A radiophonic piece aired on the 'Listening Room'
September 23, 1996

A weaving of alchemy and information. Heralded by the clack, clack of a mechanical loom. Just as the weft of information is pulled, the warp of alchemy sounds, bubbling, hissing, burning - a subtle overlaying of sounds, of voices. Of performance, painting, cyberblading, Internetting. Of practical bubbling and internal meanderings both through and within the twelve alchemical stages.

The essence or raison d'°tre of alchemy is information exchange - within the alchemist/practitioner, within and between the materials, and between the practitioner and 'god'. Just as the alchemist draws information/inspiration out of the hermetic process, thus we in a contemporary milieu draw information out of the air. 'There is something in the air.'¹ A female commentator explains that the space of information is 'beneficent', it takes on 'eternal characteristics' - it is there and 'waiting to be found'². It is out of the ether that both information and the sounds of alchemy are heard. The ether being impregnated with information, sounds, voices which filtrate our existence.

Norie Neumark's radiophonic program Separation Anxiety: not the truth about alchemy is ostensibly a piece about 'doing' alchemy, about working with the processes of transformation. The practitioners are artists, performers, and academics. Neumark skilfully weaves in the space of information exchange. Information that is in the air we breathe. Sucking information out of the air. Circulating information and data bits through cellular systems, through plastic, through ATM machines. As the Hyperformer (the 'Cyberblading Alchemical Nomad') states, we are now so dependent upon the plastic card that we cannot envision an existence without it.

Our guides, two women, invoke each alchemical stage with a naming, a sounding, of the gates: separation, solution; sublimation, calcination, circulation; putrefaction, fermen-tation; conjunction; exaltation, multi-plication and projection³. This is much like a guided tour, which for listeners is a necessary gate keeping. As in all hidden arts, one needs to be initiated, introduced into the knowledge at the right time. Timing is immanently important, not only in alchemy but also in information exchange.

A soundscape replete with multifarious sounds - voices, manually derived sounds and electronic sounds. Alchemy is noisy and the noise registers not only on the eardrum, but viscerally. The corporeal aspect of sound - sound's ability to transit body boundaries, the flesh; to pierce, permeate the body. A tonal resonance of each alchemical stage is corporeally felt. Sounds registered are embodied in the listener's being. At certain moments, for example during the stage of putrefaction, the sounds are so evocative of decay and death that a physical response is felt in the gut. Normally it is the olfactory sense that is activated by processes of putrefaction, but here Neumark adeptly conjures the sounds of decay. Anxiety felt in the processes of transformation, separation, in the individual body and the social body. Transformative space introduces 'dirt noise', 'befouled data'...'danger! dirty data'.⁴

It is not just the ear that hears; all the senses are stimulated and activated - if not physically, then virtually. A virtual sensation of skin creeping as sounds twang and quiver. The actual scent of decay doesn't emanate across the airwaves, but the virtual scent is present. Colours associated with alchemical stages are called forth from the ether: white, yellow, black and red. Fear associations with creatures of the bird and animal kingdom are evoked as the calls of ravens and the roars of lions sound and resound throughout the piece.

Doing alchemy, information indigestion. The wings of mercury fugitively lifting both processes, seemingly divergent, yet surprisingly close. Mercury, the god of information and the spirit essence of all materials used in alchemy; and mercury, the wet metal.⁵ Mercury acts as a linking metaphor in the processes of information exchange and alchemical practice. Just as the metal can not be contained, beaten into form, so information exists within a diaphanous zone. That space which is named 'the zone of spiritism'.⁶ Only the initiated, those with the gift, can hear and articulate the sprites of information.

Through devotion, dedication, trial and error, the alchemist is able to perceive the subtle changes she/he is looking for in her/his own soul. Only those attuned to listening for the cacophonous sounds, through overhearing, will register all the layers of sounds, the reverberations of information on the inner ear, the inner body. As in alchemy, 'overhearing' allows for 'the inadvertent material to seep in'⁷ and thus information and data seeps into our corpuscles; it is a transformative, performative exchange.

Layerings of voices, sounds which each call for a hearing, a teasing out of each sound object, one from the other. Invoking a listening that is a present hearing rather than an absent-minded listening of the radio in the background. A weaving of information - information about information and the processes of alchemy. Separation indigestion. Alchemy as a map, a guidepost to life's meanderings. And just as in life, when many are called and few last the distance, thus it is so with alchemy - many went mad, or were lost within the process of transformation. How true is this even in a 'contemporary', albeit nearly 21st Century, existence? Is the call to negotiate the self within the transformative spaces of information a negotiation of our own transformation within and by this information? Will we devour or be devoured by the mother, the dominatrix of information?

References

1 American performance artist, Jeff Shultz, 'the Hyperformer', who is the only voice who 'names' himself.
2 Frances Dyson, Australian sound artist and sound theorist.
3 Gosia Dobrowolska and Gillian Jones.
4 American performance artist, Julia Scher, who did an installation on 'dirty data'. 5 Australian anthropologist, Jonathan Marshall, writing a Ph.D. on alchemy, explains the evasive character of alchemical language (as opposed to scientific language) by using mercury as the example. Terms and symbols have 'slippery' meanings.
6 Frances Dyson.
7 The Hyperformer.

© Deborah Durie