JANUS is a concept introduced by the French philosopher Michel Serres in his book “The Parasite” (1980). In the book, Serres uses the figure of the two-faced Roman god Janus as a metaphor for the ambiguity and multiplicity that characterizes our experience of reality.
According to Serres, JANUS represents a way of thinking that embraces contradictions, uncertainties, and the coexistence of opposites. JANUS thinking is characterized by its ability to hold together contradictory ideas and perspectives, and to move beyond binary thinking in order to embrace the complexity of the world.
JANUS thinking has been influential in a number of different areas of contemporary philosophy, including postmodernism, deconstruction, and critical theory. It has also been used as a way of thinking about the challenges of globalization and cultural diversity, as well as the role of technology in shaping our understanding of reality.
Some experimental philosophical thoughts on “The Narrow.” started out as a conversation with ChatGPT about the Tritone Paradox in my computer music composition, Lacanian Sieve.
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1. Narrowness as a Constraint on the Symbolic
When a piece commits to one interval as its total structural horizon, the listener is placed in a space where symbolic differentiation is strictly limited. The Symbolic (in Lacanian terms) becomes a single axis—a filtration of all musical possibility through one cut, one relation, one “law.”
Psychologically, this produces:
A sense of cognitive claustrophobia: the mind searches for alternative relations, but the system refuses them.
A heightened awareness of micro-differences: the listener is forced into an obsessive, nearly analytic parsing of tiny variations.
A feeling of being “locked in”: as if the system only permits motion along a very tight corridor.
This can be described as epistemic narrowness: the world is small, but infinitely deep.
2. Tightness as Affective Constriction
The tritone carries centuries of ambiguity and tension, but without relying on tonal baggage you can emphasize its structural role: it is an interval that never fully relaxes. When it becomes the only possible gesture, a paradox emerges: the tension is constant, yet endlessly mutating.
This shapes the emotional field in the following ways:
Persistent non-resolution → a condition of suspended desire.
Pressure without release → an affective “tightness,” often experienced somatically (sternum, throat, solar plexus).
A narrowing of emotional bandwidth which paradoxically amplifies sensitivity—when all gestures compress around a single relation, small differences become emotionally charged.
You could describe this as affective torsion: the piece bends the listener inward rather than outward.
3. Narrowness as a Model of Psychic Repetition
A system rooted in a single interval, especially a dissonant and “unplaceable” one like the tritone, can be heard as a form of compulsion to repeat. Not repetition of identity, but repetition of difference within sameness—a hallmark of the unconscious.
This resonates with:
Obsessive thinking → circling around a single structuring absence.
Traumatic repetition → the return of something that cannot be metabolized.
The Real pressing through a closed Symbolic loop.
You can say: The music stages the psyche encountering an impossible limit, again and again, as if attempting to master it—but never doing so.
4. Narrowness as Spatial Metaphor: The Corridor, the Throat, the Aperture
Computer music often generates topologies rather than narratives. If the tritone is the only generative relation, the topology becomes narrow:
Like a long corridor that changes thickness, humidity, temperature, but never opens into a room.
A throat that constricts or dilates but never speaks.
A fissure or crack: the listener inhabits the inside of a fault line, not the outside.
Emotionally, this evokes:
Unheimlich tightness (the familiar inflected with the strange).
Anxiety without panic: the walls are close, but stable.
A beauty produced by proximity: microstructures become intimate, almost erotic.
You might call this spatialized affect: the emotional state is coextensive with the geometry of the interval.
5. Narrowness as Sonic Ethics: The Refusal of Abundance
By restricting the entire musical universe to tritone variations, the piece refuses abundance in favor of rigor, discipline, and radical minimality.
Psychologically, this can be interpreted as:
An ethics of renunciation: nothing is allowed except what the system permits.
A confrontation with lack rather than its concealment.
A purification of attention: the listener becomes aware not of what is present, but of what is missing.
This narrowness becomes ascetic, almost monastic—but with an underlying violence.
6. The Emotional Implication of Infinite Variation within Tight Bounds
Here the key is the infinite in tension with the narrow.
Because the tritone is the only interval, but it appears in limitless permutation:
The listener confronts infinity-in-a-sliver.
There is a vertigo of smallness: infinite depth but no lateral expansion.
This often produces a strange calm—resignation mixed with fascination.
Psychically, this mirrors:
The way obsession makes one detail inexhaustible.
The way desire attaches to a single object-cause (objet a) whose variations are limitless.
The way trauma lodges a world inside a single point.
“If this music can be narrated, it resonates in the narrative. At least it has changed me physically, this narrated music. It modulates my waves, my relationship to the wind, to the medium of music. And if that is not proof for you, please. Then why should I help you any further? After all, I have other things to do. The wind has infected me. I have to devote myself to it.”
credits
released February 23, 2025
All music by Bernd Schurer. Published by domizil 2025. Text: Tim Zulauf
Happy to announce that Titus von der Malsburg an myself are part of this years’ xCoAx exhibition programme with our research piece Automatic Reading (obfuscation):
xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects them all.
Since 2013, xCoAx has been an occasion for international audiences to meet and exchange ideas, in search of interdisciplinary synergies among computer scientists, artists, media practitioners and theoreticians at the threshold of digital arts and culture.
The focus is on the unpredictable overlaps between the chaos and freedom of creativity and the rules and determinism of algorithms, between human nature and machine technology, with the aim to evolve towards new directions in aesthetics.
In 2017 xCoAx will take place for the first time in Lisbon, in and around the Faculty of Fine Arts, right in the heart of the city center in Chiado.
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Bernd Schurer and Titus von der Malsburg Automatic Reading (Obfuscation)
During reading, we rapidly construct meaning from sequences of rather cryptic symbols. A multitude of processes are involved in making meaning happen, however, most of them are conveniently tucked away from the reader’s conscious experience allowing them to read effortlessly without having to worry about any of the practicalities such as where to place the gaze next and for how long. The present work reflects on the marvelous feat that is reading. In an experiment-like situation, we create a perceptual short-circuit that unlocks the otherwise unconcsious processes involved in reading. To this end, the test subject is exposed to a written libretto while a computer tracks their eye movements and translates them to sound in real time. The artistic implementation is based on parametric synthesis (“mapping”) and model-based sonification.
20.30 Uhr in der Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstraße 3:
FOLLOWING YOUR OWN NOSE – Catches & Canon-Singen. Mit Nasentanz.
22 Uhr im AckerStadtPalast, Ackerstraße 169/170:
DIE AUDITIVE TEXTBESTIE. Oder: Der gefangene Floh. – Installation von Bernd Schurer
Worum geht es diesmal bei der Liedertafel? Es geht weiter um den Tristram Shandy!
Alle scheinen mit allen Projekten gerade schwer im Stress (Kompositionsaufträge, perplexe Lebens- und Liebesentwürfe, Fahrprüfungen). Darum kommt uns diesmal im ersten Teil das besänftigende Catch-Singen und Nasentanzen, im zweiten Teil die auditive Textbestie zu Hilfe. Womöglich wird Florian Neuner eine Shandy-Tirade wagen. Digressionen.
Gewiss wird Bernd Schurer, Komponist elektro-akustischer und computergestützter Musik, zu Gast sein. Vielleicht bringt er Teile eines komplett verspiegeltes Umspannwerk mit, in dem ein Floh sich falsch erinnert. Er lässt wissen: “Aus dem Feld ergeben sich schon viele Linien. Weniger eine Auflösung, mehr ein Challenge.” Konzepte liegen lassen. Murmeln, essen, trinken, Shanties singen.
