SHARING I Soul Seeking; An Electronic Music Improv I 30th July, 2023

In “The Mysticism of Sound and Music,” Hazrat Inayat Khan shares a captivating legend where God employs music to entice the soul into the confines of the body. Initially reluctant, the soul views its nature as one of boundless freedom. However, through the ecstasy induced by celestial music, the soul ultimately surrenders and enters the body. This legend emphasizes the inherent freedom of the soul and explores the dualism of matter and spirit. It implies that the spirit willingly relinquishes its freedom to manifest in the material world, enabling its self-realization. Inayat Khan asserts that this loss of freedom leads to a gain—the experience of life as an individual.

Music plays a crucial role in this transformative process, allowing the spirit to recognize its true nature of freedom, interiority, and unity with the divine. Consequently, music serves as a bridge, connecting the external material realm with the internal spiritual world. Building upon these themes, artists Vaibhav Batra and Anandit Sachdev propose a 45-minute audio-visual performance piece. By combining turntables and a modular synthesizer, they aim to synthesize and highlight the contrasting elements of fixity and freedom present in sonic media. Vinyl records symbolize fixity, offering limited possibilities for sound manipulation within their grooves. Conversely, the modular synthesizer invites exploration and freedom in manipulating sound through materiality. Together, these mediums collide, rupture, and synthesize soundscapes, evoking an awareness in the audience of the freedom or limitations inherent in sound and sonic media.