Ben Glas | Playing it by Ear

“Playing It By Ear” is a performative installation that invites and encourages audience participation in the act of composing their own perception. Consisting of a series of mundane and readily navigable readymade sculptures, “Playing It By Ear” explores the possibilities of subjective perception through the practical lens of aleatoric happenings and chance. Listeners-gone-performers alter the unfolding of the pieces through not only their physical presence and movement, but also mental connections which will vary from individual listener to individual listener.
To play it by ear is to spontaneously improvise, to remain open and to take moments as they come, without determining a specific and perhaps limiting outcome. Perhaps the point of the installation is to set up a series of cyclical process which will unfold in or out of sync and that will inevitably decentralise solipsistic listening perspectives. In playing it by ear, we can make a conscious decision to compose our awareness and thus the ultimate and yet fluctuating meaning of this work.

Ben Glas (b. 1992) is an experiential composer based in Berlin. Through ephemeral compositions Glas’ work questions preconceived notions between the acts of passive hearing and active listening. In seeking to discover open ended forms of music and pragmatic listening perspectives, Glas’ compositions focus on the realms of subjective perception and cognition, via the use of acoustics, psychoacoustics and space as tools for sonic composition. His work has been exhibited and performed in spaces all around the world, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA), Glasgow’s Radiophrenia festival, the Soundwave Biennial (SF) and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (CICA). He is currently receiving his M.A. in Sonic Studies at the UdK.