time throughout a day, or throughout a lifetime. By being uttered by an individual, and being responded like a self-interaction, the verses distinctly emerge with the existence of another time axis, the vividness of memory and emotion, the elaborateness, the ambiguity, and its voice…

And we find the presence of the many voices residing within us ―the voices in the distant past, today and future that were swallowed before being uttered, the voices barely emitted but drowned out regardless, the voices of the cries let out with its prayers, and the voices gently cast on our loved ones.

Through the secret words, the various voices and languages are improvisationally traced, repeated and overlapped, and while its presence are emphasized, they quietly subside within the horizon of ‘sounds’. Each of them resonate, sometimes repelling each other, but gradually connects in solidarity.

As words become voices, and then to sounds, its abstraction and anonymity is enhanced, but through accumulation and sharing rises an ‘intimate sound / open shibboleth’. I would like you to experience the 'sound' that echoes through the space and your body, as if it is whispered into your ears, or called from the distant to you.

Eiki Mori
June, 2020
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Imm004 | Intro [3 minutes] | from Shibboleth — I peep the ocean through a hole of ... by Eiki Mori

By immeasurable

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