Where Nothing Becomes Everything

Editor’s Note: both these pieces are quiet, but within their silences, subtle details abound. It goes without saying that headphones AND attention are… indeed your friends!

Plastov

Omega Amoeba

(2024)

Omega Amoeba” is an excerpt from my latest, Moral Compost; the album acts as a soundtrack to an open-ended narrative, shaped by introspective listening.

—Paul Lastovica

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Omega Amoeba is a paradox, keep reading.

The surface is slightly rough, and the texture is not unlike a gently curved wall freshly painted a neutral matte finish. At first blush, it presents itself as a relatively static drone that hangs heavy within your personal proximity, eye level.

Like a miniature gray cloud plopped down in front of you, it lingers—waiting for a pressure drop in the atmospheric milieu of your listening space. Waiting for contingencies to unmask. Waiting for a morphological mutation within your own personal sonic weather system.

As the unmasking occurs, what lies beneath is a different matter entirely. To the intentionally alert listener, what first seemed gray and lifeless reveals itself as a teeming place, bounded only by the limits of perception. Thus, the paradox.

Find a comfortable chair and listen. Have a lie down and listen. Take a walk outside… and listen. Something very complex and active has manifested within what once seemed like an inert cloud, devoid of any form.

Movements of matter occur on a temporal framework that differs from your familiar linearity. What was static is now active. What was formless is now imbued with an aura of meaning. The apparent contradiction with the nothingness of what came before coincides not as a contradiction that must be resolved, but as a unity to be perceived through inner attention. The void to the active. The abyss of the negative to the garden of a real.

Omega Amoeba demonstrates a living example of a coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites that the Acousmatic music space excels at. The imagination is your device that allows the minimal to become the maximal. Where the sound object becomes an ontological reality, an immaterial materiality.

Sit down and listen.

—Michael Eisenberg

Paul “plastov” Lastovica is an artist whose work spans both photography and music, driven by a fascination with texture and sensory experiences. In photography, he focuses on capturing overlooked details—like rust, weathered objects, and concrete efflorescence—and manipulating these images to enhance or obscure their inherent textures, creating new visual narratives.

As a musician, plastov has spent over 20 years experimenting with MTV Music Generator 2, a music program for PlayStation 2, pushing the limits of this unique platform. His work, which blends electronic and experimental sounds, has been featured on independent labels such as 103 Records, Stargazing at Blank Skies, No Thank You Recordings, Fantasy Audio Magazine, and Moolakii Club Audio Interface.

Through both his visual and auditory work, plastov explores the intersection of texture, sound, and perception, offering audiences a fresh perspective on the everyday.

You can find the album that this piece is taken from right here.

He also has his own well populated bandcamp page with pieces that showcase his work with the MTV Music Generator 2 used with the PlayStation 2.

Finally, for more immediate access to his most recent doing’s, check out his Instagram and bsky accounts.

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Jiajing Zhao

Back to the Ocean

(2022-2024)

Back to the Ocean explores the profound physical and spiritual connection between humans and the ocean. The composition captures an ineffable sensation of belonging and boundlessness, as if returning to the womb—an experience of “oceanic feeling.”

The piece primarily utilises sound recordings from ocean water and the human body, captured with hydrophones and field recorders. This sonic narrative unfolds in three stages: immersion, deconstruction, and rebirth. The first stage conveys a devotion to the ocean, like a ritual, as the soundscape shifts from coastal to underwater. In the second stage, the body is deconstructed, represented by enveloping, granulated sound bubbles. The third stage introduces a peaceful sound world, evoking an ineffable sense of boundlessness, akin to a fetus—a new life is born and flows back to the land.

—Jiajiing Zhao

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Care to take a long walk on the beach at dusk? As twilight gives way to inky blackness and the velvet sky parades its bright, pin pricked suit of lights—Jiajing’s Back to the Ocean is the soundtrack par excellence. It presents the intrepid listener with an opportunity.

The beach that we’re walking on is familiar at first. Its coarse sand cooling as evening’s curtain begins to fall. Barely audible waves gently lick the smooth wet grains at water’s edge. You think—I’ve been here, I know this place.

It doesn’t take long, maybe a minute, maybe an hour, maybe a lifetime (it’s immaterial anyway) before you notice the change. First, it’s darker. The blackness of the night you know is now vastly darker. So unlighted that all vision, even the jet-black demon filled shadows you feared in your childhood bedroom would be consumed. The map you know, the one you had in your mind as you set off on this walk is gone. So is the territory.

As you walk, sight disabled, you notice a heightened awareness in the audible range. Your footsteps crackle like static on the rocky sand. Your breath, a muted wind tunnel. The tiny waves sigh as they end their lives on the shoreline. Even the darkness in which you are enveloped whispers soft incantations. All signs and referents are gone as the latitude becomes the longitude. A feeling of vertigo.

This walk, it’s not constrained by your physical stamina—your imaginal aptitude is your guide and close companion. In its sameness, everything is different. In its obscured blackness, everything is clear. This simple act of “just listening” allows for the opportunity to read the space in a new way. In doing so, the space reads you.

At a point undetermined, the sky you know returns. The ocean sounds like the ocean and the shadows still make you feel uneasy. You’re back in the terra firma of familiarity…

… as luck would have it, the beach will be here tomorrow. So will its double.

—Michael Eisenberg

Zhao Jiajing is a composer, sound designer, and interdisciplinary artist based in London.

His artistic practice encompasses sound, installation, and new media, exploring themes such as temporality, technology, digital cultures, and nature. Since 2019, he has been deeply engaged in spatial sound, creating multichannel compositions and installations. Zhao Jiajing’s works have been presented internationally at events and places such as the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (US), Soundcinema Düsseldorf (DE), Espacios Sonoros (AR), Sound/Image Festival (UK), IRCAM (FR), Barbican Centre (UK), Lisboa Incomum (PT), and Sound Art Museum (CN), among many others. As a multi-skilled composer and sound designer, he has collaborated with pioneering theatre groups, performers, and visual artists, creating projects that captivate audiences worldwide.

For the most up-to-date info on Jiajing’s music, check out his well-maintained webpage. He also has a soundcloud page that has many compositions available for streaming.

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