FAQ
installation with text on screen and four soundfiles
What is your favorite Sound? What are your favorite songs? What song is stuck in your head today? Where did you first hear it?
Music shapes identity, the sense of belonging and distinction. Everyone has something to say about music, although these ‘somethings’ can vary a lot depending on a persons (sub-)cultural affiliation or level of expertise. One can never know all about music: The more one knows, the more questions arise.
We all have a lot of different authorities to answer our questions: parents, teachers, friends, pop stars, TV show hosts, bartenders, etc. The internet is flattening the differences between the asking and the answering entity. We ask the internet, the internet asks us – we ask each other. Thousands of questions remain unanswered on the servers of popular question-and-answer websites. But even if they lack an explicit answer, they tell a lot about the person asking.
What does jazz sound like? What are the dates of the Baroque periods?
What are the 3 notes to the major chord?
FAQ picks 1000 randomly chosen questions on the topic of music from the internet and outputs them one by one. This process is repeated over and over again. On four headphones different sound pieces are played, also repeatedly. They deal with different ways and formats of answering. The third part of the installation is a text-file containing 121394 questions on music from the internet in alphabetical order, which can be downloaded to a smartphone or laptop.
What is Lady Gaga’s favourite city? Did the composer Miles Davis played electric violin?
