Ehm, I could give a very easy example
Here is an electrical tone on a tape
This tape I can pull through like this, and here I have a meter of tone
How do I create sound from this?
I cut it into pieces like this
This piece is pretty small, and even smaller, etc. you could go on forever
Now of course this isn't actually the smallest sound, this is a small big sound, you can't really work with this
There was a Belgian composer called Karel Goeyvaerts who, in tackling the problem of composing with sound around 1950-51, directed himself in a peculiar fashion towards 19th century ways of creating sound: all those waves that keep on going, those longs waves that keep on going (hand gestures). Of this he decided to use the basic components as tools because with the basic components he can, like a little chemist, make little stacks and towers composed solely of sounds desired by him
I have recieved a letter from Goeyvaerts, in which he explains what kind of little towers he meant.
A little tower, a lot of noise
interviewer: is the stack accumilating?
Yes there is a small stack, every sound is a little tower
yes, can you hear it, really slowly
dramatic, at the end he let's us hear the principle: didadida (hand gesture)
Despite having returned to zero (nulpunt) here, he is still a theatrical man, he briefly displays the principle
He has to strive for dead tones to reach an absolute point, but it's not allowed to work, of course it's not possible for it to work
I have an analogy with the wonderful story "The Aleph" by (Jorge Luis) Borges
Somewhere in the world is a point, and in that point past, present and future meet and everything that was and will be collides
Where is this point?
In the story he let's the narrator travel to eventually reach a town. In the town there is a street, there you find a house, you have to go into the house, then into the basement, darken the basement, lay down on the floor of the basement and point your gaze at the 19th step of the stairs, you focus, and then the aleph appears.
This prompts Borges to say that "what happens next I cannot describe, because time is frozen at this moment, time is dead, and at the same time it's only 'if', so, as a writer I can only 'sew' the words together, I can't do it, but I'll make an attempt." The amazing attempt he of course delivers afterwards is actually what Goeyvaerts also tries. He let's you hear it, but they (the tones) should actually be dead. they're actually all Aleph points.
In certain ways, if you want to be really precise, you should say that not Goeyvaerts, but Karel-Heinz Stockhauzen was the man who had the privilege of witnessing the Aleph, and breaking through it. Stockhauzen broke through it and found the space, he makes great spacious works. Goeyvaerts, in contrast, fell into a black hole so to speak, he fell through the point. He briefly made one, two small attempts to create something. Then he went to Sabena (old Belgian airlines), which is of course a whole different kind of job. In a way that was sort of his way to find space. But this is of course a really different kind of space than THE space of Stockhauzen.