Personfølsom Musik (2019/2020/2021/2022)

Personfølsom Musik (Personal Sensitive Music) is a series of live sonifications in which Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard translates the numbers of NemID-keycards into music using various musical instruments.

NemID (EasyID) keycards came into use in 2010 and contain a list of one-time codes that one uses as a level of security when logging into private and public digital platforms to access services like banking, health care, and other services vital to individuals in Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). 

When an individual uses all the codes on a NemID-keycard, the keycard remains as a record of the person’s activities over a period of time. It is also an expression of privilege, since the NemID [system] facilitates access to the benefits of the welfare state in one of the world’s richest societies.

Through his Personfølsom Musik (Personal Sensitive Music) series of works, Løkkegaard explores the NemID-keycard as a phenomenon which is on the one hand anonymous and alienating and on the other, private and personal.

The LP (pictured below) features the recordings by Løkkegaard playing two different NemID-keycards, W807-345-296 and Y453-199-562, on a church organ.

Recorded at Koncertkirken in December 2020 and released by Topos, in collaboration with Nets November 22nd 2021.

Personal Sensitive Music - No. 1/Z074-193-875 was performed for the first time on alto recorder at Copenhagen Contemporary. November 8th 2019