Topos listening salon at Proton Records -presenting Monobirds & Personfølsom Musik

Topos presents David Tudor - Monobirds (released October 7th) and Niels Lyhne Løkkegaards Personfølsom Musik (to be released on November 22nd).

The listening session will take place at Proton Records in Copenhagen and it will be possible to acquire Løkkegaards Personfølsom Musik (CD+LP):

The program of the listening salon:

David Tudor - Monobirds

From Ahmedabad to Xenon, 1969 / 1979

In December 1969, David Tudor made a series of recordings at the Electronic Music Studio at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India, using Moog Synthesizers that he himself had brought from the United States and installed there. Ten years later, on March 1, 1979, Tudor used one of these recordings, which he now called Monobird, as the primary source track for a recording session at the New York discotheque Xenon.

This album includes two 33rpm vinyl records of these works and an essay by You Nakai, When David Tudor Went Disco, that provides an in-depth study of Tudor’s performance at Xenon and its relation to Monobird.

Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard - Personfølsom Musik

Personfølsom Musik (Personal Sensitive Music) is a series of live sonifications in which Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard translates the numbers of NemID-keycards into music using various musical instruments.

NemID (EasyID) keycards came into use in 2010 and contain a list of one-time codes that one uses as a level of security when logging into private and public digital platforms to access services like banking, health care, and other services vital to individuals in Danish society.

When an individual uses all the codes on a NemID-keycard, the keycard remains as a record of the person’s activities over a period of time. It is also an expression of privilege, since the NemID [system] facilitates access to the benefits of the Danish welfare state in one of the world’s richest societies.

Through his Personfølsom Musik (Personal Sensitive Music) series of works, Løkkegaard explores the NemID-keycard as a phenomenon which is on the one hand anonymous and alienating and on the other, private and personal.
This release features the recordings by Løkkegaard playing two different NemID-keycards, W807-345-296 and Y453-199-562, on a church organ.

Released as CD + LP in collaboration with Nets 2021.

About:
TOPOS is an independent arts organisation, founded in 2019 by three artists and composers, Jacob Kirkegaard, Tobias R. Kirstein and Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, to pursue their shared commitment to cross cultural and cross media activities that move beyond the strictures and boundaries of separate fields and disciplines. Its projects and program use various modes of presenting, publishing and releasing contemporary and archival material, generated or discovered by TOPOS.

TOPOS is collaborating with Julie Martin, Director of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) to research and publish selected material from the organization's extensive archive of sound recordings that include performances, interviews and other sound material produced by E.A.T. activities over the past 50 years. A double vinyl gatefold of John Cage's Variations VII from the legendary 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering in New York City in 1966 marked the beginning of TOPOS' collaboration with Julie. Their main focus is on sound generated in the 9 Evenings performance works by artists such as John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. The Kluever / Martin Archive also holds recordings made with artists, curators and writers in the early 1990's and works with Topos to make these available on its website.