Discovery Zone - Library Copy Do Not Remove

In Library Copy Do Not Remove, Discovery Zone’s JJ Weihl presents a digital enchantment of reality, braiding together the material and non-material to reveal that they are, in fact, two aspects of one and the same thing. In Weihl’s world, Nature and technology are not enemies, but instead create each other in an infinite dance of meaning and reflection.

Originally created in spatial sound for the Zeiss- Groß Planetarium in Berlin, Library Copy Do Not Remove is a creation mythology for the simulated universe. However, this is not some dry, Bostromian, masculine fantasy of a digital reality devoid of nature’s mysteries. Instead, Weihl insists that the listener allow space for the awesome reality of the natural world within the framework of a simulation. If our world is simulated, then the simulation has to be capable of creating the beauty and splendor of Nature. In this way, Weihl engages an ambient alchemy, calling for a grand reconciliation of Nature and the technological, while asking us to consider how and where the experience of transcendent human consciousness might exist between them.

Written while Weihl was simultaneously completing her sophomore album Quantum Web, the songs on Library Copy Do Not Remove reflect an expansive, inspirational state of both excitement and anxiety at the task of composing music for such a unique space. The songs themselves were shaped through Ambisonics, a specific format of spatial audio that is directional instead of being channel-based (like stereo), and were transmitted through a mosaic of 49 speakers. Because it was written for live performance, Library Copy Do Not Remove was never conceived as an album per se, but instead as a three-dimensional event. In this way the sonic staging mirrored how we perceive sound in our everyday lives: surrounding us from all directions. For this album release, Weihl mixed all of the songs again from the ground up with long time producer E/T, reimagining and reworking the constellation of tracks for a stereo experience.

Inspired by the work of James Gleick, LD Deutsch, Johannes Kepler and Jorges Luis Borges, Library Copy Do Not Remove explores the creative tension between reality and perception, information and mythology, harmony and disorder. Throughout the album, Weihl asks how we as humans come to understand the universe around us and the underlying code which animates it. What emerges is a sonic mythos that tells of spiraling digital universes, each nested within each other, in which every participatory agent is both a part, and the whole, of reality, at once. In this way, Library Copy Do Not Remove is a cyber- expression of perennial wisdom: instead of “as above, so below,” Weihl might suggest, “as with input, so with output.”

Each track on Library Copy Do Not Remove reflects the larger themes in question. An audio representation of the Big Bang created by a physics professor is run through a vocoder, translating an astronomical origin story into a digital cosmogony: A universe born in a dial-up tone. Infinite libraries are conjured and reinforced by true mirrors and cosmic projections. Oceans of data create looped architectures that blur the line between the posthuman and the divine. Human consciousness reaches its upper limits, and then ascends even further. A tapestry of nature sounds is woven into an electronic field, infusing an aspect of intelligent hope back into the digital. A middle way opens up: natural, spiritual, technological.

All songs on the album were written by Weihl, and co-written and c0produced by Lucas Chantre. Timo Bittner, who designed and installed the spatial audio sound system at the Zeiss-Groß Planetarium, and his colleague Andrew Rahman, provided Weihl with tutorials and support on how to compose for the unique sound system, guiding her through the process of composing with Ambisonics. Bittner and Rahman arranged the material for live interpretation, while Rahman mixed the album in spatial audio for the 2023 performance, and for wider release in Dolby Atmos. .

Library Copy Do Not Remove tells an ancient secret in futuristic language: our perception of reality is the very thing that shapes it. Weihl reminds us that any understanding of Nature as a simulation must invert upon itself to recognize that even a simulated universe is contained within a larger Nature. And in much the same way, Weihl discloses that we too are catalogued, symbiotically, within a larger reality. Like copies within a library, mutually dependent on each other for our very existence.

Tracklisting:
A1. Big Bang
A2. Dusk
A3. Library Copy Do Not Remove
B1. Habitat
B2. Arp Angels
B3. Castle in the Moon

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