Hi! I just wanted to forward some recent press that covered the department in the Philadelphia Art and Science Newsletter. I think this is going to be huge for us.

Best,

L

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The following is an unedited interview between a reporter from the Philadelphia Art and Science Newsletter and L Autumn Gnadinger, head of the Department of Transdimensional Musicology and New Religious Practices; Workers’ Union (DTMNRPWU).

PASN: We should start at the beginning. When and how did the portal show up?

LAG: The portal, apropos of nothing, opened up about 3 weeks ago in what was then my studio––I formerly was an artist. In terms of how, well, that’s one of the many questions that DTMNRPWU is trying to get to the bottom of. While we have made extraordinary leaps forward in our understanding since day one…we still can only speculate as to how it functions. But, with the aid of some additional funding, we are very close to a breakthrough! Can you put the funding part in bold––

PASN: Surely this exposure will help. From what I understand, the portal produces objects. What are these, and what do you do with them?

LAG: Every couple of days a new object falls out of it. We’ve been calling them “instruments,” for the time being, as they resemble such things from our world and seem engineered to produce sounds, but who knows what (or who) they really are for. To the end of understanding them better, we have been interacting with them in various “experiments.” In these tests, we attempt to recode the complex (otherworldly) auditory phenomena that are produced from the instruments in the more familiar, tertian harmony of our world. The results are inconclusive, to say the least, but importantly, there seems to be some activity from the other side in reaction to these efforts. The more we engage, the more we are met with engagement.

PASN: How would you describe your relationship with the objects?

LAG: I think my initial reaction to them was much the same as anyone else’s would have been: “Wow, holy shit!” Since then, of course, they have become objects of my utmost fascination. I spend all of my time with them, you know, and my relationship to them verges on something I might describe as devotional.
Amorous, even. I mean, I do love them. In a way. But I don’t want to put labels on things just yet. Well, that said, I do put literal labels on the instruments to make sure our data stays organized but you know what I’m saying.

PASN: You say devotional, which I assume is a part of the department’s “new religious practices.” Do you consider these instruments the subjects of the DTMNRPWU’s devotion, or are they the objects to communicate that devotion?

LAG: Confusing as it might be for outsiders, at this time, we at the department feel little need to distinguish between tools, methods, and communicators. [At this point, DTMNRPWU’s robot ran over the tape recorder, stopping the transcript.]

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