Listening to the Virtual: Contexts and Dis/contexts by Val del Omar

Abstract

The text deals with listening to the virtual in the proposals by José de Val del Omar in its socio-political and technical context. This approach is framed in what we have called dis/contexts of the national and international scene and in mecha-mysticism. In these dis/contexts, the periphonic circuit understood as the construction of the collective ear in Franco dictatorship, and the Corporación del fonema hispánico with its appeal to concrete sounds, represent a bifurcation of the sonorous that is the basis of the invention of the diaphonic system. Based on mecha-mysticism, it can be understood that the virtual — from Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty perspective — works in Val del Omar in two different regimes: the virtualization devices and the spiritual. Diaphone emerges, then, as a sonic sensitization machine for the creation of a collective ear, which, unlike the one forged by the periphonic circuit, has a dreamlike or virtual character. Finally, and as an epilogue, the proposal of Auto Sacramental Invisible. Una representación sonora a partir de Val del Omar (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía), allows us to question Val del Omar’s legacy in relation to the construction of this collective ear and the listening of the virtual.