1. Mysticism and the Mysticism of Negation: A Basic Historical Background

Mysticism is a multifaceted term that, in a general sense, deals with uncovering knowledge of hidden or secret aspects of the world. The philosopher Jerome Gellman defines the mystical experience in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as a ‘super sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual unitive experience granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of sense-perception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection’ (Gellman Reference Gellman2011: 140). There are many mystical traditions, but the most relevant to this article is apophatic mysticism – or the mysticism of negation. Apophatic methods are common in Buddhism, mystical Christianity and Hinduism.

In the fifth or sixth century, the philosopher Pseudo-Dionysius wrote extensively on the apophatic way, describing it as a method of comprehending that which is ‘beyond or above knowledge’ (Pseudo-Dionysius 1940: 210). He described a meditative practice that granted access to the ‘unknowable’ using theurgy, or ritual. Pseudo-Dionysius’ ritual practice was a ‘complex and necessarily deceptive or subversive’ practice which utilised the rational and intuitive minds to grasp ‘the encoded insight (or contemplation) in created things’ (Corrigan and Harrington Reference Corrigan and Harrington2014: 1). The influence of Pseudo-Dionysius’ writings on negative theology was so great that the practice became synonymous with mysticism itself and, at least in the Western world, ‘the original meaning of “mystical” as hidden or secret became associated with the spiritual technique of the negation of language’ (Cousins Reference Cousins1992: 237).

Apophatic is the opposite of kataphatic, which means the ‘way of affirmation, from phasis (speech) and kata (according to)’ (Cousins Reference Cousins1992: 236). These two mystical processes differ in whether certain types of information are considered to be ultimately comprehensible by man using reason alone. Kataphatic methods suggest experiences are ultimately describable, while Apophatic methods claim that the information is ineffable and can only be experienced. In contrast, some scholars or practitioners believe that the difference between the two methods does not lie within the belief in the ultimate comprehensibility of the world, but in the process by which we retrieve mystical information. Kataphatic techniques exercise the ‘rational faculties’ (Keating Reference Keating2002: 123), whereas the apophatic method ‘involves a practice of “emptying” out of other conscious content in order to “make room” for the apprehension of God, who is beyond our discursive, sensual natures’ (Gellman Reference Gellman2011: 2). Bertrand Russell emphasises the role of the apophatic in retrieving mystical information: ‘only direct acquaintance can give knowledge of what is unique and new … It is neither intellect nor intuition, but sensation, that supplies new data’ (Russell Reference Russell1919: 17). This ‘data’ is viewed as impossible to describe because ‘the conceptual system … is limited in the sense that not everything that is knowable is “sayable” within it’ (Matilal Reference Matilal1992: 149). The ‘data’ in mysticism, as Russell says, is ineffable. This is a notion that I examine at length throughout my reading of sonified information’s potential. Some examples of negation techniques are the koan and the mantra, with a few examples in early Christian mysticism such as anagoge or the spiritual sense of scripture. These techniques take a source of information, deconstruct it by repetition, meditation or over-thinking, and use the resulting state to glimpse into fragments of a higher truth embedded in the source.

The apophatic way maintains that mystical information comes to the recipient only through sensation and experience. Information must be converted into a form that can be received as experience if one is to grasp the mystical information. As evidenced in the next section, the way scholars discuss music has much in common with the way we discuss mysticism and spiritual experience. Musical information is often treated in a similar fashion to mystical deconstructions. Sound is often imagined as a tool to allow the practitioner to transcend – as with a mystical negation – ‘the regulative categories of knowing’ and become ‘opened up to new forms of awareness’ (Katz Reference Katz1992: 6). For more information on apophatic mysticism, I would recommend Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality by Catherine Keller (Reference Keller2009), The Navya-Nyāya Doctrine of Negation by Bimal Krishna Matilal (Reference Matilal1968) and Mystical Theology by Pseudo-Dionysius (1940).

2. Mystical Sound

Sound can be measured, yet the experience of sound is ineffable. The ear is an unreliable witness, and the mind creates or uncovers links between the sonic event and the listener. The experience of sound is demonstrably subjective; psychoacoustic studies have found nonlinear and complicated relationships between external sound stimuli and metrics of perceptual experience (Loy Reference Loy2006: 155). Moreover, the perception of certain frequencies depends on gender, age and ear shape. Perry R. Cook’s psychoacoustics anthology, Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound (Reference Cook1999) and Gareth Loy’s Chapter in Musimathics (2006) on the ‘Psychophysical Basis of Sound’ plumb the depths of this topic.

We also know that there is a huge difference between hearing and listening; scholars such as Michel Chion, Pierre Schaeffer and Dennis Smalley have explored and articulated this distinction in great detail. Hearing is ‘a physiological process, a kind of receptivity and capacity based on physics, biology, and mechanics’ (Sterne Reference Sterne2003: 2). The act of listening is quite different and involves subjective engagement. In the most basic sense, the difference between hearing and listening is intent. What is heard depends upon the mode (in a Schaefferian sense) in which we listen. Listening is a complicated process that ‘involves will, both conscious and unconscious – perhaps a better word than will would be disposition or even feel’ (Sterne Reference Sterne2003: 93).

Culture and training also play pivotal roles in the perception of sound, adding even more nuance to how we hear and listen. We listen in a contemporary world and with contemporary ears. Sterne argues that the modern conception of listening has been intentionally paired with ‘notions of science, reason, and rationality’ (Sterne Reference Sterne2003: 93), which has been reinforced by the advent of modern recording technology. Brian Blesser suggests this might have been an intentional marketing effort by early recording engineers to rebrand necessarily dry recordings as being more desirable to a futuristic or sophisticated listener because they were more ‘precise’ or ‘objective’ (Blesser Reference Blesser2007: 128). Whatever the reason, technical listening is a prevalent and important mode of listening in electronic music, and one cultivated specifically by training.

Despite associated notions of objectivity, the words that we use to describe the experience of sound can be imprecise and subjective. They are ‘based in and described through a language of mediation’ (Sterne Reference Sterne2003: 94). This can be problematic in the search for an objective description of a sonic experience. For example, we describe sound using words that describe the imagined physical structures of the sounding objects, and ‘the qualities of the visual object are transferred to a sounding object-structure’ (Smalley Reference Smalley1996: 89). We lack specific terms with which to describe both the sound and the resulting experience because the way in which we listen is ineffable. This view, while far from indisputable, is echoed in the works of Barry Blesser, R. Murray Shafer, Robin Maconie, Susan Douglas and John Mowitt, among others.

The perceptual effects of sonic mediation have been studied with interesting results in fields such as acoustic ecology and ecological psychology. An interesting example of this research comes from an article entitled How Do We Hear in the World?, by William Gaver. In this article, Gaver studies the perception of sound in various contexts, focusing on the ‘internal processes that mediate between the … sound … and the experience of its source’ (Gaver Reference Gaver1993: 288). He finds that if there is ambiguity in the sound event or input, the mind will fill in the gaps: ‘If the input for perception is inadequate to specify events, then the processing mechanisms must be complex to compensate’ (Gaver Reference Gaver1993: 288). Even within the realm of hearing and listening, the way the mind processes sound adds an additional layer of abstraction.

As previously discussed, ambiguity (ineffability) is also an inherent characteristic of mysticism. Gaver notes perceptual compromises between the way the mind processes the world and the way the world may exist in an objective sense. The imagination fills voids that exist within ambiguous information, which can have a notable effect on the level of objective ‘truth’ that can be perceived from sounds. Apophatic techniques make direct use of this experiential–rational tension, deriving mystical information directly from trying to make sense of an ambiguous experience.

Mystical ineffability is not limited to the liminal spaces between the rational and irrational experience. Many scholars consider ineffability to be a fundamental (if challenging) characteristic of music. Jonathan Harvey writes extensively on the subject in a chapter entitled ‘The Role of Ambiguity’ in his In Quest of Spirit:

Vladimir Jankélévitch echoes these sentiments in Music and the Ineffable, arguing that the perception of music ‘takes place on the margins of truth’. He rejects the modern objective notions of listening, asserting that listening ‘borders more on magic than on empirical science’ (Jankélévitch Reference Jankélévitch2003: 2). This link to magic, illusionary presence and the imagination has been expanded upon by artists such as Sally Jane Norman and Joel Ryan, who suggest that musical materials, ‘like the sets and props on which circus and magicians’ arts are hinged, draw us into realms … free of utilitarian goals, allowing us to revel in creative, symbolic … encounters which play out our grasp of the world? or lack of’ (Norman and Ryan Reference Norman and Ryan2013: 20). This ineffability is often seen as a source of creative inspiration and as a method of connecting with the spiritual – though a comprehensive discussion of the latter is outside the scope of this article.

Ineffability can also be considered a major component of electronic music. Francis Dhomont defines acousmatic music as ‘the art of mental representations triggered by sound’ (Dhomont Reference Dhomont1995: 2). He asserts that the ineffable ambiguity of the source is a key aspect of electronic music and that the ‘imagination gives wings to intangible sound’ (Dhomont Reference Dhomont1995: 2).

In particular, sounds in electronic or recorded music have the potential to become mystical objects through the mediation of the ineffable. This mysticism is fuelled by the very modern act of listening to reproduced sound, as sounds separated from their sources can conjure mystical imagery. It seems that ‘under the overlay of scientific and engineering progress, the mystical experience of sound without a visible source reappeared’ (Blesser Reference Blesser2007: 121), and its reappearance marked a turning point in our experience. Robin Maconie describes these traits in the context of early perceptions of the gramophone:

Some refer to this additional layer of experiential information as ‘imagination’, but I join the scholars who contend that ineffability in music – especially electronic music – permits the mind to receive information along a wholly different dimension. According to Pauline Oliveros, ‘sounds can be the gateway into a heightened awareness of the moment’ (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005: 80) – or a key to a higher level of mystical consciousness. In an interview in 2002, La Monte Young stated that listening to certain frequency relationships, specifically whole-number ratios, ‘leads to a state of high [sic] god-consciousness, [and an] in tune-ness with [a] universal structure’ (Zuckerman Reference Zuckerman2002: 2). Harvey considers the role of electronics in music akin to ‘the desperate peace-broker on the battlefield where the rational self and the suppressed experiencer of a forbidden or other reality fight it out’ (Harvey Reference Harvey1999: 57). The suppressed experiencer, in this case, is an individual who has managed to escape the rational world and grasp at the deeper meaning hiding within the experience of sound itself.

Ineffability is not the only element worth considering; other characteristics of the apophatic way are also implicit in many electronic music forms and have significantly informed the scholarship surrounding it. Examples include deconstruction and the discursive limits of the music, which are part of what Simon Emmerson calls the ‘acousmatic condition’. It is through the deconstruction of the source that electronic music gains its power. The mystery of electronic musical sound, ‘in depriving us of what we have been told is the dominant sense perception of the late twentieth century media, has engaged and encouraged that most essential faculty, the imagination’ (Emmerson Reference Emmerson2007: 34). The admission of the limits of the ‘knowable’ and ‘sayable’ is also a crucial component of the experience, through which ‘we shift from the feelings associated with these sounds to a description of them … if we are to discuss them at all’ (Emmerson Reference Emmerson2007: 17). Dennis Smalley even posits that the field of electronic music itself is utterly bound by the listener’s experience and cannot be understood in an objective sense because it exists entirely ‘within the perceptual experience of the listener’ (Smalley Reference Smalley1996: 83).

As scholars such as Oliveros, Harvey and Emmerson have proposed, electronic music has strong mystical potential. In these practices, sound is perceived as the mediator of mystical experiences. This mediation is integral to the way we describe things we hear. Most methods of sonic mediation involve listening to real and imagined sound worlds, ratios and repetition. These processes deconstruct the original sonic sources of information, and shift focus and attention to information beyond the information. In the next section, I will analyse an example of sonic mysticism that uses the direct deconstruction of information: sonification.Footnote ¹ I believe that sonification is a particularly intriguing method to consider because it is not traditionally viewed as a source of mystical information. My aim for this section is to provide insight into how sonification is, in fact, uniquely suited for the practice of creative contemplation and in a way that is very similar to apophatic mysticism.

3. Mystical Sonification

Sonification is, as the name would suggest, the practice of converting information into sound. I will take this a step further and assert that sonification is the process of converting objective information into the experience of sound. I am not referring to audification in the sense of an Earcon or assistive display; rather, I am defining sonification as the process by which one listens to data for the purpose of revealing knowledge. Composer Barry Truax considers the process of sonification to be a tool that aids a listener’s comprehension and reflection. He believes that sonifying data, or ‘forces or data from the real world’, might ‘direct the listener’s attention back to an understanding of some facet of that world’ (Truax Reference Truax2012: 195). Others define the practice as a method of deduction:

Sonification is also deeply rooted within the contemporary mode of listening, which – as we recall from the previous section – tends to frame listening as an objective activity that one can be trained in and use for objective aims. In The Sonification Handbook, the term is defined by Bruce Walker and Michael Nees as a ‘display that uses sound to communicate information’ (Reference Walker and Nees2011: 9). This is a version of the definition in the 2010 Sonification Report that refers to sonification as the ‘transformation of data relations into perceived relations in an acoustic signal for the purposes of facilitating communication or interpretation’ (Kramer, Walker, Bonebright, Cook and Flowers Reference Kramer, Walker, Bonebright, Cook and Flowers2010: 6). Hermann and Hunt echo these definitions and claim that sonification is ‘the use of sound within a tightly closed human computer interface where the auditory signal provides information about data under analysis, or about the interaction itself, which is useful for refining the activity’ (Hermann and Hunt Reference Hermann and Hunt2005: 1). As a practice, sonification is intended as a tool to guide the listener’s navigation of the world, and some would argue it is the ‘auditory equivalent of scientific visualization’ (Hermann Reference Hermann2011: 1).

By providing the user with another method of interpreting data, sonification is said to enhance or accentuate existing scientific knowledge, to ‘disclose or make emerge aspects of the data that might not have been discovered before’ (Dhombois and Eckel Reference Dhombois and Eckel2011: 301). Carefully trained listeners, ‘by engaging with the data in a process of analytic listening’, can learn to decipher patterns which were ‘otherwise undetectable’ (Dhombois and Eckel Reference Dhombois and Eckel2011: 307). Dhombois and Eckel are careful to mention the need for rigorous training and guidance, and their intentions are clear: sonification is viewed as an objective and discrete method of interpreting and analysing data. I see this as an extension of the objectivist view of listening mentioned above. I would argue that information from these sound sources is being sought through the lens of modern science, which assumes a certain level of objectivity and an intention to use the information to further a scientific or intellectual goal.

Despite this aim, though, sonification has a number of peculiarly subjective qualities. Unlike other forms of information, sonified data is ‘delegated almost completely to the human auditory sense’ (Dhombois and Eckel Reference Dhombois and Eckel2011: 307). Traditionally, visual information has been treated as more objectively trustworthy than auditory information: R. Murray Shafer says that listeners are ‘trustworthy only when writing about sounds directly experienced and intimately known’ (Schafer Reference Schafer1993: 8). Sonification is also an unusual tool for data analysis because the data is presented in a form that ‘intrudes into reality for a moment, but escapes it in the next … a form, which is expressed over time, but cannot be touched’ (Dhombois and Eckel Reference Dhombois and Eckel2011: 301). Dhombois argues that repetition and careful guidance will lead to an improved understanding of the data, but I would argue instead that repetition is more likely to deconstruct the data, as it is in apophatic mysticism, where it is used to destabilise the rational mind.

This practice of sonifying data is seen as a way of communicating information not merely about data, but about data regarding the invisible. The meaning of this duality is revealed in Paul Vickers’ research on process monitoring, in which he states that the goal of a sonified system is to ‘communicate knowledge and awareness’ of remote activities, or the invisible or inaudible (Vickers Reference Vickers2011: 473). Some examples of this kind of information are remote or internal computer processes, ultrasound, data mining and visual data. This perspective has proven to be fertile ground for artists who have found artistic inspiration in the ‘unheard sound cosmos’, where the data ‘displayed another world beside ours … making the inaudible audible’ (Dhombois and Eckel Reference Dhombois and Eckel2011: 307).

Sonified information can be created in many ways to produce a wide variety of results. Each method involves taking an information source and converting it into sound. The listener must be carefully trained to focus and perceive previously unknown and possibly ‘unknowable’ patterns manifested in the data. The process of sonification resembles that of the listener seeking mystical knowledge through an apophatic analysis and contemplation of sound. In the latter practice, the listener:

While other methods of data analysis lean towards language and lend themselves to description and observation – thereby encompassing kataphatic characteristics – sonification does not. The negation of the descriptive effect of language renders this process apophatic. In a sense, the information is not being created, but conjured.

Despite the objective and scientific goals of many practitioners of sonification, it may be an unpredictable tool for ascertaining objective information. As sonification ‘discloses or makes emerge aspects of the data that might not have been discovered before’, it will also, as a mystical practice, ‘so dispose’ or arrange things so ‘that they are [sic] a figure of something else’ (Martin Reference Martin2006: 13). The sonification of data reveals shadows, not facts. Sonification might be more of an audible representation or mediation of the invisible rather than a form of data analysis.

Pseudo-Dionysus maintained that in order to reach ‘that which is beyond all abstraction, we must begin by applying our negations to things which are most remote from It’ (Pseudo-Dionysus 1940: 208). In order to reach the mystical, one must negate the objective. This means that data must become nondata, and this is exactly what sonification achieves. Before the conversion to sound, the data is objective and has the potential to be analysed. The resulting insights could be described, tested and replicated. When the data is transformed into experience and its objective origins are implied yet disguised, it is negated. It moves into the apophatic domain, and becomes a mantra. This deconstruction of the state of the information leads to the revelation of a different kind of knowledge: mystical information gained through the process of being in ‘direct acquaintance’ with the data. In some sense, the data is being used in a manner similar to that of a Buddhist who uses language to negate its objective trappings in his or her koan practice:

Afterwards, the information gathered has been created in the mind through the experience. It is transformed ‘into perceptual cues, which we then use to synthesise an experience of the external world’ (Blesser Reference Blesser2007: 2). As Harvey would say, the sound or music ‘undoes the ‘word’ and returns to pure awareness – or at least gives a glimpse of it’ (Harvey Reference Harvey1999: 38). The result is ineffable and will remain so. The source may remain behind the veil, strongly lit, though for a connotative-minded or imaginative listener it will appear as shadow play.

I believe sonified information understood as mystical experience is important and rich as compositional inspiration, and the information – while not necessarily objective – is still extremely valuable. It is worth saying that the scientific provenance of data is precisely what allows the negation to take place. It is also why sonification is so uniquely suited for the task. I find the sense that something deep is lurking within a series of numbers derived from some aspect of the world to be an irresistible and inspiring thought. Sound and music encompass many meanings at once, and analysis through sound is undoubtedly a difficult task with many paradoxical characteristics. Luciano Berio speaks to this notion of the mystical in music in Remembering the Future:

A sizable amount of scholarship has been undertaken regarding the spiritual in electronic music, and music is widely acknowledged as having the ability to produce states of awareness and imagination through listening. Although the historical association of music with spiritualism is itself the subject of a separate paper, the practice of sonification exemplifies spiritual and mystical traits in a manner that I would argue has not been fully appreciated. I believe that sonified information, no matter its source, is compositionally and spiritually inspiring, and serves as an invaluable structure through which artists can investigate facets of the world and our place within them. The mystical information we uncover and the deep connections we make can enable us to ‘return to real life disturbed, excited and challenged on a spiritual and social plane by music with hands on relevance to both our inner and outer lives’ (Norman Reference Norman1996: 2).