Ming Tsao

Between the Lines of Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s recent work

‘The Jargon of Nothingness’1

The Architecture

Steven Takasugi’s four electronic pieces to date are grouped into two parts under
the general title ‘Vers une Myopie Musicale’ with ‘Mudai’, ‘Untitled’ and ‘Iridescent
Uncertainty’ comprising Part One and ‘The Jargon of Nothingness’ comprising Part
Two.2 By alluding to the title of Adorno’s essay, ‘Vers une Musique Informelle’,
Takasugi proposes a program that begins with a critical eye toward the way in which
distance, and by extension musical space, has been treated in contemporary music. He is
particularly critical of the manner in which distance has been treated in contemporary
Japanese music (the cliché of ‘suddenness’) or by music that projects a nostalgic
‘aesthetics of disappearance’, such as forms of electronic music that rely heavily on an
uncritical use of reverberation.
One way in which to critique the notion of distance is to question the need to
traverse it. Takasugi’s aesthetics of myopia utilizes close-mic positions and headphones
for recording and playback. Thousands of samples are organized via hundreds of
algorithmic programs to project a crisp sound between the ears, bypassing room
ambience, echo, sustain and decay of a sound.3 This hyper ‘cut and paste’ methodology
creates ‘disembodied and immediate shifts’ between recorded events, erasing the
expected traversal of distance a performer is required to make in order to produce the
various sounds. In this manner, the ‘aura of human performance’ is avoided.4 Moreover,
Takasugi resists a tendency for the listener to be lulled by a series of illusions often in the
form of real world sound objects. By thwarting expectations, the listener is encouraged
to take on a more critical attitude and awareness.5
Magnification is another way in which the expected traversal of distance can be
bypassed. A magnified sound object appears close without a reduction in distance (as
1
‘Between the Lines’ is a reference to the title of Libeskind’s proposal for the Jewish Museum that was
literally inscribed between the lines on music staff paper (Libeskind 2000: 29 in The Space of Encounter.
New York: Universe Publishing, 2000). With regards to this paper, ‘the lines’ refer to two lines of thought,
Libeskind and Takasugi, that are placed in counterpoint with one another throughout.
2
Comments on the three pieces of Part I of Vers une Myopie Musicale can be found in Takasugi 2002(a):
291-299 in “Vers une myopie musicale”, Polyphony and Complexity (Mahnkopf, Cox and Schurig, Ed.).
Volume 1 of New Music and Aesthetics in the 21st Century, Hofheim: Wolke Verlag, 2002, pp. 291 – 302.
3
Takasugi 2003 in Jargon of Nothingness, CD recording (Encinitas: CA). To this date, the CD is self-
published but one can contact Steven Takasugi at stakasugi@hotmail.com for information on obtaining a
recording.
4
Takasugi 2002(a): 293. It is this type of avoidance that alludes to Takasugi’s ‘struggle against
mystification’ that he cites as a source for meditation for JN (Takasugi 2003).
5
Takasugi 2002(b): 12 in “Klang: sound composition pulled ‘inside-out’”. Unpublished manuscript of a
lecture presented at the symposium: Die Grundlagen des gegenwartigen Komponierens (The Foundations
of Contemporary Composition) at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany, 2002.

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opposed to a ‘close’ sound object that appears precisely through a reduction in distance).
With magnification, everything in a field of the magnified object is blown-up whereas
true ‘closeness’ affects only the object in question. Eruptive magnification, a zoom-in-
zoom-out relationship, suggests an orientation that places the vanishing point in front of
the listener, instead of in the horizon, at infinity, thus producing a depth interchange. The
notion of depth interchange, of pulling depth inside-out, yields a musical space that has
been involuted. This perspective is essential to a critique of musical space in that it
resists the assumed modes of assimilating various sound objects.
In The Jargon of Nothingness, constant magnifications and unexpected changes of
reverberation provide immediate shifts of perspective for a listener, subverting assumed
modes of listening and countering narrative trance.6 The result is the ‘iridescent nature of
uncertainty’, a shimmering oscillation between the perspectives of near and far, inside
and outside where the illuminating quality of the sound splits up the common rays of
narrative movement and displays their uncertain textures.7 This instantaneous oscillation
between perspectives destabilizes the logical faculties and ruptures intended lines of
thought by projecting a paradoxical sense of depth within the narrow confines of the
space defined by a myopic music.8

The Jargon of Nothingness – an analysis

The Jargon of Nothingness (JN) is the longest work so far in the Vers une Myopie
Musicale project at 17’40” with 16 sections each labeled with its own title, bringing to
the listener what appears to be a programmatic sense of movement.9 However, a
programmatic sense of movement is far from what this labeling of sections aspires to be.
The labels act as classifiers which group together specific types of perspective for
investigation and reflection. Each perspective offers a ‘conundrum’ that ultimately
provides glimpses into a void. They function in a manner akin to the slit windows
appearing throughout Libeskind’s ‘Jewish Museum’ where various shafts of light sift
through the museum exposing a discontinuous void around which it is organized.10
Similarly, a search for a void—an invisible presence or sensed absence—provides a
reflective space around which the various sections of JN are organized. “In fact, the

6
Takasugi cites ‘countering narrative trance’, a renewed notion of Brecht’s ‘alienation effect’, as a source
for meditation for JN (Takasugi 2003).
7
Takasugi 2002(a): 301 and Takasugi 2001: 5 in “Not toward, but away: one perspective in an Asian
influenced future music”. Unpublished manuscript of a lecture given at the symposium: Blurring
Boundaries: Confluence of New Musics of the Pacific Rim at UCSD, San Diego, CA, 2001.
8
A music where uncertainty, as manifested through a paradox of contradictory perspectives, supports the
‘belief that the physicality of experience could (and must) be affirmed through the destabilization of logical
faculties’. Osborn 1998: 1 (liner notes for CD recording) in Interregna, OCKR recordings, 1998. The
sudden and unexpected death of Mark Randall Osborn, a former student and close friend to Takasugi, was a
source for meditation for JN (Takasugi 2003).
9
The title of the piece is a reference to Ian Pepper’s article ‘John Cage and the Jargon of Nothingness’.
See Ian Pepper’s “John Cage und der Jargon des Nichts” in Mythos Cage (Mahnkopf, Ed.) Hofheim:
Wolke Verlag, 1999, pp. 9 – 34.
10
The void space acknowledges the erasure of Jewish life during the Holocaust in Berlin. Libeskind 2000:
23, 28 and Libeskind and Binet, Helene 1999: 66 in Jewish Museum Berlin, New York: Gordon and
Breach, 1999.

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work is in search of a ‘void’ which can only be made to appear through some conundrum,
typically a paradox of perspective—of inside and outside, of close and distant proximity,
of relative positions to ‘nothingness’.”11
As sources of inspiration for JN, Takasugi cites the early architectural drawings
and architecture of Daniel Libeskind, such as the Micromega series and Berlin’s Jewish
Museum. 12 What is fascinating about the two artists is that they share far more than
staking out ‘relative positions to nothingness’. Indeed, both artists seem committed to
dismantling the ideology of what it is they do. While Libeskind questions the function of
the line in architecture, Takasugi questions the traversal of line in music.13 For
Libeskind, the potential for any point, curvature or oblique reference to become a line
suggests the impossibility of a viewer grasping its sources. For Takasugi, the
instantaneous magnification of sound objects along with ‘cut and paste’ methods suggests
the impossibility of a listener’s grasping the traversal of line between two positions.14
It is through Libeskind’s ‘Jewish Museum’ that one finds the relevance of the
titles for the two parts of JN: The Architecture and The Interior of the Void. Takasugi
organizes JN around a discontinuous void indicated by various names: Void I, Void II,
The Void of the Nihilists and The Last Void. Moreover, when one peruses the back of the
CD cover, one can grasp the reference to a void through the durations of each section.
Each duration is notated to the millionth decimal place indicating that extreme precision
has been placed on the timing of each section and, by extension, each event.
Furthermore, even though the timings for the sections of Part II, The Interior of the Void,
are notated in full seconds, the zeroes are retained to the millionth place alluding, at least
visually, to a void. More generally, however, it alludes to the perception of time within
the Void; temporal perception becomes extended to the point that seconds, and not
millionths of a second, are sufficient to measure the passing of time. This temporal
extension, suggestive of timelessness, is noted by the fact that Part II, which contains four
sections, is roughly equal in duration to Part I, which contains twelve.

Experience

It is important to begin an analysis of the piece by addressing one’s experience of

the piece, particularly on a first hearing. Listening to the music requires special
circumstances: JN should be heard through binaural playback (i.e., with headphones).

11
Takasugi 2003
12
Ibid. See Libeskind 1991: 13 – 35 and 85 – 107 in Countersign (Architectural Monographs No. 16),
Great Britain: Academy Editions, 1991. Libeskind is often grouped into the school of Deconstructivist
architects.
13
Bates, Donald 1996: 7 in “A conversation between the lines with Daniel Libeskind”, in El Croquis 80: 6
– 29 and Takasugi 2002(a): 293; 2002(b): 5
14
Takasugi 2002(b): 3. Takasugi’s remarks about the ‘melodic line’ in the music of Czernowin aptly refers
to the idea of line, as continuity, in his own work as well; a work which critiques “…those continuities that
invite a steady close consecutive reflection leading to sensations of timelessness and spatial immersion.”
(Takasugi 1997: 66 in “Chaya Czernowin’s ‘Afatsim’: Resynthetisierung und Zeitentstellung (Afatsim by
Chaya Czernowin: Melodic Resynthesis and Temporal Disfigurement)”, Musik und Aesthetik 1. Jahrgang,
Heft 3, July 1997, pg. 66 - 81.)

3
These circumstances help to elicit a private space in which one can experience a very
unique aural imagination at work. The samples are derived from ‘various plucked,
bowed, double reed, and makeshift acoustic instruments’ with very little sound
processing applied. These instruments are as follows:

Acoustic Guitar Bamboo Wind Chimes Small Cardboard Box

Mandolin Copper “Tickler” Spoons
Violin Hair Clip Sticks (Bamboo)
Chin Hand Saw Tenor Drum
Koto Marbles Tin Snips
Shamisen Bachi (Nagauta) Metal Measuring Cups Water
Oboe Packaging Tape Wooden Boards
Oboe Musette Paper
English Horn Plastic Bag
Bassoon Rice
Bagpipe Chanter Scissors
Voice Sea Stones

While listening to JN, what is immediately obvious is the physical and sensual
exploration of sound materials and textures.15 One is confronted directly with the sounds
of breaking and snapping sticks in hundreds of possible ways, marbles rolling about
metal cups, rice pouring out onto paper, packaging tape being unwrapped, double reeds
squawking and moaning, and ‘choked’ pizzicato on strings.16 The combination of these
sounds (and many others) along with reverberation as another sound tool (and not a ‘set
and forget’ device17) provides for the aural experience of being showered with sonic
textures suggestive of crackling, popping, strained creaking, brewing thunderstorms,
machine humming, animals moaning, crying, snorting and breathing.
One is spatially immersed in a world of rich, unique sounds that occasionally
overwhelm the listener, as if one has more than a palpable connection to the sounds, a
moment where one breathes according to their anatomy. However, this sense of spatial
immersion is only momentary, as one is often jolted from that experience, awakened,
through magnified sounds and abrupt shifts of perspective, usually through changes of
reverberation. If one occasionally identifies a particular sound object (such as a brewing
thunderstorm), then that object is radically transformed, turned inside-out, into a very
different sound object that may appear in a category quite removed from the original one.
In this manner, one is constantly navigating through various levels of listening,
questioning prior assumptions regarding concrete musical phenomena, engrossed in a
permanent sense of uncertainty.
After repeated listenings, one engages with the material in a variety of ways, from
an associative type of listening to a syntactical one. What emerges in Part I are sectional
relationships that focus in on different details of a similar texture by varying the angle of
perspective. These oblique sectional relationships suggest trajectories that zigzag

15
In this sense, it is not surprising that Takasugi was a student of Morton Feldman.
16
‘Choked’ pizzicato is a pizzicato derived by dampening the strings of the instrument with the left hand
(Takasugi 2002(a): 293).
17
Takasugi 2002(b): 7

4
throughout the piece, often revealing gaps in the overall texture that point toward an
openness, a void.18 These gaps take on significance in Part II- The Interior of the Void-
by projecting an ‘inside’ perspective of timelessness and spatial immersion, a perspective
that is ultimately critiqued by silence, a ‘voided-void’.19

Structure

Six titles classify the various sections into groups: Crustacean (five sections),
Void (four sections), Deconstructive Inventory (two sections), Machine (two sections),
Zoo: Trapped Animals (two sections) and Sunlight in the Forest (one section). Their
placement, accompanied by duration length, is as follows:

The Architecture (Part I) The Interior of the Void (Part II)

Crustacean I (37.671043”) Deconstructive Inventory II: Water Striders (3’29”)

Crustacean II (40.53254”) The Machine II (2’06”)
Crustacean III (27.295609”) The Void of the Nihilists (2’48”)
Sunlight in the Forest (26.020408”) The Last Void (17”)
Crustacean IV (43.480408”)
The Machine I (12.999977”)
The Void I (31.36703”)
Zoo: Trapped Animals I (1’06.158072”)
Deconstructive Inventory I (33.5483”)
Zoo: Trapped Animals II (47.926598”)
Crustacean V: Barrage (50.171769”)
The Void II (2’02.828254”)

Total Duration: 9’ Total Duration: 8’40”

Not only do the perspectives of close/far and inside/outside have local persuasion
with respect to individual sound objects but also, more generally, one can hear these
perspectives affecting entire sections. In Part I, the Crustacean and Zoo sections progress
through a series of degrees of magnification where the textural details are amplified and
continually brought into focus, placing a sense of depth, the vanishing point, near the
listener rather than in the distance. This perspective of depth interchange is facilitated by
the fact that instantaneous magnifications affect much of the Crustacean and second Zoo
sections, focusing sounds up close that seem to vanish in front of the listener. In this
way, these sections act as contradictory spaces, conundrums (in the sense that the depth
perspective is not normative) which provide glimpses into a void suggested by moments
of silence and reverberation.
Progressing by degrees of magnification and oblique relationships, the Crustacean
and Zoo sections (along with Sunlight in the Forest) represent a ‘tortuous’ line that
continues through the Architecture ‘into infinity’ where the vanishing point is close rather
18
Or intervals ‘…between two (or more) spatial or temporal things and events’. (Takasugi 2002(a): 291 fn.)
19
Libeskind 2000: 29

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than far. Void I and II can be viewed as points that allude to a fragmented straight line,
distinct from the tortuous line, drawn through a process of involution that eventually
turns Void II inside-out. “As the lines develop themselves through this limited-infinite
‘dialectic’, they also fall apart—become disengaged—and show themselves separated so
that the Void generally running through what is continuous materializes itself outside as
ruined, or rather as the solid residue of independent structure, i.e. as a voided-void.”20
This idea of a ‘voided-void’ manifests itself as silence in The Last Void, as the residue of
a sensed absence that has been both fragmented throughout the Architecture and whorled
to expose its interior (The Interior of the Void).
By Part II, one’s sense of depth has been turned inside-out, reestablishing the
vanishing point at infinity, away from the listener. But the perspective is now from
inside the Void rather than outside as with the Architecture. The Void, ‘the embodiment
of absence’21, becomes a search for that which can never be heard (The Last Void).
Furthermore, Machine I, II and Deconstructive Inventory I, II form lines or bridges that
open into the Void 22. These bridges act as lines of mythic transformation, an irrational
shift of identity from machine to human, a transformation that malfunctions by placing its
consequences within a void.23

Crustacean I – V

The Crustacean sections can be illustrated by Takasugi’s metaphor of the

‘cracking carapace’, where there is an interchange between a body’s interior and exterior
surfaces.24 In such an interchange, an architecture is created in which cavities open and
collapse yielding an unpredictable spatial structure and room reverberation. One can hear
this metaphor come to life through magnified sounds of broken shards leaping out of a
cracking texture that continually creates the appearance of new chambers, always pushing
forward to an open cavity in which one can find only momentary stability. This
uncertainty of perspective is mirrored in the ‘fundamental distrust and discomfort for any
established space (since) all spaces are in collapse…With each collapse then any
assumption governing the spatial structure … becomes critically deconstructed so that
space may be redefined’.25 The ‘distrust and discomfort’ is suggested by a ‘cut and paste’
methodology that seeks to critique not only reverberation as a sonic tool, but assumptions
regarding musical space and distance as well through the juxtaposition of discrete
samples.
What is exciting is the position that Takasugi claims through this methodology.
He foregrounds the logical paradoxes inherent in much of the complex music of the late
twentieth century through the notion of contradictory spaces and the critique of distance

20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.: 28
22
There are bridges in the Jewish Museum that open into the void space which visitors traverse (ibid.: 27 -
28).
23
Takasugi suggests the mythic transformation from human to machine (Takasugi 2002(b): 8). A
transformation from machine to human, or more generally, from the inanimate to the animate, is also a
common theme in Western mythology.
24
Takasugi 2002(b): 1
25
‘()’- the author’s (ibid.)

6
as a necessarily traversed path.26 In addition, he offers the possibility of decoupling
parameters whose acoustic dependence has never been questioned ‘in the context of
normative reality’.27 The possible decoupling of direct/reflected sounds—a reverberation
turned inside-out—is what Takasugi refers to as a type of ‘infected reverberation’.28 The
result is a critique of the manner in which one relies upon a particular set of acoustical
relationships that determine how reverberation should be imagined and deployed.29
Another use of reverberation, a ‘shattered reverberation’, is one in which slices of
the decay of a sound are pasted to others obeying a very different room acoustics (i.e.,
transgressing ‘the natural law of uninterrupted decay’).30 The importance of this
technique is the awareness that it creates, on the part of the listener, of reverberation as
compositional material, rather than as a device that assimilates and diffuses all sound
objects, projecting an ‘aesthetics of disappearance’. (In the same way, the hyper ‘cut and
paste’ methods suggest an awareness of the digital sample as compositional material that
can be suitably deconstructed through various types of juxtaposition.) In the Crustacean
sections, one can find numerous examples of magnified sound objects and shattered
reverberations. Each successive Crustacean section is an oblique magnification of some
part of a previous Crustacean section, oblique in the sense that the magnification, by
amplifying different details of a similar texture, is projected at an angle.
Key elements in Crustacean I are (1) a shattered reverberation, (2) magnified
elements that suggest an endoskeleton turning exoskeleton, i.e., a ‘dissociation …brought
about by an interchange of the body’s interior and exterior surfaces’,31 and (3) silence.
Important to this opening thirty-seven second section is the weighting of the phrase
material. The duration of the sound/silence material respectively approaches 1.5”: 2”:
28.5”: 5.5”. The emphasis placed upon the duration of the second continuous sound
material (28.5”) implies a movement that is unpredictable- ‘adjustments of the body in a
failed attempt to find correspondences with the mind’.32 In alluding to these ‘failed
attempts’, Takasugi refers to Kafka and, particularly, to Gregor Samsa’s failed attempts
to find correspondences in his new body once the metamorphosis had occurred.
The sounds projected by much of the Crustacean sections bring to bear another
aspect of Kafka, namely his ‘dark pocket’ in which he kept ‘a small round puzzle, one of
those little puzzles that had little holes waiting to be filled by little metal balls. While he
would walk, he would try to draw an invisible line in order for all the balls to go into
those holes’.33 One can, in JN, hear the reference to an invisible line through moments of
either silence or trails of continuous sound material. Furthermore, fragments of this line

26
This was initially critiqued in the early music of Ferneyhough (such as Unity Capsule) and later, K. K.
Hubler (with his Opus Breve).
27
Ibid.: 6
28
Ibid.: 6 – 7. An example of reflections exhibiting ‘deviant conduct’: once the sound of a spoken word
strikes a surface of any kind, it is transposed into another dialect (ibid.: 6).
29
This is not unlike the early films of Godard where the decoupling of image with sound creates a critical
awareness, for an audience, of the manner in which image and sound are typically (and hierarchically)
bundled together, often for purposes of manipulation.
30
Ibid.: 8. A shattered reverberation also questions the notion of ‘traversal of distance’ by jump cutting
from one space to another (ibid.).
31
Ibid.: 1
32
Ibid.
33
Bates 1996: 28

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are projected through the Void sections placing the vanishing point either in front of the
listener (Void I and II) or at infinity (Void of the Nihilists and Last Void). This suggests
that Part II has been achieved through a process of pulling Part I ‘inside-out’, i.e., a depth
interchange, providing outside/inside positions respectively to the Void. What is relevant
to the Crustacean sections is the unpredictable motion of sounds paving a tortuous line
(as opposed to the fragmented straight line projected through the Void sections)
throughout Part I, sounds that occasionally gather as little balls (or marbles) around
‘holes waiting to be filled in’. One can hear this at the end of Crustacean III (1:39)34
where the sound of the ‘little metal balls’ in Kafka’s puzzle rolling into holes becomes
magnified at the end of Crustacean IV (2:31). Through this process of magnification
(and a wet reverberation), one’s perspective is placed inside the puzzle, within the holes,
listening to the trickle of balls become a flood of balls that eventually gather into a single
hole.
In Crustacean I, the sounds are affected with various shattered reverberations
giving the impression that new cavities are opening up as others collapse. The most
striking point is twelve seconds into the piece where, for a brief moment, one is presented
with a reverberated sound suggestive of a cavity of immense depth, momentarily offering
a glimpse into a void. The opening gesture (lasting around 1.5”) contains a clear example
of magnified sounds (particularly at .928) that pop out from the underlying texture in a
manner not unlike sparks from hot coals producing ‘small mismatches of conjectured
position and actual appearance…creat(ing) a trail of cognitive dissociation’.35 This
gesture is then echoed in a different chamber (3.5) and once again, albeit in a very
dramatic manner, at the end of the second sound material (31.0).
The notion of being pulled inside-out, or of oscillating between perspectives, is
not only supported by sudden magnifications and shattered reverberations, but with the
use of pitch. In the beginning of the piece (6.130), the pitch A dramatically resounds only
to be briefly echoed (16.904) and immediately followed by a fourth (D) above, which, in
turn, is echoed up an octave (25.077) returning to the original A (27.12) that is quietly
echoed once again (29.721). The dynamic emphasis placed upon these pitches allows for
one’s memory to compare and, consequently, perceive the awareness of new musical
spaces opening up through altering the timbre and reverberation on each pitch. The pitch
A that is returned to (27.12) with the added ‘flabby string’ (a buzzing sound to suggest an
A in its ‘caffeinated manifestation’ that preserves the myopic aesthetic but allows for the
sound to decay)36 is arrived at through various transformations. These transformations
involve a different sense of ‘traversal of distance’ that is confounded by the sudden
magnification of instants and unexpected shattered reverberations. The traversal is one
which views the fundamental pitch D as a rotating sound object, implying multiple
perspectives often at very sharp angles (i.e., angles that filter through a particular partial
of D).37
In this sense, one is reminded of the late work of Luigi Nono in which many
aspects of producing a sound are brought together in order to dimensionalize the sound,

34
Numbers in parentheses that are not followed by a units indication (such as the double quotes for
'seconds') refer to the indicated time-point in the recording.
35
Takasugi 2002(b): 5
36
Takasugi 2002(a): 298
37
Akin to a cubist perspective (Takasugi 2002(b): 4).

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thus projecting an intensive focus inward. In Part I of JN, a sound is often
dimensionalized through magnification/shattered reverberation and other ‘cut and paste’
methods. These techniques enable one not to focus so much on that sound per se, as with
Nono, but rather the circumstances surrounding the sound- the space that allows for that
sound to exist, the Architecture. The fragmented pitch material in Crustacean I (and II)
elicits this type of focus. The pitch A (which, incidentally, concludes the pitched material
of Crustacean II at 1:18.390) is never quite the same but is fractured by placing it in
different chambers, varying its modes of clarity. Thus, JN often ‘asserts the primacy of
its own spaces as the exhibited (or heard) work’,38 a music that emerges from the
treatment of technique as sonic material.39
Just as the tonal motion in Crustacean I suggests a traversal of distance that is
somehow shattered, so too does pitch in Crustacean II function as broken motivic pieces
from a static melodic figure ‘full of cuts and wounds’.40 This prismatic form ‘is the
deceivingly regular result of the chaotic conflict between purposeless internal pieces that
make up its structure’.41 One can hear the largest piece of the prismatic form as arpeggio
A-C#-E to G#-D, to a tremolo on B-flat, to a sustained C#, finally ending on A again
(58.328 – 1:03.901), all of which are played pizzicato on a violin. The ‘purposelessness’
of these motivic fragments, i.e., their lack of any teleological characteristics, lies in the
inability to communicate beyond their fragmentary nature, despite a ‘functional’
appearance—a ‘deceivingly regular result’. It is as if there is a desire to construct a
presence in imagined memories around an invisible whole.
Two brief breaks that project a faint rattling sound, occurring in Crustacean I
(5.387 – 6.130) and Crustacean II (47.554 – 48.483), appear as interstices within the
cracking carapace, a moment’s hesitation, the second break a magnified version of the
first through the closeness of sound (via a dry ambience). This example is one of many
magnifications that extend the realm of the local to project more global consequences of
the magnification concept. Besides the magnification concept, there is the idea of
‘flipping the lens around’ and achieving a miniaturizing effect. For example, that same
section in Crustacean II (47.554 – 48.483) can be heard as a miniaturized version of a
similar section in Crustacean I (19.690 – 22.105), a brief crinkling that is now a horizon,
an edge, where movement and silence overlap. In Crustacean III, three new elements
have been incorporated that foreshadow sections to come: (1) the use of oboe, (2) a slow,
steady creaking that alludes to a machine-like ‘humming’ and (3) the pouring metal balls
sound that is extended at the end of Crustacean IV (albeit in a very different reverberated
chamber). The oboe comes into prominence toward the beginning of Crustacean III
(1:20.248) but later takes on pitch significance (1:24.520) with the D-A motif harkening
back to Crustacean I, although magnified to project a closer perspective.
The remarkable aspect about this use of the oboe is the manner in which it transits
into Sunlight in the Forest via an extremely high arpeggio that visually conjures moving

38
‘()’- the author’s. Vidler, Anthony 2000: 224 in “‘Building in Empty Space’: Daniel Libeskind’s
Museum of the Voice” in Libeskind 2000: 222 - 24.
39
Akin to the montage techniques of film-makers Straub and Huillet where the rhythm of the ‘jump cuts’
asserts a lyrical impulse (such as in the film Not Reconciled).
40
Cobelo, Jose Luis Gonzalez 1996: 35 in “Architecture and its double: idea and reality in the work of
Daniel Libeskind”, in El Croquis 80: 30 – 38.
41
Ibid.

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sunlight reflecting against a contoured surface (1:44.582). The high oboe arpeggio, along
with the continuous sound of pouring balls (begun at 1:38.824), provides a counterpart to
the discrete, shard-like material that has previously dominated. Furthermore, one could
argue that the end of Crustacean III has magnified and opened the silence that ended
Crustacean I (32.136 – 37.709) to the point of revealing an intense movement within. In
this manner, not only does silence suggest the brief moments in which the impulse is ‘to
return to sleep’,42 but also that of an empty container that is slowly filled by reverberated
echoes of prior movement (1:38.824 – 1:45.511).
A machine-like creaking appears in Crustacean III (1:33.251) that has
significance not only in referring back to the opening creaking gesture of Crustacean I,
which has now become a mechanical, reverberated distortion of that original gesture, but
for releasing movement that had been stifled in the previous moments- offering a cavity
‘in which we could briefly dwell’.43 The pitch fragments that occurred in the plucked
strings in Crustacean II are recalled as the fragment A-F#-E in a wooden percussion
instrument (perhaps wooden boards) that appears toward the latter third (at 1:31.022),
thus completing a cycle of strings to winds to percussion, suggestive of a once larger
tonal motion that has been timbrally diffracted.
A greater magnification of the sonic texture (for example, the cracking and
popping) and the extended use of a ‘caffeinated manifestation’ of sounds through grainy
buzz characterize the first half of Crustacean IV (up to 2:31.765). Also present is a
quasi-repetition of the pitch motive that was heard in Crustacean III on wooden
percussion,44 recalling the ‘prismatic form’ of the tonal movement. The second half of
this section (2:31.765 – 2:55.542) suggests an ‘infected reverberation’. The reverberated
(and ‘caffeinated’) echoes of popping and cracking sounds from the previous half are
gradually awakened, maintaining the myopic gaze, until the sounds become the dry,
crackling texture of metal balls rushing to fill an open cavity, carried by the momentary,
unquestioned weight of their pull. Takasugi here reveals the possibility that
reverberation, despite its exterior desire to diffuse, contains an interior that is ‘splintered
and shattered’.45
This second half magnifies the ending of Crustacean III (1:33.065 – 1:45.511) by
eventually zooming in on the machine-like humming, giving that mechanical humming
formal significance in the following section (Machine I, which, in a sense, could be
viewed as comprising three isolated, magnified ‘hums’). It is as if all of the ‘little metal
balls’ of Kafka’s puzzle have finally found the right hole on which to converge, repeating
the process several times (Machine I) as if exerting ‘a will to pull into proximity an
absence in constructed, imagined memories’.46 Machine I, which follows Crustacean IV,
could be that myopic ‘gaze backward’ at ‘the edges of a crater in the ‘having been’’47, as
an anticipation for the past.

42
“In the Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa’s initial impulse, after awakening as a beetle, is to return to sleep.
His awkward condition, however, does not allow it.” (Takasugi 2002(b): 2).
43
“The initial adjustments of the body, in a failed attempt to find correspondences with the mind would
create the cavities in which we could briefly dwell.” (ibid.: 1)
44
In this case the motive is A–G–E (2:22.663), but due to the similarity of timbre and register, the
comparison is recognizable.
45
Ibid.: 6 - 7
46
Takasugi 2002(a): 300
47
Ibid.

10
 Crustacean V is the longest Crustacean section and the most intensely magnified.
One can hear clearly in between the loud popping and crackling of magnified sounds, as
if near-sighted spectacles are used to focus in on distant sounds and, in this clarification,
cause uncertainties with respect to depth perception. Indeed, a common mode of listening
assumes that close sound objects are clear and crisp and distant sound objects are blurred
and soft (a distance usually projected through reverberation). Adding another dimension
to the perceptual process, that of ‘wearing near-sighted spectacles’ (which
instantaneously focus distant objects without bringing the objects close), Takasugi
defines three states in a destabilized space, i.e., a space in which the established modes of
distance are critiqued.48 These are (a) distant/blurred, (b) distant/crisp (via spectacles)
and (c) close/crisp (via magnification). A distant/blurred perspective (the normative
perspective) can be destabilizing provided the proper context, such as one in which the
normative perspective is unexpected. A fourth perspective could also be potentially
destabilizing: (d) close/blurred (via spectacles and magnification). This is a perspective
in which a ‘pimpled’ space49, due to the marks left by consistent magnification, appears
distorted through the use of spectacles yet with the crevices of this space focused inward,
away from the listener. Some of these perceptual dimensions are at play in Crustacean V
(such as the oscillation between (b) and (c)), suggesting a destabilized space of focused
sounds that appear both near and far. The aural effect that this oscillation creates is the
sensation of a continuous bombardment (close and distant) of shard-like sounds, noted in
the subtitle to this section: barrage.
The term ‘barrage’ implies an artificial barrier and, in this context, perhaps a final
barrier in the search for a void. In that sense, one could view Crustacean V not as a
barrier but as a door, an opening, leading away from the perception of space as an
objective phenomenon-- i.e., that which can be grasped in the Architecture-- to ‘that
grasping capacity, …a concavity without a central absence, …the hole in hollowness’50,
the interior of a void. Hence, Part II, The Interior of the Void, could be seen as a critique
of The Architecture, as an end to constructed space where one is ‘not impressed by the
monuments and the logic that went into stabilizing the manifestation of being’.51 Rather,
one is faced with the possibility that an ‘ideal architecture might be an organic being- one
in the midst of grasping an awareness- an incongruence between mind and estranged
body’,52 a possibility that has been achieved through involuting one’s perspective by
pulling Part I inside-out.
Crustacean V occurs just after the second Zoo section and before the second
Void, the longest section of Part I. In juxtaposing Zoo II with Crustacean V, a skewed
sense of continuity between the Zoo and Crustacean sections is explicated, suggesting
oblique trajectories that zigzag throughout the Architecture. This is particularly true since
Zoo II contains a cracking and popping texture characteristic of the Crustacean sections.
Furthermore, an oboe sound begins Crustacean V,53 causing the listener to anticipate
hearing a continuation of Zoo II (thus subsequently comparing the two), since oboes and

48
Takasugi 2002(b): 5
49
Ibid.: 3
50
Libeskind 2000: 69
51
Ibid.
52
Takasugi 2002(b): 1
53
A repeated high E.

11
other double reeds provide the dominant texture for the Zoo sections. Contained in this
last Crustacean section are bits of oboe, tiny melodic fragments on a plucked violin and
occasional pitches on a wooden percussion instrument, perhaps a ‘cropped’ perspective
of the pitched material that occurred in Zoo II. A creaking akin to a drumhead being
slowly stretched merges pitch with prior creaking gestures, creating movement from A
(6:16.163) to C# (6:16.906) to E (6:23.036), extending the hidden tonal motion around A
heard in the previous Crustacean sections.

Sunlight in the Forest

Sunlight in the Forest is the only section of its kind. It is sonically related to the
Zoo sections in that it introduces the double reed instruments. However, the double reed
sounds are faint and high, reminiscent of softly dragging one’s fingernails against a
blackboard. In between the double reed sounds is the sound of marbles dropping and
rolling around. The dropping sensation becomes a pouring one with an interjection of
shattered reverberation to break the linear continuity of that sound (2:03.350). As
situated between two Crustacean sections, Sunlight in the Forest presents a grander
moment’s hesitation in the cracking carapace than before, ‘a desire to dream’54, that
allows for the ‘shafts of light’ to sift through, glimmering, briefly glimpsing a void.
References to a void are suggested by the creaking (such as 2:05.945) and pouring metal
ball sounds that are repeated with reverberation and temporally extended in Void I and II.

Zoo I, II - trapped animals

On a first listening, one might assume in the Zoo sections that the shrill sounds
played on double reed instruments mimic trapped animals in a cage. However, these
sounds can be better understood as a genetically engineered zoo, a collection of sounds
that are algorithmically produced to suggest the replication of trapped animals. This is
indicated through a static repetition of motives that first appeared in the plucked strings
of Crustacean II coupled, in Zoo I, with moans, squawking and cries on double reeds that
seem unable to transgress their immediate iconic status (not unlike the fragmentary pitch
material in Crustacean II).55 Underneath the moans and glissandi in Zoo I are the soft
crinkling and brushing of sounds that become magnified in Zoo II to reveal the cracking
and popping that have characterized the Crustacean sections suggesting an affinity
between them, perhaps one in which the ‘cuts and wounds’ expand to ‘gashes’.

54
“Aware of its cracking, the creature/edifice is seduced by the idea of a retreat into lull. A desire to
dream, or return to an amniotic medium, would most always be thwarted by an agony ironically
compounding with any effort to assuage.” (ibid.)
55
Throughout both Zoo sections, there is the motive of the rising sixth (D#-C: 3:40.868, C#-A#: 3:55.171,
F#-D: 4:06.131, A#-G: 5:20.063), rising third (B–E-flat: 3:47.184, G#-B: 4:10.032 and again at 4:13.190,
A#-C#(8va): 5:23.779, D–F–A: 5:25.636), descending major second with repeated note (3:54.057, B–A–A:
4:02.787), descending third (C–G#: 5:50.714, F#-D#: 5:54.615) or a melodic figure with repeated note (D–
B–B–A#-F) that appears again at the end of Zoo I (4:32.695) or in Zoo II (A–F–F: 5:28.237, G–A#-A#:
5:36.039).

12
 In fact Zoo II, in appearing just before the last Crustacean section alludes to their
similarity of structure (both Zoo II and Crustacean V are relatively the same in duration).
Just as a ‘tilting’ of silence at the end of Void II reflects the glimmer of movement as
breath (in Deconstructive Inventory II), so too does a tilting of Crustacean V reveal hints
of pitch, as magnified glimmers of movement that had emerged prior in Zoo II. Indeed,
the creaking gestures of Crustacean I - IV become the cries and moans of the Zoo
sections. There is, so to speak, ‘the systematic and dynamic transmutation of
movements’.56 Neither the Crustacean nor the Zoo sections have counterparts inside the
Void, since each section individually manifests an inside/outside perspective.57
Furthermore, the Zoo sections make apparent that the inside/outside perspective is not
related so much to trapped animals but rather to the architecture of a museum that
contains impressions of those animals. In other words, the Zoo sounds, with the
references to animals via moans and cries, are subsequently deconstructed in a way that
attempts to capture and freeze key elements of sounds, to organize and classify them in
the manner of a museum taxonomy. The sequencing of these sections (that include the
Crustacean, Zoo and Sunlight in the Forest) create a zigzag, a tortuous line throughout
the Architecture always moving inward, via magnification, pointing indefinitely toward
the listener.

Machine I, II

Machine I consists of three events (placed at 2:55.542, 2:58.143, 3:03.159) each

separated by a brief silence. The repetitive vibration of the machine, as the sound of
pouring three separate cups of rice onto paper, recalls the end of Crustacean III
(1:39.752) but also exposes the mechanics of the Architecture that was suggested earlier
by a steady machine-like creaking, a mechanical humming (at 1:32.694). It is as though
each event of Machine I is a magnified vibration or ‘hum’ of the machine. In this sense,
it offers contrasting motion to that of the Crustacean sections where the allusion is to a
cracking carapace with irregular movement. The contrast between regularity and
irregularity is mitigated in Machine II while maintaining a myopic gaze through a
reverberation that awakens the decay of the sounds. It is during this gaze that a ‘radical
shift of category’, a mythic transformation, occurs. Indeed, Machine II also consists of
three events (12:33.069, 13:04.648, 13:43.1) where silence is replaced by long slow
breaths, an impression that still lingers from Deconstructive Inventory II. Perhaps this
transition, from silence to breath, foreshadows the larger mythic transformation of
machine to human.58 An exception to this replacement is the significantly long silence
before event three (13:28.797 – 13:43.1), a reminder of the emptiness in which any
transformation will be inconsequential.
Regularity in Machine I is represented by ‘filling the little holes with small, metal
balls’ at seemingly regular intervals. Yet what appears regular in Machine I is questioned
in Machine II. The persistent typewriter clicks and a steady blowing of air becomes

56
Libeskind 2000: 84.
57
The carapace and cage act as the boundaries between inside/outside perspectives of crustacean and
trapped animals respectively.
58
That is, the transformation from the inanimate to the animate. (Takasugi 2002(b): 12)

13
distorted, twisted and infected as though there is a ‘radical shift of category…midway
through, after which the sound loses its (machine) character and pushes to some other,
perhaps (human)’.59 It is as if each ‘hum’ of the machine in Machine I is ‘inflated’ (via
reverberation) and turned inside-out: a shattered, irregular or even ‘sleepless, agitated and
paranoid’60 characteristic is revealed, making the machine ‘release and manifest the
distortion and deformation constituting its suppressed essence’. 61 The final event of
Machine II that segues into the Void of the Nihilists completes the mythical
transformation from machine into human by what sounds like the appearance of an
agitated human voice (at 14:07.806). Surprisingly, this voice sounds far more animal-
like than the engineered moans and cries that had appeared prior in the Zoo sections. But
the consequences of this transformation are voided, erased, with the appearance of The
Void of the Nihilists implying a critique of the mythic transformation.

Deconstructive Inventory I, II

Deconstructive Inventory I presents itself as a reprieve from the sections

preceding it. Brief single attacks that often consist of scissors snips, short breaths and
key-clicks are separated by silences and occasional creaking. The calm breadth of this
section, unlike any other previous section, suggests an assessment, a collecting or even a
separating of the various sounds that emerged previously, i.e., ‘the parting of the
symbols, which has to do with the parting of the experience’62. One imagines a ‘silent
space’63 where one can tabulate, classify and order the sounds that had previously placed
one in a contradictory space with the experience of magnifications and shattered/infected
reverberations. A sense of uncertainty, which was always present in the prior sections,
pauses in Deconstructive Inventory I for one to find an arrangement, a strategy for
moving forward. In so doing, however, one’s sense of organization has been
fundamentally altered by that presence of uncertainty so that new methods of abstraction
are necessary to grasp the surrounding materials. There is an ‘invisible ground from
which it is possible to scaffold moving layers of construction enabl(ing) one to recover
modes of awareness quite removed from the initial hypotheses of rationality’.64 It is the
newly recovered modes of awareness that enables a listener to hear Zoo II apart from the
aura of trapped animals, to hear those sounds as oblique trajectories of the original
cracking carapace.
Deconstructive Inventory II, which is about seven times longer than the first,
begins with slow breathing. It is as if the silences of Deconstructive Inventory I are
stretched and angled in such a manner so as to reveal long breaths, the silences’ interior,
reflecting the gliding movements of water-striders (gerris remigis), interrupted
occasionally by scissors snips, key-clicks and typewriter noises, echoes of a cracking
carapace. What is key in Deconstructive Inventory II is the appearance of a metal ball

59
Ibid.: 8. The parenthetical terms are reversed in the original.
60
Ibid.: 7
61
Cobelo 1996: 35
62
Libeskind 2000: 70
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.: 87

14
moved across a hard surface in broken patterns (first appearing at 9:04.461), that later
transits into the rolling sensation of the Void of the Nihilists. It is in the Interior of the
Void that one first finds continued movement. The transition from short to long breaths
in Deconstructive Inventory I and II further manifests itself within the Void where the
controlled movement of a ball across a surface, as an intended line, becomes an
uninhibited rolling, a dismayed line. It is this ‘tension between the very literal and the
dismaying qualities of the line, which support the fiction and rhetoric that emerges in
experience’.65 The possibility for any intended line to be broken by sudden
magnifications or to be collapsed into instants yields an elaboration of movement that has
potential to evolve dismaying qualities distorting narrative expectations.

Void I, Void II, Void of the Nihlists, Last Void

The four Void sections can be grouped into two pairs: Void I/Void II and Void of
the Nihilists/Last Void. Both Void I and II suggest a type of ‘infected reverberation’ by
using reverberation to inflate a sound object to the point of pulling that sound object
inside-out.66 This transformation, begun in Void I and returned to in Void II, is
accentuated by the brief appearance of a shard from the Crustacean sections, albeit
transformed via reverberation, toward the end of Void II (at 7:47.185), as if alluding to
the final remnants of a cracking carapace. It is in these Void sections that one senses ‘a
pregnant nothingness’ (sonically suggestive of a brewing thunderstorm), fragments of an
invisible line around which the remaining sections are organized. This ‘invisible line’,
extended as an inflated point, manifests itself through a sense of continuity, breadth and
magnification of reverberated sound. One can glimpse, throughout the first four
Crustacean sections, hints of such an extension that begins in silence (end of Crustacean
I) and progresses to a continuous sonic texture (end of Crustacean III). This texture is
then altered via magnification and reverberation (end of Crustacean IV) to the point of
infecting that reverberation through inflation (Void I). It sounds as though a ‘hum of the
machine’ (2:58.143 – 3:03.159) from Machine I, which immediately follows Crustacean
IV, is inflated and extended in a continuous manner to achieve Void I. This extension
occurs along an axis that disappears in front of the listener due to the perceived
‘closeness’ of the reverberated sound.
In Void II, that reverberated sound is inflated once again as if turning it inside-out
to achieve ‘a full loop’67, projecting the vanishing point back out into the horizon
(suggested by the approximately 13” of silence at the end of Void II). Thus, by the
conclusion of Void II, a listener’s perspective has been involuted and placed in a very
different musical space. Although first perceived through the Deconstructive Inventory II
and Machine II sections that act as pillars to ‘bridges that open into the void space—the
embodiment of absence’,68 the resultant musical space projects what sounds like an aural
representation of a hyperbolic geometry (Void of the Nihilists). Straight lines now
become curves extending infinitely, only to fold back and find themselves placed in their

65
Bates 1996: 9
66
That is, turning a sound object against itself by turning it toward itself. (Takasugi 2002(b): 7)
67
Ibid.
68
Libeskind 2000: 28

15
original position. The sensation is that of being situated in the center of a giant, slowly
spinning roulette wheel, waiting for the ball to settle but sensing the hopelessness of the
odds. The continuity of this sound is interrupted occasionally (primarily at the end
17:04.650) by a roughness of texture as a single marble moving against the grain,69 a
question mark that confronts the endless grace of the gesture, that silence is the last
fulfillment of music (The Last Void).
One is reminded of the cut through Act II of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron (‘the
non-musical fulfillment of the word’,70 ‘the limit of the expressible, the boundary of
appearance’)71 when Moses speaks the words, ‘Oh word, thou word, that I lack’ to
achieve a stunning moment of clarity, whereby, in the absence of singing, his words are
finally understood as text, critiquing the expected hierarchy of words to music in the
opera.72 So too does The Last Void, as silence, achieve a similar focus of clarity that
critiques the formal order of the Architecture, ‘the initial hypotheses of rationality’,73 a
web of intended lines. Indeed, The Last Void, although only 17” of silence, appears not
only as that cut but also as the vanishing point for the entire Part II, a perspective
suggesting that its projected temporal duration extends well past the 17” perhaps to
infinity, and ‘what lies beyond can only be embraced in the silence of empty formal
order…’74

Abstract

Steven Kazuo Takasugi’s recent work ‘The Jargon of Nothingness’ for sampled sounds critiques
the notion of ‘line’ or ‘distance’ as a means to explore contradictory perspectives while searching for a
void. A critique of 'distance' occurs in his piece through the use of magnified/focused sounds and
shattered/infected reverberations. This critique provides ways to thwart one’s assumptions regarding
normative musical spaces. By turning sounds and the spaces they inhabit ‘inside-out’ (i.e., through a depth
perspective interchange), one is removed from the usual modes of assimilating sound objects and placed
into a perpetual state of uncertainty. This uncertainty—manifested through contradictory perspectives—
supports the ‘belief that the physicality of experience could (and must) be affirmed through the
destabilization of logical faculties.’ Takasugi’s search for a void emerges from the interstices caused by
this destabilization: a search that counters narrative trance and awakens one to reclaim a subjective footing
such that music can possess a more critical humanist nature.

69
In a personal communication on 7/3/03, Takasugi wrote the following: “I think of this moment as the
displaced heart of the piece. Also, the marble (as the critical spirit) seems like it's going to succeed to
escape out of the piece via the right channel, but the piece is cut, and it never quite makes it. The idea of
something escaping a piece, or the poet abandoning the poem, acknowledging that the poetry must dwell
elsewhere, outside the poem, is a theme that is currently very important for me. This moment is something
like the precursor to this idea.”
70
Ibid.: 27
71
Cobelo 1996: 37
72
Libeskind 2000: 26
73
Ibid.: 87
74
Cobelo 1996: 37

16