The Acousmetre
Acousmetre refers to a sound that is unseen by the visual eye. Hearing is the only sense that is omnidirectional, however sight is the most important to humans, its the most complicated, it’s what we rely on to decipher signs and elaborate language. This is where the acousmetre derives its power, considering the importance of sight to humans, when we hear something but we don’t see it, the brain is in an uncomfortable position.
Chion elaborates his theory by comparing it with the work of Freud. Chion talks on the relationship of the Mother and offspring, during raising process they are constantly playing a game of the seen and unseen, when breastfeeding, when playing hide and seek, holding them when sleeping etc. For Freud, this was a rather disturbing/traumatic thing for the child to undertake. Chion recognised that the cinema became the perfect place for this acousmetre phenomenon to take place. Pythagorean scholars would listen to their masters speak behind a curtain for 5 years before being able to see them, they wanted to avoid the visual context impeding the context of the speech. Chion took this idea and applied it to cinema putting forward the idea that when we see the embodiment of the voice that we are hearing in cinema, it takes away from the power of the acousmetre.
Chion defines three distinct forms of the acousmetre. The first is a person that you talk to on the phone having never seen their face. The second is the visualised acousmetre, you can put a face to the invisible voice. The third is the complete acousmetre, this is a voice of something that is not yet seen but is liable to appear in the visual field at some point the future. Chion suggests that the acousmetre that has already been visualised is a comforting and reassuring presence, whereas he who never shows his face is less so. To clarify the power of acousmetre in cinema, Chion compares it to acousmetre in theatre. The offstage voice in theatre can be located by sound, you can hear it coming from a specific point left or right of the stage. For Chion, this disrupts the acousmetre, and diminishes the power. In contrast, cinema does not employ a stage, therefore the acousmetre is neither inside nor outside, further disembodying the voice. Chion raises to two questions, what is there to fear from the acousmetre? and what are their powers?
The powers of the acousmetre are as follows, omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence. A perfect example of the acousmetre is 2001 a space odyssey. Hal the computer inhabits the entire spaceship, this is incongruent with the human experience of sound and therefore unsettling.
Chion notes that this voice without a face might take us back to before we were born, the voice was everything and it was everywhere. Being in the womb, we can hear very early in our development. Even in the first few months of life, babies lack the ability to define the visual space, the eyes need to develop to acquire clear vision. And so it could be argued that the first few months of our lives are a complete acousmetre, we constantly hear our parents voices, but it is only later that we put a visual context to these voices.