Anima (Group B, Side B)

Anima– the soul, especially the irrational part of the soul as distinguished from the rational mind

Immortality– the ability to live forever; eternal life

As an artist in sound, I like to almost consider myself a sorcerer. How can I achieve magic through sound? What would the sonic pallet contain? Using this framework, I find myself gravitating towards mythic themes, therefore, with our group deciding on the theme of the soul, Anima, I chose to interpret this through the concept of immortality. Researching into this, Plato’s view on eternal life helped shape a lot of my direction by writing that nothing can destroy the soul, leaving it immortal. Anima in latin was used to describe breath, soul, spirit or vital force, which links to the idea that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only to be transferred from one form to another. Henceforth, I titled my piece ’21gs’, based on Duncan MacDougal’s experiment with the human soul, where he discovered the weight of a human body is twenty-one grams lighter, postmortem. 

My own vision of immortality is a beautiful, divine concept that I have most often seen in religion and mythic lore through divine intervention. (Example, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Christianity) Looking into modern research on immortality, I notice a much more macabre view. Hypotheses of freezing heads to move into new bodies, digitally uploading yourself to a cybernetic avatar or cryo-sleep. Instead of achieving (or believing) this concept, humans have shifted this divine intervention, into a technological one. 

To achieve this through sound, I structured this piece to emphasize the beauty but also the morbid side of what immortality is believed to be, or will become. Ancient vs. Modern, divine vs. mortal, blissful vs. morbid. Looking into experimental orchestras, I thought this would be an apt approach to these contrasts and to achieve eternal life, sonically. I used strings and flutes, running them through spectral stretch to interpret the ethereal, empyrean nature of what I have believed immortality to be. To close this piece, I used to noise and synthesis to introduce the modern view and to play with the idea of entropy. In a way, this piece turned out to be a sonic timeline of what everlasting life has become in Western Society. 

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Immortality | Philosophy and Religion.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 15 June 2017, www.britannica.com/topic/immortality.

Humphries, Courtney. “Digital Immortality: How Your Life’s Data Means a Version of You Could Live Forever.” MIT Technology Review, 18 Oct. 2012, www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/18/139457/digital-version-after-death/.

Thomas, Ben. “The Man Who Tried to Weigh the Soul.” Discover Magazine, 3 Nov. 2015, www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-man-who-tried-to-weigh-the-soul.

Demby, Constance. Skies above Skies. Constance Demby Productions, 1988, open.spotify.com/album/0mOvzxPIp6XULoaq2Kq3h9. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.

yeule. Veil of Darkness. Bayonet Records, 24 Oct. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8WwX0jkVMU. Accessed 11 Apr. 2021.