The jury of the Digital Musics & Sound Art category of Prix Ars Electronica writes:
"The authenticity and purity of gold can be determined by the sound emitted when the coin is struck with another coin. A high-frequency, dancing tone with a very long reverberation is sent out into the room. This inherent poetic nature of a material that throughout history has caused greed and the fall of civilizations, inspired the composer Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard.
While many entries and approaches deal with everyday things being converted to data and software, the jury finds this a very unusual and universal approach and a very important work in terms of considering universal values and methods. Gold is a very concrete symbol of something unfathomable. A material with great weight that represents a continuum of immutability and stability, gold is an object of fascination and prestige, but at the same time also an anxiety barometer for the world: because when the future is uncertain, the price of gold also rises."
"At the performance the composer invited the one person who, in a Danish context, resembles and manifests gold in person: the billionaire, businessman, and co-founder of SAXO bank, Lars Seier Christensen, to perform with him. The jury is inspired by the artist’s interest in the musical instrument itself—not only as a musical instrument, but also as a cultural marker, and his work with music in which both the individual musical instrument and the individual musician dissolve to subsequently emerge in a different form in a non-hierarchical space."
The members of the jury are Ludger Brümmer, Cedrik Fermont, Rikke Frisk, Daito Manabe and Christine McLeavey Payne.
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Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard's Music for Krügerrand – Quartet for Gold Bullion Coins was premiered at the festival G((o))ng Tomorrow 2018 by the composer himself together with two percussionists, Jaleh Negari and Ying-Hsueh Chen and the businessman Lars Seier Christensen.