Ryoji Ikeda is a digital audio-visual artist from Japan. He considers data a material, subject to be composed. This allows him to explore the underlying structures of our existence through implementing the human genome, structure of a protein or astronomical data as the input of his sounds/visuals. He translates these binary data sets into light and sound, giving us a perceivable representation of these hidden structures. He is converting patterns present in our existence that are on an unreachable plane, into a human experience.
This fascination with hidden structures informs his choice of sound. We as humans are perceptually limited by our sensory capabilities, we can only hear or see frequencies within a certain bandwidth. Ikeda tends to use frequencies very close to the edges of these bandwidths, highlighting the metaphysical distance between us and the material.
‘My aim is to show and experience the sound of data, and the data of sound’
Ikeda considers himself a composer, he collects enormous amounts of data which he then feeds to his ‘musicians’, the computers. This orchestral approach to sound art allows for a dispersion of the data through a multichannel installation.
The experience of his installations is that of sensory assault to some people, with the combination of extreme frequencies and flashing lights it can be disorienting. This sensory overload can have a hypnotic effect, inducing trance like states. I think that this is exactly the result you would expect given the source of the sound, Ikeda is presenting the audience a level of data/information that although perceivable through Ikeda’s practice, is not comprehensible.
The installation is constructed as environments for experience, people are encouraged to sit down or lie on the floor to experience the work. In this way Ikeda has placed the audience within the data, illustrating and emphasising the data’s original context. These data sets are all around us (the human genome etc.) they permeate our existence, this engulfing scale with which Ikeda presents this barrage of sensory stimulation reflects that permeation.
If an audio visual installation is an invitation for perceptual investigation (which I think it should be), then the hidden structures and imperceivable world is an excellent subject matter to explore. I would like to invite the audience to experience a sensory element of life in a different way, as Ikeda has done here. I would also like to create an all encompassing environment in which the ‘mobile visitor’ is tempted to stay for a while, relax and experience the work.
Director Denis Villeneuve describes Dune as a psychedelic journey, he talks about grounding the film with ‘familiar’ visuals that link with our relationship with nature, and expressing the psychedelic aspect through sound. The approach they took with the sound was that of a documentary, Denis wanted it to sound as though there was a ‘guy with a boom’ on the planet Aracus.
The Worm
Denis integrated postproduction very early into the creative process, he brought the sound team to Budapest where they were shooting the film, this way they were able to feed their ideas together. Villeneuve recalls working on lower budget films and having to rush the sound at the end of production, but now with a bigger budget he is able to make sure the sound has deep enough roots (as he puts it) to stand the test of time. He values having space to experiment, explore and make mistakes. When supervising sound editor and sound designer Theo Green first received the script for the film, he decided to check himself into a hotel in Death Valley where there was a nearby sand dune called Mesquite sand. He did this to get a good idea of the atmosphere of the film, to know what it sounds like to stand in silence and to know what it sounds like to walk up a dune. Green was motivated a lot by some recordings done by their re-recording mixer Doug Hemphill, they were recordings of sand dunes moving, they sing/groan. Green recognised that in order to make that sound the dunes must be resonant like a musical instrument, so Theo planted microphones in the sand to see how human interaction, walking jumping etc, resonated with the sand. This was also useful in the conception of the sound of the worm, Green realised that in order for the worm to swim through the sand as it does visually, the worm would have to vibrate to liquify the sand, this defined the sound of the worm.
Denis described the sound of the worm or ‘worm sign’ as an insect fluttering its wind, something small that doesn’t let on the full scope of the beast. It should be something so contrasted to the worm that only a native would recognise, a visitor would think it was an insect or a bird, its ‘fluttering sand’. Denis emphasised awe as the quality they wanted to portray to the audience, he didn’t want the audience to fear it but see it as a God on the planet. The worm has a strange intelligence and should convey a huge presence, meeting the worm is a spiritual experience.
An aspect of the sound design that informed the visual is something that the designers named ‘The Gunk Gunk’, a series of thumps that can be heard coming from deep within the creature. They defined this as a means of communication, this is why the worm responds to the thumping machines places in the sand by people. After hearing this, Denis Villeneuve decided to take this information to the VFX team, and asked them to animate movement in the epiglottis.
Villeneuve describes the desert environment as introspective experientially, due to the weight of the heat, open plains and silence. This, he says, brings the sound closer to you. Often the loudest sounds in the environment will be your own body, your breath and heartbeat.
The Voice
There is a very important concept in Dune called ‘the voice’. Denis emphasised a theme of channelling ancestry throughout the film, the sound department had to express this concept/theme through ‘the voice’. The idea was that Paul could channel a feminine ancestral power, and so the voice would be a deep female voice, this could be simultaneously or separate from his own voice. The sound department casted lots of gritty female voices, they layered these voices under Timothee Chalemete’s voice. They wanted the projection of the voice to be powerful, for the resonance to be amplified especially in the bass, to the point where the room rattles. They also took an opportunity to use synchronisation as an expression of aptitude, as the protagonist learns to use the voice it is out of synch with him, it comes a few seconds after the words are spoken, whereas the reverend mother’s voice is completely in sync, percussive and immediate. To emphasise the lower frequencies of the voice Theo Green used a technique he learned from Lee Scratch Perry, a pioneer in dub reggae. The technique was to record the audio, and play it back through a very large speaker in a resonant room and record the result, sometimes you can hear a little bit of the room shaking. This, Green says, gives the voice a very tactile sense to the spiritual experience. Giving a tactile sense to the spiritual experience became this sound’s main utilisation, the voice could speak subtext, text and tell a story even when it wasn’t being deployed as ‘the voice’, it became its own entity. Through experimentation the sound department had unlocked a new story telling device for Dennis.
Technology
Denis wanted the technology of this world to be grounded, as real as possible, so it didn’t become a distraction from the story. He wanted the audience to embrace the technology spontaneously. An example was the ‘Ornithopter’, it was based on insects, he wanted the vehicle to function like an insect and look like a military vehicle. The sound, Denis said, should be close to the spirit of a helicopter, in the same family but not the same. The sound team used recordings of beetles and other insects to create a helicopter sound with a natural quality.
Mark Mangini states that we can be more successful in our sound design when we start with natural recordings. He thinks that the reason for this could possibly be that we have a psychoacoustic response telling us that the sound is real, the time arrival to the ear and the acoustic environment in which a sound lives might be a subconscious identifier for reality. Whether this theory is correct or not, I think he is right. The brain responds to natural sounds differently to synthesised sounds, I’ve created synthesisers out of vocal recordings and they are very un-natural as an acoustic sound, but retain an organic natural quality. These natural sound ‘ingredients’ are all in service to quickly and effectively suspend the audiences disbelief. We can present sounds that are decontextualised from what it really is, present them in a new context and your brain doesn’t have to understand what the original sound was it just recognises that its real.
Sound walk from a hike up Binsey, a very large hill near Ruthwaite. There was a lot of wind and I only had my phone to record, so the quality is not great.
Recording from the summit where there are wind shelters.
My only experience of sound installation work was my final major project for my foundation at CCW, I created a quadrophonic piece that was situated in a hallway. I was allocated the small hallway, with completely blank walls it was very reverberant, not an ideal place for my piece. I had finished my project when they gave me the space so there was no connection between the piece and the space, in fact the space detracted from the piece as it was mixed in a quadrophonic square formation and the hallway was rectangular. Through this I have learned the importance of keeping the space in mind when creating the piece, I think this is why this passage from my Asa Stjerna research resonated with me.
“Asa presents her piece ‘The Well’, a permanent installation in the Swedish Institute in Paris. She installed a mono channel work inside the dried out well, she talk about engaging with the stone wall’s ‘agency’ as she puts it. She describes having a dialogue with the space in question, an experimental practice, an engagement with the space.”
Although from first glance this gallery space seems quite blank, I would still like to (as an exercise) try and follow Asa Stjerna’s approach to site specific works.
Mapping the affective lines– The process of site specific exploration, this is what it means to find the space, researching the site engaging with archives etc. This is, for Asa, a very vivid/active engagement.
Establishing new connections– The artistic design process. Stjerna provides an example of installing a loudspeaker with a cable on a site, this is not just an action of laying a cable. It is engaging in a dialogue with the agencies of the space.
Becoming Non-Autonomous– It is important to understand your own situated perspective.
Ive tried to use the HM land registry and the Tower Hamlets Gov website but I have come up with nothing, the only thing I know about the space is that it’s a Georgian house. I think we might be visiting the gallery this Monday ( 10/01/22) so hopefully I will be able to collect some more information.
Pythagorean learning, Freud and Acousmatics in Religion
The Ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher Pythagorus adopted an unusual method for teaching. He was concerned that his appearance would distract his students from the content of his speech, in order to circumvent this he would teach from behind a curtain, and he would not reveal his appearance to the students until they had been learning for substantial amount of years.
A similar practice was adopted by Freud during his psychoanalysis. He would ask his patients to lie down on a victorian day bed and look up at the ceiling, the patient mustn’t make eye contact with the psychology and vice versa. This was an effort to induce something called ‘free association’. It would create an environment that as clinical and intimate, it encouraged the patients to freely express their thoughts. Perhaps people listen more intently when there is no visual source, and express more freely when their is no visual receptor.
There are a lot of instances of people hearing voices without a source in religious texts. In the bible, Adam hears the voice of God telling him how to behave in the garden of Eden, Moses hears the voice of God telling him to lead the Hebrews out of Egypt. There are always descriptions of someone ‘hearing’ a voice telling them important information. My interpretation of this is that people are more likely to heed the word of something unseen. I see this as an example of acousmatics in early civilisation.
Lucia H Chung (AKA ‘En Creux’) is a Taiwanese experimental audio artist based in London. Lucia began her talk by presenting a visual piece called ‘Tell me a story’, she describes the work as a reaction to the culture shock of moving to the UK. She was working with a small group of MA students in Winchester, Lucia was the only non-english speaker and as a result was quite shy and reserved. Lucia was interested in the ‘gap’ between translations, and how a person can get caught in that gap. Lucia would whisper something in mandarin to her partner, and the partner would whisper some English phrases back. This process was filmed with a two channel video set up, the absence of understanding was expressed clearly in their faces. During this time at Winchester, Lucia was primarily working with video to explore themes of communication, and the differences in personality when speaking different languages. She conducted a visual investigation on herself, filming herself speaking English, and then speaking Mandarin.
After these works Lucia started working more with sound in video. The piece Lucia showed was a film of her doing a full body prostration, a buddhist ritual that is repeated 108 times as a way of offering yourself or to repent. She was interested in the psychological transition from the first action to the 108th repetition, an ‘untranslatable mind space through a very physical repetition’. Lucia didn’t perform 108 repetitions, instead she edited the video to invoke the psychological mind space. She sped up and slowed down the footage, emphasising the frequency change in the audio.
Continuing her investigation into translation, Lucia found a researcher called  Sarat Maharaj. She quotes an article by the South African man,
‘There emerged, it seems to me, a notion of translation which activates both the visual and the sonic. Beyond the sense of the word and image are sounds which cannot be entirely drawn into the net of signification, and cannot be entirely decoded or deciphered as meaning this, that or the other. This larger sonic pause, the penumbra of the untranslatable that shadow and smudge language, and for which we have to venture beyond language.’
This quote gave Lucia the confidence to ditch visuals and focus on sound as a material medium. Lucia started her PHD at Goldsmiths, she was trying to understand what sound arts is. Lucia discovered Jacob Kirkegaard, a sound artist who had an interest in space. Lucia specifically talks about his piece ‘4 Rooms’, an art piece in which Jacob went to the zone of isolation in Chernobyl. He then recorded the ambient sound of 4 public spaces, he choses these spaces because of the public traffic they once hosted. The recording were then played into the room and rerecorded, repeating this process 10 times for each room, a technique pioneered by Alvin Lucier. Lucia appreciate the hidden dimension of the space Jacob was revealing, she equated this to her investigation in translation.
‘4 Rooms’ – Jacob Kirkegaard
Next Lucia presented a piece she created in 2009 called ‘Spring Piece’, an audio piece created at a time of transition for her. She had just moved to London, specifically New Cross, she recalled it as a horrible place with rats and an inordinate amount of noise created mainly by passing buses. She described how her room would shake when the busses drove past, which would happen very frequently. This was a stark contrast to the quant medieval town of Winchester. She recorded the sound of her room, and used a piezo microphone to play the recording through the single glazed Windows pane, then rerecording this. This was Lucia’s first sound piece.
Lucia takes a lot of inspiration from sculpture, and says she felt a lot more comfortable using sculpture as a medium. Although she was working with sound, she still hadn’t found a way to equate it to working with a physical medium. She then recalls the breakthrough moment when she made that connection. Lucia recalls seeing Whiteread’s piece ‘Ghost’, a casting of the inside of a living room. Its a piece displaying negative space, a casting and documentation of a living space. Lucia compares this to Alvin Lucier’s ‘Im sitting in a room’, equating the plaster in the casting of the room with Lucier’s mapping of the room with sound as a catalyst.
At about 18-20 weeks the physical ears start to protrude from the head.
At 20 weeks the neurosensory section of the auditory system starts to develop.
At around 25 weeks the auditory system is functional, and they can hear low frequencies from the outside world.
Late in the pregnancy a foetus can differentiate between voices.
Once the auditory system is functional the hair cells in the cochlea, the axons of the auditory nerve and neurons of the temporal lobe auditory cortex are tuned to receive stimuli. It is within the time of 25 weeks and 5-6 months of age that these systems calibrate to receive certain frequencies and intensities. This auditory system requires external environmental sound to refine and develop, the main two sounds that do this are speech and music. The auditory environment a foetus is in within this time can determine their ability to hear, if the foetus is continuously exposed to loud environments it can interfere with the development of their auditory system.
Our auditory perception of the world can be shaped and influenced by our first exposure to it. There is a time in which we cannot see but can hear voices, to me this is important when considering the acousmetre. The acousmetre is described as being everywhere, neither on screen nor outside it. I think that a foetus’s experience in the womb mirrors this, and perhaps the cinematic experience of the acousmetre is that which subconsciously reminds us of a venerable time in our sensory development.
Richard Phoenix is an artist that works in paint, drawing, writing and music with an emphasis on how these things can help people be together. He works with autistic and people with learning disabilities, encouraging people to make and share art.
Richard started his artistic career when he was 16 playing in bands with his friends, he predominantly played the drums. These bands are where Richard came to value a DIY approach to creation, he values the idea that anyone is capable of becoming a musician and sharing their work. He sees it as an empowering process that helps communities and individuals overcome obstacles and achieve their goals.
In 2006 Richard moved to Brighton and started volunteering for an organisation called carousel that supported artists with learning disabilities. This was his first exposure to working with people who had learning disabilities. He recalls being blown away by a band called ‘Beat express’ who played at one of the gigs, and describes it as a lightbulb moment where he realised he had never seen bands with learning disabilities. This moment sparked 15 years of work, his aim is to get these bands the time and space they need to produce more music and play for more people. Richard started using the skills he had learned playing in DIY bands to support these new bands, putting on shows and recording. Richard started a night in Brighton called ‘rock house’ which gave time for these bands with learning disabilities to play every month, this night has been going for 10 years and is still going.
Richard fell in love with a Finnish punk band called PKN, and he was determined to get them to play in England. To do this he started an organisation called ‘Constant Flux’ in order to be eligible to apply for arts council funding, he managed to get £10,000 to bring them on tour. Phoenix describes the merging of working learning disabilities bands and DIY punk bands as a life changing experience, he managed to find a way to get these bands a diverse audience.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA – MAY 18: Pertti Kurikan Nimipaivat of Finnland performs during a rehearsal of the first Semin Final on May 18, 2015 in Vienna, Austria. The final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 will take place on May 23, 2015. (Photo by Nigel Treblin/Getty Images)
Richard later produced a one page print manifesto for Goldsmiths fringe and underground music group called ‘DIY as privilege- 13 point manifesto for musicians’. This was designed to talk directly to DIY music scenes, and to ask them to consider access within their scenes, to consider who is not in the room and what they can do about it. Richard started fundraisers to provide practice spaces, to transport people to and from the spaces, and to pay for shows. This lead to people with communication barriers being able to work together in order to write songs, Richard makes a point of saying that the money is used to provide structures that help people to do it themselves, this maintains agency and creative freedom.
The manifesto was later expanded and published for rough trade books. Here Richard included more personal stories from creative people that he knows, had worked with or supported. Richard clarifies that he is not speaking on behalf of disabled people, he is speaking on behalf of himself. The experiences he has had working in his field and putting on the events he has, as he says, shifted the way he sees the world and making music. This book was intended to share that knowledge with other people to try and influence their perspectives. Richard says that one of the big issues with disability is fear, fear of doing the wrong thing that stems from ignorance. This ignorance is put upon us and disability can be a very silent part of society.
‘Every art-form is intimately related to a type of life experience. The difference between chamber music and jazz is not one of quality, finesse, or virtuosity but two ways of life, which the people involved did not choose but were born into.’ – John Berger
I do think it’s too easy to be set in your own perceptions, due to our experience of life many people unknowingly have a solipsistic outlook. We should make the effort to consider others experiences and perceptions in the creative field. I’ve always been focused on the process of making and the only thing that matter to me is if like it. However I do think it’ll be interesting to explore the perception and origins of art, much like Sam Auinger talking about all of our perceptions of sound being different. Ive rented ‘Ways of seeing’ by John Berger from the library and Im going to give it a read, id like to see if it applies to my practice.
Sam began his talk by talking about his origins. He was born in 1956 in upper Austria. As a child he recognised that sound was basically information and music was social. This means that people needed the help of auditory information to function in their daily lives, Auinger gives the example of running a farmhouse. He recalls that his grandfather was famous for a practice of listening to the sound of hay in the summer to determine the weather. Sam later realised that he was listening to the moisture levels in the material, and with knowledge of the interdependencies between air pressure, materiality and weather was able to deduce the change of the weather. Sam provides another example of auditory information as a warning of people approaching, before CCTV he says they would rely on the sound of the geese. Auinger says that listening to the environment in any field was a daily practice, the sounds ‘talk’ to you. Bringing the same concept to the city, he says that the sounds are talking, but without any meaning for you.
Auinger describes a game he would play with his friends in his youth, one person would hide in a wooden hut to obscure their sight, and they would have to guess what type of car or truck passed by relying solely on sound. He says that each machine had a distinct sound, and this is the crux of his talk. He believes that it is getting harder and harder for people to rely on their ears.
Auinger talks about the catholic influence on his childhood, he recalls the mass being a huge event, and that the churches were built with the intention to enhance your experience, especially the architecture interacting with the sound of the organ. Certain types of cathedrals are even taking advantage of geographical location, making sure the sun hits a stain glass window at the time of the mass. They have used the ability of design to underline their message. But you can take this concept and apply it to all architecture, all buildings influence peoples psychology.
After studying economics and mathematics, Auinger studied composition and computer music in the 80s. There are many properties of sound we take as a given, Sam says, during in this study he learned how to describe the many different qualities that make up a sound and actually talk about it meaningfully. He would have to talk about an imagined sound in order to try to replicate it with computers. Here, he notes, he would quite often get stuck using sounds he already knew from traditional instruments. Sam equates this to trying to imagine a deep sea creature, and the fact that nothing we imagine can be weirder than what is actually in the sea. Certain principles of sound reoccur all over the soundscape, in different practices and sources. Much like evolution in sea creatures, there are structures and systems that form the way sound works. Through this line of enquiry he found psychoacoustics, realising that his body and listening apparatus reacts very differently than a microphone.
Through learning to program sounds Sam became interested in public spaces, because he realised how much daily life was influencing the way he perceived music. He provides the example of his mother hating the Rolling Stones with a passion when he was younger describing it as just noise, and later on in life, as his mothers life had changed, she grew to like it. Now she was able to decode the song structure, in the sixties when these songs were released, it was impossible for her to enjoy the music due to her upbringing on upper Austrian folk music. Auinger raises the question, how many systems are in play that influence our perception of sound?
An example of a system would be the shape of our ears, the shape enhances a certain type of frequency spectrum. A young healthy human has a listening range from 20 Hz to 20000Hz, so when Sam hits a pen against a glass almost all people will hear it, but his grandson will hear more overtones than him. Over time our ability to hear high frequency decreases, this produces a problem for our language centred society, language is constructed with vowels and consonants, our ability to hear consonants decrease as they are mostly found at 8-10 kilohertz. Auinger realises that he is missing quite a lot of his higher range of hearing, and he gives an example of how this effects his perception. If you were to imagine somewhere with a very lively nightlife, lots of people and talking, a lot going on, for a young person with healthy hearing they can perceive this as energy, something that enhances you. If an elder person listens to the same thing, there is a lot less frequency response in their hearing, so for them they perceive the same situation as stress. Another system that influences us, and for Auinger is the most important, is our personal history or context. He gives the example of some people skating in the parking lot of an office. If you are the skateboarder the sound means success or failure of a trick, or seeing a friend. If you are working in the office and have nothing to do with skateboarding you will perceive this sound as annoying. It is almost completely impossible to hear a sound in the same way as someone else. Another interesting point that Auinger brings up is that loudness steals space, for example walking in London on a busy road, you will perceive the other side of the road as a silent movie, the road acts as a border in space.
Auinger stresses the importance of learning how we listen, that it will give rise to many different avenues of research and will deepen your listening experience of the world.
