Art and Time | Media

Performance Evening: When a shell separates the penny, why won’t a grain object around sound?

When a shell separates the penny, why won’t a grain object around sound?

PERFORMANCES – INTERVENTIONS – SOUND | Studio for Art and Media @Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

  • Friday June 14th | 7pm
  • MQ Summer Stage, main courtyard of MuseumsQuartier, Vienna
When a shell separates the penny, why won’t a grain object around sound? (image generated with artifical intelligence)

The line, they said, appears to be metaphorical or abstract. The meaning might not be immediately obvious without context. A literal interpretation could be, they suggested, that a shell divides or splits a penny (a coin that might have sunken to the bottom of the sea and happened to land on a very sharp seashell). Or the line could express a concept of separation or division, perhaps symbolized by the shell and the penny, and questioning why there isn’t a corresponding reaction or noise from something else, symbolized by the grain object. But they doubted that this was the meaning intended. In their opinion it seemed to be more likely that this was a metaphor, an analogy, or an allegory perhaps? They had a really hard time with the second part on the grain object which they considered to be even more ambiguous.
And what exactly is a grain object?
Without more context, they said, it is challenging to provide a definitive interpretation.
They asked us to provide more context. So we decided to do so.

Contextgivers are:

Friederike Steinert
Hicran Ergen
Djoana Gueorguieva
Luisali Theisen
Liudmila Anoshenkova
Selin Karaman
Kseniia Nechay
Lila-Zoe Krauss
Vincent Entekhabi
Emma Bayer
Kristina Cyan
Artem Konevskikh
Buket Özalevli