(Hans Barnard, late 20th century)
Pluiging (left) and streemo (right), two fretted instruments from the Kayenian Empire. Note the interrupted placement of the frets on the pluiging. The first and third string of the streemo are tuned in unison and the second string one octave higher, allowing the frets to continue across the fingerboard. These strings are used to support the melody, which is played on the fretless fourth string (tuned a fifth above the first and third strings).
The pluiging and streemo are the inventions of Hans Barnard, who in his youth spent many hours with friends elaborating the fictional place and culture of the Kayenian Empire. Beyond maps, alphabets, and a base-6 numerical system, the merry crew also built artifacts expressing Kayenian culture such as board games and musical instruments. Barnard went on to become an archaeologist, a field in which material remains are the starting place for inferring culture, and reflects on this mirror-image endeavor: “From an archaeological point of view it is noteworthy that the link between objects and narratives is thus not unidirectional, but can also flow from a narrative into the creation of one or more objects.” Like its base-6 numerical system, the musical system of the Kayenian Empire explores a logical potentiality seldom utilized in human cultures: a 19-tone scale with just intonation. The fretted and keyboard instruments of the Kayenian Empire are designed to play music in this scale and tuning.
Text and image: Hans Barnard, “An Exercise in Autovocality: The Archaeology of My Study” in Archaeology Outside the Box, ed. Hans Barnard (Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2023)