When the musique concrete pioneer John Cage first experienced the effects of an anechoic chamber at Harvard University in 1951, he heard just one thing; his heartbeat and the blood flowing through his body. Met with true ‘silence’ he left the chamber enlightened, realising that finding true silence is impossible.
Cage went on to transform this ‘silent’ experience into ‘4’33” , but the performance-artist Dani Ploeger adopted a different approach to making his insides audible in 2011’s with ELECTRODE. Inserting a sensor-connected electrode into his anus, Ploeger tightened and relaxed his sphincter muscles to match the contraction data of a male orgasm. The sound which emanated from Ploeger’s anal cavity gurgles with heavily distorted drone and subterranean frequencies.