To start, just the graphic details of PS010 are itself a visual delight. It finds, in soft and smooth shapes, a meaningful relation to figurative shapes, blending it and constantly transforming our perception.
It’s impossible, to say the least, not to ponder about PS010’s title: “Ceci n`est pas une pipe”. After all, the polemic artwork by Magritte, is capable of catching our minds for hours, feeding a very personal interpretation and allowing a special understanding from the perspective of the observer – although it’s something with an extremely literal meaning there is an intrinsic meta-interpretation.
It’s this emblematic process that is given to us by this PublicSpacesLab compilation, without the listener even noticing it.
What other relations can be set between Magritte’s “Ceci n`est pas une pipe” and PS010?
La trahison des images or (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”) is by itself a suggestive name: The work deals with ambiguity, diversity and is full of sub-tones and unconnected juxtapositions. As we listen to the PS010 compilation, it successfully stimulates our imagination, for we perceive inumerous signs, carefully distributed, that motivate the senses and the irrefutable will to extract more of it.
“Ceci n`est pas une pipe” by Magritte means simply that the eyes get what is seen in the object and that ambiguity lies in the interpretation of the object, not as a property of the eyes.
PS010 tags along in that line: In a pluralist way it implies a full set of experiments, not merely being an essay: “that looks like it is but it’s not, because indeed it is.” It talks about what is there to be told.
PS010 “Ceci n`est pas une pipe” is a hybrid in its own way (in the sense of a mix of different shapes of meaning) that amplifies without limits the possibilities of interpretation of the multiple tracks and their composers and thus a promise, to the listeners, of an immaterial result upon their conscience.
The two artworks, each one on its own way, foment a broad and consistent (re)analysis of possibilities allowing infinite perceptions at each glance (Magritte) and at each listen (PS010). Or is it the other way around?
In any circumstance, the expression of (both) works shows that, the interpretative ramifications grow at increasing steps from a unique object, and that the visual/auditory paradox, reflecting an endless network of manifestations, should be enjoyed one at a time, randomly, and with total freedom. After all, an impression has various meanings.
Text by Joanna Alice Helm
Artists: mapmap, Somio, QuarterBit, DigiTube, SpectaCiera, Evelon, Løser,ambienteer, Swaying Smoke, Bleak Emptiness, IOK-1, Coax, I Buried Paul, Benjamin Dauer, Carl Sagan’s Ghost, Julien Mier.
Mastered by: Pure Tone @ Pure Tone Mastering Studios, UK
Graphic Design: Fernando Mateus @ Atelier Fernando Mateus, PT
![[PS010] Various Artists - Ceci n’est pas une pipe](/img/work/nomencl/m_1122.jpg "[PS010] Various Artists - Ceci n’est pas une pipe")
