Christine’s film and her use of sound, highlights the importance of sound as a method of immediate communication. Although those of us that can hear, usually understand sound as something to be experienced through hearing, sound is very much a whole physical experience, visual and sensory, that can be used to reach people in a more immediate, way: sound transcends word.

What really struck me about Christine’s film is the idea of ownership of sound: people who have access to sound through their ears behave like they own it and have a say in it. This determines a series of conventions that are only available to those that can hear and as such they exclude those that cannot. So, although Christine respects those conventions, which she refers to as “possessions”, she also aims to reclaim sound, making it more accessible to all, to reach a wider audience in a way that can be unfiltered “organic, unpolished, fluid, free”.

Christine shows us how sound vibrations can create visual art (see her use of loudspeakers playing back traffic noise and creating paintings), as well as reach our bodies directly and triggering our emotions from within in a visceral way, which is almost osmotic.

As a sound practitioner in performance myself, I very much love the idea of using sound as a physical (the whole body) medium and not just a medium that can be appreciated through hearing. If we only rely on hearing, apart from making sound inaccessible to those that cannot hear, we also promote a very passive experience, incomplete, one-dimensional experience – there is also a difference between effortless hearing and conscious active listening. Sound is physical (fluctuations of pressure), so we can exploit its ability to move particles/objects, to generate vibrations in our bodies, which can result in transmitting different emotions and as such guide our audiences through a more immersive, complete and accessible experience (see my microteaching blog post for the TPP Unit).

In my teaching practice I would start with sessions on “feeling” vs “listening” to sound, promoting the advantages of the wholly physical experience, looking to transcend completely that involving hearing.

It is important to note that this very visceral experiences are likely to put students in very vulnerable positions as they can be emotionally triggering. So I would make every effort to establish a safe place for the students, one where they can feel free to leave the room if the experience becomes too intense as well as feeling free to stop or refuse altogether to share their contributions if too difficult for them.

In terms of their practice, I would then ask the students to explore and design sound content to communicate physically through sound the story they are trying to tell, emotion by emotion, physical reaction by physical reaction. This could evolve in a visual interpretation kindled by sound, which could connect to a haptic experience (vibrations could reach the audience by touching the vibrating objects as well as the vibrations reaching the body through air) and perhaps even, depending on the visual materials used, to an olfactory one (different vibrations could “excite” different kinds of paint with different scent). Although my practice has sound at its core, students may wish to start from a piece of visual art or physical performance arts and use sound to communicate it, fine tune it, make it more immersive, more inclusive.

Further thoughts:

The film reminded me of “The Ontology of vibrational force” (Goodman, S. 2012) where he explains that this ontology is: “The basic process of entities affecting other entities” […] “Sound is merely a thin slice, the vibrations audible to humans or animals”. […] “Sound comes to the rescue of thought, rather than the inverse, forcing it to vibrate, loosening up its organized or petrified body”. […] If we subtract human perception, everything moves. Anything static is so only at the level of perceptibility. At the molecular or quantum level, everything is in motion, is vibrating”. “[…] Vibrational ecologies”. “[…] This ontology is concerned primarily with the texturhythms of matter, the patterned physicality of a musical beat of pulse, sometimes imperceptible, sometimes […] visible”.

Christine’s film also reminded me of the beautiful science of Cymatics where sound frequencies, can excite matter and make visible, precise, predictable patterns, which can be used to develop artistic pieces, unveil what’s not obviously seen, tracking information and get a deeper insight into nature. As Evant Grant (2009) suggests: “Think about the sound of the universe forming. Perhaps sound had an influence on the formation of the universe itself”

References

Goodman, S. (2012) The Ontology of vibrational force in Stern, J (2012) The Sound Studies reader Abington: Routledge

Grant, E. (2009) Making sound visible through cymatics. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsjV1gjBMbQ (Accessed on 01.05.22)

Stanford, N. (2014) Cymatics: Science vs music. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs (Accessed on 01.05.22)