Consider the single voice, the single position, a stable, fixed environment, and loop it. Now add additional voices, textures, and rhythms. In this process the single voice, much like a monologue in theatre, is supported and destabilised by the many, by the chorus in that same theatre. Similarly, the dynamics between the individual and the group, the active and the still, are important to the way a message is conveyed but also interpreted. This dynamic is exposed in the exhibition, where visual expression and sonic experience become key considerations for enlarging capacity to relate to one another.

Intimation of Endless Space Given in a Small Window of Time (approximately 10 minutes) presents the work of composer Ethan Braun and graphic designer Lina Grumm as co-authors for the first time. In their discrete practices they strive to produce differentiated environments that interrogate conventions in the sonic and graphic fields, working with sound, score, opera, performance, graphics, collage, writing, and publishing. This exhibition expands these individual inquiries into deviation as an enabling counterpoint to the flattening horizons of late capitalism. The title introduces the inquiry into deviation, as it diagrams aspects from each of their fields. Graphic design is often expected to announce, here information is intimated. Music gives body to temporality, here two durations are activated in parallel, the endless, and the small window. The title models an exhibition experience that exaggerates duration and destabilises hierarchies of information. This establishes a field of polyphony, combining a number of voices and parts. Each day of the exhibition’s duration is unique as it cycles through a calendarised sonic score. A graphic rendition of the calendar provides a detailed ‘aerial view’ of the compositions and how they occupy the exhibition’s ‘window of time'. While the use of visual codes of a standard calendar suggests a linear progression, it is placed within the field of polyphonic composition. Lina and Ethan draw from a variety of approaches to notation with multiple interpretations of the sonic-spatial score whether on a visual, acoustic, or emotional level.

The compositions emerge from the legacies of sonic awareness developed by pioneering composers in the second half of the 20th century, including Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher, Milford Graves, and Arthur Doyle. This approach to sonic content requires a listener to tune into musical as well as bodily and environmental sound. The invitation to tune in emphasises mutuality, the listener is re-coded as an active participant. Mutuality has similarly guided the production of the exhibition, which stages an ongoing dialogue between Ethan’s sonic compositions and Lina’s visual compositions. In this dynamic exchange multiple interpretations is key. A chord or a field recording from the artist's neighbourhood for example may or may not establish a direct equivalent in the visual scores—a hand, a cloud, a c minor. As part of this exchange, analogue and electronic processes are applied to both the visual and sonic outputs to colour the gallery as a living score.

Living things require care and attention. The interchange between pre-recorded electronic sound and visual composition is augmented throughout the duration of the exhibition as performers ‘read it’. They do this through ‘maintenance.’ Maintenance, much like many rituals of care, involves focused activity, in this instance in the exhibition space. Performers add analogue and bodily sound to the electronic environment by practicing deep listening and working with principles from guided improvisation. This act of care enlivens the exhibition space but also points to the fallible conditions of working with a body or a computer generated algorithm. As this living score is activated in the gallery, mutuality becomes essential, whether in the role of the performer or audience, we become intrinsic to the exhibition.

Intimation of Endless Space Given in a Small Window of Time (approximately 10 minutes) tends to the complexity of navigating the singular voice and its place within a collective. In response to this tension, the artists invite the audience to consider mutuality and the deep listening practices that support it. Deep listening can be practiced in the gallery but equally in wider spheres of life; the domestic, the administrational, the creative, the political. In working with a wide range of notational elements within the scores (the cloud, the hand, the c minor) and producing multiple versions of each sonic work (the pre-recorded, the augmented), the artists create the conditions for limitless interpretation. In opening this window the exhibition becomes a site to to tune in with and to the other.

This exhibition is made possible through the Goethe-Institut New Zealand and Artspace Aotearoa Visiting Practitioners Programme and is presented in association with Audio Foundation and BLOT, a journal for music, sound, and performance in Aotearoa.