Alexander Tillegreen – “I think there is a great possibility in listening to this mirror of your own subconsciousness” (interview)

By Alexander Julin Mortensen, photo: Press photo

The first time I encountered the Danish sound artist, composer, researcher and visual artist Alexander Tillegreen’s work was at the contemporary gallery O-Overgaden in Copenhagen. His exhibition, entitled “Shift”, showed him working in the intersection of scientifically-inspired sound and visual art, centered around a psychoacoustic phenomenon called phantom word illusion – an auditory and language-based illusion whereby a listener hears words or phrases which aren’t actually acoustically present. Instead, what the listeners (believe) they’re hearing is determined by the culture they’re embedded in and their linguistic background.

While the scientific background behind his work was inspiring in itself, what left the biggest impression on me was the artistic output of his engagement with the phenomenon, which he has researched on and artistically worked with as part of a residency at the Max Planck Institute For Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt. Here, what started as an invitation to be a part of a concert series at the institute quickly evolved into an artistic residency and ongoing research on phantom word illusion in collaboration with the institutes’ scientists.

This Friday, Alexander Tillegreen releases his debut album on the acclaimed electronic label Raster-Media (formerly Raster-Noton). The album draws in part upon his work with phantom word illusions and other psychological research by Diana Deutsch, who’s also behind the discovery of the phenomenon, as well as containing other ambient and rhythmically experimental compositions. Thus, in the same way as Tillegreen’s exhibition at O–Overgaden, his new album is a highly conceptual one with an emphasis on the role of the cultural impact of language on our daily and mental lives as well as societal reality.

Still, there’s something rather intuitively appealing about the hypnotic compositions and their rhythmic structures which doesn’t need any kind of conceptual explanation in order to leave an impression on its listeners – something of big importance to Tillegreen as well. As he states in our interview, he believes that “art should first of all touch and move you in a physical and affective way”.

Read our interview with Tillegreen in full below.

P/A: On “in words”, you draw heavily upon your research as a resident at the Max Planck Institute, where you investigated the phenomenon called phantom word illusion. Could you explain what this phenomena is about and tell a bit about how you originally encountered it? 

Alexander Tillegreen: “Yes, on three of the ten tracks on the album the main sonic material and compositional method are centered on the phantom word illusions. The remaining seven tracks are not. Over half of the album was not done at Max Planck but before and after.

The phantom words are an auditory, language-based illusion that may trigger words inside of the listeners head, that are not necessarily acoustically there. Instead, the listener tends to hear words or sometimes whole phrases that are based on their own subconscious mind and vocabulary in that specific moment of listening. The listeners’ linguistic background and cultural embeddedness is part of this experience. Also, the lived lives of the listeners are part of it – this is in the sense that people hear words related to their personal lives or recent events. This could be names of loved ones, medical words, words that are on the news media and so on. 

“I think there is a great possibility in listening to this mirror of your own subconsciousness.”

– Alexander Tillegreen

I remember the first time I heard the phantom word illusion. I was immediately hypnotized by it. I found it intuitively moving and stimulating how it kept changing even though the signal was the same. I was also immediately struck by its political potentials – in a way it deconstructs language borders and makes it about the listeners’ standpoint. 

I think there is a great possibility in listening to this mirror of your own subconsciousness. In group listening it also sparks connections between people and discussions about who we are in a given moment and how differently we listen depending on personal background.”

P/A: To me, phantom word illusion is a truly fascinating scientific phenomena – but I’d never had thought it held any musically interesting dimension without any knowledge of your own artistic work. How did you approach your research on the topic in order to make it aesthetically interesting as well? 

AT: “I think there are a lot of inherent musical, spatial, and, as I said, political qualities in the phenomenon itself. I am trying to unfold these qualities through my experiments, music and exhibitions.

First of all, there are incredibly interesting rhythmic complexities and possibilities – even though it seems simple, it really has a generative drive to it that can also be a challenge to work with musically, because it is so dominant and repetitive. It can both be reminiscent of modernistic, minimalist serial music or just of techno, as some of the participants in my Max Planck study have noticed.

Secondly, there are highly complex and interesting musical aspects to work with when it comes to voice and voice perception. There is so much potency of tonality “hidden” in speech when it is looped, sequenced, and synched in this way.

“voice says so much about where we are in our lives and the fluidity of our identities.”

– Alexander Tillegreen

In the perception of the phantom word illusion, gender distortions sometimes happen – a female voice can sound more male, vice versa, or in between. I always liked these ambiguities in the voice-perception of it. It is often the case that even though there is only one voice in the signal, listeners tend to hear the illusion of a multiplicity of voices coming from each of the speakers at different pitch.

Voice in general is a trajectory in my work – voice says so much about where we are in our lives and the fluidity of our identities. It reveals a lot about health, age, gender, and which mood we are in. When I was child, I suffered severely from stuttering and my voice was hoarse. I think this could be why I am so drawn to voice and different qualities and stages of voice.

Conversations can be very musical to me as well. In the last track on the record, “assimilate (in words)”, conversation is definitely used as an instrument in itself. The rhythm, the pauses, the intonation, the interpersonal collapse of communication, etc. It’s all there.”

Of course, I also work with voice and psychoacoustics in relation to multi-channel setups and in stereo, both in live situations and in immersive installations. I think there is always a lot to discover aesthetically on how this phenomenon acts in space and how we as individuals intuitively react physically to it.

P/A: Are there any specific artists or artistic concepts and expressions which have influenced your sound on “in words”? If so; how?

AT: “The music alternates between being very demanding of the listeners attention and at other times quite the opposite, it goes very ambient. I’m very attracted to “physical” music and I think this connects with my interest in psychoacoustics, spatial sound as well as for example bass music or rhythmically complex music. And music that slowly evolves over time. Sound and music that stimulates and triggers one’s attention and one’s body.

There is for sure ambient and dub techno and electronic influences – I’ve always listened a lot to Biosphere and Basic Channel, but also the entire back catalogue of raster. There are definitely also influences of minimalist music both in terms of electronic pioneers such as Eliane Radigue and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but also American composers like Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass etc. 

My dear longtime friend, composer Mike Sheridan, is truly a very inspiring sound sculptor. Since we were teenagers, he taught me a lot and he also helped me a lot on this album both in the mixing process and by playing his cristal batchet on one of the tracks. He just released his new album “Atmospherics”.”

P/A:Besides your work as musician and composer, you also work as a visual artist. Has your work with visual art had any impact on your approach to writing music – generally speaking and more specifically in terms of “in words”? 

AT: “Not so much that way around, more the other way where the music and sound works inform the visual works. 

I often work with visual “listening” scores in my exhibitions – these can be sculptural or graphical prints, paintings or even photographs. Sometimes, I also place other artists’ work in relation to my sound works – I did that with Charlotte Posenenske’s sculptures at Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt or Mary Vieira’s work in Milan at FuturDome.

In the case of the cover art for “in words”, I selected an etching I did some years ago with a printing studio in Copenhagen called Printers Proof Editions. I chose this piece because I think it has a certain balance of openness in its abstract form while at the same time it does play a bit with your senses – it’s an arbitrary image that I think fitted the album and the graphical trajectory of raster media. The colors and graphic quality of it also remind me of signs from the autobahn and thereby also reference German electronic music, movement, and traveling.

The opening piece of “in words”, “Phantom Streams (5 movements)”, was part of a commission and an exhibition related to the Max Planck Institute residency. There, it was presented as a 6-channel sound installation accompanied by some sculptures and prints. While the print was a listening score showing the 5 movements as dots on cardboard, the sculptures were these minimalist wall works that are actually acoustic diffusers. They play a lot with rhythm, repetition, variation, and shadow, and thereby also with the movement of the spectator. This is very reminiscent of the phantom words. They also look like shelves so there is also a connotation of a (mental) archive of potential words.”

Photo by Mikkel Kaldal

P/A: You’ve also worked with phantom word illusions in different exhibitions, including your solo exhibition “Shift” at O-Overgaden in Copenhagen last year as well as this year’s solo exhibition “Fluktuationen” at Kunsthalle Darmstadt as part of Darmstädter Ferienkurse Festival For New Music in Germany. Do you plan on continuing to work with the phenomenon one way or another in the future or is “in words” rather the culmination and artistic end point of your work with the topic?

AT: “The phantom word tracks on ‘In words’ was actually conceived as the first pieces I did with the phenomenon. So, in a way they mark the beginning, but they are just being released now as music. I do not see it as an end point but rather more as a continuous body of work within my practice, that can be regarded almost as an instrument or a sound bank that keeps growing in co-existence with other parts of my musical practice. A lot of these pieces are also traveling and adapted to new situations. I am working on a lot of new projects that are not related to phantom words as well.

But still, there are many new things to discover with the phantom words and the projects you mentioned are part of that. In these projects they are also combined with other sound and visual works anyway. For the commissioned piece at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, I explored the psychoacoustic effects of whispering in relation to the phantom words and the concrete acoustic situation of that space. At O-Overgaden Institute for Contemporary Art, and later again at Museum Tinguely, it was also an exploration of the potentials of the immersive installation, including curtains and corresponding lights.

“art should first of all touch and move you in a physical and affective way.” –

Alexander Tillegreen

Interactive listening sessions where we listen in groups and together discuss what we have heard in the material is also really something I wish to continue to do. It really sparks great conversations and exchanges that reflect the listeners’ personal cultural and linguistic backgrounds in interesting ways. It’s very powerful. Also, I still have some work to do in terms of dealing with the vast data from my Max Planck research, but I expect this will be a paratextual outcome.” 

P/A: When I visited your exhibition at O-Overgaden together with my at that point 2-year old daughter, one thing that struck me was the intuitively entrancing aspect of your sound art centering around phantom word illusions: Without any kind of theoretical understanding of what was going on, my daughter seemed nonetheless clearly captivated by your music and its hypnotic rhythms. Do you think about your music, generally speaking and on “in words”, as having to be interesting without its conceptual and theoretical context? If so, how do you work with this premise?

AT: “Definitely – I think this is extremely important and what I also love about it.
My experience is also that people of all ages have a very responsive and intuitive reaction when listening to these works. I find that beautiful and in general something I think is very important in music and art – art should first of all touch and move you in a physical and affective way. 

This brings me back to the idea of music and sound as something that stimulates and challenges our attention and senses. One does for sure not have to read or to understand any theory or conceptual context behind it. But if one wants to dive into these aspects one can do so.”

P/A: With “in words”, is there a certain impression that you’ve wanted to leave the listener with? 

AT: “Overall, I think there might be a negotiation or questioning of language, its borders and its limitations. But also, its musical potential. Sometimes I’m skeptical of language and what language can do for us. 

But most importantly, coming back to what you told me about your daughter’s experience, I think it should be listened to just as music. There are a lot of tracks on the record that really are just about listening and are explorations in musical rhythm, atmospheres and frequencies of tension and release. I think it’s a very physical type of music. I hope it touches and triggers the listener in many ways.”

Info: “in words” is out digitally on Raster-Media on November 24 as well as on vinyl on December 8.