Heartbeat. The contracting and relaxing of the main organ of the cardiovascular system. A pulse – expansions and contractions – that produces a particular rhythm. A rhythm that can be steady, uneven, slow, excited, calm, jerky. A variety of emotions can be gathered from a simple sequence of heartbeats.
Januš Aleš Luznar has been thinking about how to amplify the heartbeat and develop electronic music using only the sounds of the heart for years. In 2018, he started exploring the impact of manipulated sound on the functioning of the heart by using contact microphones and a special sound amplifier. Luznar treats the sound of the heart as a simultaneous instrument that plays on its own and never ceases to emit sounds. An instrument he can train, strengthen and control through different emotions, sound-mixing techniques and breathing.
Luznar calls his research series ictuscordis – the apex beat or the pulse felt at the point of maximum impulse. Based on audiovisual elements and the beating of the heart, the series is a dynamic manifestation of an intimate relationship between the audience and the collective heartbeat.
Listening to the sounds of the heart tells us about a person’s physical health and potential cardiovascular problems; Luznar, however, uses these sounds to explore the relationship between the psychic and physical parts of the human body. By way of a biofeedback method, Luznar very precisely and in real time adds effects to the sounds of the heart, thus manipulating their intensity and taking the listeners on a journey through a variety of emotional states. The result is an intimate, ambient immersion into the universe of the human heart.
The fourth part of the research series, memoriae draws on the past manifestations of the ictuscordis project: in the first part, Luznar amplified his heart (modulatio, 2018), in the second one (dialogue, 2019), his own and the dancer’s, and in the last one, the hearts of people of different professional backgrounds (variatio, 2020).
The project ictuscordis is invariably performed live, with no pre-recorded samples.
More at: www.ictuscordis.org
Tracklist
Credits
Januš Aleš Luznar · concept, music
Luka Prinčič · graphic design, cover, production
Stella Ivšek · Rentgen TV design
Andrej Pervanje · liner text, production
Aleš Rosa · photos of USB booklet
Special thanks to the guests who lent their hearts to the research:
Inti Šraj, Aljoša Cetinski, Vid Vanja Vodušek, Alja Buli, Tatiana Kocmur, Valentino Kanzyani, Natalija Gros, Marko Mandić
And to all contributing to the development of the series:
Alja Bulič, Den Baruca, Vid Vanja Vodušek, Gregor Krpič, Lovrenc Košenina, Zoran Grabarac, Gyula Cserepes, Sara Isa Djukanovič, Črt Trkman, Adam Mulalić, David Lavrič, Marko Vivoda.
City of Ljubljana & Ministry of Culture RS · financial support
Availability
Special limited editions of the USB booklets and free downloads (pay what you want) is available from March 16 at https://kamizdat.bandcamp.com and https://kamizdat.si.
The album is created and released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0). More at www.creativecommons.com/license.
Kamizdat · www.kamizdat.si