audiophilia_m4a — Yellow Archive

audiophilia_m4aSound production & audioguide – February 3rd 2026

audiophilia_m4a grew out of an ongoing collaboration between Anders and me. The project developed through constant exchange, feedback, and changing perspectives. Often, when an idea became clear for one of us, it would feel uncertain for the other. This back-and-forth became central to the project and reflected what the piece wanted to explore: attention, responsiveness, and encounter.

We use the structure of a guided meditation not to relax the listener, but to shift attention and perception. Through spoken instructions, the listener is invited to notice changes in focus, closeness, and density. Listening becomes more physical, more precise, and more connected. We explore how sound moves between foreground and background, how perception changes with attention, and how meaning can arise through listening rather than interpretation.

The title reflects this approach. Audiophilia does not refer to audiophile culture or technical perfection, but to philia — care, attentiveness, and relation. We approach sound quality not as purity or faithful reproduction, but as sensitivity to difference. The suffix _m4a points to the everyday audio file formats through which listening now takes place: compressed files, devices, and mediated environments. Instead of searching for an ideal listening situation beyond technology, we ask how careful listening can exist within these realities.

Somatic attention inspired by the Feldenkrais Method plays an important role in the project. By bringing awareness to how the body rests, how weight is distributed, and how we are oriented in space, listening is explored as active and grounded in the body rather than something neutral or detached.

As the project unfolds, the listener moves from a more solitary inward focus into a shared space. Breath becomes the main way of sensing closeness and the presence of others.

This marks a shift from listening alone toward listening as exposure and encounter, and it is within this shift that the notion of the face appears, drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. For Levinas, the face is not primarily a visual form, but a presence that interrupts self-contained experience and calls the subject into relation. The face represents an irreducible otherness that cannot be absorbed, understood, or merged with the self. It is an encounter that exposes the subject and destabilizes comfort, opening an ethical dimension grounded in proximity and responsibility (Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 1961; Otherwise Than Being, 1974).

In audiophilia_m4a, the face is not shown as a character or image, but felt through sound, breath, and closeness. The familiar structure of guided meditation offers an entry point, but slowly changes as intimacy and exposure grow. As multiple breaths gather in the sound space, the listener becomes surrounded by presences that cannot be reduced to background noise. Listening begins to feel less like consuming sound and more like being addressed by it.

Today, the project continues as an open exploration of listening as an embodied and ethical practice. Through constant exchange, it reflects the very qualities it seeks to cultivate and understand, changing how Anders and I listen to sound, to each other, and to the process of making. Are we done working on this project? For now, yes or maybe not.