Abstract of Paolo Ferrari's Essay IV on Absence
by Luciano Eletti

(The Radical Science (of Evolution), Music and Absence factor Project)

The Birth of the Thinking Systems and the Emergence of Absence Factor

The abstract relational universe, which has developed with the emergence in Homo sapiens of language and culture, shows a tendency towards breaking up, towards cancelling out the level fit for abstraction. Such a concretizing (and precariousness) is to be ascribed to an unaccomplished definitive detachment from past biological history.
With the thinking activity, a predisposition towards a ultraevolutionary stage (called absence) takes place, a condition of greater independence from instincts, from things, from the concrete presence of the material object if compared to previous philogenetical stages; reflexive fitness organizes a different universe capable of existence. In the transition from animal to Homo, a system leap is brought forth, which is totally new and umpredictable on the basis of the initial elements, in the face of which the universe, as it has so far become stable with a self-regulatory equilibrium between Homo’s inside unities and the outside, in the way of concreteness, that is of preservation and survival, highlights structural limits, a failure to satisfy the aspirations of the new being: in spite of its cultural, ethical and psychological development, the human organism is not specific in its entirety for the construction of abstract worlds and finds itself unprepared for the rapid development of the encephalic neocortex. The new level denotes an almost inconciliable contradiction: the encephalon does not avail itself of physical-sensory means different from those of its ancestors, although learning to think is a capability which sets an absolute difference (a new way of relation and existence) with respect to past ages. The emerged level includes new faculties of organization fit for curbing the excessive presence of thing-matter, a stability which was necessary at the beginning to prevent life from extinction (although in the course of the evolutionary stages, the extinction of the species had not given rise to annihilating entropy but to stages of greater expression of the multiple and of the different).
The arising of a biological being such as Homo, which thinks and relates in ways which are no longer fit for the systemic order of which it is bearer and interpreter (as it is observer and constructor of a world), which has bodily components millions of years old if compared to the new predispositions, results in properties which are paradoxical in the universe order from which it originates. The universe takes on existence according to the properties intrinsic to the new cognitive and expressive faculties and, at the same time, behaves in opposite ways: one in accordance and thus giving up its old massive and all-involving presence, constituted only by matter, and following the capacity of the absent factor which has arisen within one of its components; the other one a contrary one, withstanding the absolute difference of the activity emerged, which would compel it to become other from itself. The same occurs within Homo, where the (rational and affective) thinking activity, hindered by the matter-object, has, every day, to make its way within the concrete and inert field of soma and mind, within the universe-thing. Any of its acts, mental or physical, has to go through the barrier of instincts and of its bodily-tactile consistency. At first the thing is taken and not the nothing (the non-resisting matter, the empty reality), as it should be according to the new absent property, to abstract thinking: only afterwards, upon reflection, does Homo satisfactorily solve the reality-object-thing. A world and a subject lacking a point of reference of irreducible concreteness and without interstices are inconceivable (in "virtual reality", objects cease their physical consistency, the sensory perception becomes empty of matter but the body resists, it does not give up at all its concreteness-existence, a guarantee of not being dead). Accepting to be other means taking upon oneself the whole loss of the concrete modality.

The Theorem of Absence

Research studying the property of the new field of reality called Absence System is the development, almost the overthrow of the systemic reality constructed on the basis of "complexity", whose rigorous method also accepts, as significant, marginal states, particular behaviours suppressed by the traditional scientific rationality discriminating by exclusion, reduction and synthesis, and designs a subtle and thick web, a relational level characterized by the sense of complex unity together with the sense of the single event ("complex holism").
Absence Factor marks a further step towards a radical change in the elaboration of the world: a world is not taken for granted, even the fact that something exists ceases to be an unavoidable value; abstract nothing replaces the object-thing. Room is made for an absent relation not limited by the fixity of the obsolete known categories: even life and death are inlcuded, transformed. Homo’s cerebral dimension appears to be forced into a concreteness-fixation (sense-experience= > perception= > mental object) not necessary at all, into a mental and thingly expression of the world and, on the other hand, it appears to be ready for the ceasing of the representability and the experience that, linked to such a world, have so far manifested themselves.
In their development, the complex biological systems tend to let more advanced levels of complexity and abstraction emerge, expression of structural couplings of realities with a minor degree of occupation if compared to the systems preceding Homo, whose fixity has brought about an excessive concretization, an idea of matter-thing which is present even in the most sublime human acquisitions and which hinders a detachment from the present conceptual and relational level. An evolutionary mutation should take place through further abstract relations, according to less saturating couplings, between the thinking subject and thought reality, which are fit for difference and for a non-necessary manifestation. Reality would be disengaged from the compulsion to repeat, from the preservation of the status quo, from immobility caused by a too limited oscillation around the life-death equilibrium point. Before Homo’s advent, the universe is a whole without separation and distinction, without absence factor, a condition which sets interstices between thingly entities and which, being fit for the development of the thinking activity, gives rise to a radically different dimension from the one imploding within the concrete and formless object, to a reality which is detached from anybody thinking it (the subject recognizes there being an object beyond itself).
Beyond the becoming real of a stage of self-consciousness there is a further phase of reality, more dematerialized and complex, not exhausted in a thingifying-idea pertaining to Homo’s ecosystem which, since the beginning, has fixed itself in mental and tactile consistencies originating from experiences and thoughts that belong to the past biological evolution and that for millions of years have made improbable the slightest variation in the sense of a change in the level of the system towards the subtraction of trace of the concrete object.

The Music of Absence and its Temporal Dimension

The music of Absence, a complex web, is a relational field with endless variables situated in a temporal dimension of paradoxical properties (the paradox is the most fitting way to describe the phenomena of complex systems and namely to define the properties, to highlight the unique conditions of systems in absence).

Each composition already stands as a whole in the anticipation, in the anticipating absence, so that it is contained in a time-non-time which antecedes ordinary time and which is assumed and defined in its accomplishment although not fixed within ideation; in the simultaneous and anticipating time it develops in the ordinary temporality (of performance and fruition) which is that of the creating improvisation, in a Doubling without a manifest preconstituted line or just virtual line (level 01). Time is inclusive, comprehensive of the sequence of sounds and of the various manifest and non-manifest variables that take place in the composition-improvisation, given the constant relation with the co-present events of reality that are immediately transformed into (absent) forms fit for integration in the music as music is underway: the content of the music is not known a priori, mutation and invention are possible at any given step of the generating and self-generating act, with the iron bond of a creating freedom in absence. Time anticipation implies an extinct time, having a dimension where the time-object of Homo’s biological, physical and mental history has zeroed; with its end, each object of the reality it indicates and makes existent ceases to be, as it extinguishes its being time and becomes similar to a nothing (dematerialized matter). A new reality is constructed, empty of the old material substratum and of its conceptualization in terms of ordinary space and time, in a different relation with the laws of stability and structural organization, a system which is other, which includes more concrete reality and realeases it from its point of equilibrium, so as to let it, at any fluctuation, broaden its degree of systemic complexity.

Doubling in Absence

Absent Doubling is a method of composition which expresses the adaptive fitness of the new stage of the music, a process which makes possible the coupling in absence of the music composed according to ordinary forms and rules, and of the forms and the expressions of subjective and objective reality, as perceived and constructed by Homo today. With it, inclusion of ordinary music and reality systems into the complex system in absence is brought about, the latter being characterized by degree zero which corresponds to the abstract extinction (anti(anti)vibration) of the excess presence of the vibratory object. Homo’s psycho-biological system of perception abuses the level of manifestation of the thing and, bound to a listening of sounds on the side of their concrete root, it only understands to the slightest degree the more abstract and silent root (in absence), fit for generating a definitely more articulated subliminal level belonging to the musical language as well.
Doubling, a duplication in ordinary music, consists of a musical line (02), thought in simultaneous relation with the musical line (01) set as a premise, in relation to which a specific difference is brought about (complex coupling). The simultaneous re-sounding of the two lines (an including contrapunctual condition) gives rise to an absent musical stage, in which the combination of the two levels lets the musical nothing emerge. The doubling level (02) relates by anticipating level 01. On the evident phenomenal level, they appear to be simultaneous, but to a more specific listening, the temporal difference between them is made explicit: the doubling and anticipating line embraces the first one as if in a time suspended and rubato. The paradox of complex simultaneity implies the simultaneous existence of simultaneity and (abstract) anticipation. In doubling, re-sounding enables an already underway (beforehand) extinction of sounds: extinction in absence of level 01.

The Complex Music of Absence System

When the non-evident components of a set of sounds are set into relation, the summation of the forces at stake is constantly equal to zero (gradient of active nothing). The music of Absence as hypercomplex and real system, fit for self-organization, establishes its proper rules according to the modalities of complexity. The composition does not restrict itself to highlighting a new sound object, but it stands differently, if compared to the ordinary form-object: it includes (by Doubling) and takes upon itself, on a less limited level, the (concrete) musical object within a system which, ruled by sounds and their absence and capable of unitarity in its complexity, can be defined through the introduction of concepts of time and rhythm different from those in use.
The music of Absence lends itself to abstract and affective (affectivity in absence) communication: it can be elaborated rapidly, as it directly corresponds to the complex systems of Homo’s higher nerve activity (of the unitary emotional and rational mind-body system), it goes beyond the sensory and perceptive barriers of the auditory system which is slow and dull in catching the sound input as a whole, it activates the responses in a synthesis which is emtpy of the obsolete and rough concreteness and enters the manifest dimension at a step free from usual rhythm and cadences, from codified accentuations. A new temporal dimension which shortens and lengthens within the new sound universe, after expressing level zero (antitime, antisound) affective form of abstract nothing becomes manifest.
The degree zero criterion (of sound and time) in music originates from the general terms pertaining to the domain of factor absence and concerning extinction. Couplings between Homo’s sense and elaborating apparata and material-reality imply a deficit, as they have so far been tied to the conditions of equilibrium of a living and thinking system which has not detached itself from a universe and which is aimed at the preservation and propagation of species. A condition of non-equilibrium in relation to previous biological conditions would enable biological apparata to accept the loss of the excess of memory-traces which have resulted from couplings by life-death opposition. The accomplishment of such a loss - acceptance of the (absent) principle of reality - would lead to the radical mutation of the bonds necessary today to link the receptor-constructor system to the existing reality, to ceasing of patterns of experience and cognition, which pertain to the present ecosystem, and to the lowering of the threshold through which the stimula, as a complex whole, are elaborated. The cognitive system would change organization in the direction of a fitness to perceive the absence of world.
The present modality of experience and knowledge in Homo is the result of an unaccomplished mutation because of the non-accomplishment of the law of detachment (separation with no return) from systems unfit for generating expressions of complex reality. Only with Homo’s advent has a universe submitted to the unavoidable thing-life-death association taken form, less occupied by material exchanges and concrete beings, less dependent on the necessity of the thing. On this further level a system of organization of the body and of consciousness would be brought about within which the criterion zero of the relationship would find expression (relativity sine materia).
Degree zero of music implies the compliance to the principle whereby the material manifestation of sounds has already become extinct (on level zero) at its arising: no sound is to exceed and to go beyond the threshold of Absence where sound is no longer capable of emptiness; should it stick to this threshold, being silent, it could take part in Homo’s central activity which is more complex and abstract and less conditioned by the old cognitive dimension and thus ready to change. In this site, sound changes into a content which is other, container of the whole, more concrete musical universe.
The new system of sounds (absent antisounds) is not in agreement with the laws fit for the survival of the species, the auditory system can free itself of the patterns borrowed from the animal which takes sounds according to immediate, concrete targets, and which is moved by constantly unchanging rhythms. The human hearing does not receive and construct sound maps being free from ties, as a tabula rasa, because of an in-depth conditioning due to a tension in the listening of the sounds of the natural universe, like in the animal (that has organized on the basis of simple and authomatic mechanisms, fit for meeting elemental needs), and like in the ancestors that had just appeared on a wild earth, without the broad web of forms and values, which is usual today.
The auditory system undergoes not only this ancestral inheritance but also a lack of subtlety and finiteness which are fit for enabling the absence of noise in the root constituting the nature-structure of sounds, provided it couples with Homo’s more abstract component.

The Trace of Absent Music

The methods for recording the music are not independent from the general laws of the Absence System: the pieces are recorded entirely in single sessions and the process is in accordance with the hypothesis of complete and complex unity of each musical piece, in which the whole reality takes part by Inclusion. In the performance-recording the specific condition activating factor absence is required: the slightest mistake in communication, although not evident, even as far as the only intention comprehension is concerned, can lead to unfulfilled unity and aesthetics of the relationship sound-absence. There is a law of all or nothing: an unfinished performance-improvisation, a reduction of the affective intensity can lead to the non-sense of the whole piece: faithfulness and consistency without approximation are required. At the same time the method ensures greatest freedom of expression, of generating other, that is renewed and renewing (for the listener) musical and ultrapsychological relationships to the performer-composer who sets himself in relation on the absent level, with the proper degree of detachment and affect.
The recording, as a means of repeatability is not in contradiction to the thesis of constant renewal and of new musical expression. At each replication (on CD or live performance) music is renewed: the mind-body, which organizes while listening, faces a puzzle every time, and answers it while setting itself to proper listening, with an abstract level where nothing is equal to itself.. And it is necessary that the recording should immediately result in a whole, without further artificial interventions, so as to give back a non-reduced inner mobility and the capability of self-organization intrinsic to the system and so as to activate on the level zero the listener’s in-depth auditory system, in the aesthetic, affective and rational domain fit for letting other absent ways of the intelligence and of the emotion emerge.
The microphone take (the more or less close distance to the source, takes sounds either in their becoming extinct or in their initial stage or in a further temporal oscillation) and the recording site (resonances which are each time controlled and made congruous through the insertion of large paintings with forms and signs of the absent figuration, interactions that are a further sign of the amplitude of the aesthetic relational universe) are further instruments, important variables of the method, which interact with the complexity of the music.

Contents of the Music of Absence

The music of Absence avails itself of the most different forms of composition so far in use to achieve its absolute specificity. The piano, as a doubling instrument, which is neutral, with void timbre, is fundamental for its property of standing at the right distance (the relation between its sounds is taken as a stage of the anticipation) at times (again as doubled instrument) in relation to other instruments, and namely electronic instruments (synthetizers), the tone-colours of which are processed so as to achieve the pulverization and emptying of sounds in order to let emerge the silent degree of their interactions.
In a project which includes the setting to music of the poem Europa o l’Assenza, the female voice is being studied both in the form of verbal communication, without song, and with a whispered and aspirated song where the voice relates to the electronic timbres.
Setting the conceptual corpus of the Theorem of Absence, with song, acoustic and electronic instruments to music, means soliciting the properties intrinsic to the new context so as to let it emerge with less resistance, and setting concepts to an absent sound vibration in order to let them penetrate through the limitations of the cognitive structure in the post-evolutionary direction of a being, which is abstract-absent in an accomplished way, of Homo abstractus.