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Insounds : human sonic permeability and the practice of cinema sound design within ecologies of silences
Delmotte, Isabelle https://researchportal.scu.edu.au/discovery/delivery/61SCU_INST:ResearchRepository/1267125620002368?l#1367374680002368
Delmotte, I. (2013). Insounds: human sonic permeability and the practice of cinema sound design within ecologies of silences [Southern Cross University]. https://researchportal.scu.edu.au/discovery/fulldisplay/alma991012821334302368/61SCU_INST:Research Repository
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‘Insounds’: Human sonic permeability and
the practice of cinema sound design
within ecologies of silences
Isabelle Delmotte
MFA Research (1st class Honours) (U.N.S.W)
School of Arts and Social Sciences Media Studies Southern Cross University, NSW
Exegesis supporting a multi-media exhibition entitled
‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’
and submitted towards fulfilment of the requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
July 2013
Statement of Authorship
I certify that the work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text, and that the material has not been submitted, either in whole or in part, for a degree at this or any other university.
I acknowledge that I have read and understood the University’s rules, requirements, procedures and policy relating to my higher degree research award and to my thesis. I certify that I have complied with the rules, requirements, procedures and policy of the University.
Isabelle Delmotte
Signature:......
Date: ......
i Abstract
This research establishes links between the human experience of living in sound and the practice of cinema sound design. Environmental ‘silences’ are the absorbed but often cognitively dismissed sonic entities of the everyday. Their perceived ubiquity provides cinematic vocabulary that includes the expressions ‘room tone’, ‘silence’, ‘atmospheres’, ‘backgrounds’, and ‘ambiences’. Movies are framed by social constructs, and the qualities of cinematic silences allow for primal discoveries of affective sonic activities that ‘feel silent’. My project aims to embody ‘silences’ as dynamic spaces that echo human lifelong sonic absorption and state of being ‘insounds’, of being part of the sonic matter moulding the coenesthetic system of the body. The exploration of this paradigm generates a sonic awareness that in turn encourages an expansive attention to bodily and auditory perceptions.
A phenomenological approach to the creative practice of cinema sound design provides an alternative and innovative view on sonic affect and created silences in film. As a practice-based research project, resulting in an exhibition supported by an exegesis, this investigation is qualitative, multidisciplinary, and experimental in both the approaches to data collection and the design of the exhibited work. The creative processes associated with the data gathering, as well as with the design of the exhibition and its multimodal artifacts, offer a different paradigm of sound as a way of knowing.
In order to explore ways in which Western contemporary soundscapes are perceived and silences are conceived, selected research participants have contributed unique interpretations of the same cinematic script. The creators of the exhibited artifacts are professional cinema sound designers, a screenwriter, a storyboard artist and myself as I act at once as art practitioner, curator and PhD researcher. The knowledge gained provides inter- relational views on sonic affect, acoustic ecologies, semiotics of film sound and the professional practice of cinema sound design.
‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’ is the title of the exhibition marking the end of the study’s explorations of creative and curatorial practices. The use and display of different mediums, text, images and sound, allows the researcher to acknowledge all participants’ contribution to the research. The designed perambulatory path articulates the research journey of all participants and provides a physical integration of the exegesis within
ii the exhibition. By triggering awareness to the sound of the everyday, the gallery’s exploration allows for different experiential possibilities of silences and states of being ‘insounds’. The PhD thereby contributes to an understanding of everyday soundscapes in addition to the specific uses of atmospheric sound in cinematic practices.
iii Acknowledgements
Over four years the list of people who have contributed to and supported this research in different capacities has grown exponentially. I sincerely apologise if some names are missing from the following paragraphs.
I would like to dedicate this research to Margaret Balding, a very dear and generous friend who suggested that a PhD could provide a framework for my project to see the light of the day. Unfortunately Margaret left this world a few months before the completion of my endeavour. My loved and loving partner, Tess Corino, deserves more than gratitude for her unwavering support and the precious keeping of her sense of humour. My mother, Marianne Delmotte, has brought love and warmth to our lives during these years.
Patience and inquisitive perseverance are virtues inherent to my supervisors and I am indebted to their academic thoroughness. As my main supervisor, Associate Professor Rebecca Coyle demonstrated a patient and formidable academic rigueur despite the exhaustive demands of her career and her failing health. It is a great pity to all that she passed away a few months short of witnessing the fruits of her sustained efforts towards the successful completion of my research. As a co-supervisor, Dr. Grayson Cooke patiently deciphered my bi-lingual idiosyncrasies and vastly contributed in clarifying theoretical and critical perspectives. The professional complementarity of Associate Professor Rebecca Coyle and Dr. Grayson Cooke contributed to an engaging supervision. My sincere thanks also go to Professor Nel Glass, Dr. Susan Ward and Dr. Adele Wessell for their contributions at the beginning and at the end of this research.
The theoretical exploration of this research and its art practice would have been non- existent without the incredible generosity of all its respondents and creative participants. My most sincere thanks go to Damian Candusso, Carlos Choconta, Tom Heuzenroeder, John Kassab, Markus Kellow, Evan Kitchener, Benjamin Leon, Roger Monk, Tony Murtagh, Ben Vlad and Michael Worthington. I am grateful for their trustful support, professional passion and willingness to share their creative skills. I would also like to thank the director of the Australian film Noise, Matthew Saville, and the film score composer Bryony Marks, for their encouragements. Equally, I would like to acknowledge the generosity of Trevor
iv Blainey, producer of the feature film Noise (Saville, 2007) as he allowed me to use a visual extract of that striking movie.
The most precious allies of researchers are librarians. The Southern Cross librarians of the Lismore campus deserve unreserved thanks for their patience and professionalism. Often, their friendliness gave a human face to obscure academic meanderings. The technical team of the school of Arts and Social Sciences, led by Alan Hughes, has also been kind and efficient.
I am indebted to the Northern Rivers Community Gallery in Ballina (NSW) and its director, Ingrid Hedgcock, for taking the risk to host the first exhibition of an unusual project. Ingrid trusted without fail that the exhibition had the potential to reach different audiences as well as intrigue the gallery’s usual public. Her professionalism and open mindedness are real assets to the artistic community at large. It has been a privilege to exhibit in a gallery warmed by the generosity of its volunteers. Their genuine interest in artistic pursuits and desire to communicate their enthusiasm were second to none. I also would like to thank Northern Rivers Performance Arts (Norpa, Lismore) and Dax Cowan (Good Guys™, Ballina) for the in-kind support they provided for the exhibition.
I am very grateful to Bruce McIntyre, Tess Corino, Robert Judd and Joan Ajala for having occasionally accepted, despite their busy schedule, to proofread pieces of laborious writing and thereby exemplified the expression ‘long suffering friends’.
Last, but not least, I would like to acknowledge friends and acquaintances who have kindly hosted me as a ‘noise refugee’ on their porch or in their house. Their understanding has allowed me to think without having to devote precious energy blocking debilitating acoustic ecologies. My sincere thanks go to Leonie, Paula and Don, Helena and Don, Peter, Lucille, Sue, Karin and Graham, and Lilith in Suffolk Park, Alan and Paul in Wilsons Creek, as well as Luciano and Susi in Cobbitty.
Although they were not involved in this project I would like to acknowledge Michel Delmotte, Dr. Sally Pryor, Professor Dr. Jill Scott and Professor William Seaman for the long lasting influences of their respective art practice and ethics.
v Table of Contents
Statement of Authorship i
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents vi
List of Figures ix
Part 1: Informing the Research 1
1. Chapter One: Rationale of the Research 1
1.1 Background to the research 1
1.2 Scope of the research: living in sound 4
1.3 Parameters of the research 7
1.4 Research question and relevance 9
1.5 Summary of the exegesis 11
2. Chapter Two: Methodology and Methods 14
Introduction 14
2.1 Choice of methodology 15
2.2 Methods: setting the scene 24
2.3 Methods: collecting environmental silences 33
2.4 Creative practice and artistic outcomes 36
2.5 Analysis 40
2.6 Research journey 41
Part 2: Intertwining Research Territories 45
3. Chapter Three: Sonic Sensorium and Cultural Limitations 45
Introduction 45
3.1 Frequencies and vibrations: escaping the numerical 46
3.2 Sound absorption 50 3.2.1 Gathering: ears and skin 53 3.2.2 Resonating: bones 55 3.2.3 Vibrating: cells 57
vi 3.3 Wording vibrations 59
3.4 Soundscapes: positioning the body 63
Conclusion 66
4. Chapter Four: Ecologies of Silences 69
Introduction 69
4.1 Noise 70
4.2 Towards embodiments of silences 73
4.3 Insounds: inaudible motility 77
4.4 Silence as an extension of insounds 79
4.5 Cinematic silence: haptic subtlety 81
4.6 Cinematic silence: fleshing the space 83
4.7 Oscillations 85
4.8 Affective silences: habituations 96
Conclusion 100
Part 3: Sound Design, Practice and Vision 102
5. Chapter Five: Sounding the Screen, Theory and Practice 102
Introduction 102
5.1 Framing authenticity 103
5.2 Visuals entrenched in sound 106
5.3 Autonomy and omni-presence 109
5.4 Sounds as axial triggers 113
5.5 Framing silences: effects and affect 117
Conclusion 122
6. Chapter Six: Creating Silences: the Sounds of Vision 124
Introduction 124
6.1 Sound designers: shifts and turns of a label 125
6.2 Physical involvement: close and far at once 129
6.3 Creating oscillations 136
6.4 Creative practice: design and affectivity in motion 142
vii 6.5 Aural imagery: a system of sonic motion 146
6.6 Affect: sensory habituation and experiential doubt 151
Conclusion 154
Epilogue 156
On the coenesthetic qualities of atmospheric silences 156
Introduction 156
Transposing spatial experiences of silence 157
Bibliography 166
Appendices 188
Appendix A: Short biographies of creative participants 188 Damian Candusso 188 Carlos Choconta 189 Tom Heuzenroeder 190 John Kassab 190 Markus Kellow 191 Evan Kitchener 192 Benjamin Leon 193 Roger Monk 193 Ben Vlad 194 Michael Worthington 194
Appendix B: Storyboard by Benjamin Leon © 196
Appendix C: Schedule of interviews with participants 199
Appendix D: Participant consent form (sample) 200
viii List of Figures
Figure 2-1: Traditional chronology of film creation with the involvement of sound designers limited to the end of the production process ...... 24 Figure 2-2: Mode of production employed for the study data collection ...... 25 Figure 2-3: Lavinia Smart discovering the victims’ bodies in the train carriage ...... 26 Figure 2-4: Craig Finlay breaking down after shooting his last victim, the train guard ...... 27 Figure 2-5: Constable Graham McGahan testing his hearing ...... 27 Figure 2-6: Script written by Roger Monk © ...... 29 Figure 2-7: Stills extracted from the Australian feature Noise (Saville, 2007) ...... 30 Figure 2-8: Stills extracted from the Australian feature Noise (Saville, 2007) ...... 31 Figure 2-9: Aerial path of sound captures made between July 2009 and February 2011 on the Southern Cross University Lismore campus (artist's impression) ...... 35 Figure 2-10: Ambulatory floor plan of exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’, March 2013, Ballina (artist’s impression) ...... 39 Figure 3-1: Illustration representing the Resonance phenomenon of the human body, extracted from Augoyard and Torgue’s Sonic experience, a guide to everyday sounds (2006, p. 106)...... 56 Figure 4-1: Audible events perceived by the researcher in the first eight seconds of the script ...... 88 Figure 4-2: Audible events perceived by the researcher in the second part of the script ...... 91 Figure 4-3: Drones and lower frequencies occurring in the first eight seconds of the script ...... 92 Figure 4-4: Drones and lower frequencies occurring in the second part of the script ...... 92 Figure 4-5: Vocal elements appearing in the second part of the script ...... 94 Figure 4-6: Range of lower tones expressing Graham’s mental soundscapes ...... 95 Figure 4-7: Range of haptic and corporeal sound activity ...... 95 Figure 5-1: Internalising Graham’s mental soundscapes ...... 108 Figure 6-1: Traditional Sound production: Organigram extracted from David Yewdall’s Practical art of motion sound (1999, p. 155) ...... 126 Figure 6-2: Three possible processes of cinematic sound production and their relationships with the different exhibition spaces ...... 135 Figure 6-3: Graphic waveforms of Damian Candusso’s soundtrack ...... 139 Figure 6-4: Graphic waveforms of Carlos Choconta’s soundtrack ...... 139 Figure 6-5: Graphic waveforms of John Kassab’s soundtrack ...... 139 Figure 6-6: Graphic waveforms of Evan Kitchener’s soundtrack ...... 140 Figure 6-7: Graphic waveforms of Benjamin Vlad’s soundtrack ...... 140 Figure 6-8: Graphic waveforms of Michael Worthington’s soundtrack ...... 140 Figure 6-9: Graphic waveforms of Tom Heuzenroeder’s soundtrack ...... 141 Figure 6-10: Graphic waveforms of Markus Kellow’s soundtrack ...... 141
ix Figure 6-11: Entering gallery One: accessing the script while being immersed in soundscapes collected on the Southern Cross University Lismore campus (artist’s impression) ...... 143 Figure 6-12: Sitting in gallery One with headphones, hearing each individual soundtrack created by cinema sound designers while reading the script (artist’s impression)...... 145 Figure 6-13: Storyboard by graphic artist Benjamin Leon, drawn from Roger Monk’s script and without listening to the sound designers' soundtracks (larger version in Appendix B) ...... 148 Figure 6-14: Screening the audio-visual montages in gallery Three (artist’s impression) ...... 151
x Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
Part 1: Informing the Research
1. Chapter One: Rationale of the Research
1.1 Background to the research
In a previous research project at the core of my Master of Fine Arts by Research (Media Art, UNSW, 1996), I used audio-visual material as frames of reference to convey indescribable physical states of being. The first creative step of the process was a written text based on a sensory chronology rather than a time-based chronology: it was entirely centred on personal experiences related to the loss, and regaining, of ‘consciousness’ in the context of tonic-clonic epileptic seizures. In essence, ‘Epileptograph: the Internal Journey’ was questioning the relevance of an epistemological rather than a sensory approach to the notion of consciousness. As an affective element induced by environmental circumstances, ‘inaudible’ sonic matter can alter the electrical activity at the core of my being. The proprio- reception of electrical activities triggers discordant electrical signals that disrupt the effectiveness and coherence of brain activity.
Concretely, this ‘noisy’ discordance silences personal thoughts but also encourages cultural preconceptions. I pointed to the semantic dependency of sensory experiences and affirmed that the noise of language was ‘unjustly’ considered as the measure of consciousness and knowledge of the world. As a basic example, the first action that medical personnel often ask to persons ‘regaining consciousness’ is their name and the date, as if one’s essence is only based on semantic articulations of sound and not its materiality. A person’s cognitive capacity involves a re-accumulation of the articulated self that provides clues as to the reasoning of a person prior to the event of ‘losing consciousness’.
Verbal understanding is therefore acknowledged as a measure of consciousness and medical diagnosis based on non-verbal responses is not common. ‘Perception’ denotes the ability to describe states of being: it isolates the process of sensing, almost denying a legitimisation of pre-consciousness and affect. Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg
1 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
define the concept of Affect in this manner, adding a subtext that includes notions of movement and oscillations:
Affect, at its most anthropomorphic, is the name we give to those forces - visceral forces
beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing, vital forces insisting beyond
emotion - that can serve to drive us towards movement, toward thought and extension, that
can likewise suspend us (as if in neutral) across a barely registering accretion of force-
relations, or that can even leave us overwhelmed by the world’s apparent intractability.
(2010, p. 1)
To some extent, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views on the existence of a pre-conscious world summarises the goal of that prior research:
We must recognize as anterior to ‘sense-giving acts’ (Bedeutungsgebende Akten) of
theoretical and positing thought, ‘expressive experiences’ (Ausdruckserlebnisse); as anterior
to the sign significance (Zeichen-Sinn), the expressive significance (Ausdrucks- Sinn), and
finally as anterior to any subsuming of content under form, the symbolical ‘pregnancy’ of
form in content.
(2008, p. 340)
For Shaun Gallagher, body-schema and body-image are different operative modes: body schema brings an unconscious knowledge of the environment to the forefront whereas body image is a system ‘of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs pertaining to one’s own body’ (2002, p. 4, italics in text). Personal experiences led me to be aware of anterior states to the ones of sense-giving: as the mind is only part of the body, ‘the organic (as well as the inorganic) has some degree of consciousness’ (Hall, 2010). This degree of knowledge remains outside of conscious and perceptual awareness: I can relate to the notion of ‘body schema’ as it is not concerned with perception or conceptual understanding or ‘emotional apprehension of the body’. The notion of body image is equally important and both states
2 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
intertwine to form human experiences through bodily incarnation and spiritual transcendence.
Differences arise between ‘Body’ and ‘body’. The experiential ‘Body’ is in a constant mode of self-accumulative and subjective growth: it is a ‘lived body’ (Leib in German) (Behnke, 1997, p. 66). The ‘body’ tends to be considered as the material body that is anatomically and physiologically explored (Le Corps Propre in French). For Edmund Husserl also ‘body’ stands for ‘primordial “organ” or means of all actions, perception, and expression’ (Behnke, 1997, p. 66). However, the body is not an estranged element to what is referred to above as the outside of consciousness. As a rhizoid structure, the organism’s activity interrogates the supposition that an accumulation of cognitive processes extracted from past-lived sensory experiences is the sole base for knowledge. Merleau-Ponty leaves room for the Body to be at once a physical anchor and an expressive medium. As an agent of change the human body has an intelligence that manifests through actions unrelated to cognitive abilities (Behnke, 1997, p. 69). The notions of intercorporeity and the flesh developed by Merleau-Ponty allow Body and body to coexist as he writes ‘the life of the human body cannot be described without it becoming a psycho-physical body’ (1968, p. 168).
In the context of this study I will privilege the term ‘body’ as an intercorporeal entity that is not a compound of opposite entities but is an animated flesh that thinks for itself: our motile organism has a tentacular potential able to grasp more than we, in western societies, can often speak of while constraining our references to the traditional five senses. In Sounding Sensory Profiles, David Howes and Constance Classen point to the language of a tribe from the Andes, the Quechua. For this particular community, a space between human sensory organs such as nose and mouth is a sensory entity in itself. As well, each organ can be divided into many parts and their number is proportional to its importance. Each element of this web, including spaces between limbs or organs, is associated with a verb that expresses its performance and usage (Howes & Classen, 1991, p. 263). However, a lack of language is not a definite proof of lack of consciousness: a person is able to know her or his presence in the world without linguistic ability.
Sound and light waves rule the researcher’s body and position it in the world: eardrum responsiveness and/or skin-able sonic qualities will move or immobilise her centre of gravity. Reciprocally, my body schema relates sound frequencies: its foreknowledge, or
3 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
prescience, can regulate its terrestrial position in relation to some audible and non-audible sonic environments. How to define audibility and non-audibility in relation to this prescience becomes problematic: audible implies sounds, meaningful or not, being transported through the ear canal. Sounds that are absorbed by the body through other means would be presumed to be inaudible. Body image implies that we intentionally, and consciously, alter the operative behaviour of the body.
The phenomenological rationale behind this research project and its creative practice lies in the thought that body-image defines ear-ability (audibility) whereas body-schema mostly relates to ear-inability (inaudibility). R. Murray Schaffer affirms that the role of sound is to define consciousness or lack of it. According to him, sound would provide a clear signpost between two states of consciousness, its awareness being the junction ‘between differentiation and non-differentiation’. He then adds that pre-consciousness ‘hovers on the verge of each’ (Schafer, 1993, p. 22). Sonic information, audible or not, can situate the ‘mind’ of the body in the world without the need for a system of perception, unless perception is understood as a dynamic that includes the somatic and visceral body within the world.
1.2 Scope of the research: living in sound
Dictionary definitions state that sound is the sensation produced ‘in’ the organs of hearing by sound waves emanating from a vibrating source (The Macquarie Dictionary
Online, 2012). Sonic activity and vibrations are the constant elements of our lives, regardless of the activity of our tympanic membrane: they leave trails that affect both conscious and unconscious behaviours. In the early 1970s, as the leader of a research team including Barry Truax, Hildegarde Westerkamp, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse and others, R. Murray Schafer initiated a study named ‘The World Soundscape Project’ (WSP) that generated an awareness of changes in environmental sounds. This ethnographic endeavour started in Canada with a survey of the city of Vancouver’s acoustic life and its characteristics, then moved on to a sound mapping of five European villages in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Scotland. The methodological result of this practical cataloguing of the sound of places was soundmaps. This endeavour, The World Sound Project, virtually established the multi-faceted discipline of Acoustic Ecology.
4 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
Concurrently, that ethnographic enquiry led to the formation of a movement: ‘the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology’. Schafer summed up his research on human behaviour, sound perception and acoustic environment in a 1977 book entitled The Tuning of the World. As he states: ‘To what extent are the differences cultural? To what extent individual? To what extent are sounds perceived at all?’ (Schafer, p. 148). The concerns and ideologies that this comment entails are central to the scope and relevance of this interdisciplinary PhD research. My intention is to focus to the present time and, to some extent, question the relevance of the term ‘acoustic’ in the context of sonic ecologies. Nevertheless, through this exegesis and as a convention, I will employ the term ‘acoustic ecology’ as it is the study of sounds and soundscapes in relation to life, society, economic development and associated lifestyles.
Soundscapes are usually defined by the relationships that individuals and societies have with their sonic environments. Although R. Murray Schafer saw the industrial revolution and its electrical counterpart as the turning points in acoustic ‘deafness’ (1977, p. 74), every technological advance has had a similar impact in re-positioning human presence in rural and urban environments. In the 19th century the plague of city noise was the work of street musicians and horses galloping on cobbles. The horse drawn vehicle was replaced by the ‘noiseless horseless (electric) carriage’ in American and British cities (Coates, 2005 p. 641). The combustion engine does not have a monopoly on the notion of ‘noise’ and its detrimental effects on natural ecology; electrical dependency contributes to establish the normalisation of some ubiquitous sound frequencies related to lifestyle consumption.
Out of lived experiences we can distinguish between two main sorts of conventional soundscapes: the first includes the sounds of the natural elements, of animal life and rural settings and provides clear territorial demarcations. The causal sources of these sounding elements mostly reflect ‘hi-fi’ environments and can be, on most occasions, easily differentiated, thus sometimes contributing to the perception of delicate soundscapes (Schafer, 1977, p. 43). The second realm of soundscapes is mainly related to modernity: ubiquity and diffusion of lower frequencies contribute to pervasive ‘lo-fi’ environments. This classification points to sonic environments that promote muddy signals that impair communication, sense of space and personal acoustic territories. The sounds of modernity encapsulate air conditioner, fridges, traffic and the like. Power lines can emit lower or higher frequencies: the tonal variations of their ‘buzz’ seem inexhaustible. Natural elements can fit the ‘lo-fi’ environment by virtue of their tonality and frequencies: the vibrations of an
5 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
erupting volcano can be felt far away. Distinctions between a natural sound and the sound of an industrial nuisance can be difficult to make when an Australian Magpie decides to imitate a car alarm.
Schafer mentions that since the electrical revolution of the early 19th century, new vibrations and ‘tonal centers of prime unity’ defining the balance of all other sounds, are related to geographical economies (Schafer, 1994, p. 99). Philosopher and acoustician Jean François Augoyard and Henri Torgue support this view: ‘Drones that are heard constantly ... are all aligned on the frequency (and harmonics) of the electrical network (50 Hz in Europe, 60 Hz in North America)’ (2006, p. 42). When asked to sing a note spontaneously, the pitch that a person will use often corresponds to a harmonic of the electrical network frequency. ‘Soundtracker’ Gordon W. Hempton refers to these frequencies as a new ‘mantra’, at once audible and palpable, that is conveyed by electric poles crisscrossing the U.S.A (Sherman, 2010). For some these frequencies fill space with noise but the electrical energy that they convey is music to others. Many will consensually silence this new Mantra because of the physical necessity of its existence for the perpetuation of consumer cultures.
In a Western context, the paucity of current audio terms to illustrate perceptual experiences of sound can inhibit the recognition of multi-sensory parameters. Any auditory effect is a sound, a noise is a sound of any kind but a ‘confused’ one (Macquarie Dictionary 1991, p. 1208) and silence is the absence of both noise and sound. Silence is also quietness, muteness and a state of being (Macquarie Dictionary 1991, p. 1630). The notions of sound, silence and noise are ambiguous, possibly interchangeable, depending on the context and, to some extent, individual choices. If ‘noise’ is a by-product of technology and human activity, its status as ‘silence’ questions the relevance of individual perception and mode of interpretation. Both notions of noise and silence also entail territoriality. Noises become the invading ‘un-wanted’ sounds whereas the walls surrounding silences have to be pierced.
Often confined to oppositional roles, noise and silence are unified by the effects on our organism that all audible, and inaudible, vibrations generate. By highlighting the influence of sonic environments on the physicality of socio-cultural practices, my enquiry explores the notion that human bodies are instinctively tuned to their vibrational surroundings. Through its focus on the practice of cinema sound design I argue that cinema sound has the capacity to blur the line between nature and environment by hyper-realising the world in which we partake. Atmospheric cinema soundtracks and ubiquitous sonic
6 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
environments share an invisibility that is indispensible to elements of the human narrative, namely space and time. My study links acoustic ecology and the professional practice of cinema sound: this creative tool is a composite element that reflects social values, cultural experiences and bodily knowledge.
1.3 Parameters of the research
Different disciplines and methodological approaches focus on sound and human interaction with the sonic medium. On one hand, the discipline of ‘Soundscape Ecology’ encompasses different branches of studies that examine sounds in relation to life’s systems and society. It implies a descriptive approach to sonic environments and to the origin of their components (Pijanowski, Farina, Gage, Dumyahn, & Krause, 2011). On the other hand, along with other methods of enquiry such as spatial ecology, bioacoustics and urban environmental acoustics, Acoustic Ecology is concerned with human perception, corporality, mental processes, understanding and construction of sounds as relational acoustic phenomena that generate a sense of place and affect social behaviour.
For Schafer the ultimate goal of Acoustic Ecology was ‘... to determine in what significant ways individuals and societies of various historical eras listen differently’ (1977, p. 151). As an organisation, the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology started in 1993 (WFAE). By 1998, its purposes were to acknowledge consideration of the right to individual sonic space as well as to develop pedagogic methods for educating the ear and more research into the sonic environment. Other aims included the improvement of the quality of sound design in objects of consumption and media, as well as the lobbying for legislation to protect the acoustic environment and public health (Young, 1998, p. 53). The new discipline was to examine human interactions with sounds and human responsibility towards acoustic environments in order to understand the dependence on visual information.
The goal of the discipline of Acoustic Ecology is to reach a balanced relationship between humans and their sonic surroundings while studying the effects of the evolving acoustic environment. In The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, R. Murray Schafer expands on the view that society at large is an organism responsible for the potential embellishment, as well as the physical degradation, of the soundscapes we inhabit and to which we listen. The work of the World Sound Project
7 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
allowed for the daily and mundane sounds in which we are moving and which are moving around us to become the creative elements of musical entities. Sounds from nature were at first paramount and the disappearance or rarity of some sonic characteristics gave momentum to the discipline, although its focus on sound pollution limited the scope of its impact (Wrightson, 2000, p. 10). The recovery and preservation of natural environments insinuated an ecological ethics to the expression ‘acoustic ecology’ as well as a romantic aura associated with an aesthetic quest. This was valid for the sounds of nature or urbanity and the World Sound Project was inclusive of both environments. The initial focus of these particular sound studies was to be at the junction of the arts, sciences and society (Schafer, 1977, p. 4).
For example, as an art form cinema sound takes viewers through evolving experiences that trigger sequences of perception, cognition and emotional evaluations. Landscapes of the mind and body are made up of all kinds of sonic fields, including abstract constructions such as musical compositions (Truax, 2001). A particularity of my enquiry is that narrative voices and musical metaphors are not considered as the primary storytellers in the interpretation and creation of cinema soundtracks. This is not to dismiss or diminish these components of the film soundtrack but instead to highlight the integration of other sonic abstractions, often labeled sound effects, as narrative forces.
In the context of this research, the focus on the suppression of vocal narration brings to light the effectiveness of storytelling made by atmospheric sounds. The result implies that the listener can emotionally imagine a narrative through spatial perception of sound events in relation to her/his physical body (Lopez & Pauletto, 2009, Winter). Sound designers and theorists have variously named the sounds of interest as ‘sound effects’, ‘atmospheric sounds’, ‘anempathetic sounds’ or ‘impact sounds’. Sometimes the word ‘noise’ appears, often by opposition to silence but mostly related to unwanted sound or un-musical tones. The term ‘sound effect’ is common to both acoustic ecology and cinema sound although ‘silence’ can be a cinematic sound effect. There is an extensive literature of textual analyses of film soundtracks and many descriptive manuals on the intricacies of sound design. My research, however, connects the representational practices of cinema sound to coenesthetic knowledge mediated by sonic activities.
Throughout the exegesis I will opt not to take a stance on the neurological aspects of ‘emotions’, all the while being aware that D.D Olds’ definition of affect relates its roots to
8 Chapter 1. Rationale of the Research
brainstem nuclei (2003, p. 84) and that, in his opinion, affect is a sign system of ‘biological evaluation’ (2003, p. 81). In the context of my research another reason to bypass a categorisation and localisation of ‘emotions’ are the differences in opinions on the subject. Emotions can be considered as fundamentally basic if their presence is the basis for ‘coping strategies and adaptation’ (Izard, 1992, p. 562). However, different coding systems bring confusion to a definite classification. Olds also notes that some researchers would isolate seventeen basic emotions while others limit their definitions to three categories of ‘emotion- like phenomena’ (2003, p. 84). I therefore abstained from providing any firm judgment on the neurological causes of high emotions or instinctive affects as these distinctions are beyond the scope of this current research.
1.4 Research question and relevance
To shape a film is to create a cultural medium that is physically experienced by its makers and its audiences. Cultural belonging and sense of place can be achieved through a ‘kinesthetic-sonesthetic bodily basis of knowing’ (Basso & Feld, 1996, p. 105). An anthropology of the senses considers that perception is a cultural product which depends on biological activities (Porcello, Meintjes, Ochoa, & Samuel, 2010, p. 52). With this enquiry, I question the human inclination to define sound as events and meaningful signals, rather than to accept that the qualities of sound are the generator of human engagement with soundscapes. If audibility is the measure to which we refer when we attempt to describe human relationships to soundscapes, could an artistic interpretation of environmental and narrative silences provide clues about sound perception, sound habituation and cultural practices? Could the particular practice of cinema sound design provide insight into the dynamics of acoustic ecologies?
To design implies the intentional creation of an entity that has definite purposes and/or executes precise tasks. This enquiry intends to listen ‘in front and behind’ the movie screens to the work of persons acting as catalysts of sonic signals: cinema sound designers. The creativity and technology of cinema sound has mainly focused on the physical effects and narrative power of sound on viewers-listeners. Nowadays display technologies are able to expand the physical impact of sound narratives on their audience; for example by activating infrasonic frequencies through cinema seats (The Grand Cinema, 2009). However,
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frequencies perceived by the auditory apparatus and consequential cognitive signals are the founding blocks of an understanding of the real, and fictional, worlds with which we engage.
A relationship between environmental acoustics and cinema exists but its focus is on cinematic products experienced by spectators rather than on the human interaction necessary to achieve creative fusions. The role of cinema sound, apart from voice and music, is often poorly acknowledged by the public at large and is often perceived as an add-on to the visual component (Altman, 1985, p. 45). There is concern amongst contemporary sound designers over the lack of recognition of their skills and poor utilisation of their imagination and narrative abilities. A discourse is gaining momentum about the exact role and functions of cinema sound design, and professional sound designers themselves are questioning their position in the cinematic industry. Sound designers’ distant relation to the written text of a film could impact on their relative lack of creative status, the assumption being that sound is merely an added element to moving images. Randy Thom comments on the role of a sound designer as ‘a person who is in a position to actually shape the film to use sound effectively and efficiently; powerfully and subtly’ (Brophy, 2000, p. 6).
Cinematic silence is often considered as a functional element when it conveys a strong subtext that increases the importance of the voice. In the Czechoslovakian movie The Silent Wedding (Malaele, 2008), the wedding guests are keeping mute, their glasses strapped in cloth and eating without cutlery. Stalin has died during the last stage of the wedding preparation and all Russian-dominated countries are ordered to mourn and forfeit joyful public events. For fifteen minutes guests are miming conversations, musicians playing in the air and the newlyweds dancing in a silence that the bride’s tears interrupt. This functional subtext is peppered with distinct sound frequencies: the laughter of a child, the quiet footsteps of the newlyweds, the growling stomach of a guest. All have a visual reference although they do not have to be visible, but the glance or reactions of guests point to their sources. The bride’s father then decides to break the military order of silence and the party erupts in laughter, the fast tempo of Tzigane music reinforcing the joyfulness of the event.
Suddenly, in the background a dull noise grows, and rattles the house until a tank gun pierces a wall: vibrations coming from the ground up bring in destruction, and silence the party. Men are arrested or killed and the women are left aghast in a silent mist abruptly pierced by their violent cries. On the screen, the invisibility of the source brought on silence and physical stillness at once, while guests look helplessly around. To transmit the terror of
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the wedding guests, the camera focuses on the momentary bodily inertia of the protagonists. Without sound the images might have lost their ability to communicate, although the terrified and incredulous eyes of the guests witness the sonic vibrations that crack the walls. My practice-based research explores the visual dimension of sonic information, notably ‘silences’, on bodily experiences and fictional storytelling.
The human body’s refusal to exist as a passive organism demands an alternative glimpse into the influences of sonic surroundings on all aspects of our lives. More to the point, it is the sonic qualities inherent to the places where we evolve and function that activate our cellular being. Environmental silences do not have to be considered as ‘absences’ but rather a rich vibrational realm from which sound has the potential to ‘hatch’. Whether in cinema or in acoustic ecology the consensus is that pure silence, as absence of sound, does not exist, but mechanical quietness is possible and sometimes sought. For cinema theorist Michel Chion, the notion of site-specific silence can include noise as long as a particular sonority defines the ambience of that same site or scene (Chion, 1994, p. 57). Thus this investigation explores the notion of audibility, and ear-ability, in relation to the experiential body and cultural understandings of silences. It does this by interrogating the creative process of audio-cinematographic silences through their subtle relations to human bodies and visual space.
1.5 Summary of the exegesis
This exegesis, married to the setting of the exhibition, questions people’s experiential states of sonic immediacy in concrete and fictional environmental settings. The research methodology and its data collection are examined in chapter two. Phenomenology is a practice that leads to the description of a phenomenon and does not repudiate science but can examine it (Moran, 2000, p. 14). In the context of my study the phenomenon is the non- perception of some sound frequencies that I would describe as ‘new silences’ and mostly relevant to the low frequency range, the mechanised lo-fi. Of course intentional dismissal of perception is possible. Nevertheless, in the context of this study the notion of affect is a ‘freeing’ from subjective feeling. Although there is no scale to measure affect, physical experiences of the world can be acknowledged through cultural products. A walkout during the screening of the violent and graphic French movie Irréversible (Noé, 2002) demonstrated the power of sonic activity to alter human experience the world. During the first 60 minutes
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of the film a constant 27 Hz tone on the soundtrack contributed to inducing physical and psychological disturbances to members of the audience, with some spectators fainting from the beginning of the projection onwards (Bailey, 2003). My study does not focus on such affective occurrences; rather it explores the cultural implications of experiential physical sonic absorption and the creative processes that can attest to that particular phenomenon.
In chapter Three, the Sensorium, I attempt to lead the reader from the activity of her/his internal body to the haptic states provided by sonic activity. External sonic activity is bound to the body by the inter-fluctuations between interiority and externality: to numerically measure this process in order to define our place in the world seems somehow redundant. In that third chapter, I refer to our reliance on sonic visuality as it permeates our current understanding of sound as a living matter. I will suggest that cultural visualisation incorporeal event’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 62). Vibrations originate in us as well as outside us and are not always quantifiable; the experiential however is ‘map-able’ but can remain unexplained. Chapter Three prepares the reader to become an active partaker in the study exhibition, ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’, with the aim of experiencing actual and metaphorical in-betweenness.
In chapter Four, Ecologies of Silence, the intention is to suggest a material interpretation of the world in-between, the world that the intelligence of the body knows and that the rationality of thoughts tries to fence. I suggest ‘silences’ as material states of sound that verbosity, and ear-ability, have colonised for the purpose of defining the spatio- temporality of human narrative. States of sound permeability, the insounds, are at once entrapped, absorbed and silenced by the skin. Silence is an open territory and a state in movement: its malleability invites the becoming of sound. The body knows it all: are traditional concepts of silence adequate ways to acknowledge the sonic activities we absorb and that pass through us?
In chapter Five, Sounding the Screen, I introduce the translators of a cultural ‘in betweenness’ who interpret and render words and images into three-dimensional spaces. Cinema sound designers live in multiple interconnecting worlds of words leading to trans- sensoriality. From their professional standing to their individual coenesthetic being, their work interweaves the soma of fictional characters and the visually oriented expectations of directors and of moviegoers. The denomination ‘sound designer’ is itself at a state of in- betweeness: its conceptual function varies from the characterisation of sound effects to the
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atmospheric imprint of a film. ‘Silence’ and ‘cinema sound design’ are oscillating concepts that could join forces in order to mutually reassess the individuality of their paradigms.
In chapter Six, Creating Silences, I navigate the path of a sound creation using a visual tool, written inscription, and examine the trans-sensory mechanisms that these words generate. This path is concretely felt through flesh, bones and ears while moving in the gallery’s spaces where the exhibition is set. It is through the orientation of individual bodies, their axial and gravitational positions in sonic silences, that experiential awareness emerges from the buried sounds of the everyday and the emerging sounds of fiction. By pointing to some illogicalities based on numerical values, scientific measures and financial commodities, I examine the phenomenon of non-awareness to the sonic matter that positions our bodies in the world. Rather than detailing this state in words only, I lead the reader towards a physical experiment drafted by humans and built on a convergence between flesh, space, sound and vision. Within the setting of an exhibition, I provide partakers with an experience of the dichotomy between the experiential expectations of an audio-visual narrative and the invisible permanence of sounds bodily processed in and outside cinema theatres.
In conclusion, the Epilogue points out the processes of data collection and the latter’s relevance to the everyday sonic world. Commercial expectations tend to ignore the sounds of the everyday, thereby minimising the physical experiences of cinematic silences. Social constraints associated with the word ‘silence’ are reflected through visual narrative and limit the participative experience of moviegoers. I suggest that bodily processes have the potential to reflect ‘new environmental silences’ in the steps taken to create such cinematic silences. Through the voices and work of selected Australian creators of hyper-realised authenticity, I question human capacity and willingness to listen to its own physical existence.
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2. Chapter Two: Methodology and Methods
Introduction
This chapter introduces the research project in terms of its design. It indicates the phenomenological approach of the study and outlines critical and creative outcomes. The focal object of a phenomenological study does not have to be only humans but may also include ideas made apparent by a sense of wonder (Barnacle, 2001, introduction). In the context of my research, humans and cultural products are objects of study: the specificity of the creative material produced by participants is a human phenomenological process that aims to examine silence as a sonic phenomenon fenced by cultural constructs. We engage with sounds as they define the notion of immediate spatiality. We are ‘bioacoustically’ active, creating spaces for, within and with ourselves while exploring grounds. As stated by Bernhard Leitner, ‘... the calves of our legs are much harder of hearing than our chest, and we also hear with our knees and the soles of our feet’ (de la Motte, 1998, p. 294). This sort of experience encapsulates sensory interactions between sonic environments, skin and flesh. In the creative context of this enquiry, the understanding is that new silences are made from the presence of ubiquitous vibratory fields that are organically perceived at all times but may be cognitively dismissed. This dismissal also includes the visual acknowledgement of sound sources that are able to propagate sonic ubiquity, such as, for example, air-conditioning systems or even ubiquitous music in shopping centers.
For Don Ihde, auditory and visual imaginations are not interdependent, and imaginary auditory sources or events can be controlled: their tones and volumes can be mentally adjusted. For Ihde the main difference between auditory and visual imagination is that auditory imagination ‘is almost always continuous’ (2007, p. 210 italics in text). The various personnel involved in cinematographic sound production aim to merge audio and visual signals in order to provide a narrative continuity often based on audio-visual synchronicity. This project examines the aural imagery that triggers the professional audio production associated with the data collection. This creative process is based on the script of a short extract from an Australian feature written and directed by Matthew Saville, Noise (2007). This short scene was an accident of sorts and had never been scripted or storyboarded. Screenwriter Roger Monk produced a succinct script from the short visual
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scene that was sent to him without its original soundtrack or any other instructions. Written from visual and soundless data, the resulting written piece was sent to selected Australian sound designers and inspired unique interpretative soundtracks.
This unique script suggests physical stillness; its aural imagery generates soundscapes that give insight into humans’ inattentiveness to sonic environments. The produced soundscapes also reflect delicate emotional states associated with the internal silences of the protagonist, Constable Graham McGahan. The creative participants in this research are eight Australian cinema sound designers, a scriptwriter, a storyboard artist and myself. I act as both a creative participant and a curator. Encompassing both a thesis and an art practice, my research informs a month-long exhibition in March 2013 (Ballina, NSW, Australia). The exhibition progresses over three distinct gallery spaces and actively engages the audience on multiple levels: kinetic, multi-sensory, emotional, cognitive and critical.
By exploring the segmented installation, members of the public become partakers and are exposed to an original spatial understanding of perception as sensations and perceptions as cognition. The different audio-visual displays invite members of the audience to modify their listening habits as they read, walk, watch and sit while being in familiar and estranged soundscapes. In the last gallery space, gallery Three, the screening of the same visual scene with different and distinct soundtracks confronts the public with their personal expectations of audio-visual synchronicity, not only in relation to movie experiences but also to daily life. Discussion on the creative outcomes of the exhibition overlaps Chapter Five and Chapter Six.
2.1 Choice of methodology
A phenomenological approach tests the prior understandings (and assumptions) of the researcher through her/his own subjective experiences as well as engaging the researcher with her/his subject of enquiry (Sharkey, 2001, p. 17). As a PhD enquiry, ‘Insounds’ originally focused on the negative effects of some sound frequencies on the human body. However, instead of looking at acoustic environments as detrimental to human aptitudes, environmental sonic ubiquity became a creative tool that reflects the influence of soundscapes on the body and narrative expressions. This study demands an immersion in a physical, therefore sensory, context. As a data collector, I am foremost an absorber of my
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environment and second a creator amongst other sound designers. As a creative participant I am working from the same script as the participating sound designers, although my creative process differs from their professional practices.
My own creative components are made of unaltered sound sequences recorded on the Southern Cross University Lismore campus. The roles of these soundtracks relate to the practice of sensory ethnography as these recordings are witnesses of the researcher’s personal physical interactions with the sonic life of the Lismore campus as well as the listening, and probable un-listening, patterns of its inhabitants. The collection of sounds recorded on campus embodies experiences that evolve physiologically and affectively, all the while aiming to avoid an emotional engagement. Steven Feld coined the term ‘acoustemology’ as a method ‘of exploration of sonic sensibilities’ (1996, p. 97), and an acknowledgement that inter-sensory processes of perception can lead to an experiential ‘truth’. All soundtracks produced in the context of this research are the materialisations of individual sonic sensibilities. Rising out of practices of physical sound absorption and prescience of the researcher’s body, their functions are to suggest alternative experiential practices of sound awareness and cinema sound production.
Don Ihde starts his discourse on the phenomenologies of sound with the assertion that ‘The beginning of man is in the midst of word’ (Ihde, 2007, p. 3, italics in text) because the air around us is the transducer that gives some meaning to the sound of voices. Both Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ihde are set to denounce the ‘objective’ visualism that permeates the way we have thought since Aristotle. For Ihde, voice is not limited to internal or external voices of the self and the others, but includes the voices of the world, the auditory realm in its totality. He points out the traditional reduction of other senses to mere abstraction and declares that it is to ‘the invisible that listening may attend’ (Ihde, 2007, p. 14 , italics in text). Importantly, Ihde also affirms that we listen with the whole body and that our ears are ‘at best the focal organs of hearing’ (2007, p. 44). Innate and immanent knowledge of the self in the world can depart from cognitive intentionality.
Towards the end of his career, Merleau-Ponty turned to the concept of ‘Flesh’ as a way to explore primordial perception rather than dwelling on objective differentiations between the lived and objective body. However, Merleau-Ponty’s notion of Flesh is intimately related to the visible and invisible without referring to sonic matter despite the adequacy of some of his words when applied to sound. His quest seems to neglect sonic
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activity as he attempts to unveil the porous and invisible matter that ‘traverses me and constitute me as a seer, that circle that I do not form, but forms me, this coiling over of the visible upon the visible, can traverse, animate other bodies as well as my own’ (Merleau- Ponty, 1968, p. 140). In his book, The Visible and The Invisible, Merleau-Ponty understands sound as a tool for transmission of meaningful, or nonsensical events, that ‘end in sound’ while he hears his own vibrations through the use of his voice (1968, p. 144). Sound is a reverberating tool of the self and of the invisible matter around the body. Nonetheless to restrict sonic activity to vocal cords and ear canal impairs the role of sound as a cellular agitator able to influence human interactions with the world.
Sound literally reveals presence and generates actions through our flesh and bones: we can feel a train, a volcano, or a plane, before listening to it, seeing it, analysing it. However, inaudibility becomes a cultural practice when sonic information is dismissed unless funneled through the ear canal and literally or metaphorically attested by vision. Merleau-Ponty started his seminal book, Phenomenology of Perception, with the sentence ‘At the outset of the study of perception, we find in language the notion of sensation…’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p. 3). To this affirmation, philosopher Michel Serres points that to refer to a phenomenology of sensations by words only limits a phenomenological proposition to ‘a nice ethnology of city dwellers, who are hypertechnicalized, intellectualized, chained to their library chairs, and tragically stripped of any tangible experience’ (Serres & Latour, 1995, pp. 131-132). Serres’s experiences of the self in and around what could be described as ‘environmental states’ seems to have been more extreme than other contemporary philosophers.
As a trained scientist and naval officer, Serres questions the description of ‘I’ when one is neither inside nor outside itself but when an internal sense knows how to regulate the soul of body, a being’s soul and their place in the world: ‘Coenesthesia says I by itself’ (Serres, 2008, p. 19). Coenesthesia, as a felt immediacy of the body’s presence in itself and the world, is described as ‘a vital sense’, an undefined consciousness and product of all the vital processes (The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, p. 433). It adds another dimension to kinaesthesia that is the sense of moving through space. David Appelbaum, relaying philosopher Maine de Biran’s 18th Century idea, notes that kinaesthesia is a mode of body consciousness that is part of coenesthetic perception regardless of bodily stillness or activity (1993, p. 52). For Merleau-Ponty and Serres, respective thoughts on the activity of the phenomenological body seem to have been extracted from different personal experiences.
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Some of the tangibility of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological explanations starts through illness; it seems that the disunity of a body is the proof of its coherence in the world. It is the timely unity of the senses and motility as well as sensitivity that gives life to consciousness, a life which ‘ “goes limp” in illness’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p. 157). Often Merleau-Ponty relies on others’ (ST)illness while Serres tends to dwell on personal (E)motions.
In The Five Senses Serres expands on his accidental sequestration in a boat on fire where, in the rush for safety, he suddenly ended up locked by himself in a watertight compartment with all exits locked or bolted. His ordeal to get out by unscrewing barehanded a bolted porthole while holding his breath, so as not to choke, reveals the tensing of the body and acridity of the fire. The states of shocking and boiling are interrupted by the freezing cold when his head is able to get outside the ship. Now, the rest of his body is inside the boat, his frozen head outside: the contrasting sensations and his physical incapacity contribute to the in-out status of his skin and flesh: ‘I am inside, burnt to a crisp with only my frozen, shivering, blinded head outside.’ The sounds of munitions exploding motivate his desperation to get out in the open. A few sentences later, there is doubt on the state of ‘being’, of deciding to be: ‘Is it worth to breathe in the smoke, or the icy blast, or stay in the rusty iron collar, I can’t possibly decide’ (Serres, 2008, p. 19). Salvation seems to come from the sea as a wave ‘jolts the neckpiece towards my suspended ribs’: his body moves forward, towards the ‘out’. However it is a short relief as another wave pushes him back ‘in’: ‘I was inside, I was outside. Who was this ‘I’?’(Serres, 2008, p. 19).
Over years of javelin throwing and other athletic pursuits I experienced silence as a physical state, as an envelope in motion. Coenesthia, as an indescribable state of being in the world, is a determinant factor in a successful throw. There is a remarkable sensation when the javelin becomes airborne and takes its purest trajectory. In effect, an instinctive knowledge transmits through the whole organism when this trajectory is in accordance with the thrower’s centre of gravity and use of the elastic abilities of the moving body. The combination of these elements testifies to the body’s mastery of inter-connecting conducting elements, such as the ground and the air. When this state is reached athletes, as well as many other competitors, will talk about being ‘in it’ or ‘in the zone’ as if we reached our ‘soul’, our core. Deaf and tactile percussionist Evelyn Glennie mentions this state of perfect resonance when she states that it only happened to her once and that as she finished the piece she was ‘silent’: ‘Within my mind, I was completely silent’ (Duffie, 1994). Perfection in motion can be internally silent.
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Michel Serres writes that ‘Gymnasts train their soul, so as to move or wrap themselves around it’ (Serres, 2008) and notes that throwers do not practice this quest. However, all bodies go searching for their ‘souls’ as to defy gravity and become weightless in the matter of sound. In my practice of throwing javelins, silence is a vibratory rhythm in motion transmitted through the feet, a smooth silence that is cut raw when the instrument leaves the skin of the hand so to be propelled by the velocity and elasticity of the body. Then voice surges, forces are vocally expelled, the heart beats audibly at the temples and the reverberating sounds of stadiums rise: we are out again and noise isolates us.
Sometimes the ‘I’, as the talkative witness of the world, has to disappear and let the flesh stir the body. Serres’s take on the ‘I’ as a primordial being and the notions of the ‘in and out’ of one’s body and world are important to this study. The inter-relational oscillations between states and worlds, words and skin, sound and vision are explored in the exegesis with the intention of being experienced in the exhibition. Oscillations can suggest a simultaneous attraction towards innate senses of balance and instability.
To tentatively link ‘psychic’ and the ‘physiological’, the ‘for-itself’ and the ‘in-itself’ (2008, p. 89), Merleau-Ponty takes the examples of a patient’s phantom arm as perceptive memory (2008, p. 93). Another of his observational subjects is a patient that cannot perform gestures without open eyes or touching his own skin (2008, p. 118). Concurrently, Serres’s phenomenology has a rawness and primacy appropriate to the permanence of soundscapes to all humans: vibrations move all of us literally, figuratively and socially. In the context of the current practice-based framework, the works of Merleau-Ponty and Serres position the roles of all participants. On one hand, observations of others’ worlds direct my phenomenological take on the contribution and work processes of the cinema sound designers. This position also influences my incumbent curatorial role, experiential discoveries and descriptive tasks. On the other hand, the creative process that I experienced in interpreting a specific environment provides physical closeness and immediacy. In parallel, phenomenological knowledge is gained through the process of consolidating links that expand personal and public experiences.
Sarah Pink notes that ethnographies are not only methods of collection; they are participative enquiries that involve multi-sensory engagement on the part of the researcher: a walk in the context of a town historical tour is ‘not simply a walk but also a lesson in how to see’ (Pink, 2008). A soundwalk can also be a ‘seeing’ walk and, in the case of the researcher,
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include sonic and vibrational acquisition of knowledge. As a creative participant, albeit one not working in the film industry, and as a curator, I have some similar sensory abilities but different experiential approaches to sound from the other research participants. In this study, the subjectivity of the author and the participants could not be avoided, but a form of ‘felt’ knowledge in relation to experiences in sound could be developed. The enacting of the relationship between creators and the object of production is central to the data collection of the research. The two areas of interest, acoustic ecology and cinema sound, are evolving environments and so is the way they are abstractly and physically experienced. The ethnographic process of enquiry is not linear but rather embedded within the production process: it is integral to the life of the researcher and can affect all life facets (Pink, 2007, p. 118). As expected, my research journey has followed paths of inclusion and organic intertwining.
Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright note that anthropology must not restrict itself to visual exploration of text-based models and demands interactions with a range of ‘material and sensual practices in the contemporary arts’ (2006, p. 4). This approach implies a rethinking of anthropology as a social science that relies on descriptive words. By using experiential technology to acquire data the experience of the researcher goes beyond descriptive collection. For the time being, the phenomenological process of learning about, and sharing aspects of the multi-sensory experiences of participating sound designers, is ethnographic. Their audio-creations are wordless, but potentially descriptive, expressions of their individual craftsmanship and sensitivity. To an audience, cinema sound professionals are the invisible mediators of an experiential world of sounds and silences that is in constant mutation.
Sound designers have a pivotal role in the construction of a film soundtrack as their participation relies on their personal affective relationship to audible and non-audible sounds. Through their own physical experience, sound designers give a ‘sounding body’ to the story itself, and to its characters, whereas sound mixers, for example, are slightly more concerned with the phenomenological experience of audiences. These different approaches articulate various experiential creativities. One seems to be a spontaneous activity led by affect and the other a cognitive field prompted by the thought of the physical experiences of others. There is a trans-situational aspect to these creative events and their affective continuity as they establish a ‘connecting thread of experience’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 217).
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To establish a thread connecting acoustic ecologies, sensory silence and the practice of cinema sound, I adopt Michel Serres’s inclusive approach that weaves the distinct sonic realms in which we live: the molecular, the individual and the cultural (2008, p. 106-111). At a molecular level our bodies sound and resonate from vibrations emitted in the natural world by all means and matters that surround our bodies. The sound of the social collective can also be a contributor in ‘silencing the body, silencing the world’ (Serres, 2008, p. 107). This project takes an enactive approach to humans’ place in a sonic world: the manner in which we actively create our perceptual world is inter-subjective but the sensorial activity within us demonstrates a permanent integration within worlds of sonic, and social, activities. I would agree with Harald Stadler that a phenomenological approach to film theory provides a ‘mutually constitutive relationship’ between non-filmic factors and filmic experiences as they influence each other inside and outside cinemas (1990, p. 41).
Two sorts of phenomenology are mostly observed in film studies: that of the creators (usually the film director) and that of the public. Both are based on cognitive phenomenology: the director’s thoughts and experience are able to find their way in the sensorial experiences of the spectator. Although neuronal processing is dynamic and irreducible (Edelman, 2003, p. 5520), cognitive film theory loses ground as it is foremost the viscerality, the immediate effect, of film’s experience that activates our interpretation. As a film scholar, Steven Shaviro notes the hegemony of consciousness as the knowledgeable judge for the reality of sensations but comments that the cognitive grows out of the visceral (2008, p. 53).
The primate in us experiences data before we attempt to ‘understand movies figuratively’ (Sobchack, 2004, p. 59, italics in text). Although Vivian Sobchack’s film phenomenology departs from cognitive film theory, her choice of word is ironic: ‘figure’ still carries reference to some visible forms and watchable human participation to the world. However, coenesthesia generates axial convergences that can be part of a movie experience and bodily perspectives. Human gravitational faculties are not impaired by the bodily immobilisation that is intrinsic to cinemagoers’ experience in western contexts. The kinesthetic activity that is visually displayed on screen can be amplified because of the spectators’ relative stillness (Sobchack, 1992, p. 186). Concurrently the experience of watching Derek Jarman’s movie Blue (Jarman, 1993), for example, reflects the organism’s inner-interactions in processing light and vibrations. Vivian Sobchack notes that when visual
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inattentiveness or fatigue affect a spectator watching Jarman’s movie Blue, it is the soundtrack that provokes a sharpening of the visual information (1992, p. 198).
The vast field of Eastern Phenomenology and notion of life force do not concern this study; nor shall we investigate the realm of neuro-phenomenology. If ‘beyond the five senses’ refers to the paranormal, ‘beneath the five senses’ leads to the visceral and molecular (Howes, 2009, p. 22) with all the intertwining sensorial aptitudes that this entails. It is my understanding that coenesthesia as the sense of the body, is a phenomenological tool that reveals the permanent immediacy of our presence to ourselves, being cognitively aware or not, and to the world. The ‘easing and un-easing’ of the body in the world that is ‘already there’ belongs to a pre-conscious process. Merleau-Ponty’s statement that our body does not have ‘the power to make us see what is not there; it can only make us believe that we see it’ (2008, p. 32) seems incongruous if applied exclusively to sound. At times, by using a visual language, Merleau-Ponty seemed to neglect the world of sound, or silence ‘as sound’ itself, its reflective capacity and the velocity of its trace on our skin. Sometimes cognition is a visual accident of sorts that sonic and gravitational information can activate.
If the above seems close to transcendentalism, it is probably because we are limited by the senses that have been culturally set for us. Gestalt could encompass this study’s line of thought as it unveils the non-verbal and pre-reflective state of a body. However, and literally, the practice of stillness in a soundless space that is sometimes suggested (Denham- Vaughan & Edmond, 2010, p. 16) does not concur with my own interpretation of the word ‘silence’. Husserl’s ‘transcendental constitutive phenomenology’ resonates but is ambiguous, as the object of the experience, silence, and the experience of being in silence, exist. In the context of this study, intentionality (understood as thought processes directed towards being ‘in silence’) is relevant in part. Here is a world that senses and can be sensed. However, ‘It’, the sphere of moving silences, is not a ‘thing’ in the sense that it is not an occurrence that reveals the world: it is an implicit field whereas ‘things’ are explicit and listened to, such as focal sounds.
Don Ihde describes the ‘things’ that we listen to as ‘the first existential sources of the sounding which we hear’ (2007, p. 73). A field would be the situating context where ‘things’ appear and it would be bounded in-the-world. As Ihde refers to fields as existentialist structures that could nurture sonic events, he points out that the ‘auditory field’ has no forward orientation, as is the case of the visual field (2007, p. 75). This point applies
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to the current research as sound provides a spherical understanding of the environments that we inhabit. The visual field has to focus in front of the self but sound can give it its depth of focus and brings things out of the visual plan. This focal inseparability would make existential phenomenology more appropriate to this enquiry on sound and silences.
Fields of silence link the object of perception, sound, with a perspective of the body brought on by coenesthesia and kinesthesia. Silences, as ‘auditory fields’, are physically implicit whereas focal sounds are subjectively explicit. Focal sounds signpost points of echo- location: they administrate the subjectivity of distances between the core of individuals and the edge of their worlds. Ultimately, due to its open-ended approach and the methods employed, this research is experiential and empirical in nature. The integrative capacities of the human body give density to Merleau-Ponty’s assertion that ‘the perceiving mind is an incarnated mind (1964b, p. 3). This clearly states the impossibility of articulating a dual description of perception, one that would separate the experience of multi-sensing from the materiality of the environments. Experiences rather than cognitive truths are objects and products of this inquiry. ‘Being in the world’ becomes a process rather than a finality. This process has the potential to be viscerally felt and transmitted through explorative creative practices such as atmospheric cinema sound but also through perambulatory experiences such as soundwalks.
In a participative practice-based research project a sensory ethnography, and its phenomenological implications, conveys the need to meld worlds that are ‘already there’. Sound creation, as a conjunction of sensory reception and perception, is able to express the physicality of human emotions in specific spatio-temporal settings. Audiovisual synchronicity can at times define audibility but sonic activity is spherically immersive and induces visceral participation to the worlds out of focus. Most of the time, interpretations of visual experience are ‘irrationally’ paramount: ‘seeing is believing’ is still a cultural leitmotif. However, feeling and hearing without seeing are part of our sensory world.
Internal sounds such as heartbeat or even outdoor traffic have a known but invisible source to the naked eye. Irrelevant to rationality, the body in-the-world makes sense for itself through sound and visual constructions of hidden worlds. I understand that attempting to justify this stance could be pointless, as phenomenology itself calls for ‘description’, an inscribed proof of the complex phenomenon of human interaction with the world. This is precisely why a practice-led research gives me the opportunity to extract a
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phenomenological experience from the body of participants, including my own, and the public alike.
2.2 Methods: setting the scene
A brief understanding of the chronology of common film production can give an appreciation of this study’s data collection, the particularity of the process employed and the results obtained. Usually, the life of an onscreen story starts with a script, moves on to storyboarding, is then shot and edited. The practice of sounding a movie starts with location and set recordings and finishes with the assemblage of sound effects, music and voice onto the film visuals. The graphic below outlines the basic steps of this process:
Figure 2-1: Traditional chronology of film creation with the involvement of sound designers limited to the end of the production process
For this study, the above schema has been turned ‘upside down and inside out’. The design of the study’s data collection, and the data obtained, demonstrates the originality of the research process. The figure below describes the asynchronous production process use
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to obtain creative data. This graphic displays the different steps and material obtained. It is followed by a contextualisation of the narrative elements provided to the different creative participants.
Figure 2-2: Mode of production employed for the study data collection
To start the data collection screenwriter Roger Monk wrote a short script based on a brief visual scene. In the feature film Noise (Saville, 2007) this 55 seconds scene is voiceless and expresses the physical and emotional isolation of a human being. The scene has one location, one protagonist, minimal action and no dialogue or monologue, but it has a strong emotional charge. This short and dramatic narrative reflects a stillness that highlights the aloneness of the protagonist, his indecisions and the turmoil of his thoughts. In the film Noise (Saville, 2007), this precise scene is devoid of dialogues and the merging of musical tones and musical components is a subtle mix of high frequencies. The existence of this particular scene set in a police caravan came as a result of a spontaneous decision of the film director Matthew Saville and the director of photography László Baranyai: only two takes were shot at the end of a day’s work in that location (Saville, 2010). This cinematic segment was therefore un-scripted and without a storyboard to refer to.
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The reasons for the choice of the movie Noise (Saville, 2007), and this particular scene, are twofold. Firstly Noise is a film about phenomenologies of sound that echo the lives of the main characters. Secondly, the scene chosen can stand out ‘by itself’ in the sense that no interpretation of it could be false: visually there is only one protagonist, two deserted locations, nil interaction with any kind of creature and no vocal content. In that scene sound is invisible. The film feature Noise itself opens with a scene in a train carriage where a young student, Lavinia Smart, comes into visual contact with death. Lavinia first appears wearing headphones and is confronted with the horror of a mass shooting in a Melbournian suburban train.
Figure 2-3: Lavinia Smart discovering the victims’ bodies in the train carriage
In the carriage only one character is alive: Craig Finlay has gunned down all other passengers. Visual clues give the impression that he might be schizophrenic and victim of powerful voices. The audience is aware of Craig’s culpability and the fragmented narrative of his unpunished crimes is central to the plot.
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Figure 2-4: Craig Finlay breaking down after shooting his last victim, the train guard
The main protagonist, Graham McGahan, is a police constable who has a poor opinion of his personal role in the police force. He has been suffering from tinnitus for some time but has only become recently aware of his diagnosis and the possible prognosis of another medical condition. He keeps silent about his health until confronted by his girlfriend who is a fellow constable and musician in the Police Orchestra. We first witness his symptoms when he has trouble hearing his colleague, and when he loses his sense of balance and falls while on an escalator.
Figure 2-5: Constable Graham McGahan testing his hearing
After the train’s mass murder, a second murder victim is discovered a few days later and police seek information from the public. Graham’s superior, dismissive of tinnitus as an unsettling medical condition, confines him to a portable caravan that serves as a contact point with the neighbourhood where the young woman’s body has been discovered. For the
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listener, the audio presence of tinnitus is subtle and its occurrence appears in the delicate mix of mechanical and atmospheric sounds. Sometimes a barely audible high pitch personifies Graham’s presence on screen. It is a silence to some but the way it is used makes it a filter accentuating the silenced sounds of everyday.
This sounding embodiment of tinnitus is perfectly fused with the delicacy of Bryony Marks’ musical score. Three different planes and proximal layers of sound appear. They manifest through Graham’s relationship with his own body, with the world around him, and with the machines he touches in an attempt to make sounds that he might be able to hear. Graham brings himself closer to the source of perceptible vibrations. He is looking for the noise usually labeled as silences, the ‘noises of the everyday’. Graham relies on his vision and touch to localise kinetic objects, to place them in his audible and tactile range.
For this investigation, I decided not to focus on the representation of tinnitus but instead on the integration of everyday sounds in the frame of mind and spatial parameters of the main protagonist, Constable Graham McGahan. In this film, there are no silences without sounds. There are no silences made of the sounds of nature either. The feature film Noise brings to the fore an awareness of the forgotten frequencies, the ubiquitous sounds, the sounds of the everyday that are taken for granted. My impression is that the film Noise is a sonic vessel inhabited by displaced sounds and un-listened-to persons. The movie unites individuals relying on the sounds and voices in and around themselves as well as on visual attention to and of others.
Most of the film protagonists aim to find their own place in a world made of real and metaphorical ubiquitous silences that demand visual dissection. The solving of the murders depends on the transparency of Lavinia’s statement. Her description of the events is blurry, her statement seems unclear to the detective in charge. Sounds distract Graham’s comprehension of the world and he cannot perceive visual clues that could lead to Craig’s arrest. Although he spends time looking at the identikit, he is unable to recognise Craig who comes into the caravan and aggressively rants about the changes in the neighborhood since the arrival of migrants.
Below is the script that screenwriter Roger Monk wrote based on the 55-second-long visual extract of the chosen movie scene. He wrote this short piece from that soundless extract sent to him. Monk translated the visual material ‘shot by shot’ and wanted to give it
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some rhythm in order to instill some density to the stillness of the scene (Monk, 2012). The narrative is stripped of frames of reference that could interfere with the creative outputs: physical appearance, facial expressions of the character and ethnic background:
EXT. DEMOUNTABLE POLICE STATION - NIGHT
It is late and still. The world appears deserted yet waiting.
The fluorescent light at the door of the demountable
and from the snack shop opposite glow brightly in the dark.
The demountable door is wide open. (8 secs)
INT. DEMOUNTABLE POLICE STATION - NIGHT
The Policeman is alone in the demountable.
Seated at his desk, he smokes a cigarette
and stares at an identikit picture of the suspect.
He sucks on the cigarette like it were oxygen.
Next to the identikit is a picture of the victim.
She is young, smiling, alive. Not any more.
By contrast the identikit picture of the suspect doesn’t look like a real person.
More like fractured recollections of a real person.
The policeman stares as though hypnotised by the victim’s eyes.
The camera moves closer.
Their eyes stare. As if the policeman were willing the victim to speak out.
Who did this? Why? Why does someone do something like that?
Roger Monk © 2010
Figure 2-6: Script written by Roger Monk ©
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As Roger Monk wrote the above script shot by shot and without sound references, a graphic segmentation of images extracted from the feature and their corresponding text can be suggested:
EXT. DEMOUNTABLE POLICE
STATION - NIGHT
It is late and still.
The world appears
deserted yet waiting.
The fluorescent light
at the door of the
demountable and from
the snack shop opposite
glow brightly in the
dark.
The demountable door is
wide open. (8 secs)
INT. DEMOUNTABLE POLICE
STATION - NIGHT
The Policeman is alone
in the demountable.
Seated at his desk, he
smokes a cigarette and
stares at an identikit
picture of the suspect.
He sucks on the
cigarette like it were
oxygen.
Figure 2-7: Stills extracted from the Australian feature Noise (Saville, 2007)
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Next to the identikit
is a picture of the
victim. She is young,
smiling, alive.
Not any more.
By contrast the
identikit picture of
the suspect doesn’t
look like a real
person.
More like fractured
recollections of a real
person.
The policeman stares as
though hypnotised by
the victim’s eyes.
The camera moves
closer.
Their eyes stare.
As if the policeman
were willing the victim
to speak out.
Who did this? Why? Why
does someone do
something like that?
Roger Monk © 2010
Figure 2-8: Stills extracted from the Australian feature Noise (Saville, 2007)
Eight sound designers based in Australia volunteered to produce a soundtrack. Participants were made aware of the opportunity to cease their participation in the research
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at any time 1. The sound designers received the script with the brief that the length of their sound piece should be 55 seconds. Several of the participants have won Australian professional awards from the Australian Film Institute (AFI) and the Inside Film award or the Australian Screen Sound Guild (ASSG), and/or contributed to awarded movies (AFI, Emmy, American Oscars or Golden Reel). Screenwriter Roger Monk (AFI and IF winner) wrote the script that articulates the soundtracks of the exhibition and graphic artist Ben Leon produced its storyboard. The Australian cinema sound designers are Damian Candusso (ASSG and Golden Reel winner & AFI nominee), Carlos Choconta, Tom Heuzenroeder (AFI winner, ASSG & Emmy nominee), John Kassab (ASSG winner and sound designer on an Oscar-winning short film), Markus Kellow (ASSG winner), Evan Kitchener, Ben Vlad and Michael Worthington. Some participants have also contributed to films screened at numerous international festivals, including Cannes and Berlin 2.
These professional cinema sound designers were not provided with any other clues, including any reference to the film Noise. Importantly, they were asked to produce their work from a written text, a technique unusual in the contemporary film industry. As this project revolves around the sensory faculties of creative individuals, there were no constraints on the categories of sound that could be used. Whereas music, effects, vocals and atmospherics are traditional components of a movie soundtrack, participants had carte blanche to interpret the scripted scene with sounds of their own choosing as to encourage instinctive creative practice. Nowadays, most sound designers start their work on their own digital audio workstation (aka DAW). This solitary step of production encapsulates the viscerality of each participant’s approach to soundmaking.
These eight creative participants produced a track each and the resulting eight tracks were then applied to the identical fifty-five second visual extract. Michel Chion labels this particular production technique, whereby different soundtracks are applied onto the same visuals, as ‘mariage forçé’ or forced marriage (1994, pp. 188-189). This process is not a simple exercise in style: its intention is to provide data on appraising impacts between audio and visual components. An important aspect of the research’s design is that the creative process applied by the participants was asynchronous. Instead of producing sound from images, their task was to produce sound from writing: the participants relied on aural
1 Ethics approval ECN-10-020, 24 February 2010
2 Succinct biographies of the creative participants in Appendix A
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imagery based on literary interpretation instead of assigning sounds to visual language. Subsequent interviews pointed to the rarity of the process as most sound designers primarily work from visuals and adapt sound to sight, therefore rarely transcribing words to sound. This approach however is conventional in the production of animation as this genre relies on sound characterisation. In that case the development of the acoustic distinctions of places and protagonists is interwoven within the script and thus integral to pre-production.
This study’s resulting audio compositions are highly subjective as they are made of situational and expressive sounds that embody the experiences and personality of each creator. Although my research has a public outcome, an exhibition, its primary audience was its creative participants. It is only at the interview stage that sound designers were able to appreciate the audio-visualisation of their own work and those of others. In effect and unknown to them, the script on which they based their individual soundtrack had an existing visual backdrop. The resulting artifacts composed of eight different auditive visions are screened in the last gallery space, gallery Three, of the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. The intention of this chain of creative events, including the unveiling of the visual connection after audio production, aims to activate processes of aural imagery and visualisation of the acoustic presence of silences as entities felt and listened.
The ensuing collection of soundtracks offers an insight into the experience of creating a sensual product unrelated to visual input other than an aural imagery, a subjective experience of hearing without pre-existing auditory stimulation. In the end of study exhibition, the audience is subjected to the same process of visio-audition as the script is the main element that can be seen while entering the first gallery space. Upon entering gallery One, the audience is able to read Roger Monk’s script while being in bodily contact with the environmental soundtracks through speakers. The aim of and existence of these tracks is discussed in sub-chapter 2.3 (Methods: collecting environmental silences).
2.3 Methods: collecting environmental silences
To understand the lived experience of creating sounds and to cultivate ‘cultural empathy’ (O’Leary, 2010, p. 116), I am involved as a creative participant, and therefore bring a self-reflexive element to this ethnographic inquiry. My position is that of a ‘sensory apprentice’; I am in ‘receivership’ of sound subtleties, similarities and differences of
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atmospheric information related to a specific territory. In this experimental setting, an art practice is a multisensory tool that acts as a form of mediation and not as a survey system. The researcher’s creative contributions are soundtracks based on the script and made exclusively from sounds recorded on the Southern Cross University Lismore Campus. The only sonic treatment applied to the sound captures was volume mapping. Three different layers at the most were applied in the composition process: the purpose of the collection was to re-present the everyday. A walker around the University’s campus will notice that a large part of the audible and skin-able sounds emitted are representative of the vibratory activities incumbent to modernity: air conditioning, freezers, air extractors and so on.
Such industrial auditory background is a physical reality of our daily lives and is accepted as a necessary consequence of our lifestyle (M. J. Epstein, 1993). This sonic rumour, a ubiquitous murmur, is colonising the world and becoming a symbol for successful consumerism and industriousness. Anecdotally, on one of my early recording sessions on campus, I met an air-conditioning technician who was fixing the cooling system of a large unit affixed to the Library. His comments, ‘there is no fresh air without noise’ and ‘you get used to it (the noise)’ were interesting on two levels.
The first remark suggests that contemporary buildings can effectively breathe by merging air and expelling sound. The second comment demonstrates a latent fatalism and engrained social acquiescence related to man-made environments, healthcare and lifestyle expectations. In the particular case of air conditioning units, poorly maintained equipment can be the source of legionnaire disease (Legionellosis,) and other respiratory infections (Fernández, Alvarez, González-Barcala, & Portal, 2013, p. 24). Heating, ventilation, and air- conditioning (HVAC) systems contribute to diverse ailments and an increase in work related sickness absence; this technology might also be the cause of Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) (Preziosi, Czernichow, Gehanno, & Hercberg, 2004, p. 1120). Audible and inaudible sounds are breathed, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously.
The air-conditioning technician’s second comment is the backbone of this study: why should we ‘get used to’ sounds of modernity that result in poor management of soundscapes and the poor health of many? When it comes to environmental sound, the cognitive mind is expected to fence off the influences of sonic activity and to anaesthetise some bodily mechanisms, thereby disavowing the permeability of the human flesh. To ‘sound’ this question and give it experiential and metaphorical weight, I instinctively designed a locative
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and metaphorical path of recordings. This resulting walking path started at ‘the mind’, the library, and ended at the ‘kinetic body’, the sports field. Between start and finish, I captured sound in places where cells and skin play traditional intellectual roles, the Science Schools. The buildings hosting some activities of the School of Arts and Social Sciences, such as music, involve skins and cells as resonant entities. On the sport fields, skin and cells entrain both aspects, intellectual and cellular, through coenesthetic states tributary to motion and gravity. These recordings were made in August 2009, August 2010 and February 2011. The map below attests to the intention of the recording stations, represented by red stars, which followed a clockwise path pictured as a white line. Not all recording stations were re-visited each year.
Figure 2-9: Aerial path of sound captures made between July 2009 and February 2011 on the Southern Cross University Lismore campus (artist's impression)
The capture of sound sequences consisted of walking around campus, guided by sound and stopping to stay immobile for 30 to 60 seconds with the recorder hand held at waist height in front of the researcher. Only fractions of the sounds captured have been used on the self-produced soundtracks broadcast in Gallery One. The capture of ‘ready-made’ sonic activity in front of a recordist’s immobile body is common to many recordings executed in the realms of acoustic ecology and cinema sound. The kinetics involved and the stillness required do not apply to the practice of cinematic Foley. A Foley artist aims to
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create or re-create in studio specific sounds that would enhance the narrative after the movie shoot. These extremely physically creative post-production skills rely on sensory awareness and coordination. Although the visitors to the exhibition marking the end of this research are not invited to explicitly produce sounds themselves, their individual bodies are tributaries to similar sentience as well as cultural boundaries. Partaking in the exhibition involves experiences of moving through sound, retrieving and creating emotional memories from sound as well as being culturally bounded by sounds.
2.4 Creative practice and artistic outcomes
Both individual experiences and subjectivity often forge expectations about the spatial origins of sonic events (Truax, 2001). In the context of this research, sonic activity regulates a person’s inner spatiality: human sensitivities to sound refine our physical and emotional relationships to both our immediate and distant environments. As participants in a major global creative industry, cinema sound designers have the ability to fence in, and off, humans’ experiences of the world. Covering three distinct spaces, the exhibition’s design aims to bring attention to the globalisation of sounds in local contexts, the degree of human physical habituation to such phenomena and our expectation of daily audio-visual feed and stimulus.
This empirical practice-based research relies on its artifacts, which are made of, or extracted from coenesthetic states thus reflecting the lived experience of their creators. Martin Siefkes’s notion of artifacts includes transience such as the sound of someone walking, as well as events, projections and texts (2012, p. 63). The element of transience is appropriate to evoke the melding of coenesthesia and creative practices as they interweave in the exhibition space. Means and objects are inter-relational and inter-changeable: they are lived matter experienced by all participants.
The conceptual framework and associated methodology to collect and interpret data contribute in reconciling different states of lived silences in and outside movie theatres: felt, inaudible, audible, produced, sought and dismissed. The devising and curating of an exhibition is an evolving physical process leading towards an embodied phenomenological approach to knowing. An exhibition allows another connection to the sound of silences: a coenesthetic exploration of silences that are felt. An exhibition is a space in which artifacts
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reciprocally interact with an audience: it is a staged and structured event that is experienced in its totality. Dictionary entries describe an experience as the content of a perception regarded as independent of whether the apparent object actually exists as well as the ‘totality of the cognitions given by perception; all that is perceived, understood, and remembered’ (The Macquarie Dictionary Online, 2012).
For a visitor’s moving body, even of the sitting kind, a sensory overlap unfolds narrative interpretations. To visit an exhibition of any kind is a somatic experience that alters aesthetic appreciation and allows a visitor’s memory, perception and imagination to coexist (Annamma & Sherry, 2003, p. 278). Each gallery space of the end of the study exhibition generates its own peculiar psychoacoustic properties that influence all sorts of listening experiences. The proposed exhibition is a site-specific experience even though it will not morph the space into an interactive or ‘a representational element in the artwork’ (Campesato, 2009, p. 28). Sounds or visuals will not be the triggers of interactive interface, such as motion sensors and the like, between the space and its visitors. Rather, members of the public are invited to follow a perambulatory path through the gallery spaces and let their bodies find their own way to mediate familiar and unfamiliar soundscapes.
The design of the space is a metaphor for the ‘idealised’ creative path of a narrative movie soundtrack, from script to sound then to audio-visual product. It occupies three distinct gallery spaces ‘en enfilade’. It is the physical progression from space to space that defines the site’s narrative, its relationship to the participants’ soundtracks, as well as to the atmospheric sounds and to the 2D components exposed on the walls. The display is composed of written material, audio artifacts, graphic representation of audio-narrative and written narrative, and audiovisual material; it contextualises individual modes of living with and within sonic environments. To some extent, the kinetic experience of moving through sound matter is linear: the succession of different spaces invites the audience to move forward from one space to the next without backtracking. This experience offers a sharpening of the senses starting with visual imagination (the reading of the script), auditory perceptions (environmental sound), auditory imagination (cinematic soundtracks) and haptic sensations transmitted by the sensitivity of the participants (feeling the sounds through headphones or other display).
Sonic familiarity can be experienced when moving in the first space of the exhibition, gallery One, while immersed in environmental soundtracks recorded on the
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Southern Cross University Lismore campus. The two environmental soundtracks of different lengths present in that first area of the exhibition are not played in the last section of the exhibition, the projection space (gallery Three). This last step in the navigation is a space dedicated to the audio-visual projection of the different filmic assemblages previously mentioned. The goal of this experiential exhibition is twofold. Firstly, a coenesthetic encounter that involves sound, visual and haptic stimulations that contribute to a holistic body experience. The second goal is for visiting participants to perform personal assessment of contextual narrative silences. The choice of a title for the exhibition has been a progressive journey: from ‘Inaudible Visions’ to ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. ‘Inaudible Visions’ was concerned with the cultural perception of sound as an added element to visual information. ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’ brings to the fore the potential of silences to ground different perceptual modes of sound awareness, including vision.
The floor plan and its associated descriptive images attest of the design intention and experiential potential of the space. Entering in gallery One and exiting in gallery Three, individuals are invited to participate in the chronological dismantlement of a professional creative process from the viewpoint of cinema sound designers.
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Figure 2-10: Ambulatory floor plan of exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’, March 2013, Ballina (artist’s impression)
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2.5 Analysis
David Howes clearly states that ‘ …the new sensory anthropology focuses not on the measurement of the senses, but rather on their meanings and uses as understood and enacted in specific cultural contexts’ (Howes, 2006, p121). While they are descriptive methods, ethnographies do not preclude phenomenological approaches of data interpretations. There are no set templates for sensory analysis other than the suggestion that a sensory ethnographic analysis is a process of abstraction ‘which serves to connect the phenomenology of experienced reality into academic debate’ (Pink, 2009, p. 120). As texts, this study’s creative outputs enable a reflection of lived experiences in sound and the script that was provided sets silence as a phenomenological space for extensive listening. As both audio and visual components were produced independently, the superposition of these elements departs from the traditional cinematic narrative and subsequent textual or cognitive interpretation.
In the context of my project, the physical coexistence of audio and visual materials generates asynchronicity in some of the compiled assemblages. For the sound creators, these results create fresh perceptual memories on the basis of an unexpected visceral, sensorial and emotional experience, thus providing a different insight on the written story. The subsequent interviews/conversations with the sound makers concentrate on their individual practices and unveil some aspects of their lived relationship with sound. A particularity of the study is that, instead of executing a commercial product, the participants were creating interpretative audio pieces that had to satisfy their own physicality and subjectivity. The research materials are considered as texts evocative of specific creative processes that depart from common professional practices of cinema sound design. Although these creations do not have commercial applications, they are nevertheless irreducible from their creators’ experiences of being in the world and part of a cultural system.
With the use of the term ‘Sensorial Ethnography’, I am referring to the definition given by Howes and his stance on the validity of this method and the relevance to this research: at its core, my study is an ethno-phenomenological enquiry that is organic in nature. Although data is collected along the way, its interpretation, and subsequent exhibition, did not conform to a rigid format and a set chronology. The analysis of the interviews, for example, started prior to individual collection and evolved prior, during and
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after these occurrences. Face-to-face conversations became an evolving process intertwining literature, professional practice, personal anecdotes and the researcher experience.
To broaden the interpretation of the data and avoid a totally objective description of creative outputs, systematic semantic and/or numerical coding have been dismissed along the way. Although the exegesis points to the existence of quantitative data, I suggest that the quality of a life in sound is related to physical aptitudes that are poorly understood. This project aims to suggest the underlying structures that fuel the experiential creativity of a specific community focused on sonic awareness. Scientific methods are mostly irrelevant to the sonic quality of a person’s life and interpretative narration provides the means to humanise mechanical coding, be it numerical or semantic. The outcome of this research is partially ‘undecided’: insights, observations, reflections are dynamics that I am, as a participating researcher, in the process of merging through an experiential display. The research areas that I aim to explore do not involve ‘new technologies’, reliance on mechanical description or sophisticated methods of digital analysis. As well, the object of the research, acoustic ecology, and its means, cinema sound, do not provide any element of ‘disinterested standpoint’ (Candy, 2011, p. 37). The evolving relationship between practice and theory is interactive and interwoven thus constituting the research journey.
2.6 Research journey
The practice-based approach of the study addresses the propensity to use recorded sound material mostly as a basis for written ethnographic purposes. Samuels concludes that a shift in the notion of aurality led by consideration of soundscapes and sound art for ethnographic purposes would ‘partner anthropology about sound with anthropology in sound’ (Samuels, Meintjes, Ochoa, & Porcello, 2010, p. 339). In her definition of sensory ethnography, Sarah Pink states that ‘ethnography is a process of creating and representing knowledge (about society, culture and individuals) that is based on ethnographers’ own experiences’ (Pink, 2007, p. 18). The researcher’s act of recording and sound making would have as much significance as the written interpretations of the products obtained. This research attempts to apply this paradigm and add a participative dimension to the techniques of collecting data and the sensory practice of being in sound. The collection of data has no historical or archival purpose other than artistic display as my interest resides in the creative
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process of all participants making sound from written signs to generate visceral and affective experiences.
This study aims to incite experimentation in order to question sonic awareness and has educational properties. As advised, I started my research on the assumption of a chronological distinction between stages of inquiry: definition of a question, ‘fieldwork’, data collection and interviews, analysis of content, written exegesis, creative production and artistic display. This progression is not as clear-cut as it had been thought. Creative processes intertwine and a phenomenological approach is not a search for an objective truth in the outside world but rather a personal experience lived out ‘within the paradoxical certainty/uncertainty of everyday life’ (Welch, 2001, p. 70). In the light of her own experience, Robyn Barnacle argues that a research process is not based on a succession of ideas followed by methodological concepts producing outcomes (2001, p. 9) but rather relies on a cycle that revolves around the unfolding of thought process. It is this process that is in the making and will be pursued, as innovation relies on methods that cannot always be pre- determined.
The above is especially true to my progressive study and to the organic manner of its evolution. Whereas previous research experiences have been solitary, organic and self- experiential, this current project was entirely reliant on others’ lives in sound. To glimpse into others’ lives in sound, and discover perspectives on their existence has been, all along, the goal and driver for my research. However, avoiding my own prejudices about the sonic activity motivating this enquiry has proven difficult because of its physical repercussions and the ‘ingrained’ capacity of my body to reject some sonic frequencies. To some extent, this personal factor was the only predictable element of the study. The objects of study are the propensity of others to live in sound, the expectations of mindfully controlling the physical affectation of sound and the cultural habituation of sounds that belong to contemporary living. The unpredictability inherent in human collaborations, professional practice, subjective interpretation, artistic displays and academic findings motivate and fuel this inquiry.
The research has involved multiple kinds of interactions covering dynamic aspects of sonic activity in a framework sketched by individuals’ lives and creative endeavours. In June 2010 I gave a presentation introducing the research and aspects of its data collection at the annual conference of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (Koli, Finland). Two members
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of the public spontaneously offered to create soundtracks based on Roger Monk’s script. Anthony Magen, landscape architect and sound artist, and Nick Antonio, Associate at Arup and Acoustics Los Angeles Group leader, found merit in the concept and its creative aspects. Nick Antonio had never recorded sound to that effect or used the sound editing program installed in his computer. The day after the presentation Nick provided me with a soundtrack, having found the experience enjoyable and interesting. Anthony Magen and Nick Antonio’s soundtracks are not part of the exhibition’s artifacts. However the circumstances of their impulsive creations testify to the potential integration of imagination with the qualities of lived soundscapes.
It has been a privilege to approach members of a specific community dedicated to sound at large and who apply their knowledge to the particular purpose of contributing to the narrative sensory experiences of many. The dedication and passion of members of the cinematic community is well known: to make a movie is a great collaborative adventure. I had few doubts, as a researcher and creative practitioner, that passion and professionalism are essential factors when it comes to willingness in sharing knowledge. Although this stance might have appeared irrational and naive to some, it is my belief that the backbone of research is humans’ propensity to share knowledge and propagate it outside its usual channels of diffusion.
Prior to the beginning of the research, apart from scriptwriter Roger Monk, no participants were known to me. A brief encounter with local sound designer Michael Worthington took place very early in the research. No other contacts other than electronic ones were made prior to receiving participants’ creative works. Face-to-face contacts were in the form of the open-ended interviews after receipt of the artifacts. This anonymity confirmed the integrity of the process, as there were no emotional involvements between researcher and participating sound designers prior to receiving creative data. Conversations with ten creative participants have been memorable for the generosity of spirit shared by passionate individuals representative of a creative community often poorly acknowledged outside, and surprisingly, inside the cinematic industry.
The creative and emotional involvement of all participants demonstrates how an experiential approach to a specific stage of the creation of a film soundtrack can reflect human perceptual knowledge of contemporary lives in sound. As a first curatorial experience, the project was at times daunting: how does one give justice to works
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altruistically created for the occasion by unknown and trustful individuals? A main concern was to find the appropriate setting and modes of display capable of conveying the general importance of sound, and the works produced by participating sound creators in particular. The duty of care and ethical considerations incumbent on works specifically created by others are paramount to participative collaboration. Although reflecting on conversational exchanges, Paul Sharkey clearly expresses the potency of creative encounters and their influences on my curatorial journey: ‘The outcome of the genuine game is associated with none of the participants and all of them at the same time’ (2001, p. 24).
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Part 2: Intertwining Research Territories
3. Chapter Three: Sonic Sensorium and Cultural Limitations
The light helped me for a little, and then came darkness and, worse still, silence which
pierced my ears like a sword. The machine hums! Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our
blood, and may even guide our thoughts. Who knows!
(Forster, 1954, p. 127)
Introduction
In this chapter, I examine the different perspectives between the way sounds are studied and the way they are inhabited. If there were differences to make between visual and sound perception, it would be in the sense of place and simultaneity that they both convey. Most of the time, though, the privilege of vision is that the distance and source of visually mapped objects can often be accurately estimated and localised. Nevertheless, unless using devices external to the body, one cannot see the place where she/he actually is while looking at the world whereas sonic information positions us at the centre of the experienced world. Visual perception implies attention to objects, and beliefs, even subjective, can grow from visual information. For Casati and Dokic, the study of sound has been neglected over the fascination for cognitive activities linked to visual clues. Without entering the debate on the subjectivity of sound, they rightly question the medium of sound, its presence, causality and properties in relation to notions of sensory perception and the ‘privilege of the visible’ (Casati & Dokic, 2010, p. 1).
For example, in a car the external rear mirror on the driver side gives a widened angle: the vehicles behind seem further than they actually are. Contrastingly the inside rear mirror gives an accurate vision, albeit inverted, of the distance between vehicles. The characteristic of these simultaneous experiences of visual, and sonic, assessment relies on the use of mirrors. If the car behind was to blow its horn and attract the visual attention of the driver of the car at its front, the distance between vehicles perceived through the side mirror of the car ahead might not coincide with the strength of the aural signal coming from
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the back. The sources of some sound events and some frequencies are not always precisely discoverable visually as demonstrated above. However, sound unites realms of visible and vibrational events whereas sight always remains multiple (Serres, 2008, p. 108), and multi- planned. Sonic matter expands the uniqueness of common sensorial territories and coenesthetic states of being in the world at the time of its making.
In terms of spatial awareness the perception of sonic movement is sometimes unreliable. Search for a sonic world led by observation and quest for acoustic differences can impair audio-perceptive capacities. The Doppler effect, for example, relies on the combination of the speed of sound with the simultaneous movement of its source and this alliance contributes to perceptually disturb the appreciation of the sound source. As Alain Badiou suggests, its passage can be interpreted as an event as ‘ “Event” repudiates the present understood as either passage or separation; it is the operative paradox of becoming’ (2007, p. 38).
Experiential awareness varies between individuals but nevertheless influences the social constructs of sonic activity. As a sound is the product of any vibration in air, water, solid that can be perceived ‘inside’ hearing organs, a soundscape of any kind, noisy or silent, is only relevant if the auditor is in the realm of its influence. The ‘ear’ is not the only hearing organ. Humans are active sensory receptors of their surroundings and are equipped with different tools of sonic conduction: bones, skin, flesh and the internal ears. Sonic activation of cellular activity is factual; the spatial dimension of auditory perception refines our social existence and survival techniques. Metaphorically, this chapter takes the readers to the ‘starting block’ of their physical exploration of the three joined galleries that constitute the exhibited outcomes of this research project. In a practical sense, this chapter acts as a sensorial run-down of a few bodily tools at our disposal to navigate sonic spaces and develop awareness of personal listening practices testifying of our experience of being in the world.
3.1 Frequencies and vibrations: escaping the numerical
The vibratory energy of sound has to travel in a medium (air, water, solid, gas or other) in order to achieve transmission. Its motions provoke displacements of molecules and activate changes in air pressure. The scientific data used to gauge the values of sound perceived by an average human are interpreted so to fence perceptual normality. Foucault’s
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assessment of measurability rings true when applied to human relationships with sounds: ‘measurement enables us to analyse things according to the calculable form of identity and difference’ (Foucault, 1994, p. 53). Whereas vision is measured through the reception of light, despite the inherent subjectivity of sound perception, hearing is assessed on the base of the energy expelled by physical vibration.
The repetition per second of the travelling wave constitutes its frequencies and is measured on a scale of Hertz (Hz) as devised in the 19th century. There are different categories of sonic frequencies commonly devised as such: infrasound (below 20 Hz) low frequency (20 Hz to 300 Hz), mid-range frequencies (300 Hz to 6 kHz) high frequencies (6 kHz to 20 kHz) and ultrasonics (over 20 kHz). Loudness is reflected by the amplitude and velocity of the travelling wave; its intensity is measured through a logarithmic scale relative to the ratio of the sound pressure level and expressed in Decibel (dB). Although this scale is based on scientific measures it is also tacitly and arbitrary ruled by the human auditory perception of the quietest sound. Almost by default, ‘zero decibels’ is an arbitrary measure relative to the notion of a presumed common interpretation of sonic signals. This quest for uniformity rarely considers individual abilities and the uniqueness of sonic contexts.
Frequencies and loudness are independent registers of the sound matter and are sometimes thought as being reciprocally inconsequential. However, although their respective measurements are divided, their inter-relations are essential. Taylor gives the example of a change in the amplitude of a 440 Hz tone provoking different reactions: depending on the individual the pitch will seem lower to some, whereas for others it will increase or will be for some even unnoticeable (C. Taylor, 2000, p. 35). Individuals apply personal notions of noise, silence and music voluntarily, or involuntarily. Humans are used to measuring sounds on the basis of their loudness and ensuing pain and giving it a value in decibels. Regardless of the frequencies to which the sound waves reach the auditory apparatus, a loudness of 70 decibels can be pleasant background music to some while the same sound measurement can be physiologically and emotionally excruciating to others.
Directionality of a sonic event is of major importance when assessing audibility as some frequencies can create a sonic envelope that has no discernible source. Low frequencies travel further than higher ones and their resulting ubiquity increases their spatial presence. In terms of vibrations and wavelength, the higher frequency will be faster and its active range shorter than the lower ones. The average hearing capabilities might define the
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social acceptance of sound, but ultimately the physical limitations of each human delimit her or his acoustic experience. Estimates of the damage made to the auditory apparatus offer great discrepancies. An Australian government official pamphlet indicates that hearing can be impaired by exposure to ‘noise’ louder than 75 dB (Australian Hearing, 2010). For some, pain thresholds can start at a loudness of 120 dB decibels, which is the equivalent of a jet taking off at a distance of 50 meters (Truax, 2001).
Environmental physical affects of sound waves rely on different factors: the frequencies and amplitude of the waves, the resulting changes of air pressure, the duration of their travel and the perceptual performance of the living bodies. The human auditory apparatus is able to detect minute changes of air pressure and subtlety of loudness. It is important to differentiate the perception of loudness and frequencies as their semantic interpretation by the public at large regulates many aspects of Western societies, from health to political power. As we all know through haptic experience, loudness does not correlate to the effects of low frequencies: loudness is not the only way for frequencies to propagate and break our personal sense-scape.
Some of the questions surrounding sound perception might reside in the discrepancies of the scales acknowledging the matter of sound; the common reliance on loudness to assess sonic impacts transforms qualitative experiences into narrow technical models focused on the ear organ. Loudness has become the main value to measure sound and at times falsifies a discourse on sound as dynamic and immersive substances. Loudness of some sort is still the major criteria to gauge sound and frequencies. Overall, the numbers of complaints related to low frequencies are increasing but their loudness is still a decisive factor. In an experiment 93% of complainants were affected through their ears by the audible loudness of the frequencies below 50 Hz (Subedi, Yamaguchi, & Matsumoto, 2007, p. 29). Of course some participants to the above study were also able to perceive with their whole body frequencies below 50 Hz.
Most scientific studies focus on the impact of sound on annoyance, stress and loss of concentration in productivity settings (Broner, 1978, p. 1; Cohen, 1980, p. 105). Usually such investigation is set to determine the lowest levels that are audible to an average person with normal hearing. Study groups are often composed of young men supposedly to ensure ‘quasi objective’ results and to avoid ‘emotional’ biases (Leventhall, 2003, p. 12). Nonetheless, much has been written on the physical qualities of sounds and their impacts on
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our health and social fabrics. Since the 1970s multiple scientific studies have explored the gamut of the impacts of sound frequencies on physical and psychological health (Alves- Pereira & Branco, 1999; Broner, 1978; Burns, 1973; Cohen, 1980; M.J Evans & W. Tempest, 1972; Evans, 1976; Gerhardt & Abrams, 2000; Qibai & Shi, 2004; Stansfeld & Matheson, 2003; Uchikune, 2004). Mostly set in laboratories and designed with productivity and workplaces in mind, these studies offer no real consistency in the overall results on the experiential consequences of particular sound exposures.
Socio-economical studies outside the workplace also offer mitigating results (Atkinson, 2006; Benton, 2006; Bull, 2000; Cohen, 1980; Friedmann & Wulff, 1976; Glass & Singer, 1972; Kryter, 1972; Yeowart & Evans, 1974). Sometimes contradicting each other, often without similar modes of investigation, the disparities displayed by these studies show the lack of qualifying tools able to evaluate personal sound perceptions. Most of the time, the description of human behaviour and physical propensity towards sound fell into two audible perceptive categories: ‘normal’ or ‘(over) sensitive’.
‘Normality’ seems associated to quantitative data and sensitivity tend to insinuate an unreliable account of an individual human experience. Quantitative studies on whole-body exposures to infrasound are performed in a specially designed low frequency chamber, and therefore often have poor relevance to lived experiences. Experimental scientific settings have been used to decipher the effects of these frequencies from hermetic test chambers, loudspeaker rooms, pressure chambers and more (Takahashi, Yonekawa, Kanada, & Maeda, 1997). It is still through settings like workforce and productivity that audibility and inaudibility are taken into account. A report to the World Health Organisation concluded that the dB-A scale that is commonly used to measure loudness was not allowing for the complexities of extreme low and high sound frequency. A dB-C weighting would give a better indication on the level of low frequency components. The conjoint use of dB-A and dB-C scales would contribute to a better assessment of sound frequencies and give more precise indication about the potential health effects of lower frequencies (Berglund & Lindvall, 1995, p. 143).
Sensory parameters can be measured to reflect sound relationships to health, environments, personal experiences and social interactions. Composer and original member of the ‘WSP’ Barry Truax succinctly describes the world we live in as resonating in two modes at once: the Hi-fi soundscapes and the Lo-fi soundscapes. As an abbreviation for high
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fidelity, a hi-fi signal is rich in clarity and can be heard effortlessly: a hi-fi environment is not masked or encumbered by noise. By comparison lo-fi signals preclude clarity and the constancy of their emissions can sometimes have analgesic properties: they tend to submerge other signals and spread non-listening habits (Truax, 2008, p. 104). For R. Murray Schafer hi-fi soundscapes denote a pre-industrial era where lo-fi environments testify to post- industrial acoustic soundscapes (1977, p. 272): both categories affect social fabrics and concepts of space. This research aims to bring to the forefront discrepancies in modal awareness to sound. The lack of qualitative data on the physical influence of low-frequency sound reflects the paucity of a qualitative discourse on the power of sound to transform the sensorial body.
The case of low-frequency ‘annoyance’ is particular in the sense that it demonstrates the paucity of expression related to frequencies unused in aural communication although low frequency can ‘intrude into the individuals’ consciousness’ (Manley, Styles, & Scott, 2002, p. 43). ‘Annoyance’ is a dismissive term that excludes individual sensitivity and prohibits medical consideration. The power of resolution of the human brain is an efficient device for environmental detection. However, until coupled with new technologies of frequency detection, the physical effects provoked by some sonic frequencies are quickly relegated to the unusual, the unexplainable, the individual. Some environmental researchers and acousticians, mainly adept in quantitative methods, are nowadays asking that research outcomes include qualitative approaches to acknowledge individuality in understanding the common sound environments (Cowan, 2003, p. 72; Qibai & Shi, 2004, p. 72).
3.2 Sound absorption
Sound is a process, the making of which is the conjunction of fluctuating events. Casati points out that if sound waves occurred at a speed that preclude locative audibility then the traditional notion of sound as auditory event could be in jeopardy (2010, p. 9). For Casey O’Callaghan sound is also ‘the act of one thing moving another’ (2009, p. 27) thus defining sounds as spatio-temporal events that have an origin, are audible through their motion and provoke qualitative changes of different components. If the slowest disturbance of the medium is considered as the threshold of audibility then the position of living bodies during the passage of such energy contributes to perception being circumstantial. In that case, it is the prescient knowledge of a lived experience in places that is the ‘ingredient’ of
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perception. Our bodies respond to these dynamic and borderless forces in unidentifiable ways.
A study on the effects of vibrations on the whole body acknowledges changes in the autonomic nervous system (Uchikune, 2004, p. 137). There have also been some conclusive results about the interference of low frequency on the intellectual capacity of office workers (Persson, Bengtsson, Kjellberg, & Benton, 2001, p. 34). If negative effects in the workplace are partly acknowledged, their reality outside commercially productive environments is often played down. Commercial interests often contest perception of detrimental sound as they maintain that low frequency is not loud enough to provoke hearing loss or long term health problems. It is the case with the range of energies emitted by wind turbines. Expert advice states that ‘infrasound from wind turbines is below the audible threshold and of no consequence’ for humans and wildlife (Leventhall, 2006, p. 34). Many, including the World Health Organisation, refute such claims (Berglund & Lindvall, 1995; Frey & Hadden, 2007, p. 124).
Living bodies are viscerally ingrained ‘with and by’ sounds. Sounds reaching the skin, ears included, can be felt as the lower frequencies vibrate and develop tactile qualities (Schafer, 1977, p. 11). Sound can fill an emptiness that resonates on the ‘walls’ of the sensory surface of the body (Massumi, 2002, p. 14). Environmental consultants report on the lack of long-term studies on the effects of low frequencies, audible or not, on humans and their environments (Cowan, 2003, p. 15). Amongst this range, the frequencies below 50 Hz are most often felt through bone conduction by our complex auditory receptors (Thorn, 2007, p. 38) and by internal organs’ vibrations (Hope, 2009, p. 75). Studies also point out that a large proportion of low frequency components in auditory perception may increase adverse effects on a range of health symptoms.
As an extra-aural, whole-body, sound-induced pathology Vibro-Acoustic Disease (VAD) is often ignored while at the same time being prominent and costly in work place contexts (Alves-Pereira & Branco, 1999). Exposure to frequencies set between 2 and 250 Hz can trigger a range of physical symptoms that include nausea and respiratory alterations (Burns, 1973, p. 346), lethargy, headaches, abdominal pain, nausea, poor concentration and drowsiness (Margaret J. Evans & W. Tempest, 1972, p. 20). Other effects of low frequency emissions can include speech and dexterity impairment, tinnitus, falling sensations, and by extension, sleep deprivation, learning difficulties, stress and depression. Paradoxically
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subjects exposed to similar frequencies wearing only headphones experienced drowsiness and loss of balance at most (Evans, 1976, p. 108). This phenomenon would suggest that the ear has kinaesthetic functions but that the coenesthestic body could react to sound differently.
Being exposed to other tonalities can help expand the range of sensory frequencies and for example increase the possibility of learning other languages (Tomatis, 1991, p. 76). Developing a memory for voicing emitted at low frequencies, mostly by surrounding males, does not incite newborns to prefer male voices; it is the language that they have been submitted to in utero that they will prefer (Gerhardt & Abrams, 2000, p. S29). In The Conscious Ear, Tomatis proposes that sensitivities to frequencies have a relation to language and ethnicity. The ‘ethnogram’ that he devised linked populations to the average frequency band of their language with French hearing between 1000 and 2000 Hz. By contrast North American English hears between 750 and 3000 Hz and the Spaniard one goes as low as 100 Hz to peak at 2500 Hz. Slavic nationalities have even greater sensitivities to very high and very low frequencies and this expands their grasp of foreign languages (Tomatis, 1991, p. 72). The importance of frequencies is also apparent in the expression of emotions. R. Murray Schafer gives the example of the descending frequencies emitted by distressed chicks compared to the ascendency of the frequencies they use to express pleasure calls (Schafer, 1977, p. 31).
Human sound sensitivity is not subjective but is mainly appreciated in ways that require linguistic descriptions and numerical inscriptions. This approach to the evaluation of knowledge pre-supposes that perception includes cognitive interpretation. Edward Casey also defines perception of space as the cultural primacy of the intelligence displayed by a lived body, ‘a creature of habitus’ (Casey, 1996, p. 34). The matter of sound itself, rather than its entirely cognitive interpretation or its measurements, can activate knowledgeable processes. However, awareness of knowledgeable processes is a product that relies on the notion of ‘Affect’ as a pre-conscious state that highlights the uniqueness of the kinetic and kinaesthetic participation of individuals in the activity of native soundscapes.
Affect is a pre-emotional and a-subjective state that allows the body to be part of environments without a hierarchy of sensations and cognitive promotion. Human perceptual sensitivity to action or movement is not defined by the stimuli that reach one organ only, as all traditional organs of reception, nose-ear-eyes-skin, are aware of events happening in and
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outside the body (Gibson, 1966, p. 34). Depending on the material context we are immersed in at any time, we will know instinctively which silence we are breathing, where and how fast we should run or how still our limbs should remain, which sounds should our skin accept or go through. As indicated by the title of this research, human bodies do not offer resistance to the matter of sound, as if porosity was an essential trait of our existence. By ‘insounds’ I suggest a malleable and active space that is not specific to the perception of external or environmental sound. ‘Insounds’ does not rely on ear-ability or tactility: it is a state of being in sounds that is triggered by a physical absorption of sound and results in coenesthetic state generating awareness of space and movement. We rely on vibrations and on the prescience of being ‘insounds’: it has been our survival tool.
The way we experience sound has much to do with the fact that, while absorbing and sensing vibrations, our bodies are aware of infinitesimal fluctuating events. Kraemer et al. have shown that events of auditory silence set in both familiar and unfamiliar environments provoke distinctive auditory cortex activity (2005, p. 158). Equally, there is presence of activation of neurological responses in anticipation of sound detection (Voisin, Bidet-Caulet, Bertrand, & Fonlupt, 2006, p. 277). Brains are wired to listen for pauses, internal signals and out of body auditory stimuli. What we do not hear, our brain is able to bring to life: continuous anticipation can rule the audio-cognitive apparatus. These neuronal queries and responses for tones and pauses could be at the origin of an ‘introspection of missing sensations’ (Sorensen, 2009, p. 131). This neurological activity, which occurs despite the lack of sound amplitude, can reassess differences, if any, between sensations and perception.
3.2.1 Gathering: ears and skin
The inaudible can add other dimensions to the flesh as we become audible through its silent resonance. This silence is only too penetrating for our skin to signal its passage towards our core. It is our skin and bones that can relay minute frequencies populating the world in and around us, and give us the impetus to move forward or away from places. Audibility relies on the skin although it is the inside ear that will primarily modify the orientation of its internal and external skin to sound vibrations. By the fourth month of pregnancy, human ears are the first completed physical sensors to become fully operational, although parts of the ear will take up to two years to mature. The auditory apparatus is of extreme and delicate complexity, made of three distinct parts - inner, middle, external - and
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its precocious development is directly linked to the evolution of the nervous system. Part of the inner ear ‘makes its way into the neural tube’ (Tomatis, 2005, p. 45) which in turn will become the operating nervous system. The inner ear membranous shell acts dynamically in the positioning of our bodies and in the analysis of sound waves.
Hair cells are essential to the analysis of the rhythms and frequencies of sound waves. The outer hair cells are more sensitive to the frequencies that are supposed to be unheard, therefore contradicting the common approach that humans have a limited range of audibility (Salt & Hullar, 2010, p. 19). The muscles of the middle ear have also a very important protective function as their voluntary, or involuntary, contractions can lower sounds’ loudness by 30 decibels. These muscles that enclose the bones of the middle ear have to act in synergy in order to provide optimal hearing and bodily balance as what is true for the ear is true for the whole body: ‘each one reveals the other’ (Tomatis, 2005, p. 53).
Physiologically our auditory apparatus can be reached by all sonic frequencies. Lower frequencies seem to act more on the visceral system. The most frequent and rapid changes of air pressure result in a higher pitch than the human ear apparatus will seemingly accord itself to. It is commonly thought that a perceptive range set between 20 and 20 000 Hz, subject to individual variations, is the perceptive norm. Some auditory discomfort seems limited to high pitch sounds between 2,000 to 5,000 Hz: chalk or nails on blackboard, angle grinder and female screams involve ‘a distress signal from the amygdala to the auditory cortex’ (Sedley et al., 2012). Jurgen Altmann notes that although frequencies lower than 170 Hz can trigger tissue to ‘behave as viscoelastic fluid’, it is the softness of the ear and the lungs for example that would absorb rather than reflect sonic energies (2001, pp. 181-182). The ear transcends its assumed limitations: the ear is skin and by nature is a perceiver of vibratory ‘inaudibility’.
Ears are far from passive receptors of the world around us. Their mechanics make them at the same time receptors and transmitters. What we name ‘listening’ could be a coincidental confluence of body memories and phenomenological expectations. Distinctions have been made between hearing and listening as if hearing was a product of instinct while listening would be generated by cognition. Pre-natal audio discrimination is an important factor on the potential postnatal linguistic abilities. Michael Merzenich suggests that a conjunction of environmental factors may potentially affect an infant’s brain plasticity and contribute to the rise of autism (Merzenich, 2008). Experiments on rats exposed to constant
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white noise show that this sort of stimulus affects the ability to differentiate between clear and muddy auditory signals and impacts on learning abilities (Rubenstein & Merzenich, 2003, p. 257). These environmental influences would match R. Murray Schafer’s definition of lo-fi environment as these signals mask clear signals (1977, p. 272). This approach gives weight to the importance of sensory data that is sometimes unaccounted for in the quest for perceptual measurement.
For R. Murray Schafer ‘hearing’ starts when the lower audible sounds become tactile vibration (1977, p. 11). John Cage defines listening as ‘an attention to the activities of sounds’ (Cage, 1961, p. 10); this use of the plural would imply that listening imposes distinctions between sonic events, audible or not. Hard science and notions of silence could give us reasons to ignore the difference between hearing and listening. For Jean-Luc Nancy, listening is ‘an intensification and a concern, a curiosity or an anxiety’ (2007, p. 5), all effects that have potential phenomenological and coenesthetic repercussions. In the context of this study, the distinctions between states of listening and hearing are not as important as the notions of audibility and non-audibility; the body hears and our behaviours, voluntary of not, are not always only linked to tympanic activity. Audibility could be a skinful grabbing of sounds that are attended to by the interpretative ear.
3.2.2 Resonating: bones
With its average two square meters, the skin is our main organ of perception. Its flexible, heat-able and non-permeable surface enables a capture and a transmission of material information without reducing them to visual frameworks. Our engagement with sounds and spatial balance relies on the medium in which we are immersed; it defines our notions of immediate spatiality. Whole-body bone transductions are an essential part of our terrestrial somatic apparatus and ear architecture as they progress towards the three smallest bones of our body (ossicles). The way our skeleton moves affects reception and transmission of sound. The soles of our feet transmit energies vertically to the bones of our ears. Michel Serres notes that our sense of hearing relies on the ascension of vibrations through our bone structure, from the soles of our feet to our inner ear and its regulatory balancing task (2008, p. 142).
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The nature and activation of stimulus depend on environmental contexts: the ecologies of the world around us influence proprio-perception. For example, vibrations and their frequencies travel differently according to the material they pass through: they go faster in water than air but, underwater, skull-bone conduction is an important sensor. Underwater vibrations captured by the skull’s bone structure can be distributed to the whole body, finding a direct access to the inner therefore bypassing left or right ear localisation (Helmreich, 2007, p. 624). Hearing sound through bone conduction starts in the fluid environment of the prenatal state and allows perfect binaurality as both ears perceive identical signals. After birth, this equalising faculty is lost and airborne conduction privileges sound localisation (Gerhardt & Abrams, 2000, p. 22).
Tomatis notes that a posture for listening relies on the position of the spinal column in order for lived bodies to become ‘actively involved’ with sound (2005, p. 86). He equally claims that bones are not only receptors of frequencies: their resonating capabilities and the body’s posture are the active broadcasters of our voices’ frequencies (Tomatis, 2005, p. 89). The following illustration attests to bones and internal organs’ sonic resonance:
Figure 3-1: Illustration representing the Resonance phenomenon of the human body, extracted from Augoyard and Torgue’s Sonic experience, a guide to everyday sounds (2006, p. 106).
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Hearing impairment can enhance music making. Vibrations and bone conduction allow tones to be felt, a prospect more enticing than the pitch and timbre distortions caused by hearing aids. A deaf music student playing flute showed to be particularly sensitive to low notes that can be felt going all the way through her arms (Fulforda, Ginsborga, & Goldbartb, 2011, p. 460). Bone conduction, resonance, vibrotactile stimulation and muscle memory all contribute to map the flesh. Deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie’s ability to interact with musical instruments relies on vibrations experienced through the floorspace and transmitted to other haptic surfaces of her body. Such vibroacoustic phenomenon seems to be part of human natural biological makeup and can leave long-term memory in the body (Seitz, 2005, p. 427)
3.2.3 Vibrating: cells
Pauline Oliveros describes the sonic envelope of the earth, the sonosphere, as made of resonant frequencies that couple bodies to the earth’s magnetic fields as they feed each other: ‘All cells of the earth and body vibrate’ (Oliveros, 2011, p. 162). A study on the bodily effects of inaudible high frequency and low frequency, singled out or combined, notes the existence of a non-airborne auditory system activating a biological, non-neuronal and intracellular messengers apparatus. The revealed cellular changes to the brain thalamus and brain stem suggest that to base sensory knowledge on airborne sound conduction and the traditional notion of audibility (between 20 Hz and 22 kHz) overlooks important findings, as an ‘unrecognized sensing mechanism’ might exist (Oohashi et al., 2006, p. 344).
It might be on the basis of this ‘universality’ that film music theorist Anahid Kassabian advocates a ‘logic of Affect’ as a tool to comprehend how a state of consciousness apprehends the physical body’s responses to auditory signals and transforms them into cognitive substances. The processed paths would leave traces forming a potential of affective circuits for future perceptions to access emotional and cognitive states. An ‘affective subjectivity’ becomes a contagious response to cultural impositions such as ubiquitous audio-visual material and environmental stimuli (Kassabian, 2010). Such a hypothesis would confirm that although individuals are distinct listeners, the sum of their perceptual beings generates ‘an organismic unity’ influenced by the audibility and non- audibility of their environments, including urban settings. Combined with Kassabian’s proposal of ‘affective subjectivity’, my study’s views on the physicality of silences adds a
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social dimension to individual perceptions and behaviours as ways to generate and propagate ‘raw’ emotions. The loss of distance between listeners and their sonic world fuses those two poles into a unified living entity (Noble, 2003, online): could this unity be, at times, detrimental to our cognitive abilities or could it enhance reasoning?
However, ‘affect’ is not linked to emotions but is the body’s response to stimuli ‘at a precognitive and prelinguistic level’ (Labanyi, 2010, p. 224). Consciousness is not fast enough at registering the impulses absorbed by the body as they are quicker than can be perceived, therefore ‘the entire vibratory event is unconscious, out of mind’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 29). Concurrently, in The Transmission of Affect, Teresa Brennan states that ‘we are not self-contained in terms of our energies’ (2004, p. 6) and that social contexts can define physical states, through musical vibrations for example (2004, p. 71). As stated by Gregory J. Seigworth and Melissa Gregg ‘... affect is persistent proof of a body’s never less than ongoing immersion in and among the world’s obstinacies and rhythms, its refusals as much as its invitations’ (2010, p. 1).
These different views are relevant to this study: the influences of vibrations on the organism are not only restricted to auditory signals and specific parameters based on average. Conjointly, although sound can originate in social contexts and carries social meanings, as movies do, it is foremost a matter that influences the multiple aspects of the body. Nevertheless, the affective response of a body to sonic stimuli can also modify social behaviour.
Although a sensorial body is in ‘the known’ of the influence of environmental parameters, social constructs suggest notions of audibility as ear-ability that are confirmed by visibility. The intellectual dependency on one organ with a visual protuberance eclipses the reliance on the ‘fullskin’ reception of the spherical worlds of sounds. As Amy Coplan investigates bodily ways of knowing the world she suggests that ‘emotional contagion’ between individuals is based on non-cognitive affective response (Coplan & Matravers, 2011, p. 120). The affective responses of many individuals, formed by physiological responses and residues of emotional paths, allow the possibility of all senses to play interconnecting roles with the worlds in and around us.
Michel Serres’s approach reunites these fluid energies between lived bodies, their environments and their inter-communication. For Serres, three worlds of ‘audibility’
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accompany our lives (2008, pp. 106-108). Three realms of sound presence and sound matter are relative to our lives in sound. His understanding provides a useful way to approach sonic worlds from the perspective of the individual human body. A primary source of sound is within us, as at a molecular level our bodies sound and resonate. His reasoning involves a sort of cellular snowball effect as Serres’ secondary source of sounds lies in the natural world and by extension comes from all means and matters that surround lived bodies. His third world of audibility concerns the sound of the collective that has, literally and figuratively, the power of ‘silencing the body, silencing the world’ (Serres, 2008, p. 107).
Serres’s notion of the ‘sound of the collective’ also refers to language, words, the sounds we make ourselves, the voice that submerges a discourse with and within our environment, as well as the variations and chaos occurring in and through ‘noise’. However noise becomes information: the background noise subsides and interferences become constructive out of ‘the molecular chaos’ (Serres, 1982). The sensory dynamics that manifest in the way human bodies perform in their environments are essential to the genesis of modes of inter-communication with the cellular self and others. The manner in which this communication is described varies because its origins often rely on individual accounts.
3.3 Wording vibrations
An important factor in the transformation of listening from the perception of a sound event to its analytical disembodiment of sonic experiences is the advent of electroacoustic modes of reproduction and creation (Droumeva, 2005, p. 164). For R. Murray Schafer the resulting split between a sound source and its electroacoustic reproduction amounts to a state of ‘schizophonia’, a fracture of time and space (1994, p. 273). As a pedagogue, Schafer developed exercises focused on selective listening and sensory awareness. Schafer’s pivotal contribution is that the environment has to be listened to musically, that humans are responsible for its score and for their own listening skills. Music teachers and music therapists are successfully teaching his methods worldwide (Kern, 2007, p. 296). Although Schafer developed an important language of sounds, some have expanded the lexicon of the act of listening and considered the temporality of this phenomenon. As an electroacoustic musician, Barry Truax introduces notions of spatio-temporality and cognition.
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In 1978, composer and member of the World Sound Project Barry Truax consolidated the concept of soundscape by drawing up a multi-disciplinary framework, the acoustic communication model, which allows sound to be a mediator between the environment and its listeners. The framework he devises for listening has two main umbrellas: an everyday listening that focuses on immediate processing of sounds and an analytical listening that involves aesthetics and memory. Everyday listening and analytical listening are the main aspects of the practice of acoustically registering sources and divergences of sound to survey the world around us. They are subdivided into terms of acoustic environments, perceptual content and communicative intent.
In the age of electroacoustics, listening implies an individual decision on the spatial position of the body in relation to sound sources, for example loudspeakers (Truax, 1997). Such transformation of the original relationships between sound and receptors allows technology to tell us how to skin-feel sonic vibrations but it can also impose on us ways to listen to some frequencies of sound. In this regard acoustic environments such as the lo-fi soundscapes of urban settings have a role; it is the modes of the sensorial attention and inattention to the ‘in between’ sounds that can be acknowledged by the skin and transmitted to all.
Although less oriented towards aesthetic and educational dimensions, Truax’s concerns focused on listening quality and clear signals. This proposition of mutual relationship gave new grounds for acoustic ecology and asserted it as an interconnected system. More than 400 different sound states were defined in a cross-referencing scheme that departed from traditional descriptions (Truax, 2001). It is organised by physical descriptive themes: vibration, magnitude, sound-medium interface, sound-environment propagation, and sound-sound interaction. Soundmarks, lo-fi, hi-fi, keynotes, sound signals and other notions of sound behaviours are reinforced. Permutations and assemblage of sonic characteristics are encouraged although the use of the expression ‘sound effect’ is limited to the use and manipulation of sounds for media and sound design (Truax, 2001)
The concepts of listening in search and listening in readiness introduce listeners’ intents and expectations but also the notion of the surrounding space as a communication mediator. The way space affects human behaviour creates social spatiality and adds a dynamic element of aural architecture along navigational, symbolic and aesthetic spatialities (Blesser, 2008). This approach creates interdisciplinary frameworks that mix architecture,
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acoustics, perception, and anthropology in order to create physical spaces responding to inhabitants’ lives instead of inhabitants responding to space. Barry Blesser defines aural surroundings as spatial acoustics and the way listeners experience the space as cultural acoustics (2007, p. 5, italics in text). Both of these presences of acoustic activities interplay with each other as human active intention generates the multi-dimensional spatiality of a place. The anticipation of this confluence makes listening an instrument capable of emitting sound by tuning the voice, for example, to the vibratory reflection of material environments.
A chronological development of terminology signals shifts in understanding of sound. In the 1950s’ accousmatic composer Pierre Schaeffer’s sound object involves physical signals and perceptive intentionality. In the 1970s R. Murray Schafer’s soundscapes introduce notions of clear acoustic communication and aesthetic considerations. ‘Sonic Landscape’ could be a relevant notion as there are almost tri-dimensional synaesthetic qualities to the resonant fabrics emitted by landscapes that infiltrate human porosity. The terrain models the layers of its sounding planes: humidity, altitude, electrical activities, vegetation, material and light sculpt the speed and intensity of sounds that reach the skin and bones of all living species. ‘Soundscape’ is an accessible keyword able to describe human participation to sonic environments in constant states of change. The adaptable concept of soundscapes provided at once awareness and loss of focus on the intrinsic matter of sound itself, its nature, as well as the states and social status it activates. As an expression, ‘soundscape’ has become disproportionate to the creative potential of sounds and the matters that make their presence, or absence, perceptual. The term ‘sonic effect’, claimed by French researchers, gave relevance to all aspects of sound’s paradigms.
In the 1990s, the research team at Centre de Recherche sur l’Espace Sonore (CRESSON) questioned the pertinence of the expression ‘soundscape’ and its relevance for the time (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 11). CRESSON’s work came into existence as the increase of masking sounds in urban environments was diminishing the receptive clarity of significant signals (2006, p. 7). Their research does not assess acoustic ecologies in negative or positive manners but rather focuses on the effects of environmental sound on lived bodies and cognitive capacities: its thematic nomenclature is framed within the disciplines of social sciences, urban studies and applied acoustics. At the centre of their lexicon is the concept of the ‘Sonic Effect’ that allows a broader integration of qualitative and quantitative data.
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CRESSON's enquiry investigates four types of process involved in everyday sound perceptions: spatial (sound marking), interpersonal (sound encoding, semantic), symbolic (perceptions, actions) and interactive (quantifiable interactions of sound itself) (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 8). Augoyard posits sonic signals as having lesser importance than the qualities of their travels, therefore justifying pluri and interdisciplinarity studies of sounds. This proposition adds yet another layer of comprehension to the extent of the reciprocal exchanges between sonic ecologies, lived body, mental processes and spatial knowledge. CRESSON’s approach combines architecture, acoustics, perception, and anthropology in order to create physical spaces responding to inhabitants’ life, instead of inhabitants adapting to sounds moulded by space.
The categories of sound effects devised by CRESSON demonstrate the interconnectivity between materials, spatial contexts, subjective interpretation of the sonic objects and events on the human body. By adding a dimension of physical and mental creativity to all facets of living in sounds, a multi-modal mode of auditory perception can be described and 88 sonic effects ground CRESSON’s nomenclature. Allowing incursions into the transformative capabilities of sound as a physical force provides sensorial and emotional tools: sonic effects ripple to provide lived bodies with felt spatiality. CRESSON’s vocabulary focuses not only on the acts of perception in the context of human interaction but also on the material space that models and frames these exchanges.
A particularity of CRESSON’s lexicon is that each sonic effect refers to an opposite, but complementary, notion of its mechanics and effects. Anamnesis, for example, is a semiotic effect described as ‘an effect of reminiscence in which a past situation or atmosphere is brought back to the listener’s consciousness, provoked by a particular signal or sonic context’ (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 21). All senses can trigger an effect of anamnesis. Its counterpart, the effect of phonomnesis, is a mental activity and stands for ‘a sound that is imagined but not actually heard’ (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 85).
CRESSON's approach allows both effects to be consistent with the ‘same’ experience of sound: anamnesis could trigger a phonomnesis and the reverse path could be true. For example, walking the noisy streets of New-York could induce the reminiscent anamnesic effect of watching the film Manhattan (Allen, 1979), all the while provoking the phonomnetic effect of ‘internally hearing’ George Gershwin’s 1924 tune Rhapsody in Blue used to great effect in that movie. The phonomnetic effect of internally hearing the same
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musical score can induce memories of walking the streets of Manhattan. Anamnesis, although mostly subjective, also allows ‘shared backgrounds over which individual perceptions are laid’ (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 23).
Another of CRESSON’s sonic effects, ubiquity, involves the impossibility to localise sound and is related to the effect of delocalisation which implies a conscious realisation that a knowledge of that sound’s source is an illusion. The localisation of a sound source can lead to disinterest and the sound becomes voluntarily inaudible, invisible, atonal and imaginatively silent while it triggers a process that Augoyard & Torgue refer to as the Debureau effect (2006, p. 37), a term originally devised by Chion. Curiously, when applying this effect into a cinematic context, Michel Chion focuses its impact on the vocal narrative instead of applying it to atmospheric information (2009, p. 474).
Transposed onto a cinematic canvas CRESSON’s interpretation of the Debureau effect can become an expression of a new silence. Study participant John Kassab gives the example of a heartbroken person walking through a city, oblivious to sounds and, as we experience her/his emotions, the amplitude of the sounds of cars and trams can fade away although we are still watching the source of their sonorous emissions (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Jean-François Augoyard indicates that although ubiquitous sounds exist and are from everywhere and nowhere, the ubiquity effect only occurs when we actively look and fail to identify its source. If the source of the sound can be visually located or logically explained, ubiquity disappears (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 131). Augoyard does not seem to consider that vibrations and tactile enquiry could lead us to the source of a ubiquitous emission. According to Augoyard the effect of ubiquity also has the propensity to ‘open the way to the metaphysical dimension of sound’ (2006, p. 130). Metaphysical approaches also appear in Schafer’s discourse, notably with the Ursound ‘from which the sound world itself is born’ (LaBelle, 2006, p. 204).
3.4 Soundscapes: positioning the body
Soundscapes research has focused on the way to represent, describe and classify contextual audibility. Each soundscape has its own meaning and language that speaks about our interaction with our surroundings (Westerkamp, 2000, online). R. Murray Schafer classified sounds by physical characteristics (acoustics) or perception (psychoacoustics),
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functions or meanings (semiotics and semantics) or emotional and affective qualities (aesthetic) (1977, p. 133). These categories are set in sand as they influence each other according to the complex and multi-modal activity of listening used by an individual at any particular time and context. The main aim of Acoustic Ecology is to educate the public at large about sound but more importantly about the audible sounds not listened to in many surroundings. Sounds activate inter-sensory processes that can ground individuals in space by absorption of sonic motions without a need for locative visualisation (Feld, 1996, p. 99).
As not all sonic environments have distinguishable or visible sources, Schafer devised pedagogic methods to re-educate our organs of hearing and develop awareness to clarity, or muddiness, of sounds. Steven Feld and R. Murray Schafer’s works are along the same line as they both define senses of place and relation to nature, a space where ubiquitous lo-fi signals are scarce. The sound-fullness of urban environments and their vibrations can be allocative, often described as atmospheric, as airborne, whereas more often the ubiquity of their propagation is through soil, matter, skin and bones.
Steven Feld’s original study focused on the influence of birds and soundscapes on the music and cultural mesh of the Kaluli tribe of Papua New Guinea. Feld expands his enquiry to the sensuality of emplacement, the body of the land, as absorbed and framed by a human body (1994, online). He introduces the notion that the characteristics of natural environments are having direct consequences on sensory stimuli and language: the limited visual field experienced under the rain forest canopy affects the matter of sound and its understanding. To think cross-culturally and inter-linguistically, about sonic events and acoustic ecology as processes and sums of multi-sensorial events might define new communication and awareness models. In a Chinese study on blood pressure and heart rate and subjective feelings while exposed to low frequency noise, one question to the participants was, ‘Do you feel windy?’ (Qibai & Shi, 2004, p. 72). Correctly translated or not, using words that qualify natural elements to define somatic states indicates the limited scope that some languages have to express a range of sensations.
Without entering the realm of Asiatic philosophies on the mind of the body, it is a fact that the physicality of soundscapes and sonic effects can mutate into sonic mindscapes that in turn affect social interactions. Bruce Johnson, a founder of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, notes that in Finnish the greeting ‘Mitä kuuluu’ means ‘What do you hear?’ and one of the words for ‘us’ means ‘those who hear the same things’ (2003, online).
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The weather and half-yearly darkness in this part of the world might alter sonic information and modify embodiment of time and space. These sorts of observations are not anecdotal. They reflect the way sounds travel to unify us as well as their physical power to modify social structures and create cultural distinctiveness. Equally, the sound mapping of a city based on the social trajectory of tinnitus sufferers gave effective indications of the contrasting use of urban contexts when health relies on spatial audition and vibratory activity. Rowland Atkinson describes urban spaces as sensory narratives where the ‘sound sources are by no means random’ (2006, online).
Soundmarks, as suggested by R. Murray Schafer, are sounds having unique qualities able to characterise communities, tones that can be re-interpreted to fit a temporality and geographies (1994, p. 274). Distinctive bells in different villages or industrial sounds linked to specific locations are noticed. Barry Truax emphasises that, once defined, and because of their historical uniqueness, soundmarks should be preserved (2001). Amongst the proliferation of noises, the successful preservation of pastoral soundmarks such as waterfalls, geysers and the like can be precarious. A soundmark also reflects human activities and the intrusiveness of chainsaws and snowmobiles in Arctic countries might question notions of natural soundscapes. These new acoustic elements, as sounds ‘out of place’, reflect the activities of a community in a specific location and confront sensory, as well as cultural, expectations. Per Hedfors notes that the idea of hearing original natural, and picturesque, soundscapes might have to become designed experiences requiring planning (2003, p. 30).
Hildegard Westerkamp is confronted by her own expectations of this problem of sonic identity, and sense of place, in the urban noise and impersonal sounds of Brasilia. The sound of crickets provided a rhythm that solved the ambiguity: the sonic identity of the city materialised as ‘the sounds that have kept my ears curious and exercised’ (Westerkamp, 2002, online). Such participative interpretation involves the body as a filter and the mind as an active soundmaker of ‘locative nature’. Multisensory activity, personal history, embodied memories of acoustic environments all amalgamate to form individual frames of listening that shape vibratory experiences.
In the context of the creative outcomes of this project, the first exhibition space (gallery One) proposes listening to silences as part of individual experience, previously enacted or not, of ubiquitous listening. The environmental tracks that provide the sonic atmospheres are ‘sound catches’, snippets of time walked around a specific place, the
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Lismore campus of Southern Cross University. Visually, the skin of the campus is bucolic, green most of the year and leafy. Sonically, the rhythms of its breath do not match the quietude of its outlook. Although sounds of air-conditioning are commonplace, each piece of equipment, at any given time, has unique qualities corresponding to the weather and physical confinement that inform their mechanical activities.
Listening to apparent banalities absorbed by our organism also confers analytical listening as the traditional aspect of acoustically registering and surveying the world around us. The matter that is audible can be subdivided in terms of acoustic environments, perceptual content and communicative intent. Feeling vibrations, listening in readiness or in search, as well as applying the modes of causal, semantic and reduced listening (Chion, 1994, pp. 25-32), result in silences as potential spaces for ‘expanded listening’ (LaBelle, 2010, p. 54). However, the embodiment of silence as a non-conscious background transforms silence into a ‘sound in potential, unactualized’ instead of a space awaiting conscious attention and analytical discourse (Goodman, 2010, p. 191). To listen, as to tend an ear (‘entendre’) or a body, involves becoming a symbiotic element of sonic territories that are in perpetual motion.
Conclusion
There are more concerns with potential physical deafness occasioned by prolonged exposure to loudness than with other multi-sensorial capabilities (Hicks, 1981, p. 43). Although extremely accurate and visibly distinguishable, the audio apparatus is not the only channel of sonic awareness. This is often ignored because visual assessment of ears’ mechanism can inform an individual’s capacity to conduct human communication that might be impaired by the evolving nature of soundscapes. In the 30 years since R. Murray Schafer’s The Tuning of the World, a combination of atmospheric music and industrial hum has contributed to create a ‘pervasive ubiquity’, an ubiquity that is rapidly spreading, and that is setting the scene for homogenised cultural patterns.
Unruly dynamic systems such as urban soundscapes are far from bucolic Utopia. Hi- fi and lo-fi are at times losing their distinctive edge and have the tendency to merge. While the physical impact of the ‘auditory sounds of modernity’ is acknowledged, the extent of their ubiquitous cultural and physical influences is barely noticed. As well as being listened
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to and meaningfully deciphered, an acoustic place is viscerally sensed and ‘suffuses the entire fixed or moving body’ (Feld, 1996, p. 97). Cooperation between senses can increase the evocative power of audible manifestations and can create a dynamic of perception, anticipation, remembrance and meaningful event (Cranny-Francis, 2008, p. 10). These sonorities can be present in cinematic soundtracks that must accommodate an experience of acoustic ecologies of the everyday and provide a representation of ‘anticipated banality’.
Paul Carter questions the relevance of Acoustic Ecology as a functional and transformational discipline if aesthetics and functionality are disjointed (2003, p. 13). Clarity of sonic signals, idealisation, nostalgia and perfect harmony were very much at the base of the initial core for the movement’s genesis. The social and pedagogic impacts of the Acoustic Ecology movement are tangential but also contribute to a homogenisation of thought on what sound should be aesthetically or semantically. The quest for harmony and a balanced acoustic ecology could become almost dogmatic at times. Michael Noble rightly wonders if the studies of Acoustic Ecology ‘simply desire the sounds of waterfalls or long for a pseudo biblical return to the Garden of Eden’ (2003, online).
Two paths emerge: one privileges the effects of interactions between materials and humans, while the other focuses on the subjective interpretation, usually musical, of an auditory event, visible or not. Their common ground is the need for an experiential participation in acoustic environments that would be unconcerned by a semantic listening prevalent in a visual culture. Even though their research on architecture and sonic urbanity is scientific, thorough and rigorous, Augoyard points out that ‘if measurement by numbers might be important to be taken seriously, it is not always necessary and is never sufficient to convince’ (Augoyard, 2005, p. 22). That statement supports this research perspective on the quantifying of sound as a poor reflection of its presence and affective capabilities.
An interconnecting element joining life experiences, memories, social interactions and body sensations is emerging. Sound artist and composer Darren Copeland sums up the missing link as a lack of knowledge about the potential associative properties of sound and the poor consideration for ‘the connection between sounds and other levels of experience, for instance the emotions’ (Copeland, 2000, p. 24). There is a need to acknowledge our interactive bodily permeability to sonic activity through activities unrelated to numerical scales and academic discourses. CRESSON’s lexicon does not include ‘silence’, although it defines it as ‘ubiquitous’ (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 134), whereas Schafer finishes the
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introduction to his seminal book with the suggestion that ‘All research into sound must conclude with silence’ (1994, p. 12). R. Murray Schafer’s nomenclature includes some musical terms such as the ubiquitous ‘keynotes’ that do not have to be consciously listened to. Keynotes of a given place, such as the discreet roar of urbanity, contribute ‘to outline the character of men living among them’ (Schafer, 1977, p. 9). Could the creation and diffusion of cinematic silences exemplify the ‘new silences of the everyday’ and increase awareness to physical sonic absorption?
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4. Chapter Four: Ecologies of Silences
We are healed better by leaving noise behind than by diving into language.
(Serres, 2008, p. 85)
Introduction
From conception to death sound has reflective qualities: it situates us in the multidimensional world, be it inside the confine of the uterus or in the ‘outside world’. In Chapter Three, the inherent qualities of a contemporary native space manifests as an assemblage: place and time articulate the soundscape, frequencies and loudness define its configuration and bodily affects. In that chapter, I presented humans as active sensory receptors of their surroundings, who are all equipped with similar tools of sonic conduction: bones, skin, ears, cells. Chapter Three examined the perceived invisibility of sounds according to their physical qualities, notably their frequencies. By using the example of frequencies, chapter Three pointed to the disparity between the richness of sonic bodily experiences and the paucity of tools, other than visual traces, able to disclose these experiences. Chapter Four discusses the physical presence and activities of silence as tactile elements able to enrich aspects of cultural experiences as well as of everyday life. However, this study does not focus on psychoacoustics of silence but rather privileges silences as embodied listening tools and discards musical language as criteria of physical awareness to soundscapes.
In his seminal book, Audio-Vision, Sound on Screen, Michel Chion writes:
Every place has its own unique silence, and it is for this reason that for sound recording on
exterior locations, in a studio, or in an auditorium, care is taken to record several seconds of
the "silence" specific to that place.
(1994, p. 5)
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Chion adds that these recordings are mostly used ‘behind’ dialogues. These words open the possibility for the sounds of the everyday to reveal spaces, places, and temporality and carry a sense of being in the world. They also situate the action of language as an interruption of the fluidity of the sounding worlds. His comments position environmental silence not only as an absence of voice but also as a rich living terrain at the core of interactions between humans and the world around them. By suggesting the neologism ‘insounds’ as a human sonic realm to which silences provide tactility, I depart from the ontological notion that silence is only a mental construct. In the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’ I propose an embodiment of silences as factual states rather than contemplative states. Towards the end of this chapter, my understanding of lived soundscapes will include the creation of cinematic silences as soundspaces.
4.1 Noise
There is little doubt that pastoral and bucolic silences are fast disappearing but contemporary silences have noisy components that are testaments to human diversity and associated behaviours. Concluding the first edition of The Tuning of the World, Schafer proposed that all studies on sound should end with the notion of silence, not its traditional Western incarnation of death and dread but rather ‘the positive silence of perfection and fulfillment’ (Schafer, 1977, p. 262). Such perfect but equally approximate ‘geographical’ silence can be reached through contemplation, and presumably individuals in a natural setting would achieve the best outcome. In that case, natural setting refers to a bucolic one, a notion that does not suit my understanding of nature as locative and omni-sounding. In contemporary settings there is an underlying expectation that silence has an aura of purity and is linked to places associated with intellectual pursuits such as monasteries, scientific laboratories, libraries and the like. In these contexts, silence seems a created concept, a voluntary act by individuals but one that can involve others and necessitates their vocal immobility. Proximal silence then becomes ‘a place of growth and not of escapism, a restorative of the unknown’ (Prochnik, 2010, p. 289): a mute self-listening despite sonic interferences.
There are different ways to estimate the presence of silences. Usually absence, or interruptions, of sound or noise are criteria for an attainment of silence. In a pragmatic way Barry Truax describes silence as the theoretical absence of sound (2001). Traditional studies
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of acoustics are based on measuring units that disturb the primacy of silence by cutting to its matter: the loudness of clocks, trains, planes and the pace of someone’s shoes in the corridor are all incisions of matter that we built by ‘digging around it’. For John Cage, the idea of a possible acoustic silence is aligned to the omnipresent sound of urban ‘traffic’ (1991). We can intentionally flatten what surrounds sound causalities, isolate elements of the visual soundscapes to the point of altering their rhythms. R. Murray Schafer regards the world as a musical composition that should be listened to as such, ‘within the comprehensive dominion of music’ (1994, p. 5, italics in text). Contemporary acoustic environments have evolved, and keep evolving, largely due to the industrial and electrical revolutions. New vibrations have shifted the tonal centre on which all sounds may be measured (Schafer, 1977, p. 98). The growth of environmental sounds through consumer goods could mean a homogenisation of cultural differences into a uniformity dominated by western technology and economic structures (M. J. Epstein, 1993).
Commercial imperialism has found a ubiquitous voice at times unrelated to loudness but rather to the quality of sounds: both the two-stroke engine of a leaf blower and the low frequency air exhaust of a tunnel can be heard from a considerable distance. These two examples add different qualities and frequencies to our sonic environment but they will usually be assessed on the force of their emission and the sense of proximity or reach that they give. Their intrinsic qualities are being over-simplified: ‘loud’ and ‘silent’ are considered as perceptive truths and so are ‘noise’ and ‘silence’. Due to its physical roots ‘noise’ is an ethical problem that demands perpetual communal and individual reassessment.
The noun noise derives from nausea and seasickness but the verb, to noise, is relevant to the conduction of information (The Oxford English Dictionary, 1989, p. 466). Noise produces interference, distortion and incomprehension (Brophy, 2008, p. 426). For French economist Jacques Attali noise is also physical pain applied to the body (1985, p. 27). Both low and high frequency signals for example can drill deeper than the skin and find their way into the body and silence the mind. A judgment on the presence of noise is of a personal nature and the consequences that noise implies better define its existence. Sound designer Tom Heuzenroeder, creative participant to this study, describes noise as ‘ typically something that I get tired of hearing’ (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). Equally, noise can be a sonic, visual and biological innovator: ‘there is always the potential for noise within a system; there is always the potential for change’ (M. Thompson, 2012, p. 16, italics in text).
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Attali’s adage that ‘Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise’ is applicable to all realms of life (1985, p. 3). Noise interrupts the metronometric body and activates, or silences, thoughts. We have the propensity to be infiltrated by noise, the sound ‘out of place’: it has been our survival device as well as our downfall. Silence and stillness can be signals of danger to some. For some individuals, noise resides in the invariability of the frequencies and the constant amplitude of the rumbling that reveals the spatio-temporal presence of undesirable sonic effects. For Tom Heuzenroeder these same qualities can be applied to describe silence but loudness has no part in it as constancy provides a background that ‘I will discount in my mind’ (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011).
Silence is then audible but without much variance in amplitude or frequencies: the dullness of its noise anesthetises thoughts and also cocoons the skin. R. Murray Schafer notices that modern man developed the capacity to use sound such as Muzak in order to silence other acoustic environments, to inoculate ourselves from auditory distractions and reach a state of ‘audioanalgesia’ (1994, p. 96). Max Picard denounces the supremacy of noise, its verbal and material omnipresence that even invades the sky, ‘the upper edge of silence’ (1948, p. 140). He starts his study on silence by declaring that ‘Silence is an autonomous phenomenon’ (1948, p. 15) and further on declares that this statement is no longer valid: silence is ‘simply the place into which noise has not yet penetrated’ (Picard, 1948, p. 40). For Picard, silence is elemental, a basic structural element of humanity, a language that does not start when words stop but that is unfortunately ‘killed’ by words therefore denying us access to the divine.
Transcendence of acoustic listening can be achieved by searching for the perfect acoustic silence, even though ubiquity and visual endorsement can often hinder, but also enhance, this quest. In this study, the use of the word silence could seem a misnomer: quietness, or even noise, would appear to be more relevant at times. However, this study is not about discourse to attain audible silence or divine quests. This research focuses on physical contexts of acoustic ecologies and their incumbent repercussions on cinema sound: the word silence has political and ideological connotations but also many phenomenological ramifications. As they are made of sounds, new silences re-define the criteria that testify to human physical and intellectual participations in the world. Industrialisation brought in a different sort of silence, a silence without pause, a constant background noise integrated into our audible culture, or ‘culture sonore’ (Chelkoff, 1996, p. 5).
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It is this integration of constancy and entrainment that can at once sooth and disturb our body. A ‘new’ silence that lacks a depth of field materialises and is based on voluntary acceptance of noise. The cognitive dismissal of some proximal sounds and the tympanic responsiveness that they generate become listening and spatial tools. An acoustic understanding of silences could be based on an absence of distinct soundmarks and the presence of sonic fields, such as lower frequencies (<300 Hz). Due to their current presence and future omni-presence in industrialised societies I would label them as ‘new silences’. Contemporary idealised silence has been strategically redefined with a romantic notion of ‘natural’ silence in opposition to the noise of progress (W. Miller, 1993, p. 114).
In the 1970s, the acoustic ecology movement re-assessed these criteria and gave physicality to an ideal. For example, by recording and archiving sounds that could disappear, such as un-mechanised trades or sparsely populated countryside, the World Sound Project tended to oppose noise to music, city to country, industrial productivity to intellectual health, vulgarity to wisdom. These notions of silence are consensually acknowledged but their existence is relative to individuals and communal visions of noise and silence. A chainsaw ‘looks less silent’ than an air-conditioning tower: it is portable and its mechanic parts are visible. Its sonic emissions can be erratic as a human hand triggers its tonal changes of speed and angular contacts with wood. Although its frequencies pierce the air a chainsaw can be visually silenced, and maybe aurally dismissed, as it is a tool that is part of our audible culture. So is a jackhammer, although we might not be able to dismiss it so easily as its frequencies can make the ground vibrate. Both visual immateriality and materiality of silence, and new silences, have to be addressed in the face of relentless audio-visual habituation and consumerism: could the atmospheric soundtracks of film sound reflect a physical dependency on new silences?
4.2 Towards embodiments of silences
Silence becomes a sounding world that we all carry in our physical envelope and that impregnates our individual sense of event and being. Many acknowledge that silence is audible but few propose that silence is an autonomous entity linked to the sensual body. Silence, as an existential force, could be considered as a dual entity. The first is an energy able to ensure survival relative to lived circumstances. The second aspect of silence is its ability to create a territory independent to thought processes and language. Both aspects are
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based on the notion of affect and both eventually lead to conscious awareness. The matter of silence leaves residues of a ‘memorial sense’ in a body’s coenesthesia. Sounds of silences, as foundations for audible focal sounds, provide ground for a ‘knowing’ of sonic environments: if locative sounds can be heard, a map of silences can be felt. I suggest that silences are contributors to primal gestures and are not defined by absence of sound; rather they form a fertile embedding in which sounds grow.
For John Cage ambient sounds become silences ‘only because they do not form part of a musical intention’ (Cage, 1961, p. 23). The absence of ‘silence’ as a sonic effect in the CRESSON’s repertoire is partly understandable insofar as listening can be so private as to be ‘an act that can sometimes be totally mental and silent’ (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 85). Silence is a space that is aesthetically defined in order to relativise the individuality of perception and sensitivity at the peripheries of audibility. Most of the time silence is seen, explained, justified as a subjective and literary abstraction. As an expression ‘silence’ is a negative abstraction by opposition to something else: to voice, to the sounds of humanity, the noise of modernity, to life. The reverence in which it is held oscillates from death to the sublime, from loneliness and despair to mystic revelations. It has, however, audible qualities and physical density that are just as significant as ‘music’, ‘noise’, ‘speech’. As we consciously notice what surrounds a source of audition, we can mine for silence: it becomes a rewarding concept. Even though this description could be metaphorical, it suggests a deliberate kinetic action and a path differentiating unconscious sonic immersion from auditory cognition.
In any environment, we ‘know’ where and how fast we should run or how still our limbs should remain, which sounds we should accept or pass through. Depending on the material context we are immersed in at any time, we know instinctively which silence we are inhaling and touching. The physical progression in the gallery space of this project’s exhibition gives the means to question the physical nature of constructed silences and the affective qualities of being insounds, of entwining personal kinaesthetic sense of place and coenesthetic state. Entering Gallery One, the audience has choices between different positions: moving upright in the space or sitting on a bench as well as sitting in chairs with headphones on. This space reveals silences as motile events, new silence as ubiquity and insounds as triggers to spontaneous motions.
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Our physical capabilities demonstrate that the state of attending to silence as an auditory event is an occurrence in itself, a state of becoming. Sara Maitland acknowledges that all the physical, sensory and psychological experiences that isolation and silence brought her were triggers for emotional extremes. She asserts that imaginary voices, auditory hallucinations and an ‘exhilarating consciousness’ feel like gifts and not experiences that could be triggered by a lack of something (Maitland, 2008, p. 78). To some, silence is at once the means and purpose of one’s faith: a place that encourages self-audibility in order to explore a promised un-hearable land. As we carry sound inside us as well as being receptors of stimuli, silence sounds like nothing else; it can bring introspection through the perception of a relative absence of auditory sensations linked to the gaps in others sounds. That silence can bring satisfaction to some as it offers the possibility to attend to the workings of one’s own mind (Sorensen, 2009, p. 132). Silences are often categorised as quests for peace achieved by physio-psychological separations from some of the disturbing noises produced by nature or humanity. However, silences are not only about volumes of sound nor are they only metaphorical marks of nature, religiosity or intellectual pursuits.
To consider silences as cogitated expressions of individual perception precludes a broader appreciation of humans as co-authors and actors of their environments. Silences are fertile grounds for awareness to vibrations. For Cage, technology allows the state of ‘always sound’ to the forefront of ear-ability, of the vibrations waiting to be heard. Douglas Kahn points out that Cage’s experimentation in anechoic chambers, in which sound is deadened, made him aware of his internal vitality, the ‘always sound’ (Kahn, 2003, p. 192, italics in text). John Cage asked a technician at Harvard University’s anechoic facility about the low and high sounds that he perceived while in anechoic chambers. The technician’s answer was that the lower frequencies were blood circulation and that the higher ones were related to his ‘nervous system in operation’ (1961, p. 8). Cage’s experiments in sounds and silence such as his experiences in anechoic chambers incited him to say that ‘…silence is not acoustic. It is a change of mind, a turning around’ (Cage, 1991).
In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to spend half an hour in an anechoic chamber. Years later the reading of John Cage’s personal experiences sounded partly familiar to me: electrical sensations and crackling higher frequencies ran under my cranium, starting at the back of my neck and moving up in waves rippling all over my head. I could best describe this experience as a manifestation of ‘the body’s inner ears’ although binaurality is not part of the equation: ‘internal omni-aurality’ would be more appropriate.
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Occurring at a stage preceding linguistic ability, a similar feeling of surging activity is present during the re-accumulation of the self after a tonic-clonic epileptic seizure. Unlike John Cage the answer I got from the technician to whom I mentioned these higher frequencies was that I had to be ‘schizophrenic’. In my opinion his comment denoted a predetermined and poor understanding of such schizophrenia and of auditory verbal hallucinations.
This ‘always sound’ has been demonstrated, and analysed, but without visualisation or amplification tools it can be forgotten. We are suspicious of its existence if it does not leave visible or tactile traces. A graph or an electrical impulse can attest to the materiality of these silences that are audible to the flesh and not only to the ears. Because cinema sound primarily depends on technology able to render the audible spectrum, despite the example of the film Irréversible (Noé, 2002) cited previously in this exegesis, this study does not aim to physically demonstrate the existence of the inaudible. Douglas Khan commented that Cage used amplification to ‘render audible a range of small and inaudible sounds belonging to states and action of the body’ (Kahn, 2003, p. 194). Amplification attests to the presence of inaudibility through skin vibrations and coenesthetic states.
The body resonates in many ways and this project’s intention is to allow for sound to talk in and outside the skin. Many sound artists find ways to activate a search for senses, and amplification of invisible matter is a constant in sound artists’ practices. We live in an amplified world where the science of what is unseen demands translation. Technologies uncover the un-amplified sounds of the everyday, their drums on the skin and on the tympanic membrane, but cognition dulls these sonic signals that travel within us. Contemporary technologies allow for a detailed rendering of the un-heard, the un-seen, the activity of the stratosphere and cellular agitation.
In 1999 in Melbourne, Joyce Hinterding and David Haines brought the sounds from underneath Federation Square to our ears and skin. Their multimedia piece, Undertow 1999, established a connection between the electrical energy that ran beneath visitors to the exhibition and body memories which bypassed cognitive computations (Hinterding, Haines, & Horscroft, 1999). In the U.S.A, Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling have mined the cellular songs from inside us. With the use of an atomic force microscope, they recoded the sound of living cells. Their resulting creative practice, The Dark Side of the Cell, allowed
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cellular cries and purrs to surface, as well as drilling our ears and making our skin crawl (Niemetz & Pelling, 2004).
This research avoids recent technologies and interactive haptic displays, although the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’ would not have materialised without exposure to schizophonic, amplified and audible sounds. Instead, the physical expression of this study relies on a cinematic sound practice that has relevance to daily existence in western cultures. The propagation of home theatres, the ability to ‘re-view’ sound and silences, to re-experience vibrations, even though banal at times, singles out cinematic silence as an extraordinary visual experience accessible to all. To these particular perceptive notions of audible silences, I will add a physical and porous state that envelops and nourishes silences: insounds.
4.3 Insounds: inaudible motility
Constant bodily absorption of sound only ceases with the event of death and its immobility. The ‘flesh’ of sound only ceases at our death, when air ceases to be carried in and absorbed by the body. With ‘insounds’ I attempt to name a space that we carry in us, a space that has a sonic axis triggered by the world we are part of. ‘Insounds’ is a coenesthetic state of being, triggered by physical absorption and reflection of sound. This concept departs from Cage’s musical notion of ‘all-sound’ (1961, p. 5) and adds an essential motile dimension to a body’s participative presence in the world. Insounds also implies that searching for ‘silence’ can include motion towards unobtrusive, even inaudible, sonic occurrences. As we are unable to interrupt the viscerality of sound, wouldn’t insounds be more appropriate to express a physicality of conceptual silence? Insounds does not rely on the subjective justification of the spaces between sound and their sensorial quest: it is a permanent and organic state defined by coenesthesia.
Gravity, or absence thereof, does not impair a sounding coenesthesia. While leaving the mother ship and floating into space Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov describes his experience of silence as heavy and deep, a state unrelated to anything he had experienced on the Earth. His recollections involve hearing his heart and veins and he believed that he could hear ‘his muscles gliding on each other’ (de Gueldre, 1995, p. 59). A state of insounds allows motility, as basic intentionality (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p. 137), to explore spaces of
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silence. Max Picard joins Sara Maitland in this possibility of associating one’s silence with movement and spatiality.
Certain acts of faith that cause believers to move around and towards silences are telling of their motile attributes: sitting, standing up, genuflexing, walking in order to grasp this space of sound. This study does not aim to use divination of any kind as truthful experiences of silence. Rather, it is the physicality of moving towards realms of silence so as to reach absence of thoughts that questions a sensorial hierarchy ruled by the ear, not only as a sound funnel, but as a skin able to catch the inaudible that affects our balance.
‘Insounds’ take us under the derma. I suggest that silences are not synonyms for immobility and stillness, rather they are the dynamic elements of being ‘insounds’. Michel Serres describes silence as a healing place and a time when organs do not talk to each other: they ‘fall silent – health returns. Illness comes upon me when my organs can hear each other’ (2008, p. 85). However, when potential motion is juxtaposed with an absence of vibrations it becomes a synonym of dysfunction: the heart falls silent and, at the movies, there is a mechanical problem in the projection room.
Nevertheless, cinema sound allows the fullness of these silences to be dynamic without being a reflection of an interruption in the coherence of systems such as text or music. Not that silences are only mere additions to these systems, as they allow a sonic scenography and choreography to take place by altering the notion of proximity. The famous 30 minutes of vocal and musical silence in the movie Rififi chez les Hommes (Dassin, 1955) was inherent to the roles of four thieves for whom sound was the enemy. The protagonists move slowly around the room and quietly demolish the floor by cutting it open. The four characters communicate with their eyes, limbs and centres of gravity: insounds become visible. Their voiceless dialogues articulate the space and transform it into a point of audition attended by the characters themselves and, ultimately, by the audience.
Director Jules Dassin had to battle to keep this very physical scene of Rififi chez les Hommes bare of a musical score, simply occupied by the sound of the crime scene and its voiceless signals. It is a scene entrained by kinetic language and coenesthetic knowledge of both the visible protagonists and the invisible moviegoers. The first eight seconds of the study participants’ soundtracks are at once a metaphorical and experiential immersion in states of insounds. This segment of the sound pieces expresses the stillness outside the
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caravan. Its hearers, in the first gallery space of the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating silences’, have the possibility to be in contact with this quasi-visual stillness while standing, moving, sitting, with or without headphones. Their flesh leads their activity in sound, the creation of their visual soundscapes, and their active occupation of the gallery space. In the sub-chapter ‘Oscillations’ (4.7) a table highlights the audible sound elements used in the participants’ soundtracks to ‘flesh’ the space.
4.4 Silence as an extension of insounds
Mark Muldoon proposes the Greek expression ‘Akoumena’ (‘things listen to’) to position silence as a dynamic matter that has auditory qualities to be listened to. ‘Akoumena’ would engulf all sorts of silences but would refer to its auditory perceptions as devices precipitating awareness (Muldoon, 1996). Muldoon suggests that the permanent quest for sign and interpretation limit the way silence is perceived and considered. Silence is dynamic and its energies range from molecular activities to sensorial qualities and non-cognitive identity. By using this concept, Muldoon joins Brandon LaBelle in the notion of silence as a space for ‘expanded listening’ (LaBelle, 2010, p. 54).
Senso-spatial identifications of silence can be questioned precisely because of the evolution of the multiple ecologies as well as the sense of place and time that we embody. Participant Tom Heuzenroeder mentions that despite hearing the sound of a refrigerator in his home environment, silence becomes ‘my place, a physical refuge that brings on a sort of serenity’ (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). The states of perception of vibrational effects or events suggested by Augoyard, of listening in readiness or in search as defined by Truax, as well as the modes of causal, semantic and reduced listening defined by Chion, can lead to the notion of silences as organic and permeable territories. These territories are not the exclusive domains of sound as they affect other porous elements of the body.
Vibrations affect us in invisible and unscented ways but can leave a floating mark on our skin or even in our mouth. According to Sara Maitland, until the mid-eighteenth century all writings about silence had a religious connotation rather than a secular one (2008, p. 41). As she herself explores silence, with the intention to live ‘in’ it, Maitland travelled and found an isolated place to rest, listen and pray. While she tastes the peace and practises her faith, all her sensorial abilities intensified and unleashed pleasures in things that she had hitherto
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considered as almost banal, such as eating porridge: ‘Eating was an intense pleasure: it tasted more like porridge than I could have imagined porridge could taste’ (Maitland, 2008, p. 48 , italics in text).
Taste, hearing and body temperature, as indicators of her place in the world, became noticeable measures of her own physical and emotional states. As her religious discipline increased so did her disinhibitions: cleanliness and grooming disappeared, as did injunctions against swearing. She writes: ‘I felt as though the silence itself unskinned me … . As though, to put it crudely, the superego was overwhelmed by the silence’ (Maitland, 2008, p. 54, italics in text). Sara Maitland notes that these losses of social norms seem to be usual to physical loners such as free-divers without breathing equipment, mountaineers, hermits whose physical activities free them from social conventions and cognitive imperatives.
Merleau-Ponty states that the body acts in unity and that to distinguish between sensations and perceptions might be questionable (1933, p. 104). He pointed out that ‘To return to things themselves is to return to that world which precedes knowledge’ (Merleau- Ponty, 2008, pp. ix-x). Insound offers a way to apply this chronology because it anchors itself in the fluidity of the present and becomes a sense in the making that leaves cognitive interpretation as ‘afterthoughts’. However, there is no clear-cut linearity in ‘sensate sound’ as its matter engulfs us via skin and bones. It seems that lived bodies have an autonomous interpretation of vibrational activities as they can manifest a prediction ‘of upcoming information before the actual sensorimotor event’ (Leaver, Van Lare, Zielinski, Helpern, & Rauschecker, 2009, p. 2484).
Commonly used, the expression ‘silence’ can denote the attainment of transcendental states leading to conscious description of sound that generate tympanic responsiveness. I would suggest that ‘new silences’ reveal the cognitive dismissal of vibratory but barely audible soundscapes that have haptic qualities. ‘Hearing’ and ‘listening’ can be indistinguishable as they encroach on ‘bodily thoughts’ therefore increasing the notion of perception and unsettling its thought linearity. Silences, cognitively dismissed and bodily absorbed, could be differentiated by the way higher and lower frequencies travel through the epidermis rather than by references to their amplitude or duration. However, it is their amalgamation that disseminates a state of insounds. The last 47 seconds of the script used for this study, set inside the caravan, provides silences that fence the dermal periphery of the protagonist and assert his state of insounds. A tentative itemisation by the researcher of the
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distinct sounds piercing and gliding on Graham’s skin follows in the sub-chapter ‘Oscillations’ (4.7).
4.5 Cinematic silence: haptic subtlety
R. Murray Schafer’ s words that ‘however dimly, silence’ suggest that silence works by opposition and denotes near physical stillness (Schafer, 1977, p. 257). For Bela Balász, silence exists only ‘where sounds can be heard’ (1972, p. 205). Silence is subtle but cinematic loudness is often its measure and context is its criteria. Both Balázs and Schafer refer to a quiet activity made by natural sounds when they experience ‘silence’. Michel Chion refers to silence as a sound demonstrating ‘that nothing happened’, like quietness after the storm, and adds a temporal value to the notion (1994, p. 9). He also seems to suggest that audible silences are noises that might not always convey ‘emotional resonance’ (Chion, 1994, p. 8). How could the sounds of silence be described as inconsequential when narrative contrasts are their trademarks? Apart from opposing it to ‘noise’, defined as unwanted sound, the ‘stillness’ of silence is ambiguous at best. For some, ‘cinematic silence’ is an audible presence, made from sounds, and that provides spatial clues through degrees of loudness, a technique referred to as ‘sound mapping’ (Candusso, 3 May 2011).
At the junction between contextual audio components and the processes in use to control them lies the notion of silence, a word that has strong connotations in film production. It is often avoided as it rarely matches the commercial intentions of film producers. However, silence as the presence of an absence relates directly to human evolutionary process. The fear-flight reaction is linked to an instinctive awareness of the possible dangers associated with the differentials in sound perceptions. Silence then becomes, by physiological aptitude, an auditory constant that is relative to contextual modes of experiencing sounds.
Sensory-motor contexts are primordial and the relationships amongst sounds themselves provide useable information, notably spatial. For Paul Théberge, it is the relationship between the sounding elements that creates sound on film and it is not only the relationship of sound to images that matters (Théberge, 2008, p. 55). This comment reveals the importance of silences as essential matter and not mere interruptions of dialogue or music. However, as it is a sounding matter the expression itself leads to confusion in terms
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of its realisation. There is a gap in the semantics of perception, intention, expression and usage of the terms ‘atmospheres, background sounds, ambiences, effects, noise’.
The commercial belief that silence is at once an obligatory ‘presence or absence of something’ translates in a physical incomprehension of inaudible silences as narrative tools. Shoma Chatterji notes that if a deliberate pure silence were inserted into the soundtrack of a mainstream movie screened in India, the lack of the permanence of sounds would depart from the acoustic habituation that audiences are exposed to in their daily lives (2003, p. 105). When it differs from physical habituation, silence is heard and is able to disengage listeners from the visual spectacle. Chatterji adds that the audience would suspect an occurrence of a mechanical breakdown and would shout, demanding some sound (2003, p. 109). Randy Thom agrees that the absence of sound on the track can leave audiences concerned with technical malfunctions in the theatre (Thom, n.d).
Although these reasons for concern are different, the relative ‘disappearance’ of sound in a theatre can generate a similar effect: an expansion of the space surrounding the audience. It is an important assumption that places of audio-vision, such as cinemas, should be soundless. Nevertheless it is that assumption that is able to transform audible and felt silences into narrative tools. However, this narrative concept might only be a cultural belief, a social reflection of a hierarchy of sounds that translates to place and belonging, as silence in industrialised environments is a sought-after commodity, a luxury item.
At the movies, silences are often visual: limbs and lips do not move, cars stop and what is left is the reassuring cushion of the rumbling world. It is ironic, and revealing, that one of the most feared and poorly understood social memories, silence, is the most difficult sound to implement in contemporary Western cinema. Sometimes the achievement of leaving a minimal impact on a track feels like a ‘victory’, as expressed by Carlos Choconta (Choconta, 5 May 2011) Murtagh also gave the example of the sound track he mixed for Samson and Delilah (Thornton, 2009), and in which the main characters talk together in extended silences. As there is not much dialogue and music some critics, and members of the public, described the soundtrack as ‘empty’. It prompted Murtagh to remark that ‘it’s interesting how people get conditioned’ and to recall a positive comment from a critic that the movie provided him/her with ‘one of the best silences I’ve heard in a long time’ (Murtagh, 22 September 2010).
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4.6 Cinematic silence: fleshing the space
Cinema sound designers develop dynamic multisensory systems that affect narrative structure in ways that promote an audience’s non-cognitive affective responses and subjective listening. The sensory potential of displayed sound reinforces the possibility and intention of cinema sound designers to channel sonic worlds towards our skin. Silence becomes a transient product of auditory and tactile contrasts. Aside from the absence of voice and music, cinema sound designers articulate a language of silences that affects an audience’s non-cognitive affective responses and subjective listening. Other types of contextual silences are used aside from the non-utterance of narrative and its visual frame. In Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979), sound designer and film editor Walter Murch demonstrates how subtlety can flesh the space so that ‘It feels silent, but it isn’t’ (Murch, 2003).
This last expression, referencing a physical perception, is common amongst professionals and so is the saying that silence is about ‘pulling out and taking off’ sounds in order to achieve the subtlety of silences. Often sound designers have to spend much time convincing directors and producers of the narrative potential that audio subtlety can perform. Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) specialist and sound designer Tony Murtagh laments the lack of opportunity to explore what producers often label as ‘dead space’: ‘it’s like “oh there is a dead space there! Move it out, take it out, pack it all up” ‘. They don’t realise we would do things there if you let the space there. That’s trying to convince people to leave time for sound, to actually have a palette to work with’ (Murtagh, 22 September 2010). There is something basic about this fear of silence as an expression of stillness, a somatic memory that redefines the space in which the story and its protagonists are anchored. Suddenly the intimate world of producers and directors, and the one of the audiences, becomes too vast: it has to be fenced.
All sorts of silences are emotional drivers but an imprint of soundlessness on the filmstrip talks differently to an audience. It interrupts a physical participation in the narrative and exposes the audience to the presence of its own sounds previously covered by the film soundtrack (Figgis, 1998, p. 2). What might have been ambient noise for part of the narrative gets centre stage: film silence becomes an immersive experience though it might still replicate cultural beliefs that the absence of voice, or music, equals silence. The obsessive reproduction or fabrication of the ‘real’, as the unseen environmental elements associated
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with the perfection of fictional soundtracks, confirms the silent audibility that the sounds of the everyday have become.
For sound designer Michael Worthington, there is purpose for silence to be mixed in a soundtrack and that makes it ‘an effect all in itself even though it does not have to be created’ (Worthington, 21 December 2010). In 1976, Claudia Gorbman advocated that ‘silence’ should be considered as the fourth element of the soundtrack and gave it diegetic, extra-diegetic and meta-diegetic qualities (Gorbman, 1976, p. 451). Sound designer and creative participant Tom Heuzenroeder describes silences as dynamic atmospheres that can transform the meaning of a film: he considers silences as visual elements, always different, as the impact of the contrast depends on the substance of the scene (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). Cinema silence is an effect required by other audible elements as well as by visual content. Silence on film has become the product of ‘a way of mixing sounds rather than a generic sound element, along with dialogue, music and sfx ...’ (Bubaris, 2010).
For creative participant Damian Candusso a believable silence is mixed rather than ‘created’ and involves ‘carefully choosing minimal sounds’; highlighting isolation, for example, could entail the removal of all sounds associated with human life and movement (Candusso, 3 May 2011). Whereas acoustic ecology often refers to the sounds of silence as incarnations of Nature, some cinema sound designers take the opposite approach and deny the inclusion of natural organisms into their renditions of silence.
In the film Cast Away (Zemeckis, 2000), the main protagonist is stranded on an uninhabited island. Sound designer Randy Thom pushed the approach described by Candusso to the extent that all sounds associated with a kinetic presence, like insects’ sounds, were removed. It is a reality of sorts that might activate a deep and instinctive perceptual memory of an audible experience: the one of an absence, the realisation of an ‘inaudibility’. Sound designer Emma Bortignon notes that scared animals cease to emit sound and that might explain the instinctive, or voluntary avoidance, of the sound of live entities (Siemienowicz, 2010). The movie Cast Away was a rare opportunity to practise the creation of different silences: only eight words were said in the first 40 minutes on the island. Sounds recorded in that location were of no use: everything was made in post- production (Thom, 2009a, p. 20).
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As seen above, absence of sound on the digital soundtrack is rarely used although it is a possibility that many aspire to practice. The ‘flat line’, as the graphic connotation of the absence of sound without any noise on the recording medium, is applied by Tom Heuzenroeder in The Kiss (Page, 2010): he left the medium bare of sound information for a few seconds. He chose a moment when a protagonist disappeared under water and as he commented: ‘You can hear a pin drop in the audience’ (Heuzenroeder, 2010). Pure silence, that is one without any data on the digital track, is used. Its inaudibility is listened to although the noise of the world would most certainly preclude the immobility of the tympanic membrane. In a short film Michael Worthington inserted a four-second silence where ‘there was actually no sound’ and this absence of sound on visuals created a bigger impact than a musical one (Worthington, 21 December 2010). As they were talking about these rare occurrences, both sound designers seemed to have relished the experiences.
During a post-production conversation with the researcher, Tom Heuzenroeder noted that ‘all along you wanted silences and I didn’t give you any’ (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). The soundtrack that he produced for this study is not devoid of kinetic or digital signals: it testifies to a lived environment, an active silence that maps spaces. A ‘flat line’ could have mapped differently the spatiality of the visual narrative screened in the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. A testament of this possibility is participant Benjamin Vlad’s soundtrack in which approximately two seconds of ‘flat line’ have been inserted before the sound of a gunshot at close range.
4.7 Oscillations
My personal interpretation and physical ‘receivership’ of the participants’ soundtracks can be appreciated through a visual relationship between the space and body of the protagonist, Constable Graham McGahan. With this framework in mind, I succinctly attempt to describe my personal experience of listening to each soundtrack without visuals. Damian Candusso’s soundtrack involves Graham’s body early on: his lighting of the cigarette and deep smoke inhalations, his hands turn pages as he exhales. The silhouettes of his colleagues appear through the radio. We can feel the velocity of Graham’s auditory imagination at play when physical actions bring on sudden violence: the rapid succession of gunshots and the yells of the victim centre the kinetics of the action. Carlos Choconta’s soundtrack moves the actions in and out of physical proximity: from the close skin contact of
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the smoking we move to the spatial positioning of the victim, first in a crowd then by the seashore. We come back to Graham’s skin through another close felt smoke exhalation.
Tom’s Heuzenroeder’s piece leaves us on Graham’s skin for two-thirds of the track: cigarette smoking and gestures become intrinsic to our own coenesthetic. His cigarette smoking does not completely disappear when the physicality of the murder becomes manifest through the imaginary yells of the victim. John Kassab’s soundtrack brings in a different physical context with the jazz tune coming out of the transistor from Graham’s left side and the absence of two-way radios. His physical actions are short and soft as he smokes, breathes and turn pages. The music does not stop entirely while he hears the cries of the victim, and it clearly returns after the sounds of her distress. Similarly to Heuzenroeder’s piece, Graham’s mind has not run away from the space his body occupies. In contrast, Graham’s physical presence in Markus Kellow’s soundtrack would be virtually absent if it were not for his smokeless breathing, the speed of which conveys his own distress while imagining the murder.
Evan Kitchener’s soundtrack brings Graham’s physical posture to the fore through the creaks of his chair’s leather seat. His repeated change of position and brisk smoking let his skin talk for his unease and fears, all the while without any audible reference to a physical presence of the victim or her murderer. Ben Vlad’s soundtrack restrains the physical presence of Graham: his gestures are economic and precise: the lighter is used and closed, the smoke inhalation and its long exhalation are followed by a breathing that transmits a state of powerlessness. The sound of his chair testifies to his position and communicates the oscillations of his thoughts. Digital silence is inserted to accentuate the violence of a single crisp gunshot that is followed by the soft talk of the murderer. The piece produced by Michael Worthington is tactile: a coin is spun on a desk, a lighter is heard at close range, Graham’s smoking is sharp and transmits exasperation, the cigarette butt is crushed almost violently in the ashtray, a hand flicks a light switch, the coin is again spun and then the light is switched off.
Graham’s physical involvements with his space and mind are all set inside the caravan. Logically the fleshing of these physical silences is in total contrast to the ambiences outside the caravan. Two notions of silence therefore transpire from Roger Monk’s script. Expressing the soundless visuals of the scene extracted from the film Noise (Saville, 2007) sent to him, the script written by Roger Monk offers two distinct spaces of silences: firstly,
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physical territories, and secondly, an introspective domain. The first eight seconds of the script express the environmental aspect:
EXT. DEMOUNTABLE POLICE STATION - NIGHT
It is late and still. The world appears deserted yet waiting. The fluorescent light at the door of the demountable and from the snack shop opposite glow brightly in the dark.
The demountable door is wide open. (8 secs)
©Roger Monk 2010
Drones and sounds of urbanity can affect cinema audiences in effective ways and in a less conscious manner than sounds created with the aim of mimicking authenticity. For example, in Robert Connolly’s movie The Bank (Connolly, 2001) the ubiquitous sound of air conditioning upon entering the austere building to meet mean corporate characters leaves the audience feeling cold and uneasy. Because of the urban or semi-urban environment that is suggested in Roger Monk’s script, lower frequencies typical of a cityscape could have dominated this first section of the soundtracks produced for this study. However the content of the soundtracks diverge from the researcher’s expectations.
In effect, the first eight locative seconds of the script created by the participants are devoid of the analgesic qualities particular to the rumble of modernity described by R. Murray Schafer. Six out of eight of the participants’ soundtracks deploy subtle higher frequencies to build the sonic landscape. After the first eight seconds, all soundtracks contain, at some stage and in some form, lower frequencies to announce the introspective state of the protagonist. The following table proposes the researcher’s personal itemisation of the distinct sound events that can be heard during the first eight seconds of the produced soundtracks.
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First Eight Seconds of the Script, Exterior of Police Caravan
Michael Sound Effects Damian Candusso Carlos Choconta Tom Heuzenroeder John Kassab Markus Kellow Evan Kitchener Ben Vlad Worthington
Faint Traffic
Loud Traffic
Train Passing
Urban Hum
Faint Emergency Sirens
Fluorescent Buzz
Faint Waterway
Barking Dog
Crickets/Cicadas
Storm Approaching
Two-way Radio, Male Voice
Tone, Dynamic Low Frequencies
Figure 4-1: Audible events perceived by the researcher in the first eight seconds of the script
The designs of the first eight seconds of the soundtracks obtained for the research privilege higher tones. Distinct sound events emerge as locative buoys. Crickets or cicadas figure in six tracks, very faint traffic is audible in three tracks, one track features a distant storm and its lightning, two tracks feature distant dogs barks, and the sharp tweaking of train tracks can be heard on one track. The audible higher-pitch sound events weave a wide space but bring focus towards a spatial centre of audition and view point: the main protagonist, Police Constable Graham McGahan. This use of frequencies seems to corroborate cinema sound practitioner Claude Beaugrand’s impression that cinema sound design is attracted to a ‘sleekness’, a polished smoothness, of sonic events, that does not exist in ‘real life’. Beaugrand notes that often low-fi frequencies are dismissed as if life outside the human screen was devoid of them; for him, to dismiss the sounds of the everyday gives a standardised, ‘a televised’, perspective of life (1992, p. 33).
Narratives and their contexts always demand different creative interpretations. As a hybrid of aural imagery and phonomnesis, auralisation is a term that departs from ‘imagery and imaginary’. The fact that an urban scene invites naturalistic events reminds us that all participants are living in Australia where crickets and cicadas are common and seasonal, storms are frequent and dogs inhabit city centres but also abound in suburbia. In that respect,
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and to some extent, the materials obtained can ‘auralise’ a summer night in the Australian suburbs, a setting similar to the existing scene of the feature Noise (Saville, 2007).
Roger Monk describes the second part of the visual extract set inside the caravan with the following words:
INT. DEMOUNTABLE POLICE STATION - NIGHT
The Policeman is alone in the demountable. Seated at his desk, he smokes a cigarette and stares at an identikit picture of the suspect. He sucks on the cigarette like it were oxygen. Next to the identikit is a picture of the victim. She is young, smiling, alive. Not any more. By contrast the identikit picture of the suspect doesn’t look like a real person. More like fractured recollections of a real person. The policeman stares as though hypnotised by the victim’s eyes. The camera moves closer. Their eyes stare. As if the policeman were willing the victim to speak out. Who did this? Why? Why does someone do something like that?
©Roger Monk 2010
Both visual and auditory imagination are at play for sound designers to assign a spatial imprint to these words and transfer a coenesthetic state that leads them to create space. Their physical involvement with the written states of silences might ripple on the visitors to the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. The different frequencies used by participating sound designers in that part of their own soundtrack relate to the sense of proximity, therefore to the skin and body of constable Graham McGahan. They physically position both the protagonist and the viewers in the story’s space: the police caravan. Sonic information gives us space in which to move, visual information triggers cognitive paths and contributes to meaningful, but malleable, organisation. Silences conjugate spaces with emotions and provide us with a physical space in which one is able to ‘hear oneself’ (Voegelin, 2010, p. 79). As an organic and cumulative process the exhibition’s exploration
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aims to provide an understanding of the entwining of sensorial activities employed to create cinema soundtracks that influence the silences of the spaces pictured.
The following table aims to itemise the different elements that can be heard and felt on the sounding of the script’s second segment, set inside the police caravan. As previously noticed, these elements, and the silences they create, fence layers of skin and ear audibility by evoking oscillating senses of distance and the policeman’s coenesthesia. These haptic layers can be imagined, or even felt, by the visitors of the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. The long table that follows is then subdivided in smaller tables focused on different experiences of physical proximity. The resulting shorter tables will be referred to in relation to physical dimension of sound design practice. Some of these tables articulate discussions in this chapter as well as in Chapter Five. The tables that follow are relevant to the researcher’s phenomenological experience of the world at the time of audition.
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After the First Eight Seconds of the Script, Interior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington
Faint Traffic
Loud Traffic
Train Passing
Urban Hum
Loud Emergency Sirens
Fluorescent Buzz
Two-way Radio, Female voice Two-way Radio, Male Voice
Female Voices
Male Voices
Children Voices
Female Cries
Female Yells
Crowd Voices
Distorted Voices
Singing Voices
Soft Voices
Breathing, Inhale
Breathing, Exhale
Hand Rustling Paper on desk Hand Crushing Cigarette in Ashtray Cigarette Lighting with Matches Cigarette Lighing with Lighter Coin Bouncing on Desk
Seat squeaking
Cigarette Paper Burning
Gun Shot
Blunt Impact
Dog Barking
Seashore
Crickets
Birds
Background Music
Tone, Discreet Low Frequencies Tone, Dynamic Low Frequencies Tone, Discreet High Frequencies Tone, High Frequencies Tone, Low Frequencies Elongated Musical Tones Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Figure 4-2: Audible events perceived by the researcher in the second part of the script
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Apart from references to smoking, the only sound signals present in the project’s script were the fluorescent lights in the caravan and on the neon sign of the food outlet across the street. Their presence in the first eight seconds is in every soundtrack obtained for the study.
First Eight Seconds of the Script, Exterior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Faint Traffic
Loud Traffic
Train Passing
Urban Hum Faint Emergency Sirens Fluorescent Buzz
Figure 4-3: Drones and lower frequencies occurring in the first eight seconds of the script
In the second part of the script, this buzz surfaces in six out of eight tracks. The varying frequencies and loudness of the fluorescent-based buzz visually link the inside and outside environments. There are almost no ‘creative oscillations’ in this visual trajectory: we move in and towards a similar substance of silence. Within the individual sound pieces, the distant sound of cars, crickets and buzz of a fluorescent light let us hover in the space outside and inside the contour of the caravan. Both the protagonist’s skin and that of the caravan take shape: the ‘in(side) and out(side) relate to proximity and the visibility of sound sources.
After the First Eight Seconds of the Script, Interior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Faint Traffic
Loud Traffic
Train Passing
Urban Hum Loud Emergency Sirens Fluorescent Buzz
Figure 4-4: Drones and lower frequencies occurring in the second part of the script
Some segments of the soundtracks give an emotional approach to the presence of environmental sounds as they support the internal silence, slightly musical, lived by the
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constable Graham McGahan. These segments are based on the written script: Anna Gibbs describes mimetism as ‘the corporeally based form of imitation, both voluntary and involuntary on which literary representation ultimately depends’ (2010, p. 186). An intriguing element of the soundtracks produced by some cinema sound designers was the addition of tones, songs and some distinct voices, to the written diegetic. Aspects of John Kassab’s artistic contribution to the study also testify to a bodily cultural ‘ensounding’.
While reading Roger Monk’s script Kassab noted the protagonist could smoke in his workspace. As this practice is now legally long gone in Australia, John decided to add a diegetic music track that would reflect a time past. He added some period jazz, crackling in the background, to evoke a Film Noir of the 1940s. He also applied the sound of matches to the light of the cigarette, whereas the other five soundtracks auralising the cigarette use lighters. The combination of music and physical events provides historical allusions through the diegetic sounding element: this referencing is unique amongst the soundtracks collected for this study. When apposed to the visuals of the scene extracted from Noise (Saville, 2007), these elements add a visual historical mismatch to the asynchronicity of sound events and visuals.
In the last exhibition space, the sensory unification of sound and images questions the origin of individuals’ auralisation, the sounding heard mentally, without referring to words. For Pauline Oliveros, to appose imagery to the realm of sound can provoke a cognitive ‘dissonance’ (Oliveros, 2011, p. 163). The inability to visually associate some sounds with the narrative context of images in motion can be unsettling. The lack of synchronicity between some sounds and the screened visuals might transfer for the audience into an experiential uncertainty. The pre-emption of the moving narrative oscillates between the presence of the visuals and the doubt generated by what has been, or might be, heard. Therefore, for some members of the audience, a ‘physical doubt’ would reflect the collision of past, present and future events at once. Since the talkies, cinema has synchronised us (Lynch, 1997, p. 79) and, as bodies, we tend to audio-visually funnel the abundance of information that surrounds us. Through the artifacts displayed, the creation of different kinds of silence links human interaction and ‘experiential trust’ thus expanding the omnisensory potential of sonic frequency in cinematic narratives.
For example, the outside environment of the first eight seconds was mapped with discreet events, such as dog barking or crickets. The second segment of the script provides
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an ‘inversion of the frequencies’. Of course, these distinctions are not valid for all soundtracks but appear in six out of eight tracks. In effect, lower frequencies populate the inside soundscape of the caravan as well as the inner soundscape of Constable Graham McGahan’s emotions. They reflect the internal silence as well as the haptic spatiality that Graham makes of the space. His breathing and smoke inhalation are in the lower tones and the drone of ‘dread’ that personifies his thoughts also reaches the lower scales. The sensory potential of these sounds reinforces the possibility and intentionality of cinema sound designers to channel sonic worlds towards his, and our, skin.
As exhibition artifacts, each participant’s soundtrack differently wraps three layers of sonic information that are personified by the body contour of the policeman, the voices around him, the ghostly aural presence of the victim and the membrane of the caravan as sounds of the outside are present inside it. The internal surface of the caravan echoes with the discreet high pitches and buzz of the fluorescent light: we have become part of the protagonist’s ‘derma-temporality’. The sounds of his breath, the lighting of the cigarette, the pages turned, all reinforce a flux between his body and the air around him. The voice of others is broadcasted and crackly, transmitted through the two-way radio: in some of the study participants’ soundtracks these voices remain until the end of the scene. In other tracks they disappear, muted.
After the First Eight Seconds of the Script, Interior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Two-way Radio, Female voice Two-way Radio, Male Voice Female Voices
Male Voices
Children Voices
Female Cries
Female Yells
Crowd Voices
Distorted Voices
Singing Voices
Soft Voices
Figure 4-5: Vocal elements appearing in the second part of the script
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Lower frequencies take us away from a near-like social kinetics of voices. We reach the ‘inside’ of Graham’s ears, the frequencies are lower and their tonal amplitude increase in some soundtracks. We penetrate the ‘inside of his head’, his silence, populated by doubt, and it is the high pitch of the victim’s terrified cries that fences Graham’s aural imagination and impact on his emotional territory.
After the First Eight Seconds of the Script, Interior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Tone, Discreet Low Frequencies Tone, Dynamic Low Frequencies Tone, Discreet High Frequencies Tone, High Frequencies Tone, Low Frequencies Elongated Musical Tones
Figure 4-6: Range of lower tones expressing Graham’s mental soundscapes
I previously suggested that silences hovered on the permeable skin, therefore acknowledging an ‘in-side’ and an ‘out-side’. Through the exhibition, the outer skin of the ambulatory visitors and the inner skin of their ears experience the subtle spatial silences executed by the creative participants. Coenesthetic liminality triggers our balance in sounds, the quasi-aquatic and non-gravitational performance of the inner-ear bones, the sonic bound gestures and primitive affect that can alter the trajectories of bodies and objects. The following table attempts to itemise fluctuant gestures, from breathing to altering the axial position of the body or extending a limb to make contact with an object.
After the First Eight Seconds of the Script, Interior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Breathing, Inhale
Breathing, Exhale Hand Rustling Paper on desk Hand Crushing Cigarette in Ashtray Cigarette Lighting with Matches Cigarette Lighing with Lighter Coin Bouncing on Desk Seat Creaking
Figure 4-7: Range of haptic and corporeal sound activity
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Again, Michel Serres’s narration of being in and out of a body, away from the self and in the metal carcass of a boat creates affect and reaches the reader. Serres goes further into the primacy of the body ‘being in the world’ by focusing on the timelessness of its dynamism: he posits the body as evanescent, ‘a body that builds itself anew through its senses’ (Connor, 2005, p. 318). Silences, as animated spaces in which bodies can be discovered, are listening tools that deserve to be felt and acted upon. Throughout the exhibition the focus on sound has been intrinsic to the visual context: the resulting ‘visio- audition’ (Chion, 2009, p. 499) gives the opportunity to question at once the evanescence of sound signals and corporeal memories they instantly create.
Sonic activities give a sense of space through a sensorium framed by ‘the body’s contour’ (Basso & Feld, 1996, p. 91). Michel Chion coined the expression ‘visio-audition’ to represent the manifestation of audio perception when changed by visuals, written, drawn or screened material (2009, p. 499). In the context of the creative practice, cinema sound designers are coesnesthetic sounding boards able to transmit this re-organisation of the space and to build cognitive understanding anew. These elements allow for an embodiment of the physical absence of the victim and the event of her murder. Chion affirms that the role of sound in a movie is to allow an audience to be ‘wrapped within its timespan’ (1995, p. 44).
Two distinct mimetic traits are linked to the auralisation and production of an imaginary event: the lighting of a cigarette is not mentioned in the script but its smoking is. The contagion that occurs in both the spheres of creation and spectatorship is dynamic. The higher pitch sounds of the lighting of a cigarette became a beacon for an almost contagious visual mimetism. Damian Candusso thinks that ‘if there is a cigarette it has to be lit’ (Candusso, 3 May 2011); five of his fellow participants transferred the same thought, and gesture, onto their sound pieces. The revelation of the non-apparent lighter, or matches, expands the space, suggests another being’s presence and breaks the visible stillness of the auralisation. It is as if affective auralisation expanded the narrative territory by a ‘misplacement of assumptions’. With the example of the non-literal lighting of the cigarette, affect is a phenomenon that is at once innate and socially engineered.
4.8 Affective silences: habituations
As sonic vats, silences give the opportunity to elaborate emotional contagion between individuals based on non-cognitive affective response. Teresa Brennan’s concept of
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the ‘transmission of affect’ provides a bridge that links the experience of contemporary cinematic silences to our audible or inaudible lived soundscapes (2004, p. 23). Transmission of affect, as a biological and mimetic agent, is active in the last gallery space where the audio-visual screening offers a dissociative experience between audio and vision, between sensory matter and cognitive expectations.
The essential ‘skeleton’ of a film has coenesthetic properties that join our ins and outs, with the world coming to us and taking us in, to build us anew. As the epitome of narrative contrasts, the practice of the ‘flat line’, the absence of signals on a track, can confront the upward notion of stacking memories that build us anew. The ‘flat line’ can take us ‘aback’ to a basic state of survival, an episode of ‘us and the world’. It is a creative pursuit poorly understood, therefore culturally fenced. Mike Figgis’s remark (Figgis, 1998) on the unsettling of audiences as a result of inserting digital silence in scenes of Leaving Las Vegas (Figgis, 1995) remind us that audiences are exposed, insounds break the skin. Suddenly we are there, sitting in a dark space, in a moment in time that does not match the space around the noise of the image. Our skin is confronted by sounds that have no visual partner: they are pure tri-dimensional markers, too close for comfort.
Usage of constructed silences, and medium without signal, reflects directors’ understanding of sound narrative potential. To fulfil their potential, sound and contrasting silences rely on the trust of some; director Matthew Saville mentioned that on the film set, he and the producer have to be the most ‘ignorant persons’ around. This implies that he trusts the technical, and phenomenological, knowledge of his film crew. To some degree, their soundscapes’ habituation can give access to the unexpected richness of cinema sound. However, both Kassab and Candusso note that films with lots of ‘silence’ would not entertain current western youth because we have become used to constant sound activity (Candusso, 3 May 2011; Kassab, 29 July 2011). Markus Kellow adds that the living environments of spectators could influence their perceptions of soundtracks: what would be noisy to some would be quiet to others according to their habituation to environmental sounds (Kellow, 25 October 2010).
Cinema sound designers and their audience share similar criteria of awareness to sounds; education, background and personal experiences are parts of the vibrational knowledge of human bodies: it is the absence of signals on the track that disturbs. A constant comment from all participants or interviewees associated with film making is that narratives
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lead the production, that productions are led by budgets, that budgets are controlled by producers and that directors control the aesthetic and rhythm of the narrative. Sound designers-supervisors-mixers aim to move audiences to the edge of their seats but, ultimately, they are telling a story to entertain others by responding to the ideas, or sensations, of directors (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Conceptual notions of silence and their cinematic usage are fenced by the potential of an audience’s physical ease/unease based on sonic ear-inaudibility. By this stage of their progressive exploration of the project’s exhibition, the audience has been provided with the proposition that sounding silences can be ‘felt’ differently according to physical activities.
Sound designer Tony Murtagh reminisced about events he supervised while teaching at the Academy of Performing Arts in Hong Kong. In order to practise listening and sound exercises, groups of young locals who always lived in sound and noise at all hours of their lives were brought to the unfamiliar and quiet settings of a duck farm in the New Territories. They would get ‘very nervous and edgy’, confronted by a quietness foreign to their daily world (Murtagh, 22 September 2010). This edginess, in response to an absence of familiar environmental frequencies, reflects silence as a state that cannot be imagined, nor can it be seen. The noise that impregnates the daily life of these students reverberates in every megalopolis where individuals and communities mostly ignore the amplitude of its presence. An analogy with Paul Virilio’s remark that silence implies consent (2003, p. 71) can be applied to human habituation and indifference to the soundscapes of modernity: by consenting to their impacts on humans we give them the status of silence. The silence of the everyday, outside cinema, is a consensual silence made of frequencies that are part of the visual realm but erased from the visual field.
Nonetheless, silences can become intense visual experiences. For study’s participant Michael Worthington this vision of sound is best experienced as he practises astral photography in the Australian bush when at ‘a certain time of night all the creatures actually stop and die down and it’s extremely still and that’s when you can hear your own breath’ (Worthington, 21 December 2010). However, kinetic and visual stillness are not always a criterion for silence: in fear-flight experiences silences can be visual too. The closest experience to this silence in movement, outside sport arenas, occurred when my right foot found its way a few centimetres above a brown snake in Central Australia. My body took a plunge backwards and, while suspended in the air, all sounds disappeared. However, one element seemed to guide this airborne trajectory as my eyes kept focus on a solitary tree.
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While my left foot propelled me in an envelope of silence, my eyes kept focus on that tree and were anchoring time: life suddenly happened in slow motion despite my body’s velocity.
The sonic activities of silence do not separate the state of insounds from the experiential body in its environment but rather impregnate the organism with a continuum of pre-cognitive corporeal impulses. Traditional views tend to explain cognition as the end result of sensations. R. Murray Schaffer affirms that the role of sound is to define consciousness or lack of it. According to Schafer, sound would provide a clear signpost between two states of consciousness, its awareness being the junction ‘between differentiation and non-differentiation’ (1993, p. 21); he then adds that pre-consciousness ‘hovers on the verge of each’ (Schafer, 1993, p. 22). Would silences be part of this last fluctuating territory and be the source of cognitive reasoning? This suggestion allows consideration for experiential silences to be revealing indicators of humans’ attitudes to their soundscapes. It also reveals a limited understanding of bodies’ absorption of sound as organic matter rather than as a succession of finite events.
Within the study’s exhibition, and alongside the space devoted to the script, the presence of non-altered sounds of the everyday captured on Southern Cross University Lismore Campus aims to provide ground for ‘contrasting listening’. Claude Bailblé’s coinage of ‘terreau sonore’ (cited in McCann, 2006), literally a ‘sonic compost’, is appropriate to depict a subterranean, nutritious and silent bed of bodily knowledge on which hand picked sounds can grow. This first gallery space provides the sonic compost able to generate attentive listening to the presence of other sounding elements. I previously suggested that engineered ‘silences of the everyday’ could be the epitomes of the discrepancies between theoretical approach, creative practice and commercial goals in the contemporary movie industry.
These discrepancies include the expression of environmental sound habituation and the visual expectations attributed to sonic environments. In the last stage of the study’s exhibition, exposure to amplification acts as a pointer to the un-amplified sounds of the everyday, the skin-able and audible but mentally invisible matter that surrounds us and travels within us. In and outside cinemas, silences germinate out of the sounds of the everyday and unseen activities. Sound frequencies build our visual space and provide silences by virtue of the small amount of space they take onto an auralised visual field.
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Cinematic silences, with or without audible signals, are space builders. However, sound designers often have to battle to impose silence as a rich terrain on which to build sounds. The artificial silence of movies fascinates cinema sound professionals although this study has confirmed the poor commercial value of this attraction. In an interview, sound editor Livia Ruzic mentions that she is able to detach herself from her professional expertise when going to the movies. However, and tellingly, she adds that, ‘It is often on a second viewing, if I really like the film, then I focus more on the sound. But then it is often also the lack of sound, or the use of silences, that really interests me’ (Capp, 2002). This physical attraction, and creative potential, warrants an investigation in the practice of including invisible elements of the soundscapes. The often barely audible elements of the study participants’ soundtracks do not match the urban sonic bed that we inhabit and tacitly ‘know’. Instead, the created sound pieces provide us with contrasting objects of attention to our ‘known sonic fields’. John Kassab’s opinion that ‘silence is an effect with sound’ (29 July 2011) finds its mark: silences fence pictorial space and establish aural imagery.
Conclusion
A common definition of silence seems relative to sounds that have gone or are in states of becoming: vibrations on the skin can awaken the mind, titillate visions and disturb thoughts. As well as invading our obsessive quest for semantic explanations, silences also populate the rich pre-cognitive intelligence of bodies: we commonly mention that time or place ‘feel silent’ and also that silence ‘falls’ on us as if it were an uncontrollable matter. Sardello qualifies silence as a primary phenomenon perceived by the whole body as ‘a kind of touch, like that of a warm breeze on the skin on a fall day’ (Sardello, 2008, p. 35). Silences breathe and take us closer to an original state, a state that I suggested as ‘insounds’. To some extent this concept combines Cage’s notions of all sound and always sound that extend sonic activity behind the body (Kahn, 2001, p. 159). However insounds does not rely on audibility and phonographic recording or musical tones because it is not an object: it is flesh, an element that ‘is not matter, is not mind, is not substance’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 139).
This fourth Chapter took the reader from sounds as omnipresent constants, ‘insounds’, to silences as distinct elements of soundscapes’ narrative. The narrative of our environment guards and guides us, as bodies, in the time and space we occupy. We pointed
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out that sonic environments are not natural musical compositions but processes engineered by our kinaesthetic needs. The elemental sonic activities of our surroundings are the matter that reaches us, activates our affective capacities and transforms silences in humans’ coenesthetic experiences of the world. Based on that proposition and the protagonist’s near kinetic stillness, the scripted scene gives material for constructed silences. The activity of these narrative elements triggers the audience’s attention to the density of their presence.
The presence of silences is an evolving phenomenon linked to haptic processes triggering coenesthetic and kinaesthetic awareness: we are insounds but silences at once envelop and expand our skin. The sounding silences of cinema soundtracks that cocoon us in movie theatres emerge in dialogues, music and sound effects: for participant sound designer Markus Kellow ‘silence is something that is above them all, connecting to them all’ (Kellow, 25 October 2010). In this stage of the exegesis and in the perambulatory exhibition, silences are acknowledged as contributors to primordial gestures. Silences are able to provide a measure of the active reciprocity between humans and their material environments. A place of acoustic silence, like an anechoic chamber, takes us to the sonic transits and flux of our own flesh and guts: we live in sound, we self-echo. However we are not ‘finite’ as waves subtly brush the epidermis: the skin knows when it meets vibrations of silence that will push a human’s centre of gravity towards the audible to save one’s skin, ‘pour sauver sa peau’.
As catalysts of the matter that we are part of, silences add another dimension to our knowledge and sense of being in the world. Silence becomes motile, fluid and spontaneous: it gives a sense of time to the minds of our body. The idea that flesh and fluids have minds of their own seems incongruous and far from contemporary propositions of the ‘mind/body problem’. However, I suggest that the state of insounds allows the body to express its mind as the organism makes informed decisions about its axial states and gravitations: it finds its space in the texture of sounding silences. It is this material texture that cinema sound designers have to make apparent to our centre of gravity as well as to our dermal and visual fields.
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Part 3: Sound Design, Practice and Vision
5. Chapter Five: Sounding the Screen, Theory and Practice
Introduction
The discourse on cinema sound often focuses on the relationships between the viewer-listener and the semantic interpretation of the auditory content. A link between environmental acoustics and cinema sound design exists but generally focuses on the experience of spectators, rather than on the creative process performed by the sound storytellers. The physical involvement of the public is rarely juxtaposed with the kinetics of cinema sound making. The aim of this chapter is to reconcile these modes of experiencing sound and to smooth the distinctions between makers and audiences. Audiences are makers of their own soundtracks and are, like sound creators, active experiencers of the sounds of the everyday. The distinction between these two states is based on the sensorial intention of sound designers, the expectations generated by commercial practices and their repercussions on narration.
This chapter looks into the perceptual expectations that relate to the creation, and necessary reception, of soundtracks created for film fictions. In the context of this study, I look at two underlying assumptions: first, film sounds are phenomena framed by cultural constructs and second, soundtracks are the products of somatic experiences and narrative endeavours. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s approach to phenomenology suggests that it is the study of essences set in a world in existence: this implies some inseparability between the object of study and its perceiver. According to Merleau-Ponty, phenomena have to be examined from within and, through creative participation, that approach is literally reflected in this study. The creative process of sounding the visible world around us starts within the flesh and coenesthesia of its creators, a phenomenon that is largely ignored by film theorists.
This study’s participants, as perceivers of their worlds and objects of study, create outputs that are in turn objects of study. As a method of inquiry phenomenology is concerned with human experience as it is lived and described by ‘specific individuals in
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specific circumstances’ (Pollio, Henley, & Thompson, 1997, p. 28). The artifacts produced in the context of this research showcase individual creative skills while establishing sound- makers as prescient ‘sounders’ of silences bound by cultural standards. This fifth chapter highlights theoretical stances and the study’s creative participants’ views on industry practices. Here, we prepare the set for the discussion on the unusual practice of sound design employed to generate this study’s exhibited artifacts. The insights obtained will sustain the discussion on aural imagery and coenesthetic approaches to sound awareness and creation that are part of the Sixth chapter.
5.1 Framing authenticity
In early cinema, the moving images projected onto the screen were aural, but mostly voiceless, and mechanical sounds were their first companions along with the musicians, or actors or narrators by the stage. In the 1910s, Edison’s kinetophone fused moving visuals and sound but encountered problems of synchronisation between the two mediums. From the beginning of the ‘talkies’ perfect sound and image synchronisation was the primary goal. Numerous audio systems were experimented with on both sides of the Atlantic and it took more or less ten years to reach a standard that reflected the power of sound to alter the perception of moving images. Although sound-on-film had been achieved, Susan Hayward defines the moment in cinema sound as the release in 1927 of an American movie directed by Alan Crosland entitled The Jazz Singer (Hayward, 2006, p. 358). The successful opening of that movie in Sydney in 1928 broke all box-office records (Yecies, 2007, p. 136).
The initial incentive to add synchronous sound and voice to moving images was commercial. It capitalised on the success of radio and music hall by simulating them, at least in the U.S.A. Cinema conversion to synchronous sound was motivated by replacing live musical, radio-plays and staged entertainment with low-cost film (O’ Brien, 2005, p. 3). Whereas cinemagoers could once imagine the actors’ voices by reading muted lips and talking bodies, they could now watch on screen, or guess, where the sound was supposed to emanate from. In 1980 critical studies theorist Rick Altman affirmed that cinema sound deserved recognition in its own right and wished for the ‘ontological fallacy’ of cinema being a visual medium to be expunged (1980, p. 14, italics in text).
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Altman’s wish was for the historical perspective on film sound to be replaced by an ontology of sound that would reveal it as a natural element of cinema, a complementary entity rather than an add-on element to visuals (Altman, 1985, p. 52). It is unclear if that goal has been achieved: cultural differences and technological advances have not hindered this effort but have not exactly unified the fields of cinema sound theory and cinema sound practice. Presently, the social and phenomenological aspects of the practice of cinema sound design are changing due to technical innovations that seem to re-enforce images as main narrative conveyors.
The Greek origin of the word ‘cinema’ implies the act of motion and traditionally static images travelled on a moving celluloid strip. For André Bazin cinema had to be realist, its images objective and corresponding to their actual duration whereas montage ‘insidiously substituted mental and abstract time’ (2004, p. 53). To some extent, everyday life is about disjunction and collage of non-linear events and Trevor Ponech’s concept reflects that idea: cinema is ‘a mental item which sorts external objects, state of affairs, or events’ (2011, p. 53). For Edgar Morin the essence, the ‘inner power’ of cinema and its social necessity, is to realise human imagination (2005, p. 7). In the 1940s, filmmaker and theorist Jean Epstein applied that idea when he noted that ‘Already, it’s no longer a matter of simply hearing people speak but of hearing them think and dream’ (1985, p. 143). He physically slowed audible events in order to separate their tones so that ordinary sounds would reveal their complex nature and be themselves instruments of a true score, ‘purely out of sound’, as he did in his 1947 movie Le Tempestaire (Chaîne de Langloisph, 2012). If realist cinema personifies the idea that ‘the image must be reinforced by what we hear on the soundtrack’ (Jordan, 2012), what kind of silences would be realist?
Vivian Sobchack’s definition of film can give ground to a phenomenological approach to the role of sound and sound makers in the experience of everyday life: she understands films as ‘perception turned literally inside out and towards us as expression’ (1992, p. 12). While adding that cinema is ‘dynamic realism’, visual editor and sound designer Walter Murch sums up an understanding of the essence of cinema with a very graphic image. For him cinema involves watching what happens when we implausibly put ‘dogs and crocodiles in the same cage’ (Old School Cinema, 2010, April 21).
Murch’s graphic analogy superimposes visual imagination onto the grasping of a situation fenced by logic, and is reminiscent of Bresson’s idea that image and sound ‘must
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work each in turn through a sort of relay’ (cited in Weis & Belton, 1985, p. 146). For some, a film without sound is still a film whereas a sound track without images is a radio-play unless it is projected (Chion, 1994, p. 143). In 1930 Walter Ruttmann produced an ‘audio- film for radio’ using the technology of film editing but without pictorial content. The resulting narrative, Weekend (Yulogarcia, 2011), has scenic and rhythmic qualities; it carries aural imagery: the sawing of wood, noise of engines, music and voice give it a structure that needs no images to be uniquely audio-visualised by members of the public.
There is no interruption of sonic activity in Ruttman’s ‘radio-play’ made with visual technology: a lack of images disallows us ‘to see any silent continuation of the action’ (Balázs, 1972, p. 205). However, the notion of ‘radio-play’ is not limited to avoidance of broadcast or screened silence. On creating his soundtrack for this study, John Kassab noted that working from a script was a form of radio-play. If the brief for the study’s creative participation had been to create a radio-play, Kassab’s soundtrack would have been the same as the one he actually produced (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Of course his soundtrack would have been very different if he had been provided with visual guidance as a base for audio- visual synchronicity. If the piece that John Kassab created were to be broadcast, the first five seconds would be ‘misheard’ as a mechanical silence and the audience, unless warned, would probably reach for the volume knob.
Loudness and considerations for the visible source of sounds, and the ways sonic waves travel, link acoustic ecology and cinema physically and figuratively. For Bela Balázs, sound film is an invaluable musical tool that ‘will teach us to analyse even chaotic noise with our ear and read the score of life’s symphony’ (Balázs, 1972, p. 198). However, the unavoidable goal of adapting sound to visuals and matching audition to sight narrowed sensory experiences for the makers and the public. Synchronicity, as a ‘pronouncement of universal validity’ (Balázs, 1985, p. 120) can seriously curtail the potency of cinema sound: sound changes axis of perception, directs sight and makes us ‘feel vision’ differently.
The unease that Sergei Eisenstein manifested for synchronised sound opened ways for Soviet filmmakers to use non-synchronicity as a complementary element of montage rather than an element of sensory disjunction. For Bazin it was the editing and timing of images that gave cinema the means for a director to transmit ideas and emotions (2004, p. 44). He also noted that the introduction of cinema sound did not alter the power of visual montage but instead turned cinema itself into an objective illusion (Bazin, 2004, p. 52).
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As a perceptual unit, film physically engages our senses and can provide pre- reflective experiences that resurface when exposed to a fictional narrative. Research participant John Kassab succinctly sums up the narrative possibilities and the purpose of cinema sound as: ‘Without sound, the illusion of reality is lost’ (2010, p. 7, italics in text). The coherence of the illusion can rely on sound despite Christian Metz professing that the image is the vehicle of the film narrative (1974, p. 26). Motion provides objects with an autonomous presence that give an impression of authenticity to an audience, except that this occurrence cannot be touched on the screen. However, the vibrations that engulf the space where we sit in to witness the materiality of images touch us and connect us to the screen.
Sound becomes haptic and its movements can make us believe in the instant and the realism of a visual narrative even though this element could remain unseen. In Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956), Pierre is a French resistant captured by the Nazis and on death row. Over successive nights he methodically dismantles the wooden door of his cell, and rebuilds it so that daylight will not reveal its modified state. The sounds of the guards’ boots in the corridor give substance and temporal depth to a realistic, and historic, setting. As described by Michel Chion ‘It’s the reverberation of the whistles, the footsteps, and the noise of keys and locks that etched these imaginary spaces into my memory’ (2009, p. 255). A tangible physical dimension is added to the ‘reality’ of the imaginary: tactile dimensions give it a ‘real authenticity’, a haptic imprint.
5.2 Visuals entrenched in sound
In a film scene, staged activity will suggest the original sources of sounds; for many their position in the frame will be their primary mode of definition: diegetic or non-diegetic sonic expressions. It is almost paradoxical that one of the most discussed, and contentious, terms used by film sound theoreticians is the ‘diegesis’. Its greco-latin root positions it as a literal spoken narration that provides an external point of view. A diegesis is a descriptive commentary: it cannot escape the linearity of its narrative content, although its sonic vehicle is alterable at will. Cinematic visions provide linearity and sound can offer multiple interpretations of these visions. In its cinematic interpretation, diegesis aims to describe the position of sound in relation to the visual content: sound is referential, almost reverential, to the two-dimensional plan. Sound at large is omni and pluri-directional as well as inescapable
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to all, but the measure of its narrative importance remains its audible ‘territory’ in or out of the frame.
Diegetic sounds have their source in ‘the story world’ and non-diegetic sounds are sourced ‘outside’ it (Bordwell & Thompson, 2010, p. 284). The characters within the story would perceive dialogues, visually indicated sound effects and music emanating from the scene as diegetic sources. Non-diegetic sounds would include the interpretative music score, voice-overs and voice off screen. Bordwell and Thompson push the distinction by adding a spatio-temporal element to this concept of displacement and presence of sound in the intertwining of visual narratives (1985, p. 197). Displaced diegetic sound can take place alternatively in the past or in the future whereas ‘simple’ diegetic sound happens in the present. While noting that diegetic sounds can be on and off screen, Bordwell and Thompson add ‘internal’ and ‘external’ diegetic sounds. External diegetic would stand for what the spectator perceives as a sound for which the source is part of the scene while internal diegetic refers only to the sounds emanating from ‘the mind of a character’ (Bordwell & Thompson, 1985, p. 193). Internal diegetic is subjective and external diegetic is thought as objective.
The diegesis of sound sources is sometimes irrelevant as the same idea can have a similar appearance but can sound differently: an ambulance will pass with all lights flashing but its sirens don’t have to be turned on all the time. The absence of their specific tone could transform that lack of audio activity into a meta-diegetic presence or into an objective external diegetic. Claudia Gorbman notes that ‘diegetic music functions first and foremost as sound’ (1980, p. 200, italics in text) and also sees the need for another banner to express the unspoken human experiences and ‘the sounds in the mind’ in a non-musical way. Many creative participants to this study use these sorts of sonorities as they interpret the second part of the script: the introspective state of Graham and his mute visual interrogation of the victim’s picture. Gorman gave the appellation ‘meta-diegetic’ to sounds linked to the imagination and silence (1976, p. 449) while Chion coins ‘internal sounds’ as sounds of the imagination as well as body functions (1994, p. 222).
Chion splits this diegetic category as objective-internal (bodily functions) and subjective-internal (mental voices, memories and so forth). Gorbman’s definition of ‘meta- diegetic’, and Bordwell and Thompson’s ‘internal diegetic’, as sound imagined by characters is close to Balázs’ affirmation that the potential of film sound, other than vocal or musical, is
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greater than being a simple copying and mimetic device. The study’s script and its two different constructions of silences, divided as ‘before and after the eighth second’, attest to these ideas and their sonic expressions. In some of the created soundtracks, the second part of the script indeed generates some low frequency tones that are almost musical, but not quite, and fit the above notions of internalisation. The table below, extracted from the summary of the distinctive sonic events audible in the interior scene of the script, indicates sonic elements used to express internal thoughts:
After the First Eight Seconds of the Script, Interior of Police Caravan Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Tone, Discreet Low Frequencies Tone, Dynamic Low Frequencies Tone, Discreet High Frequencies Tone, High Frequencies Tone, Low Frequencies Elongated Musical Tones Damian Carlos Tom Markus Evan Michael Sound Effects John Kassab Ben Vlad Candusso Choconta Heuzenroeder Kellow Kitchener Worthington Figure 5-1: Internalising Graham’s mental soundscapes
With the lower frequencies signalling emotional interiority and skin of the protagonist, sound designers’ soundtracks offer a membrane of silence that takes us, the public, in and out of Constable Graham McGahan’s life. All the while, this membrane of lower frequencies grounds us in the space of the caravan through the density of Graham’s physical presence, the economy of his gestures and the sounds of his breath. These sound effects do not provide a musical score and do not depict any physical actions: they are somewhere in between, a place that has deep physical resonance.
As a sound designer, Walter Murch frames sounds in broad categories: ‘encoded sound’ (voice) and ‘embodied’ sound (music) with sound ‘effects’ floating between these two poles, neither fully encoded nor fully musical (Murch, 2005, online). Sound designer Ben Burtt distinguishes two kinds of sounds: literal (dialogue) and nonliteral abstraction (music) with sound effects ‘somewhere in between the two’ (cited in Sonnenschein, 2001, p. 197). Film composer Mladen Milicevic adds the term oneiric as referencing dream-like states, in order to deepen Gorbman’s concept of meta-diegetic (Milicevic, n.d, online). However, his solution is for music to interrupt meta-diegetic sounds in order to access an
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oneiric mood. Diegetic music, relevant to location, and non-diegetic music, relevant to the score, are other differentiating constructs that can open new grounds for discussion. Anahid Kassabian suggests that the will to differentiate diegetic and non-diegetic music is useless as boundaries are often crossed and blurred (The Editors, 2003, p. 76).
Such vague descriptions of sounding elements’ content and meaning are often inapplicable in practice. What matters is to create something that ‘feels’ right at the time of creation and is designed to make an audience ‘feel’ sound as physical conveyors of emotions. Milicevic questions the utility of ‘jargon’ when diegesis, synchronous, realistic, literal, counterpoints, as well as their counterparts, could distract from obtaining an integral understanding of cinema (Milicevic, n.d, online). Theoreticians, as well as ‘technicians’, could be both guilty of the same sin: instead of talking about sound they ‘are actually thinking of the visual image of the sound’s source’ (Metz & Gurrieri, 1980, p. 29). Anecdotally, none of the professional participants to this study used the nomenclature tentatively explained previously.
Ben Vlad was the only participant sound designer to mention the expression ‘diegetic’, albeit wondering if ‘non-diegetic’ would have been more appropriate to describe music and atmospheres (Vlad, 2 March 2011). It is tempting to agree with Cultural Studies lecturer Henry Taylor that, at times, the semantic discourse on diegesis and cinema sound seems like a farce to distance film studies and critical discourse from ‘the general, “ignorant” public’ (H. M. Taylor, 2007, online). A clear-cut definition to the presence of diegetic and non-diegetic elements seems more appropriate to the function of a script in the telling of visuals: being, coming in the frame and being, and going out of the frame.
5.3 Autonomy and omni-presence
Sound is never off. Instead sound is in, around, behind the screen, whereas visuals appear and disappear (Metz & Gurrieri, 1980, p. 29), as if they were prisoners of the frame. Sound makes us see differently: this fact can be experienced through the end of study exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. Comparisons relying on a choice of soundtracks that amalgamate sound and images differently provide tangible experiences. These different experiences require unique coenesthetic readjustments in response to the affective impact of a narrative that regenerates itself not because of a component’s absence but because of the malleability of that very element. The phenomenological impacts of
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cinema sound allows a departure from a visual vocabulary towards a multi-sensorial one; it also makes irrelevant a discourse solely based on a sensory hierarchy and lightens the stance that vision is the cinematic gospel.
Rick Altman’s wish for cinema sound to experience a ‘new beginning’ (1980, p. 15) demands ‘new listening’ to sounds in order for film criticism to depart from its focus on visual factors. Chion employs the term ‘synchresis’, a combination of synchronism and synthesis, to reinforce the instantaneous and natural fusion between images and sounds. Synchresis does not imply the witnessing of the physical junction of sound and vision: suggestions of kinetic events are enough to achieve a coherent narrative (Chion, 1994, p. 63). An example is the pneumatic sound that accompanies the visual cut between a closed and open door in The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980). As a sound effect, this dynamic element drives a kinetic action that has a resonance for the public.
Altman’s hope for a new perspective on cinema sound corresponds with Michel Chion’s will to acknowledge sound as an integral part of cinematic language due to the permanence of human relationships to sound. The thought that the causality of sound is enough to trigger cognitive interpretation limits the full potential of the sensorial aspects of cinematic soundscapes. Sound is ‘a rocket in stages’ (Chion, 1994, p. 27): as cinematic event, sound is not limited to the source of a sound but rather is part of an amalgamated succession of different sounds. Walking in a leafy street, a sound bed might include birds, breathing, rumbling traffic at a far distance and a car coming in front. Apart from the car, the other sounds would not appear to be synchronised to vision.
The way cinema sound operates reveals the temporality of the visuals and adds value to the scene. Chion decomposes this temporalisation of images by sound in three stages (1994, p. 13). First, the person moving into the street with birds would represent temporal visualisation and breath provides rhythms to her/his physical progression. Second, the rumbling of the traffic and the noise of the oncoming car could express temporal linearisation as they simultaneously combine a linear and sequential sense of time. Finally, the vectoralisation, as the condensation of timely characteristics of all elements, provides a finite physical story. In the above nomenclature vision is still the measure of sound as a contributor to the moving images and the potential multisensory reactions of audiences.
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Sound production techniques develop and generate evolution of public consumption and physical habituation. However, worldwide standardisation of technologies is of such great commercial importance that it can alter aesthetic possibilities. Technical standardisation affects synchronous sound, camera usage, projection speeds, styles and narrative plots. To reduce costs, following narrative conventions was a way to obtain funds and make money out of filmmaking. Charles O’Brien pinpoints the 1930s as the decade of worldwide homogenisation with the appearance of similar character-driven plots that displayed identical techniques such as ‘linear, cause-and-effect successions of scenes; and continuity editing’ (O’ Brien, 2005, p. 5). In his comparative study on the respective sound standardisation in the U.S.A and France, O’Brien points to synchronous sound recording techniques that greatly influence French style: the takes are longer and actors are more often ‘character-actors’ often performing both on screen and on the stage.
French filmmakers privileged Son direct (direct sound) but this technique was discarded in the U.S.A where re-recording and scored features became the norm. Hollywood separated sound production from image production, and to this day, the direct-sound techniques perpetuate distinctions between French cinema and other national cinemas (O’ Brien, 2005, p. 135). These fundamental differences of the chronological application of sound onto the celluloid might explain some theoretical discourses and contemporary cinematic practices. Sound re-recording is able to provide shorter, and more contrived, glimpses of the world around us: it is out-of-synch with life. However, re-recorded sound is symbiotically present when it seamlessly connects physical affect, narrative experiences and emotional expectations of individuals and crowds alike.
Since the ‘60s, high quality portable recording technology has provided ways to produce territorial sound identifiers for audiences. The distance that mechanical recording allows between the origins of sound events, and its human listeners, created what R. Murray Schafer labeled ‘schizophonia’ (1977, p. 91). He considered the practice of electromagnetic recording and diffusion at another location as ‘abhorrent’ (Schafer, 1994, p. 274). However, this technological breakthrough allows the public to finally have the possibility to listen to ‘sound objects’ independent of referential qualities such as places of recording. Portable sound recording equipment allowed schizophonia to become the way to achieve ‘diegetic’ and acousmatic sounds on film and in theatre. Cinema sound is schizophonic as it can be captured at one place and released at another: voice, music, ambiences can be grabbed and transposed anywhere at anytime. All elements of a film soundtrack can be treated in that
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manner. Albeit their tasks and modes of production differ, their hierarchal ‘importance’ is not clear-cut unless it directly refers to the framed images.
Film historian John Belton gives the responsibility of listening to the viewer’s sensitivity and adds that the perception of sound is usually ‘through or in terms of the image’ (1985, p. 64). Sound designer and visual editor Walter Murch, in his introduction to Chion’s seminal book Audio Vision, uses the expression ‘conceptual resonance’ to establish the potential reciprocity of emotions that vision and sound bounce back off each other (1994, p. xxii, italics in text). Expectations are part of that process and sound does not always materialise visually in order to be coenesthetically potent. The multi-sensory perceptions consequently generated stimulate the imagination of the experiencer more than visuals would (Sinclair, 2003, p. 20).
The primary creation and reception of film sound has everything to do with the spatial presence and sensorial activity of our bodies in their entirety. While employing the term ‘rendering’, ‘le rendu’, Chion acknowledges members of an audience as omnisensory beings: a ‘rendering’ is a process that leads a public to experience the knowledge of a scene, not because of its reproduction, but because of the multi sensory ‘truth’ that it can convey (Chion, 2009, p. 488). Sound vibrations are the malleable amalgam that holds the story together. The story is the main consideration of sound designers: to create ‘what the story needs or demands’ is paramount; the bulk of sound designers’ efforts can focus on characters’ perspectives and not always on camera points of view.
Over time, Chion’s work has helped establish a non-oppositional relationship between sight and hearing that allows the simultaneous perception of sounds and images as a welded event rather than two modes of story-telling acting in parallel. By inserting notions of multi-sensoriality, Chion unveils the mutual contamination of sound and visual information. Listening becomes a physical progression in three acts that leads the audio- viewer to her or his holistic interpretation of the potential meaning of a scene or even film (Chion, 1994, pp. 26-29). Act 1 is a causal listening that orients an ear towards the contextual cause of the sound. This axial orientation implies that the head itself is a receptive device. Directional precision is not a requisite but vision can confirm the source of sound(s). Act 2 is semantic listening and involves a coding of the information leading to its interpretation. Finally in Act 3 appears a reduced listening that reveals the personal and subjective translation by individuals of the lived experiences. Reduced listening, as the
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selective act of listening, would allow individual perceptions to join communal impressions and therefore ‘partake in a particular kind of objectivity, that of shared perception’ (Chion, 1994, p. 29).
Sound is inescapable and, as we listen as much with our body as with our intellect, the stages and modes of listening mentioned above are integral to each other. Although Chion’s descriptions are analytical and ordered, they could still fit Merleau-Ponty’s opinion that, as a phenomenological art, cinema can ‘make manifest the union of mind and body, mind and world and the expression of one in the other’ (1964a, p. 58). Michel Chion commented that ‘sound is mental’ and that ‘only the screen can be touched’ (1994, p. 144) but later on formed a view on the link between physiologies of experience and emotional richness. In 2000, he wrote that ‘Audiovisual relationships are largely cultural and historical but, in everyday life as well as in the audiovisual arts, they rely also on relatively little- known universal psycho-physiological phenomena’ (Chion, 2000, p. 205).
5.4 Sounds as axial triggers
Even after the introduction of synchronous sound, an attentive and immobile audience was rare, at least in the 1930s in France. Charles O’Brien describes movie houses as providing ‘entertainment-palace ambience’ and live entertainment was part of the experience (O’ Brien, 2005, p. 33). By contrast, in America the exhibition of film was becoming less social and more intimate: the emphasis was on the story rather than the place of exhibition (O’ Brien, 2005, p. 34). Balázs’ impression that ‘sound has no shadows’ (1972, p. 213), implying that cinema sound could not render a full three dimensional sense of space, loses ground.
The technical evolution of sound diffusion in cinema reflects the fact that sensory stimuli have become the goal that technology is chasing: we seek future sensations and often dismiss the impact of the familiar occurrences. However, sound designers Carlos Choconta, Tom Heuzenroeder and John Kassab insist that people’s personal backgrounds, their selves included, are the main factors in responsiveness to fictional or actual sounds (Choconta, 5 May 2011; Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011; Kassab, 29 July 2011). Could cinema sound denote patterns of general sound awareness through fictional actions witnessed while being still?
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Control of diffusion, and perception, increases the capacity for selective listening to establish ‘a cultural schema establishing a hierarchy’ of audition (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 124). For Merleau-Ponty, experiences of perception lead to cognition in order to ‘recover the consciousness of rationality’, although its French translation takes a more combative approach: it re-conquers rationality (‘de reconquerir la conscience de la rationalité’) (Merleau-Ponty, 1933, p. 67).
Such ‘rational hierarchy’ is physically present in a traditional movie soundtrack with the voice, music, and special effects coming from the centre of the screen, the music and special effects from the wings. However, it is a successful hierarchical demonstration if audiences’ eyes and ears do not leave the screen in front of them. Too much visual or audio panning, or a loud sound for example, could take the eyes towards the cinema’s ‘exit sign’ and this distraction will break the story telling. Incidentally, cinema professionals refer to this kinetic effect as ‘the exit sign effect’. Tony Murtagh points out that unintelligible dialogues have a similar effect: the ‘illusion is broken’ if in a cinema spectators turn to each other and ask what just had been said in front of their eyes (Murtagh, 22 September 2010).
Set configurations of speakers can enhance listening modes and allow distinctions between the layers of the background sounds, musical tones and vocal signals (Droumeva, 2005, p. 166). However, if used inappropriately, sophisticated displays can turn a narrative into loud chaos and have disastrous consequences for the story telling. Participant Michael Worthington suggests that if the voice is unbalanced, for example only coming from the front right speakers, the public could feel lectured at rather than participating in the story (Worthington, 21 December 2010). Christian Metz also notes that ‘Films release a mechanism of affective and perceptual participation in the spectator’ (1974, p. 4, italics in text).
Kristin Thompson points to the perceptual techniques used by Eisenstein to direct the reaction, and participation, of his public. A succession of three stages of physical and emotional control was taking place, starting with perception then moving on to emotion and finishing with cognition. Eisenstein did not consider these stages as a linear progression but as a ‘fundamental response process’ (K. Thompson, 1980, p. 120). To focus on the sensorial apparatus and cognitive mechanisms is insufficient as a means to understand our involvement within soundscapes: stimulation involves participation. Participation does not
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always entail cognition but it demands presence and availability: this of course is applicable to the phenomenology of listeners, in front of the speakers or behind the console.
Technical capability gives a spatial quality to the narrative power of specific sonic elements, but also to the previously unnoticed sounds. Chion, admitting that diegetic/non- diegetic confusions have monopolised part of the discourse on cinema sound, realised that the characteristics of sounds are modified by technology at large. To close his views on the subject he wrote that offscreen sound is invisible but related to what displays in the frame, regardless of its temporality. He adds that the source of ‘onscreen sound’ appears in the image and belongs to its framed reality (Chion, 1994, p. 73, italics in text).
While the developing movie vocabulary seems to have focused on the ears and eyes, Chion’s prolific coinage suggests a holistic approach that includes the tactile and kinesthetic impressions of an audio-visual narrative. According to Lakshmi Srinivas, there is a current lack of studies related to the culture of reception and physical involvement in cinema at large: cinema studies ‘has not moved beyond the analysis of film texts’ (2002, p. 172). There are dangers in insisting on a detailed ontology of film sound as it is the nature of sound in all its forms to be contextual, personal, un-listened to, omnipresent, detailed, visual, hidden, evolutionary and most simply, vibratory.
We focus on our ears and the multi-omnidirectional content that reach their axial permanence, forever on each side of our head. It is only when sounds, or relative absence thereof, pull us out of or into our seats that we experience the life of a movie in relation to our own axial sense of the world. However, the cultural ecology of theatres themselves acts as different experiential spaces in different countries. Going to a movie premiere in Bhopal in 2000, Amit S. Rai describes entering a movie theatre with the sensation that ‘from behind me a massive, surging pressure rushed me in forward’ (2009, p. 45). Regardless of the artistic value of the film, movie-going in India is sensory as the members of the public congregate in groups and families, talk aloud and move around the space (Srinivas, 2002, p. 160). The structure of a ‘Bollywood’ film allows for disjointed narratives: spectators can arrive late to a screening or in the middle of it without too much impact on their understanding of the plot (Srinivas, 2002, p. 167).
This physical integration of fictional narrative is largely due to the sound structure, songs and dance sequences that allow for the physical use of the theatre. It is in such contrast
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to the physical immobility of the western cinema-goer that one has to question the future relation to global sensory experience that technologies can foster. Sound studies mostly relate to seated and immobile spectators: how can we assess the phenomenological effectiveness of movie experiences if the notion of coenesthesia and its cultural ramifications are dismissed?
As mediated environments, movie theatres have a life of their own: walls and seats react to the use of low frequencies, and virtual narratives hover on the skin. Although ownership of domestic surround sound systems is increasing worldwide, multiplex cinema’ screenings set the multi-sensory experiential trend of spectatorship. While seated, the different physical interactions of the public with technological settings provokes a new ‘human-technological assemblage’ that transforms consumer habituation to the multiplex- commodity’s sensorium (Rai, 2009, p. 61). For a Hindi moviegoer, English movies equal boredom because ‘there is too much conversation, nothing happens’ (Srinivas, 2002, p. 158). This affective impression transfers to the creative and technical aspect of production. The antidote to boredom seems to be the Hollywood blockbusters, with their special effects, popular music, loudness and fast pace. To examine the somatic experience of the public, in context, can attest to the success of the narrative effectiveness executed by sound designers and the rendering of all elements of a film soundtrack executed by re-recording mixers.
The ‘universal psycho-physiological phenomena’ mentioned by Chion are what sound designers are able to trigger as witnesses to their personal you have to light up the cigarette’ and architects of narratives. As their main concerns are focused on the story, they have a tendency to trust their instincts and memories without thinking too much about the public. Sound designers’ production usually goes to the supervising sound editor and re- recording mixers who assess the potential effect of their material on the soundtrack at large.
Sound designers tend to work for the story and mixers for the audience. It is worth remembering that in most cases a film is in fact an ‘audio-logo-visual’ product, as words are the most valued elements of cinema sound (Chion, 2003, p. 468). Hollywood studio sound director Don Rogers noted the role considered the most important by film directors is the one of dialogue mixer (LoBrutto, 1994, p. 24). However, study participant Michael Worthington rightly points out that good writing does not always involve many words. In his view, a story is not about dialogues with sound around them but rather dialogue ‘that is sitting within the space therein’ (Worthington, 21 December 2010).
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5.5 Framing silences: effects and affect
The atmospheric noises, labeled as ‘those humble foot soldiers’ (Chion, 1994, p. 145), sound like the outcasts of film theory despite the importance of their spatiality. Chion notes that their presence is occasional and extremely stereotyped: seagulls will set the story by the seaside, a mix of police and fire trucks sirens will most probably transport us to cities. The success of a ‘perfect’ atmospheric soundtrack, with minimal but eventful special effects, is to position the audience in the intimate territories suggested by the visual information. Understandably, and for most professionals, including Tony Murtagh, a perfect soundtrack is the one that is ‘humble’, goes unnoticed and that does not interfere with the vocal information (Murtagh, 22 September 2010).
Chion suggested a hierarchy of perception when he wrote that ‘There are voices, and then everything else’ (1999, p. 5). With Hollywood movies ‘everything else’ has to be heard too: there is ‘a sound for everything’ says participant Damian Candusso (Candusso, 3 May 2011) therefore hyper-reality is the norm. In Hollywood every point of view has to emit sounds although the voice has to be clear and intelligible. At times, there is a blurry line between audible re-interpretation of existing events and fabrication of an imaginary audio reality. If the movement of a sabre was not producing a familiar ‘woohhssshh’ and if the sound of a hand clapping a shoulder was not touching our ears we would be at a loss to understand the intimacy of these experiences. But is this excess of ‘points of sound’ always necessary?
Depending on the story, ‘hard FX’, as the sound effects linked to a visualised kinetics, demonstrate how sound effects born of movement can add ‘intimate territories’ to physical proximity. They also magnetise elements of the story and transform them into characters: the red car will be louder, the ferry blows its horn when leaving the quay or the train toots at a crossing. The sound of the sabre transforms it into the link between opponents, the sound of hand on shoulder links actors: both attract the attention of the audience. The story ‘needs’ the time and spatiality that these links generate.
Ben Turner proposes that the sound effects register could be broken down into different categories: atmospheric sounds, Foley and ‘impact effect’: uncommon sounds as well as sounds for real objects that ‘need emotive impact within the diegesis’ (Turner, 2005, p. 4). Supervising sound editor Norval Crutcher could use this expression when he describes
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a sound effect achieved to personify a gun as ‘It’s got to have character to it’ (LoBrutto, 1994, p. 58). Similarly, Worthington gives the example of the air pressure gun that is the weapon of the main protagonist in No Country for Old Men (Coen & Coen, 2007). Made of many layers of sound effect, including some Foley, the gun ‘sounds like it looks rather than sounding like it does’ (Worthington, 21 December 2010). Intriguingly, cultural critic William Whittington includes the non-mechanical sound of ‘farm animals’ to his description of sound effects (Whittington, 2007, p. 36). For study participant John Kassab, atmospheres, backgrounds, ambiences, silences and sound effects are all effects made with sounds whereas for Worthington these same elements are ‘sound design’ elements that can be used musically (Worthington, 24 April 2012).
A way to differentiate these sounding elements could be to identify the process of creating them. Different work processes correspond to different roles, even if the same person fills different positions. Traditionally, sound effects designers will design sound effects; the atmosphere editor will execute atmospherics and so on. These sound elements are also associated with the chronology of film production. An atmosphere follows the film from start to finish and is consistent with the story location. Sound effects mostly relate to what is in the frame. Ambiences relate to the actual location of the shoot and entails sound recording of particular spaces before shooting or at the sound editing stage. Not many sound designers have the opportunity to picture sounds of silence in term of where they might belong and texture the screen in the specific locational context.
Sound designer Carlos Choconta suggests that the best way to define the atmospheric cohort is to question the notion of ‘effect’ (Choconta, 5 May 2011). For Barry Truax ‘sound effect’ is purely mechanical and defined as ‘a pre-recorded or simulated sound produced for a radio, television, film or theatrical program in order to suggest an actual sonic environment’ (Truax, 2001). Sound effects also map emotional visualisation. Choconta gives the example of the unreal loudness of hands softly touching shoulders and defines sound effects as the sounds that alter the emotional constant of a scene but would not be heard in other circumstances. Gianluca Sergi introduces a narrower version of sound effects as something ‘used in works of fiction to add realism’ (Sergi, 2006, online). The discrepancy between these two views, one suggesting perceptual exception and the other perceptual habituation, is confusing. Could these two phenomenological views be reconciled?
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Atmospheres, background, ambiences and silences have all these traits of coming from ‘somewhere’ in order to re-create an artificial place that ‘feels right’ but without too many descriptive qualities. They are indispensable, rich and enhance the ‘mood’ of film. For the purpose of this study a difference is made between ambience and ambiance with ambience referring to the pervading sonic atmosphere of a place and scene. Ambiance refers to a movie’s mood: sound and other elements such as lighting and set design create an ambiance that has been manufactured (Kcmyoung, 2012). In an audio-visual entertainment context, the aim of an atmospheric soundtrack and eventful special effects is to physically lure the audience into the ambiance of the fictional narrative. To spend time on location can provide material and inspirations to sound designers. Sound designer Leslie Schatz spent some days on the set of the film Gerry (Van Sant, 2002) and was able to physically absorb its atmosphere and record important narrative sounds (Klinger, 2006, online).
Ambiences of specific locations, atmospheres, backgrounds, room-tone, silences are all sound effects that can have wide implications for a visual story and contribute to set its mood. Bela Balázs expressed a request for a creative use of sound, not including vocal and musical, that would see sound as an independent commentary to the images and ‘reveals something hitherto hidden from our eyes - or ears’ (1972, p. 197). In a sense, it might be easier to define these elements visually: they have ‘un-sourcable’ qualities, are wide-angled and often out of focus. However, the nature of their differences is as blurry as the notion of their diegetic: are they on or off-screen? How do they reach an audience?
Surround sound technologies have contributed to expand the screen sound’s register, tonalities and their vibrating powers. The advent of surround sound offered the possibility to expand the range of audio experiences by positioning speakers at strategic points in a theatre and cocooning audiences. The worldwide propagation of the Dolby Stereo System transformed ‘traditional’ cinema into ‘hyper-nurturing cinema whose sensory realism ... brings on a sort of beatitude’ (Chion, 1999, p. 10). This potential cocooning prompts sound designer Gary Rydstrom to say that the public loves surrounds in movies: 'It opens up the space’ (LoBrutto, 1994, p. 238). The space of experience becomes a diegesis in itself.
Surround sound technology also allows atmospheric cinema sound to become more analytical as the silence between sonic signals become more ‘palpable’ (Chion, 2009, p. 151). The ubiquitous ‘rumeur’ - a quiet but persistent vibration, a rumbling - of the world has changed; the subjectivity of a collective can affect and silence its imprecise
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manifestation. Movie listeners can also experience fictive realities with precisely crafted environmental silences as proofs of authenticity. This sounding silence engages listeners physically: it provides them with personal territory and emotional space. It fills vocal blanks and gives gravitas to any ‘meaningful’ signal that might follow the duration of its presence. Paul Théberge gives a common example of this technique when, as in many television series, the sudden audio interruption of a heart monitor signifies a life ending (2008, p. 52). The audience loses the protection of what was an ambient noise and becomes physically attentive to the rhythm of narrative spaces between the rhythms of ‘meaningful signals’ and their sound effects.
A (too) simple definition of sound effects, close to Walter Murch’s suggestion of ‘sound-centaurs’ (2005, online) would be of sounds with neither clear voice nor music. However, with the use of Hildegard Westerkamp’s acousmatic tracks in Gus van Sant’s movie Elephant (Van Sant, 2003) the definition of a traditional musical concept would have to be revisited. Part of the soundtracks could be perceived as ‘sound effects’ for the public at large but it could also be labeled as accousmatic composition with distorted tones. Importantly, these soundtracks were not written for the movie and sound designer Leslie Shatz did not alter them. Nevertheless, these sonorities embodied the sense of place and refined the mind space of the characters. Scholar Randolph Jordan describes the use of Westerkamp’s sounds by Leslie Schatz in another Van Sant movie, Last Days (Van Sant, 2005) as ‘housed within the spaces we see on screen, while continually offering a ladder out of the frame to lands that lie beyond’ (Jordan, 2007, online).
Atmospheres and background seem to be interchangeable, depending on the country (Kassab, 2010, p. 19) or the content. Candusso adds that atmospheres, backgrounds and ambiences are all the same things ‘worded differently by different people’ although he labels background as being an element of atmospheres while arguing that both ambience and atmosphere are character locative (Candusso, 3 May 2011). The kinetic activities that they surround seem to make a difference in the semantic usage of these labels. Some see ambiences as a complement to the sounds of an atmosphere/background. For example, while walking in a leafy street the indistinguishable words spoken by passing people would provide a background to the ambiance made of birds as well as of hums of modernity and traffic. The car coming forward belongs to the visuals and its characteristics would be the products of sound effects. A car coming from the back could be an atmospheric element. For sound designer Tom Heuzenroeder the differences in the use of terms come down to the
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practice and process of creating the soundtrack, as some structural elements have to be kept separate until the final re-recording mix (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). The car coming from the back is part of the atmospherics but because of its invisibility can be considered as a spot effect able to be taken off or lowered at will.
As there is no consensus about terminology, it is worth noting that there is an ‘interchangeability’ of nomenclature. On the online ‘sound-article-list’, American sound designer Randy Thom posted the following question: ‘Does “atmos” mean anything that is heard but not seen on the screen?’ (Thom). While noting that in the U.S.A there are no differences between the terms ‘ambience’ and ‘atmospheres’, Thom suggests that the most commonly used expression in the American industry is in fact ‘backgrounds’. Australian sound designer Damian Candusso mostly refers to ‘background’ as ‘atmospheres’ (Candusso, 3 May 2011). John Kassab gives another interpretation to these terms and writes that atmospheres/backgrounds create a sounding bed that can ‘slip seamlessly between objective and subjective perceptions of sound’ rather than just establishing location or fading behind dialogues (2010, p. 19). For some Australian sound designers such as participant Carlos Choconta, atmospheres, ambiences and backgrounds have a common point: they are the sounds that could be happening in ‘that’ place even if the scene was not to have a cinematic output’ (Choconta, 5 May 2011).
As my study progressed, it became obvious that each sound designer, although bound together by similar but vague sound codification, was able to generate individual views without needing to expand on semantics. Practice is the leitmotiv and when explanations are suggested, expressions such as ‘it feels like’ or ‘it feels right’ or ‘you know when’ are the norm. Professional practitioners struggle with applied terminology. Michel Chion is not very popular amongst the study’s participants. To some his lexicon resembles name-giving to obvious and/or instinctive sound manoeuvres and physical interactions. Why should terminology be important when ‘hands on’, tuned ears and instinct are the traits of the trade and result in products that can, at times, depend on prescient knowledge? Can cinematic conventions impregnate human bodies’ foreknowledge of the world?
Sound creation can provoke a ‘déjà entendu’, a reminiscence of already-heard, of the plausible and/or the implausible. Acoustic expressions follow codes dissected by critics and sometimes by the public: in that regard, Chion speaks more about the impact that mixers and re-recording mixers would have on the public. Sound designers interrogate and support the
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story, others throw it to the lions with words trying to justify the kill. Still, Chion has given room to talk about cinema sound as a sensory sounding board that bounces from the screens instead of echoing from visuals. Soundtracks can actually channel echoes from the ‘guts’ of sound designers to the ‘fresh ears’ of the re-recording mixer. The resulting processes affect at once the on-screen protagonists and their movie audiences: a chain of affect can be omni- directional rather than linear.
Conclusion
There is something telling in this comment from Randy Thom: ‘If feature films were about depicting reality, the average actor wouldn’t be better looking than the average person on the street’ (2003, p. 125). For Thom, cinema is ruled by creating illusion and perfecting lived experience: from its making to its purpose a movie is an illusionists’ practice. Australian sound recordist/editor and designer James Currie, while acknowledging the talent and ideas of Walter Murch, notes that his way of ignoring location recording could contribute to a ‘sanitisation of American Film’ (Zielinski, 2010, p. 29). Murch describes his intention when recording sounds of door-slamming is to record ‘the space in which the door- slam happens’ (Ondaatje, 2002, p. 226).
The ‘space in which the door-slam happens’ is a measure of time known to all but buried in the epistemology of sound, their sources, their effects and their destinations. It is a measure untouched by precisions that can anesthetise context. Clean dialogues do not always convey elements of truth to an audience and a compulsion to re-create, after the events, can perpetuate an artificial ‘feel’. However, background, atmospheres and silences can all be sound effects that Hollywood often polishes and embellishes, sometimes too much. John Kassab’s comment resonates when he states the possibility that sometimes ‘a really terrible sound is the right sound because it captures the essence of something’ (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Theory seems like an eternal pursuit, Hollywood is its own world, movies cheat but all can strangely be united by the essential viscerality of sound and its affect on sound makers.
Film sound is a phenomenological witness able to demonstrate the connection between humans and their world. However, it is almost paradoxical that we should often ignore the human factor behind the phenomenological content and that discourses focus
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instead on the cognitive and sensory intentions of directors and the experiences of their audiences. Critics’ reviews rarely point to the groundbreaking work of the sound team but the industry rejoices when it happens. The disinterest by both the industry and the public seems at time so blatant that a New York Times press article (Heffernan), acknowledging the talents and indispensability of sound designers, was hailed as a miracle on the sound.org list:
It’s so rare that film sound design is taken seriously enough to be commented upon in a
publication with the stature of the New York Times. Whether we agree with Ms. Heffernan’s
opinion or not, we should honor the occasion by reading it.
(Thom, 2010)
Importantly, Heffernan’s article was praising the work of sound designer/sound supervisor Paul N. J. Ottosson on the film The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008) and pointed to the subtlety of his work through the use of silences. In May 2010, a sound designer from the sound.org list contacted Wikipedia, the popular Encyclopedia online, to seek the inclusion of ‘sound designer’ for key credits associated with feature films (Hellum, 2010). The answer from the Wikipedia moderator was that sound supervisor and sound designers were not key contributors to a film creation. However, since early 2011 a search for ‘sound designer’ on Wikipedia provides a link to a page on ‘sound design’; on that page the role of ‘sound designer’ is defined as such: ‘A sound designer is one who practices the art of sound design’ while also observing that ‘sound designers are expected to be creative’ (Wikipedia, 2012).
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6. Chapter Six: Creating Silences: the Sounds of Vision
Every time something is to be explained, it is more prudent to begin by experiencing it.
(Metz & Gurrieri, 1980, p. 32)
Introduction
The ultimate decision about any aspect of a movie resides with directors and producers. Some are more or less aware of the visual impact of sound. Some participants in my study have mentioned that, at times, they play a near educational role with directors and producers and that this exchange can lead to successful collaborations and mutual respect. In a personal communication Tom Heuzenroeder wrote: ‘I personally have suggested things to directors who have then discarded entire lines of dialogues, realising that a small suggestion and detail in the sound can say the same thing in a more pleasing, or more natural way’ (Heuzenroeder, 2010). Although voice often leads the soundtrack other sounds give it contexts, textures and density. To convince a director or a producer of sound’s potency can demand perseverance. Carlos Choconta mentions his physical interaction and persistence at post-production stage while trying to insert digital silence instead of audible sound: ‘I was with the producer and that’s when a lot of sounds were chopped away. So that’s why it was a win for me, because I managed to convince him’ (Choconta, 5 May 2011). Technique and experiment reflect on a creativity emerging out of industry necessities, human physical interactivity and the sharing of life experiences.
This Sixth chapter unfolds different aspects of the practice of contemporary cinema sound: commercial imperatives, interpretive expectations and individual creative experience. For psychologist Dean Simonton the collective creation that is a film involves groups of contributors arranged in four creative clusters: dramatic, visual, technical and musical (Simonton, 2004, p. 1496). Part of this classification is not obvious: the crisscrossing of collaborative interventions can perturb the chronological setting and the constraints of movie making. The chronology of filmmaking has three stages: pre-production, production and post-production.
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Sound has become a fixture of post-production and many associate the production of sound to this step in movie making. In 2007, parts of a report on the state of the creative industries in Britain suggested pointed that a ranking of creative contribution based on two distinct categories, ‘pure creativity’ and ‘applied creative skills’, did not reflect 'the tensions between creative labour and the conditions in which it is put to work' (O’Connor, 2007, p. 47-48). Based on art economics, this idea is more a reflection of commercial viability. ‘Pure creativity’ almost becomes a synonym for market failure. The same report highlights an outdated notion of the ‘criteria of creativity’ based on ideas and suggests that production constraints are dominant creative agents. This chapter points out the experiential differences between creative processes in commercial environments and those employed for the creative endeavour of this research.
6.1 Sound designers: shifts and turns of a label
As to the artistic creativity in cinema production, Simonton defines the musical cluster as independent from all creative clusters and he associates sound designers with the technical cluster. He also notes that during the 1960s the sound technicians’ work was split into two different categories: special effects and sonic features (Simonton, 2004, p. 1507). Current definitions or opinions on the label and the role of the sound designer oscillate between these divisions of labour, as confirmed by this study. The term ‘sound designer’ appears vague as individual practitioners seems to apply different criteria to its functions, therefore running the risk for the expression ‘sound design’ to become meaningless.
Participant Damian Candusso suggests that Sound personnel are foremost technicians, and that depending on the individual, a person will develop a creativity linked to a ‘confidence in experimenting’ and a trust in their instincts (Candusso, 3 May 2011). A third notion is the one suggested by creative participant John Kassab: a sound designer is often credited along with other heads of creative departments (2010, p. 7) and uses her/his talent to manipulate ‘an audience’s emotions and physical responses’ (2010, p. 9). Even though production constraints might fuel contemporary creativity we should not dismiss the perceptual, mnemonic and instinctive capacities of creators.
Often the credit of sound assemblage goes to filmmakers and directors without reference to the craft of sound, apart from allusions to musicians. In some ways there is
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some logic behind this perspective: sound designers often focus on the unseen to accurately reflect characters’ physical environments and emotional abstractions. The bulk of their efforts might centre on characters’ perspectives and not on camera points of view. The sound department of a feature film has many different positions to fill on set and in post- production. Some known terms are: production recordist, boom operator, sound recordist/engineer, sound editor, sound mixer, sound effects mixer, sound effects editor, re- recording mixer, Foley artist, Foley mixer, Automated Dialogue Replacement Mixer (ADR), dialogue mixer, sound supervisor and more. In a traditional studio hierarchy, the sound director is the administrator of a sound department. The schema below may still be applicable to a sizeable American budget and is entirely relative to the mode and place of production, although sound supervisor now replaces sound director. We should note the apparent mistake related to the Foley department, as the Foley editor should sit between Foley Artist and Supervising Foley Editor:
Figure 6-1: Traditional Sound production: Organigram extracted from David Yewdall’s Practical art of motion sound (1999, p. 155)
The above hierarchy started to change in the early ‘70s when the big Hollywood studios were dismantled partly because of trade union disputes (Whittington, 2007, p. 113). These changes pushed people like Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Walter Murch, Randy Thom, Alan Splet and others to move to San Francisco. They formed independent
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production companies, such as American Zoetrope led by Coppola, which became the experimental ground for that American generation of filmmakers. Without dependency on studio constraints, they took the opportunity to freelance, experiment and become film collaborators in their own right (Whittington, 2007, p. 32). In the 1970s Coppola and Murch cemented their creative collaboration with The Conversation (Coppola, 1974) and Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979).
Both films became landmarks for the industry at large and elevated the status of sound production. The subtleties of sounds, other than vocal or musical, had already been established as powerful narrative and stylistic elements by Alfred Hitchcock with The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) or by Jules Dassin’s Du Rififi chez les Hommes (Dassin, 1955). Like Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola gave impetus to sound as an intrinsic narrative element that should be seamlessly integrated into the process of movie making. In 1971, Murch had already created a clear ‘denser world through denser sound’ (2005, p.38) while mixing a film that he co-wrote with George Lucas, THX 1138 (Lucas, 1971). All along Murch has also been a talented visual film editor and this point was pivotal in expanding the integration of creative components. When Murch tried to describe his role(s) in the making of Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979), his first stereo film, he coined the term ‘sound designer’. In an interview, Michael Jarrett asked him the origin and meaning of the term:
It is a nebulous area. The origin of the term "sound designer" goes back to Apocalypse Now
when I was trying to come up with what I had actually done on the film. ... I thought, "Well,
if an interior designer can go into an architectural space and decorate it interestingly, that’s
sort of what I am doing in the theater. I’m taking the three-dimensional space of the theater
and decorating it with sound." I had to come up with an approach, specifically for
Apocalypse Now that would make that work coherently. In my case, that was where ‘sound
designer’, the word, came from.
(Jarrett, n.d online)
Often the creation of the expression ‘sound designer’ is also attributed to the necessity, at the time, to avoid union regulations and lesser tax purpose. However, this study focuses on Murch’s reference to modeling sound for a three dimensional space. His remark
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is also telling of the impact of technology in terms of creation and diffusion (stereo, Dolby and quadra-phony). Other sound professionals appropriated the term of sound design and for some it became synonymous with concocting sounds to emphasise specific aspects and making the most of the modes of diffusion.
The terms sound designer and sound supervisor can equally have an administrative connotation as they outline the creative goal to an assemblage of people who will produce a narrative product. Sound supervisor now often replaces sound director but this expression is itself sometimes interchangeable with sound designer. Sound designer Mark Ward objects to the idea that the label ‘sound designer’ suggests an administrative role rather than the one of ‘a major aesthetic force in the film’ (Hancock, 2007, p. 162). A quarter of the twenty-four Australian respondents to the recruitment online questionnaire did not provide any answer as to the question of a sound designer having a creative role rather an administrative one, or the reverse. The other three-quarters of the professionals contacted for this study were ambivalent: half suggested that sound design is a fully creative position whereas the other half thought that the role encompasses both capacities.
In some ways the concept of someone being a ‘sound designer’ is a very recent addition that, although imprecise, is applicable when the budget is adequate. Sound designer and sound supervisor are sometimes interchangeable roles but with sound supervisor assuming more administrative tasks, less ‘hands on’. William Whittington affirms that the role of sound designer is associated with the creation of special sound effects (Whittington, 2007, p. 95). For study participant Damian Candusso a sound designer is foremost a ‘designer of sound effects, a creator of new and unknown sounds for specific use in the visual narrative’ (Candusso, 3 May 2011). His strong view on the matter almost refutes the role of sound designer as a person overseeing the integrality of a sound immersion but rather emphasising sounds as narrative characters. Candusso’s approach also relays his own practice; the films for which he has been credited over the past years have mostly been adequately funded American and Australian productions.
On a small budget, a sound designer might also be a sound supervisor and a sound editor. Budget constraints limit the number of individual roles implicated at different stages of the sound production and therefore expand the roles of the persons involved. Although on-set recording is important, its product will be tampered with in post-production. A lot of location sound–recording equally happens during post-production, when the ‘missing
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sounds’ will reveal themselves. Sometimes a location recording has to be done or re-done for the soundtrack to be successful (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). One person can fit many production roles and can be involved at different stages of the creative process. Australian sound editor Livia Ruzic does not call herself a sound designer unless she is the only person working in post-production on a non-feature film (Capp, 2002). Some denominations are common in some countries and not in others: the term ‘audiographer’ is used in India and is distinct from sound designer. However, according to audiographer Hitendra Ghosh, an audiographer is not involved in matters related to special effects. Applied to a western context, Ghosh’s definition of a sound designer is unclear as he also links the term to a sound recordist/engineer working on location (Sengupta, 2010).
Creative participant to the study Michael Worthington describes his professional practice as being at once an audio engineer, a mixer, a sound designer and a digital audio sculptor; for him everything is sound design: voice, music, sound effects and sound design elements can be employed musically. Worthington argues that mixing is part of sound design and a sound design is something that is ‘thought through’ (Worthington, 21 December 2010). Tom Heuzenroeder concurs as he sees the activity of a sound designer as someone ‘coming in with a plan’ to direct the soundscape in ways that enhance the overall mood of the movie (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). Worthington sums up his view on the label ‘sound designer’ with the following comment: ‘It’s not a job. It’s something that becomes what people think is a job. Nobody is employed as a sound designer. They’re employed to do a specific thing and from that they decide this is sound design’ (Worthington, 21 December 2010). Specialised as a 5.1 mixer for music and cinema, Worthington prefers to use the term ‘Surround Design’ to define the aim of his practice (2013).
6.2 Physical involvement: close and far at once
Professional practices and the physicality of spectatorship provide a subtext to explore cinema sound as an affective tool that influences the creative team involved as well as their audience. An important shift in the physicality of sound production, and sound designing in particular, relates to recent technologies. There are important ‘new’ work configurations in the global workplace and sound designers’ practice is no exception. Firstly, some traditional mixing studios are going virtual, in effect closing doors and shutting down important places for live collaboration. Secondly, while sometimes watching the edited
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footage, all designers are now creating their tracks and pre-mixing on their Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), a work practice also known as ‘working in the box’ (Kassab, 2010, p. 12). Fast online transfers of files and ideas, video conferencing and virtual ‘common’ workspaces have made some work settings redundant. Nowadays most sound designers will establish their own workspace, usually home studios, and then shift to bigger studios in order to collaborate with supervising sound editors and mixers. The chronology and need of sharing the same space, the same air, is shifting.
Most of the study’s participants have had to act in different capacities during some film or television productions. On that basis, they often establish a sustained physical relationship with their first public: film directors and producers. Thom and Murch position the sound designer as a person who ‘guides the overall treatment of sound in the film’ while noting, in 2003, that this structure was still unusual in Hollywood where a sound designer was often considered as a ‘hired gun’ effect maker (Thom, 2003, p. 122). Damian Candusso, however, notes that ‘knowledge of the script is less relevant to a sound designer than it would be to the supervising sound editor’. He considers that role as the one ‘with the overall view of the film’, making sure that every audio component blends well (Candusso, 3 May 2011). Sound designer John Kassab concurs that supervising sound editors should co- ordinate the film soundtrack from inception to final mix. They can be more hands on or administrative according to their personal preferences but are often ‘the most accountable sound person to producers and directors’ (Kassab, 2010, p. 8).
Tom Heuzenroeder’s opinion that a sound designer needs guidance from the director (Heuzenroeder, 2010) is at odds with the creative framework designed for this research. In an email prior production, Tom Heuzenroeder asked for direction as to which form the sound piece for this research should take (Heuzenroeder, 2010). In fact, the idea of having ‘carte blanche and work from script’ proved to be unusual, and even confronting, to some participants. Michael Worthington for example created different versions: one that he would like himself and one that he thought the researcher, as a ‘client’, would prefer. Like participant Carlos Choconta, his motive expresses the universal motto that it is the film director who will make the final decisions (Choconta, 5 May 2011). These reactions were unexpected and denoted the embedding of the production imperatives, namely the cultural relegation of sound as an accompaniment to someone else’s vision.
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It is the nature of each film production to be unique in content and creative manner because of the persons at the helm. The fact that some films with a small budget can capitalise on great sound is not rare: Noise (Saville, 2007) is the undeniable proof of such an accomplishment. Regardless of a budget it is the sensibility and awareness of sound that will allow for exceptional use of the medium. Joel and Ethan Coen gave the script of Barton Fink (Coen & Coen, 1991) to supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay in the pre-production stage. The effects track led the production of the soundtrack; Liesvay and music score composer Carter Burwell divided the script into sound frequencies so that the tonality of the soundtrack reinforced the visuals (Barnes, 2007, online). For the film The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008) director Kathryn Bigelow and sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson worked together from the pre-production stage.
Ottosson mixed The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2008) himself ‘in the box’, only getting into a mixing theatre to adjust tonal balance. He won two Oscars for his editing and mixing of The Hurt Locker. As stated by John Kassab, Ottensson’s work process, technological use and creative involvement from start to finish ‘sent shockwaves throughout the sound community’ (Kassab, 2010, p. 13). The validation of that film’s soundtrack suggests that successful sound design is an intimate affair and technology allows a blurring of production roles. For sound designer Emma Bortignon, collaborator on Noise (Saville, 2007) from pre- production onwards, the role of a sound designer is to communicate with the director and then articulate her or his ideas to the sound team in order to find technical and creative solutions that will help to tell a story (Siemienowicz, 2010). The technical process and consequences of ‘mixing in the box’ from pre-production on, independent of the sign posting provided by moving images, suggests a re-mapping of the experiential process of sound creation.
A director understanding the impacts of atmospheric sounds in relation to all other components of a soundtrack, will take a great interest in specific sonic aspects over the duration of production. The working relationship between sound designer Paul N.J. Ottosson and director Kathryn Bigelow stands out as symbiotic from pre-production on. Their latest collaboration, Zero Dark Thirty (Bigelow, 2012) is based on the American military operation that killed Osama Bin Laden. In an online interview, Ottensson points out that to achieve authenticity great care was taken to understand the geography and daily life activities around the compound where Bin Laden was in hiding. To do so, aerial images of this precise location were used to map possible sounds such as train stations, rivers, wildlife and the like.
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What was important to Ottosson was to imagine the life of the place at a certain time of the year in order to ‘try to stay really organic and true to the story’ written by Mark Boal (Soundworks Collection, 2012a).
Tom Heuzenroeder points out that to influence a director in any manner the working relationship and understanding has to be ‘solid’ (Heuzenroeder, 2010). Heuzenroeder prefers to refer to sound design as ‘sound plan’ or ‘sound planning’. His opinion is physically and metaphorically appropriate: a sound designer comes in with an intention to alter the planes of vision and to shift centres of gravity. Early involvement of sound designers can also make some visuals redundant and cut lines of scripts, (Heuzenroeder, 2010) therefore adding to the creative ambitions but also saving time and money for the directors and producers. Heuzenroeder agrees with Thom’s suggestion that movies could be devised around sound and sees this proposition as a ‘resistance to the conventional linearity of film construction’ (Heuzenroeder, 2010).
Unfortunately, this ideal does not match the financial reality of most Australian productions. This concept remains utopian, or Hollywoodian, unless directors and producers have strong affinity with sound or can be convinced to experience sound and budget for it. It takes considerable funding or extreme diligence and belief to sustain years of intense collaboration in the flesh. Animations are exemplary in that regard. Sound characterisation is indispensable for animated features such as Happy Feet (G. Miller & Coleman, 2006) or epics like Avatar (Cameron, 2009). Years of sound planning and preparation are required when specific sounds are integral to characters’ behaviour and personalities. These written characters breathe with their ‘sounders’.
These costly creative processes also need physical interaction between all professionals involved in their creation. Study participant John Kassab worked for 13 months on the short Australian animation The Lost Thing (Tan & Ruhemann, 2010) that won the Oscar for short animation in 2010. Both sound and animated work were feeding on each other, a process that Kassab qualifies as ‘a complete technical and creative anomaly’ leading to a ‘completely open beautiful collaboration’ (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Randy Thom has advocated for movies to be designed around sound and for sound designers to intervene from pre-production onwards (2000, p. 16). Over the past eight years Thom’s credits concretely demonstrate that his thoughts are reflected in his own practice: eleven out of thirteen films he worked on between 2008 and 2012 have been animation features (IMDb, 2012).
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Most sound designers acknowledge the closeness of a sound team as well as a structured division of labour that can precede the shoot, as mentioned by sound designer Chris Boyes (Coleman, 2010, online) who worked on Avatar (Cameron, 2009). Nevertheless, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does not award any Oscar to the sound designing category per se; instead it rewards the sound editing and sound mixing categories (Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, 2013, online). As sound designers are highly reliant on the now widespread DAW tools, they are able to produce their own mix, as mentioned above.
This shift in production affects the coenesthetic potential of creators and their ensuing perceptual experiences. Gabor Csepregi notes that artists at large are able to experience a form of coenesthesia, which he refers to as a ‘deep sensibility stimuli’ (2006, p. 37). As asserted by creative participants, cinema sound designers are creative artists in their own right (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011): the instinctive knowing of affective reactions on the body structure and their influence on the soma occur in experimentation. As sounds are able to modify our kinaesthesia, regardless of our physical position, the creations of silences are relevant to a phenomenological discourse, suggesting that movies can be viscerally felt rather than pigeonholed as subjective experiences.
A familiar element of perfect physical conditions for sensing films is the position of an individual in relation to sound outputs such as speakers. The surface that is at the tri- dimensional intersection of sound signals is known as the ‘sweet spot’. In a cinema theatre, this spot is typically at the physical center of the floor space’s width and length. ‘Mixing in the box’ allows sound designers to cover all creative processes, even though in its last production stage the soundtrack will be processed by a sound mixer in a mixing room. While producing in their own studios, and positioned in the ‘sweet spot’, designers are aware that the subtlety of their work might not be noticed: theatres and broadcasts rarely convey in full the subtleties of their creations.
When their work reaches the mixing stage, which is performed by the ‘fresh ear’ of the mixer, the same circumstances for perfect conditions of audition and clear perception are replicated in the larger space of a mixing room. Sound surround allows different patterns of listening through a vast range of sensory activations but cinema theatres’ diffusion does not always perform as advertised. Nevertheless, professionals will always endeavor to produce the best quality possible by using sound systems’ configurations in a manner that suits the
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sound design; maybe one day there will be an ‘ultimate screening that’s going to sound brilliant’ (Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011).
Study participant and screenwriter Roger Monk recalled the experience of watching a movie he wrote, Walking on Water (Ayres, 2002), screened in Berlin (Germany) where, he says, screens and sound systems are bigger. The richness of the soundtrack of this particular Australian feature was suddenly unveiled to his ears. None of the previous screenings of the movie allowed such a detailed exposure of the sound work’s intricacies. In Berlin, Monk felt the delicacy of sound making, and it is this element of surprise, of ‘what they have done with it’, that sums up his view of films as organic matters that are the chronological sum of human involvement: the lived knowledge of all has a creative cumulative effect (Monk, 2012). For Roger Monk a movie is the sum of a collaborative effort and the product of a heartfelt assemblage of talents and ideas. His stance on the chronology of the sound department involvement diverges: for him sound audibility is not a necessary pre-production factor. Contrastingly for writer-director Rolf de Heer, imagining sound is a physical part of writing. During an informal conversation de Heer made a gesture with his two hands near his head to indicate that, while writing, sound sits ‘next to him, just there’ (de Heer, 2012).
Rolf de Heer and Matthew Saville’s phenomenological writing process leads to the ideal commercial practice advocated by Randy Thom, starting with the reading of a script, and is the theoretical envy of all. To some extent this stance is tested in the data collection of this study and is labeled as ‘ideal commercial practice’ in the illustration below. The second proposition, labeled as the ‘most common commercial practice’, is based on visualisation of edited footage. The third proposition is the one that has been used to collect the soundtracks for this study.
In order to contextualise the relationship between the exhibition and the physical involvement of sound designers in the data collection, the three gallery spaces offer a physical dissection based on a visualisation of written words. The schema that follows outlines the three different modes of creative production cited above that can be applied to sound design, and highlights the process of aural imagery that is, according to Gary Ferrington, a necessary process in creating meaningful sound (1993, p. 61). The following illustration maps the process of aural imagery with practices of sound design, including the unusual approach used for this study data collection. The design of the end of the study exhibition’s floorplan matches this last process and the positioning of the artifacts in the
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different gallery spaces reflects this intention. The different creative chronologies and potential range of professional practices take shape as the audience moves through the three joined gallery spaces.
Figure 6-2: Three possible processes of cinematic sound production and their relationships with the different exhibition spaces
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The above illustration points out that gallery One reflects an absence of moving images other than the ones imagined from the reading of words by the participant sound designers. In gallery One we follow a sounding process that physically involves writer and sound designers although they had never met or been in contact with each other. Their interactions have not been experienced in the flesh. To achieve a physical integration from all parties, the combination of the ‘ideal commercial practice’ and the PhD data collection would allow ‘auditory writers’ and sound designers to collaborate in the flesh.
The main difference between the processes outlined in the above illustration is that in the context of the study’s data collection, sound designers did not have to communicate with anyone and share a physical experience leading to a creative output. However, creative participant John Kassab involved someone else in the physical exploration of Roger Monk’s script. Without the researcher’s knowledge, John Kassab sent some soundmix drafts and the script to Foley artist Adrian Medhurst in order to personify physical actions such as the one of ‘on sucking on the cigarette’ (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Medhurst acted upon the script and the sound design. To some extent Kassab became a director himself as he expanded his own coenesthesia by trusting someone else’s sense of the world.
6.3 Creating oscillations
Of course moving an audience is also dependent on the presence, or absence, of sounds and their relationship with images. Edward Branigan makes a distinction between visual and auditory data; in the light, shape and colour are integral parts of a visible element whereas sounds emanate from objects. For Branigan, when no sound emanates from an object the object becomes silent, be it visible or not (1989, p. 311). When the invisible object emanates sound, it becomes ‘source-able’ despite being out of the frame and off screen. The implication of its presence makes the differentiation between its diegetic or non-diegetic qualities irrelevant. In 2008, Jasper Aalbers relates public ignorance of the sound around them to the invisibility of speakers, a fact that, he thinks, incites members of the audience to appose sound sources with the visuals (online).
This study would argue that giving credit to the visibility of the broadcasting sources diminishes the importance of multi-modal awareness to, and through, sonic activity. To some extent, Aalbers’ comment prevents the presence of silence, ubiquity and subtle sound
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such as traffic, to provide the space in which the story lives and connects with individuals’ coenesthetic abilities. An immobile ‘audience’ can be shaped by a technology of sound displays that animate the envelope of the flesh viscerally. Outside the cinema individuals can choose a palette of auditory experiences but cinema sound makes these choices more difficult at times because focal vision also needs lateral guidance. Although this guidance could be provided by the position of speakers around the cinema theatre, it is in ‘itself’ that the immobile body produces sensory symbiosis: the onscreen visual diegesis that guides a coenesthesia.
A point raised by Murch re-enforces the phenomenological approach that applies to a person’s relationship with sounds, environment and the professional practice of sound design. John Kassab mentions the quasi-incredulity of his colleagues when he walks around the mixing room to experience the range of sound reception in different parts of a projection space (Kassab, 29 July 2011). Sound designers, sound mixers and even directors, rarely experience the fruit of their efforts in an upright, moving or motioning position. Kassab’s comment in his Churchill Fellowship report is telling as he asks production companies to provide better ergonomic seating for the sound team (Kassab, 2010, p. 16). Contrastingly, Walter Murch works standing up when editing visuals in order to better internalise the rhythmic symbiosis provided by the works of the actors and the camera operator.
The rhythm of a movie is an affective and multi-modal transfer that involves the coenesthesia of both creators and spectators in their spherical experiences of the world. We all physically contribute to the multi-faceted creations and interpretations of movies. Murch affirms that standing up while editing images allows him to be fully engaged in his body therefore adequately transferring the physical moves and intentions of protagonists onto the screen: ‘… when gunslingers faced one another on D Street in Kansas City, they stood, they didn’t sit on chairs and shoot at each other’ (Ondaatje, 2002, p. 273). In a Western screening context, and while resting on chairs, members of the audience’s centers of gravity are lower and their gestures are limited.
Murch’s view reinforces the view that a film sound designer is the sonic architect of visual narratives as well as the audio puppeteer of viewers’ sensorial modes. Through an experiential transfer of the coenesthetic knowledge gained through an individual’s life, sound can trigger a transmission of affect, ‘a process that is social in origin but biological and physical in effect’ (Brennan, 2004, p. 3). Creativity can be tested by the success of
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emotional embodiment, and John Kassab testifies to this potential when noting that ‘silence can make us lean forward in our seats to be absorbed by the visual drama, a sudden sound from silence can then throw us back in our seat’ (Kassab, 2011). These kinetic reactions are signs of oscillations, of the perturbation of emotional and physical balance that take us in and out of ourselves.
The sensory potential of sound reinforces the possibility and intentionality of cinema sound designers to channel sonic worlds towards our skin and centre of gravity. The addition of sounds coming from the back of an audience gives a haptic quality, a vibro-tactile presence to some frequencies, particularly the lower ones. The use of these frequencies can demonstrate an understanding from filmmakers of the possibilities to reach an audience using sound, and incite members of the public ‘to participate not only visually or orally but also physically’ (Sergi, 2006, online).
Film director Phillip Noyce concurs: extreme low and high frequencies are tools to consider as they are ‘both primitive and spiritual in terms of their invisible effect on audience responses’ (cited in J. Stadler, 2008, p. 159). In the surreal Lost Highway (Lynch, 1997), David Lynch, credited as sound designer, also personified the isolation and incomprehension of a man framed for the murder of his wife with low frequency drone. In Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975), Peter Weir employed low frequencies to characterise the isolated rocky hill and its tortuous paths, scene of the disappearance of three schoolgirls.
Aalbers notes that ‘Diegetic is everything that belongs to the world of the story: the characters, the dialogue, the set and the props etc. Non-diegetic is everything that is part of the film but not of the world of the story’ (Aalbers, 2008, online). The soundtracks created on the basis of a script for this study reveal in part that the diegesis is expected to have a visual form and that the spatial implication of the non-diegetic cannot be dissociated from the filmic narrative. The story needs its own space in the world and its diegesis engulfs non- diegetic notions. Cognitive expectations and the spatiality of sound can collide: we oscillate.
This oscillation is also reflected in the creation of the soundtracks executed for this study: instincts, expectations, visual habituation and kinetic memories all collide. As participants produced soundtracks without visual support, the ‘source-ability’ of a non- scripted sound event in six tracks out of eight unbalances the story’s spatiality and alters the subsequent interpretation of the visual data. In effect, while the designers were aware of the
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protagonist smoking, the script had no mention of the cigarette being lit up. The waveforms of the soundtracks clearly indicate the event of this hypothetical sound source and appear as one or two pronounced spikes in the left half of the waveforms
Figure 6-3: Graphic waveforms of Damian Candusso’s soundtrack
Figure 6-4: Graphic waveforms of Carlos Choconta’s soundtrack
Figure 6-5: Graphic waveforms of John Kassab’s soundtrack
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Figure 6-6: Graphic waveforms of Evan Kitchener’s soundtrack
Figure 6-7: Graphic waveforms of Benjamin Vlad’s soundtrack
Figure 6-8: Graphic waveforms of Michael Worthington’s soundtrack
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The spikes attributed to the lighting of the cigarette do not appear on the following graphic representations of the soundtracks executed by Tom Heuzenroeder and Markus Kellow.
Figure 6-9: Graphic waveforms of Tom Heuzenroeder’s soundtrack
Figure 6-10: Graphic waveforms of Markus Kellow’s soundtrack
The significance of this particular sound event, the lighting of the cigarette, became apparent when the visuals from Noise were applied to the soundtracks. As its source could not be seen, the sound became the trace of a second protagonist due to the auditory proximity of its presence: out of frame but not out of mind and certainly not weightless. The apparition of this ‘non-existent’ event is intriguing but also revealing of the instinctive need to animate a body, position it in space, and start a physical narrative. When I pointed out their application of sound to a non-scripted act in the course of postproduction interviews, most sound designers were surprised that the cigarette was not lit but only smoked.
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Their individual creative addition to the written material transformed the lighting of the cigarette as a time marker for the spatial occupation represented by the protagonist’ inhalation and exhalation of smoke. In some ways silence had to be interrupted and, as the tangible axis of the space, the protagonist is visually represented with an elevated, sharp and brief sound coming out of audible silence. The associations of collected soundtracks and the existing visuals of Noise (Saville, 2007) take shape in the last exhibition space gallery Three. The oscillations provoked by the asynchronous physicality between onscreen visuals and visible sounds can destabilise the sensory narrative expectations of the audience.
6.4 Creative practice: design and affectivity in motion
A major point raised during interviews was that although the idea of accessing a script before the shoot is tempting, ultimately sound is used with images, and most of the time the visual material accessed by sound designers is already edited. To some, reading a script might be more unsettling than constructive as the visuals and rhythm made out of the script could be disappointing to the sound team in post-production. Reading a script entails visualisation of scenes and this is the core method employed by all participants in their creative endeavour for this study.
Participant Evan Kitchener, although appreciative of the possibility of accessing a script in a commercial environment, states that too much imagining could be counterproductive ‘because so much can go wrong and so much can change’ (Kitchener, 2 May 2011). For Markus Kellow, looking at visuals after reading a script can be disappointing and is therefore avoided (25 October 2010) because, as suggested informally by Carlos Choconta, the best movie is ‘the one that happens in your head’. If the practice of contemporary cinema sound making relies on edited visual references due to budget restriction, it also reflects our relationship to sound at large: our era demands narrative audio-visual synchronicity in and outside cinema.
Entering gallery One, members of the audience first approach the printed script and are in contact with consensual silences, the ubiquity of the sound of the everyday recorded in a specific location. The montage of ‘ready made’ layers of sound extracted from the Southern Cross University Lismore campus acts as a matrix that nurtures potential attention to other sounds: often contrasts are the key to awareness. Listening to apparent banalities
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absorbed by our organism also suggests analytical listening as the traditional aspect of acoustically registering and surveying the world around us. The matter that is audible can be subdivided in terms of acoustic environments, perceptual content and communicative intent. While listening to the sound designers individual soundtracks, the presence through the headphones of ‘the silences of the everyday’ recorded on the Lismore campus distracts from an analytical interpretation of the sonic narratives. This audio bleed and interference link the experience of listening with intent to the state of insounds: it testifies of the coenesthetic oscillations that the confluence of audible, and inaudible, sound can trigger.
Figure 6-11: Entering gallery One: accessing the script while being immersed in soundscapes collected on the Southern Cross University Lismore campus (artist’s impression)
The audience, in motion around gallery One, is able to experience everyday silences. Sonic ecologies are organic amalgams of personal surroundings. Created by myself, the specificity of the six minute environmental soundtrack is its embedded banal presence in our ‘sonic compost’: it acts as a spatial and textural reference to the experience of moving through sounds, without awareness of their ‘evanescent materiality’. This six minute track is composed of 31 distinct extracts of recordings captured along the devised walking path that starts at the library and ends at the sports field. These recordings are played in order of progression along the path and are all made outside buildings, in the open air. While silence has close connotations to the quest for knowledge, the university campus personifies the
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dichotomy between the silences of traditional nature and the inherent qualities of mechanical contemporary soundscapes.
The green and lush Lismore campus of Southern Cross University is relentlessly sonorous as its buildings breathe heavily under the sun. In gallery One, these environmental soundtracks invite an upright listening, still or in movement, to the ‘un-listened’ tones of a specific territory. Due to their lack of clarity and visual identity these haptic ‘new silences’ become textures that do not require re-cognition: our own coenesthetic body apprehends them, as it does on a daily basis. In the gallery setting, the consensual silence of environmental sound creates a space in waiting that is susceptible to generating bodily gyrations and cognitive attention to contrasting events. The second track that can be heard in gallery One is two minutes long and expresses the artist’s sonic impression of the cinematic script. This soundtrack is made mostly of extracts from the six minute soundtrack. Apart from slight volume mapping, the sound extracts used to produce these two environmental soundtracks have not been manipulated.
The two minute soundtrack plays alternately with the six minute soundtrack and both are made of the same sound extracts captured on the Lismore campus. Considerations for a two minutes soundtrack, its condition of audition and its visual interpretation were directly related to the methodology of the research. Being aware of the movie Noise (Saville, 2007) and the role of the scene on which the script is based conferred the researcher a knowledge of the subtext. Therefore the first concern was of an ethical nature. The creation of the two minute soundtrack had to stay in line with the phenomenological approach of its creation. The slower aspect of its sonic components, captured during soundwalks on the Lismore campus, transforms the two minute track into a sensorial but slow narrative. Despite their different lengths the two minute and the six minute soundtracks both follow the same ‘physio-metaphorical’ content: from the softly spoken atmosphere of the library to the vocal and muscular sweat of the oval.
The second consideration for the two minute soundtrack was spatial as the listening of the environmental soundscapes was building a phenomenological space. None of the sounds used in the two and six minutes had been manipulated and this factor was the reason for the printing of their waveforms on unbleached material. The soundtracks produced by the sound designers would be printed on white material. These visual and haptic distinctions and the way the prints populated the space were in direct relation with their sonic components.
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The visual imprints of their contents corroborate the sensorial subtext of their creation: the clean tracks of the sound designers and the raw soundscapes of humanity’s ‘new silences’.
The exposure to contrasting sonic events materialises with the soundtracks made by the eight cinema sound designers that can be heard through headphones. Although at the time of creation both sets of soundtracks, environmental and cinematic, are the interpretative products of the same writing, their audio materials involve two distinct kinetic processes. The first one, audible while the audience walks around gallery One, involves the researcher’s physical, mostly upright, quest for the capturing of sounds. The second kinetic process invites visitors to sit while listening to the tracks created by the participating sound designers. Listened to through headphones, these artifacts are the products of a creative process executed while sitting.
Figure 6-12: Sitting in gallery One with headphones, hearing each individual soundtrack created by cinema sound designers while reading the script (artist’s impression).
The body might be seen as still but in fact is actively processing the sounds projected in the confined space that it occupies. The experience of the broadcast offers proximity and activates the internal balance centre of the body through the ears. Sounds colonise the space around the heads of the seated members of the public through bone conduction and haptic vibrations. Silence is then a material concept that exacerbates the funneling of sonic activity. This stage of the exhibition highlights the spatial possibilities of the attentive reception of the created sounds of silence. Only the deep-seated part of the body, the inner ear’s labyrinth, can capture sound waves without always being able to alter their qualities.
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In chapter Four, tables detailed the qualities of the distinctive sounds used by participant sound designers and outlined their construction of soundtracks reflecting the scripts. Most of the recognisable sounds that provide the spatial stillness described by the script have relatively high frequencies and give clear proximal signals. Thus the dispersion of frequencies used to represent the first eight seconds of the script are in complete contrast to the lower soundscapes of modernity that refract from the SCU Lismore campus and contribute to loss of perspective. With the script as guide, audio-viewers are in reception of the distances of sound sources in relation to the physical centre of the scene, its centre of gravity. Regardless of this coenesthetic mapping, these higher frequencies are vibratory soundmarks that constellate the aural imagination with different heights and distance relevant to a fictional viewpoint.
6.5 Aural imagery: a system of sonic motion
The script used for this experimental study is representative of a fictional event, and each creator and subsequent listeners will create their own version of it. A process of buried memory seems to surface in the commissioned soundtracks that are played, and displayed, throughout the exhibition. This process is applied to the two different silences encompassed in the script: the figurative expression of the lonesome protagonist and the environmental silence that situates the spatio-temporality of his experience. Participating sound designers are able to transfer their process of aural imagery to those of audiences. Adding a facet to the participative dimension in experiencing the cinematic medium, Laura Marks states ‘. . . I am exploring sense experience in cinema not to seek a primordial state of sensory innocence, but to find culture within the body’ (2000, p. 152). With our eyes closed our ears and skin are able to draw planar vision and to position the protagonists in a spatial context. Audience members are instinctively able to let their own coenesthesia adjust itself to that of movies’ protagonists: ‘airborne’ coenesthesia is essential in 3D movies such as Avatar (Cameron, 2009). Without sound we would be in a spatio-temporal vacuum and heavily stranded in visual narratives.
A storyboard can act as a blueprint for sound design in some movie productions. However cinema sound designers are rarely immersed in the genesis of the visual creative process, and the final edit of visual content marks the start of their collaboration. The commonality of this corporate practice highlights the experimental approach that my study
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has imposed on cinema sound practitioners. This disturbance to their usual creative process added a certain dependence on visual imagination in order to build the potential sound narrative. To tap into the potential of sound narrative, some active visual imagination was added to sound designers’ usual creative processes and, most importantly, required cohesion of multi-modal senses. Members of the public apply the same collation of sensory processes when it comes to the cognitive and emotional interpretation of the soundtracks in gallery One and gallery Three.
The small surface of gallery Two acts as a passage between galleries One and Three. On the wall of this space is a storyboard executed by illustrator Benjamin Leon and based on the script written for this study by Roger Monk. Benjamin Leon was not provided with any clues about the film Noise nor did he listen to any of the produced soundtracks 3. No sound is played in this particular space: the exhibition’s visitors move from the environmental sounds and static text in gallery One to the cinematic soundtracks and moving images in gallery Three. In gallery One, members of the audience activated their capacity to visualise words and sounds. Gallery Two provides a two-dimensional representation that unveils words and shapes forms. All the same, the storyboard offers the possibility to localise and visualise sounds of the imaginary.
3 Larger versions of the 26 frames of the storyboard are in appendix B
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Figure 6-13: Storyboard by graphic artist Benjamin Leon, drawn from Roger Monk’s script and without listening to the sound designers' soundtracks (larger version in Appendix B)
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The state of phonomnesis is understood as a mental process that demands an internal sonic control of sounds that are imagined but not actually heard (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 85). As this study focuses on pre-emotional reactions, the purely psychological aspects of filmic and auditive experiences remain unexplored: the notion of affect is itself taken out of its psychological context. Nevertheless, mentions of filmic subception are important as the design of the exhibition heavily relies on the researcher’s ‘instinctive understanding’ of the gallery exploration.
According to Augoyard and Torgue, phonomnesis becomes a voluntary act, a process that seems indispensable to sound-making and sound telling. This process is alive in gallery One as members of the public read the script but seemingly ceases when entering gallery Two as vision can provide sound localisation. In that space while looking at the story board members of the audience can visualise a topography of sounds at first internally imagined, and mentally physically positioned through headphone listening in gallery One. While focusing to the relationship between musical score and images, Dominique Nasta mentions the psychological effect of subception as a process of controlled imagination but unheard sounds similar to phonomnesis (1991, p. 48).
Nasta associates filmic subception with subliminal perception (1991, p. 90) and as ‘deferred perception’ (1991, p. 93) whereas Steven Campbell refers to it as a dimension of ‘the unheard’ (2011, p. 85). Nasta also refers to internal and external subception (2001, p. 96) and the distinctions these terms entail are relevant to the design of the gallery experience. She defines internal subception as a process triggered by ‘very diversified auditive stimuli that either facilitate narrative progression or suspend the diegesis to focus on purely emotional states’ (2001, p.96). External subception is more relevant to elements ‘inducing a particular type of audience participation that is both active and empathic’ (Nasta, 2001, p. 96).
The design of the exhibition aims to confront members of the audience with an established visualisation of the phonomnetic process they submitted themselves to while reading the script and moving around gallery One. While actively moving around that space the experience of external subception would link the preconscious bodily knowledge with the environmental soundtrack. The researcher’s presumption was that members of the audience, while creating a mental soundtrack expressing the protagonist’s states of mind, would also involuntarily perform a personal emphatic visualisation of the scene. These
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simultaneous internal audio-visual processes would generate empathy, only to be reassessed through the physical viewing of the storyboard in gallery Two.
Gallery Two is at the junction between two spaces and their distinct sonic environments. Its own sonic identity is at the confluence of other sound streams, including members of the public’s own phonomnesis, and the external subception experienced in gallery One. In gallery Two, physical confrontations with still images that spatially position imaginary audio-visual events in distinct frames necessitate some personal narrative adjustments. Therefore gallery Two would provide a recall of an ephemeral visualisation and its sonic phonomnesis, both belonging to the immediate past. The process of internal subception is physically contextualised by the design of the space: confluence of diverse mental and physical audio-visual stimuli is diegetically suspended in front of the 26 drawn still frames. Their stillness, in contrast with the fast activity of audio-visual imagination, increments physical and empathetic oscillations.
Gallery Three addresses the valorisation of sound by gauging the amount of space that it takes in the field of vision. Augoyard and Torgue refer to asyndenton as ‘the deletion from the perception of memory of one or many sound elements in an audible whole’ (2006, p. 26). Erasure denotes intention, therefore reinforcing the weight of this action. Augoyard and Torgue propose the notion of synecdoche as the valorisation of one specific element that informs the practice of selective listening (2006, p. 123). In films, but also in day-to-day life, visualisation exacerbates the multiple capacities for selective listening to promote a cultural hierarchy of audition that can influence our acoustic ecologies. Selection denotes the intentional filtering of sound environments and ‘an evacuation of useless elements from our consciousness’ (Augoyard & Torgue, 2006, p. 123) in order to achieve a perceptual organisation of kinaesthetic space.
Augoyard and Torgue point out that physiological aspects of selection and valorisation have ‘yet to be discovered’ (2006, p. 125). Valorisation engages spatio- temporality: the succession of valorised elements constitutes a phenomenological tool reflecting our existence in the world. The artifacts’ creations denote an organisation of space through the body of the protagonist that is based on kinetic association. For participant Damian Candusso, if someone smokes ‘you have to light up the cigarette’ (Candusso, 3 May 2011). Aural imagery seems to be expected of the audience as well as of the creators. For Candusso there is ‘almost’ an expectation that the sound designer should preempt what
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members of an audience anticipate to hear in order to feel that they are part of the film (Candusso, 3 May 2011). However, and although expectations of sound rely on individuals’ history and memory, cinema sound has the power to surprise and re-assess environments by attenuating memory or preconception related to previous experiences (Candusso, 3 May 2011; Heuzenroeder, 1 May 2011). In the last exhibition space, and because of the presence of the lighter, re-assessments of spatiality through sound reach affective paroxysms.
6.6 Affect: sensory habituation and experiential doubt
In Western societies we tend to privilege our visual environments, and the witnessing of sound sources often increases the plausibility of sound perception. As members of the public enter the last exhibition space, gallery Three, the installation proposes two subjects of phenomenological reflection: transmission of affect and phenomenological analysis of the works on display. In its entirety the physical progression through sound and visuals triggers inter-subjective critical listening of silences through a phenomenological ‘process of doubt’ (Voegelin, 2010, p. 10). This process of doubt culminates in the last physical display that is made by superimposing each previously listened to narrative soundtrack onto an identical sequence of moving images. The screen reflects the stillness of a place, the aloneness of the protagonist and the fear and turmoil of his thoughts. As both audio and visual components have been produced independently, the superposition of these elements departs from the traditional cinematic narrative and subsequent interpretations. Doubt settles.
Figure 6-14: Screening the audio-visual montages in gallery Three (artist’s impression)
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This part of the exhibition is a reflection of the 1930s declaration that ‘The first experiments in sound must aim at a sharp discord with the visual images’ (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, & Grigori, 2004). In that last exhibition space, gallery Three, the superimposition of each soundtrack onto the similar visual extract demonstrates the possibility of sounding silences as ‘amalgamating agents’ amongst different modalities. Vision and sight do not match the diegetic content of the images as we cannot see the lighting of the cigarette. Consequently the non-diegetic silence is interrupted: it might be an invisible witness, another body, another skin. By dissociating the physical experience of sound and vision, this step in the artistic practice of ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silence’ questions the dominance of visual imagery in the creative process of sonic narratives.
For the sound creators and the spectators, these results create unsettling perceptual memories based on prescient experiences: they provide personal insights on sensory constructions of meaning based on habituation and involving all senses. How many sighted people can remember their walk in sounds to the corner shop this morning? A distinct memory might be a bicycle coming out of nowhere, behind them but inexplicably unheard, and the sudden coenesthetic impulse that pushed them away from this unseen vehicle. Perceptions are not divided but the experimental visioning of audio information in the gallery asks us, as questers for meaning, to reorganise a hierarchy of spatial auditions shuffled by the invisible location of the cigarette lighter’s sound.
The compulsion to define sound sources as inside or outside the frame might give the impression that cinema sound acts as a land surveyor. Two features come to mind when it comes to trigger public awareness, and maybe the awareness of some directors, about the potential of sound in movies. The Conversation (Coppola, 1974) and Brian de Palma’s film Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) encompass the essence, the contemporary reality and the role of cinema sound: the medium becomes an archivist of the plausible, and the potential of its imaginary is censored by vision. In both thrillers, the plots are triggered by sound recordists inadvertently capturing events while being invisible to the object of their recordings. Sound can include and exclude with more subtlety than images: when the camera does not look or the light disappears there is not much to see and exclude but more to listen to and include. Cultural visualisation impairs the acknowledgement of a ‘body’s registration of the in- betweeness of the incorporeal event’ (Massumi, 2002, p. 62).
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Cinema can accentuate cognitive dependence on visualisation in order to assess the reality of sound in a ‘sonic mist’. For example, in Blow Out (De Palma, 1981) Jack Perry, played by John Travolta, is a sound recordist who, while capturing material near a river at night, becomes the auditory and visual witness of a car accident. To confirm his suspicion of having heard a car tyre being shot just before the car plunged in the river, he dissects frame by frame a mysteriously made footage of the same accident. To do so, he cuts each of the picture frames of doubtful origin obtained and printed by a magazine. He then visually ‘re- animates’ them, first as a detailed flip-book and then as a blown up filmed sequence. After the processing of the filmstrip, he obtains confirmation of the gunshot by synchronising the frame of the visual blowout of the car tyre to its acoustic event on tape. This visual montage confirms the veracity of his auditory ‘truthful hypothesis’. The visualisation of sounds matching the frames is potent but so is their linear mismatch as it unbalances synchronous meaning-making.
Affect and cinema, or rather the process of experiencing the meaning-making of a cinematic sensory experience, trigger emotional circumstances that give perspective to the spectator self and the fictional other. In the context of my study and the last exhibition space, Tarja Laine’s description of the process of affection, the physiological side of emotions, resonates:
Affection, then, becomes the contact space between the internal experience and the external
world, the way in which we ‘mix’ the ‘here’ of the spectator’s world and ‘there’ of the
cinematic world.
(2006, online)
Barry Blesser and Pauline Oliveros’ approaches to sound makes the human body a translator of sounds as well as an active participant in the pre-conception of sound. The affective properties of sound cannot be bypassed and ‘it takes energy to ignore sounds’ (Oliveros, 2011, p. 163), regardless of their audible, or inaudible qualities, and visual presence. However, if the associative properties of sound events and sonic effects give voice to individual perceptions, they also imply that there are as many interpretations as there are listeners and visualisers for each sound event and its obligatory source (Copeland, 2000, p.
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23). The exhibition allows individual expressions of sensory practice, achieved without the guidance of moving images, to be experienced as a sensory progression that relies on the amalgam of known and unknown sounds, of imagery and imaginary: these in-between states generate communal affect.
The physical coexistence of audio and visual materials generates definite asynchronicity in some of the compiled assemblages. The imaginary visualisation of silences collides with this fresh vision of the narrative. Could a disjointed non-musical soundtrack call for a renewed assessment of sensory modalities exercised by years of sounding vision rather than visioning sound? Jane Stadler reminds us of Aristotle’s view that imagination depends on light and Plato’s suggestion that to imagine life one should start in a dark cave (2008, p. 172). Both views imply that we are ‘prisoners’ of vision but it can be argued that all senses, influenced by sonic activities, act in unison to enlighten the world around us. Often synesthesia is linked to the interconnectivity of sound and color. However, Laura Marks also refers to this phenomenon as embodied thinking with kinaesthetic ramification (2002, p. 149) and a tool for translating information ‘amongst modalities’.
Imagination involves movement, and humans have the ability to internally access different rotational planes, therefore applying kinaesthetic qualities to perceptual abstractions (M. Johnson, 1987, p. 125). Different opinions on the appellation ‘sound designer’ suggest possible differences in the way the coenesthetic knowledge intrinsic to an individual sound professional can affect the phenomenology of others, directors and audiences included. The practice of this particular ability is what has been asked from the creative participants to this study. To intentionally transfer linguistic abstractions to a multi- planes medium such as sound demands abilities unrestrained by two-dimensional planar vision.
Conclusion
The elemental sonic activities of our surroundings constitute the matter that reaches us, activates our affective capacities and transforms silences in humans’ experiences of the world. Based on that proposition, the near kinetic stillness of Constable Graham McGahan allows the script to give material for imaginative constructions of silences to be the active elements of the scene, and control its spatiality. As the majority of the created soundtracks
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include the noticeable kinetic action of lighting a cigarette, Augoyard and Torgue’s suggestion that sound processes show the self as an accumulation of personal sonic subjectivity points to the importance of phonomnesis in the creative practice of sound design. Imagination of unheard sound does not preclude physical processes and sense of space. However, sounds in situ can sometimes annihilate the imaginative process and trigger deliberate dismissal of locative sounds and associated silences.
The screening in the last gallery space presents eight different interpretations and approaches to the script, and shows how the reception of the visual content is affected by sonic elements. The experiential results of the experimental approach to data collection demonstrate that sound is not an add-on to visuals but can rather act as a spatial driver of a person’s bodily axis. The experiment, in the gallery setting, asks to be felt in order to be cognitively decanted. It is the sounds of the un-visualised audibility, the off-screen, that can at once unify the flesh of audiences and the bodies of narratives. This chapter on the exegesis and the design of the research project’s exhibited work has attempted, by a ‘dissociation’ of our main senses, to corroborate the experience of sound editor Helen van Dongen:
There is no separation of I see in the image and I hear on the track. Instead, there is the I
feel, I experience through the grand-total of picture and track combined.
(cited in Doane, 1985, p. 56, italics in text)
Throughout the exhibition, members of the audience are invited to operate as individual entities given the choice of associating their imaginary power and coenesthetic impulses to feel sound, to be aware of being insounds. Ideally, out of their motioned interaction within the artifacts, a disjointed audio-visual montage now affects the spectators. Whereas cinema spectatorship often deploys our ‘rational-cognitive faculties’ (Schmidt, 2011, p. 34), the exhibition perambulatory path requires attentive viewing of environmental silences, thus questioning the relationship between coenesthetic abilities and our daily viewing of sonic surroundings.
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Epilogue
On the coenesthetic qualities of atmospheric silences
Introduction
This exegesis, married to the setting of the exhibition, comprises six chapters. The literature relevant to acoustic ecology and cinema sound has been included in several inter- related sections. In Chapter One and Two, I discussed the Research design, methodology and methods employed. Chapter Three explored the sensorium and the numerical coding that relate human bodies and their sonic environments. I suggested that rational measurements could inhibit the consideration of sound as a coenesthetic tool that positions us in the immediacy of the world. In chapter Four, I approached different notions of silence in relation to sensations, language, thoughts, creativity and spatiality.
The way semantics of film sometimes idealise cinematic products as cognitive experiences rather than as omni-sensory ones was examined in chapter Five. That chapter evaluated the roles of theoretical nomenclature in the work processes linked to the creation of sensate worlds in, and around, the screen. In chapter Six, I looked into the design of the artistic element of the research, namely the exhibition, and its capacity to transfer theoretical stances into experiential, and experimental, states. The relevance of the study’s data collection lies in the reconfiguration of audio-visual creative processes. By dismantling the creative steps that are chronologically activated during movie production, both data collection and exhibition interrogate mediatic procedural knowings of the world.
Cinema sound reveals what is hiding beyond our eyes and our ears. Sonic ecologies nurture listened and un-listened-to silences: members of an audience cannot ignore their own prescience of mingled bodily activities. A nomenclature based on sound acting as a ‘visual support’ perpetrates a sensorial dichotomy, and hierarchy, between hearing and sight. Rick Altman attributes the importance given to the visual content of a film over its soundtrack to a camera oriented technology and ensuing vocabulary (1985, p. 44). Gianluca Sergi judges that approach to sound as subservient to the images is discriminatory and notes that film
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vocabulary privileges analogies to vision: cinema is labeled as a ‘visual medium’ and directors are ‘visionaries’ (1998, p. 12).
The creation of audio-filmic silences that involve involuntary sensory integration, and promote cultural conventions, deserves some consideration. As a concept, silence remains a cultural marker in Western cinema and its creative practice highlights the poor omni-sensory awareness of sound outside movie theatres. The methods employed in this research provide a practical frame of involvement with the aural imagery of environmental and internal silences. Equally, this research investigates the perceptive tuning of a human body to its sonic surroundings through the visual expectations generated by sonic narrative.
Transposing spatial experiences of silence
Film sound is a phenomenological witness able to demonstrate the connection between humans and their world. However, it is almost paradoxical that we should often ignore the human factor behind the phenomenological content, and that discourses focus instead on the cognitive and sensory intentions of directors as well as the experiences of their audiences. Participant sound designer John Kassab comments that to create the ‘right sound’ directors have to tell him ‘what they want their audience to feel’ (Kassab, 29 July 2011). This remark implies that a phenomenological film experience does not start at its projection but has a cellular genesis leading to its making. We engage with sounds to define spatiality relative to our kinetics and perceptual subjectivity. Maurice Merleau-Ponty considers that human behaviour is formed by visual information, tactile data, motility and sensibility that all appear ‘only as inseparable moments’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p. 138).
A conclusion coming from my current research is that phenomenological approaches to film theory ignore the physical practice experienced by sound professionals. It also points at the disparity between what some American sound professionals profess, and what selected sound professionals in Australia currently practise. Some professionals, for example, view Michel Chion’s terminology as ‘invented words’ and his efforts as attempts to theorise obvious experiences that are often instinctively created, therefore phenomenologically executed. It would be presumptuous, and unnecessary, to generalise about Western professional practices because of the contextual particularities and the evolving identity of each project, as well as the galloping technological changes inherent in the industry. Each
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professional generation is associated with technologies that inevitably modify the phenomenology of human involvement in film sound creation. However, the constancy of the discrepancies related to the roles and actual performance of sound designers are under scrutiny: public visibility demands an enunciation of the task and talent at hand.
Seasoned sound professionals are aware of both the limitations and the excess that technology can entail. Narratives do not always require the diffusion of all frequencies. In April 2012 Dolby Systems launched a new platform, Dolby@Atmos™, which aims to ‘transport people into the story with a lifelike, sensory experience’ (Soundworks Collection, 2012b). Instead of using five to seven main speakers this new configuration could employ as many as 64 speakers. Could this sort of technology put us back in touch with the sound of our daily existence, the very sound that we cognitively dismiss? High quality diffusion of ‘the un-listened-to’ could give some impetus to the consideration of environmental silences as ‘sensory actors’ in their own right.
The frequencies of silences are sometimes reliant on loudness because the loudness of their diffusion is unfortunately often the only way to explore their effects. However, it is in the mastery of putting ‘in’ and taking ‘off’ elements of a soundtrack that subtlety is noticed. By extending the ‘territory of diffusion’ to 64 speakers the delicacy of some frequencies might become apparent, as they will not have to compete for ‘skin-space’ in order to be omni-sensorially lived and perceived. However the evolution of display technology currently focuses on individual audibility through headphones and the like. This tendency might derail the intention of movies’ sonic bodily experience, or at least restrict it to a small portion of the population, namely moviegoers or home theatre owners. The privatisation of hearing that entails sonic access focused on the ear is also affecting our sense of being in the world, our awareness of skin sonic reception. Contrastingly the production of cinema sound does not always involve headphones and mostly relies on professionals’ spatial feel and acoustic knowledge.
Nowadays, the physical gestures of laying the sonic bed and experiencing the sounds that enliven a film start in a personal space, a home studio, then move on to a bigger space that accommodates human interaction and bodily perception. The transposition of sound creations from home studios to mixing room relays the impression that sound mixers have a spatial knowledge of sound as a full body component, although their kinaethesia confines them to a sitting position. Sound design, as experienced by John Kassab for example, can
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include motion and an upright position. It has to be noted that the two youngest participants to this study, Evan Kitchener and Ben Vlad, exclusively use sound libraries and do not physically record outside their studio. Their practice may personify the extent to which schizophonia has become a mode of life that might affect acoustic ecologies and atmospheric cinema sound design.
The schizophonia generated by the reproduction of sounds and its timeless and physical transposition cultivates body memories in common physical and mental spaces (Droumeva, 2005, p. 165). The mapping of experiential creativity is evolving in such ways that ‘schizophonia’, as a method to record and map the world, is morphing into a ‘spatio- phonia’, a sonorous space that cannot be tuned out because of its invisibility. Metaphorically ambiences, as room tone, can be applied to the schizophonia of sound effects; ambiance, the mood of a film, reflects the spatio-phonia and the gestalt integral to atmospheric ecologies. Such a redistribution of soundspaces is used in the display of the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’. In gallery One the soundtracks created by participants are first heard through headphones therefore emphasising a concept of schizophonic objects. In gallery Three the atmospheric diffusion of the soundtracks married to the vision, or not, of sound effects, changes the ambiance and spatiality of the short narrative.
Theorists, including Michel Chion, tend to see atmospheric cinema sound as a necessary addition to a complex assemblage centered on vision, scores and verbal intelligibility. A nomenclature based on sound acting as a ‘visual support’ perpetrates a sensorial dichotomy, and hierarchy, between hearing and sight. Rick Altman attributed the importance given to the visual content of a film over its soundtrack to a camera-oriented technology and ensuing vocabulary (Altman, 1985, p. 44). Cinema sound reveals what is hiding beyond our eyes and our ears; it does not keep out of sight un-listened-to, but felt, silences, and members of an audience cannot ignore their own prescience. Roger Monk’s statement that each stage of film production is an interpretation of the previous technical and creative steps is amplified when applied to the sounding of a movie. The steps of production are tightly intertwined and the net that links them reveals an essential human characteristic: a tacit awareness that all sounds stir our body and its skin.
For sound artist Bernhard Leitner, an immersive presence in sounds implies a full body experience of listening through flesh and ears (de la Motte, 1998, p. 294). Corporeal ecologies and evolving sensory models are interdisciplinary in expression and
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representation. The sonic matter that reaches our flesh has evolved, and a daily immersion in audio-visuals subjects us to voluntary and sometimes unwanted material. Diegetic and nondiegetic still all relate to the vision of the screen, as if sound could be framed whereas it simply cannot be: sound is an effect that provides ‘affordance’, a Gibsonian concept that Harold Jenkins describes as a ‘reciprocity between an organism and its environment’ (2008, p. 34). On and off-screen soundscapes do not make definite incisions in narratives: sonic information creates spaces that have elastic qualities, where the matter of sound is redistributed. These spatial oscillations allow silence to become structural by reorganising the space inherent to our individual coenesthesia. The structure of the sound waves of silences organises our physical and mental gyrations and oscillations, as expressed by Michel Serres:
Geometers and topologists, we inhabit spaces in dimensions and proximities, tears and
continuities; we live in gravity, strong, vertical, symmetrical; but our submersion in sound
waves prompts our attitudes, supple, oblique, lop-sided, strained, restless. Time begins here,
with rhythm. We are still fish, evolving in an environment where at each moment we find
our balance through our hearing, an accurate calculator and computer. Proprioceptive
hearing controls our gait, weary or lively; ordinary hearing commands flight, alertness,
wakefulness, sleep; social hearing dictates deportment.
(2008, p. 142)
To some extent, the sonorous world that each of us seems to listen to has no relation to its sonic physicality. However, foreknowledge positions us, as bodies, in the world. The artifacts created for this study are strategic elements insofar as their making and medium are an integral part of global mass culture: their display is almost a non-event. In the end of study exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’, there are no electrifying displays, or sophisticated ways to prove the extraordinary configurations of sonic matter in other ways than to be in it, to be in a state of insounds. Rather, the exhibition’s display is intrinsic to the coenesthetic foreknowing of each visitor as they physically dissect the chain of movie making throughout the different galleries.
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The created sound pieces of this study and their different modes of display provide contrasting atmospheric territories. The impression of the partakers to the exhibition might concur with John Kassab’s opinion that ‘silence is an effect with sound’ (Kassab, 29 July 2011): it fences narrative space, establishes aural imagery and affects environmental stasis. Effects with sound are also the criteria put in place by the CRESSON team: sound and sonic effects can be practically demonstrated through the exploration of ‘new’ and cinematic silences.
Some have been perplexed as to the choice of the word ‘silence’, and its inherent vagueness, to reveal a physical approach to sonic activities. An investigation centered on the controversial professional denomination of ‘sound designers’ reveals the weakness of semantics when applied to the lived professional life. Both the expressions ‘sound design’ and ‘silence’ are related to the uncovering of axial balance. Sound design maps malleable space with sounds while silences provide surface and matter on which sonic effects grow. Even semantics attempts to adjust to these realities: silences are heavy, they are still, they fall on you, can be cut with a knife but they can also give birth to a discourse or to serenity.
The two words, silence and sound design, literally oscillate between states assigned to their existence. However, silences provide malleable physical structures that sound designers can experientially model. Interviews with participants have revealed that digital silence is at the chronological core of the creative process (Kitchener, 2 May 2011). Importantly, digital silence is of great attraction: it is almost a magnetic oscillation that has been felt and practised by some study participants, namely Tom Heuzenroeder, Carlos Choconta, Ben Vlad and Michael Worthington. By leaving the track bare, cinema sound designers can make us listen to ourselves, if we are ready for such confrontation.
Sound designer Michael Worthington describes his role as a ‘digital audio sculptor’. Adding to this concern with the matter of sound itself sound designers articulate spatial information acting on the coenesthesia of all, starting with their own. A suggestion to appreciate sound designers as ‘organic architects’ of atmospheric silences could unify the different strains of the appellation ‘sound designer’. Instead of being in transit between the creations of effects, the overall atmosphere of a film or the management of other professionals, ‘sound designer’ could specifically attend to the spatial construction, by way of dismantlement, of a story, its soundspaces and airwaves.
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Dismantling of creative steps can expand the space given to sound in the realm of visual imagination. Serendipitously, at the end of December 2009, sound designer Randy Thom suggested to fellow cinema sound professionals on the sound.org list to create soundtracks based on an un-produced 50 year old script (Thom, 2009b, online) in order to highlight the creative potential of an early involvement of sound designers in the production process. Although the online response was positive, I am not aware of the concrete outcomes of Thom’s proposal. Nevertheless my research thus coincides with a broader line of enquiry occurring internationally.
We could journey up the phenomenological chain of movie making instead of capitalising on a culture of reception as a unique paradigm for an understanding, and making, of movies. The methodology developed for this study has generated data confirming differences of opinion in a profession that cannot be standardised because of the organic nature of cinematic sound. Omni-sensoriality and humans’ perpetual re-assessement of their own worlds are rhyzomic and prohibit a hierarchical knowledge of the world. However, cinema sound design’s interactive evolution and the physicality of its affective practice can potentially influence aspects of the chronological hierarchy of film production and its sensorial impacts. My research has aimed to unveil a creative mechanism that is inherent in the practice of cinema sound design but is poorly acknowledged by the first audience of a movie: its director/s and producer/s.
In Australia, a phenomenological practice of filmmaking seems to be the privilege of independent productions where the writers are also directors, such as Matthew Saville’s Noise and most of Rolf de Heer’s movies. To discover silences as embodiments of soundspaces that need a voice, directors and producers have to trust their own coenesthetic knowledge of the ‘outside’ world as well as that of others. Then atmospheric cinema sound will:
reveal for us our acoustic environment, the acoustic landscape in which we live, … ; all that
has speech beyond human speech, and speaks to us with the vast conversational powers of
life and incessantly influences .and directs our thoughts and emotions, from the muttering of
the sea to the din of a great city, from the roar of machinery to the gentle patter of autumn
rain on a windowpane.
(Balázs, 1985, p. 116)
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The experiential dissection of cinema sound production is at the core of the current research and its art practice. Although it seems at time pointless, the tail-biting discourse on the entrainment of the sensorium through the amalgamation of moving images and sound does not have to cease. However, a practical and linear dismantlement of production mechanisms can be a strategy to exert an awareness of sound at large. As all elements intrinsic to this project start in the flesh, the creative breakage of their intertwining becomes a metaphor for the fragmented disengagement with the sonic world to which we belong. Upon leaving the exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions, Oscillating Silences’ some visitors will question the fact that their organisms adjust to sonic information in ways that are by definition evanescent. Questioning the visualisation of an audio narrative amplifies a life ‘outside our lives’, and allows a state of insounds to surface and stir us. Coenesthesia knows the silence that takes a small amount of space in our retinal field but so much space on our skin and in our bones.
The noun coenesthesia and its derivatives have been taken out of any psychological context. This research has also deliberately avoided all references to Eastern Philosophies, psychoanalytic cognitive processes, physiognomic perception and musicality. This study is concerned with the essence of belonging to the world as an axial component in its sonic space: this is not a metaphysical proposition, neither is it a measurable scientific hypothesis. The set-up of the end of study exhibition space aims to alert partakers to their own kinetic ability and the modification of their physical interactions with space when exposed to a mixture of soundscapes. The theory of haptic visuality that Laura Marks develops, positions the screen as a membrane between the film and the viewer, almost as a dynamic mnemonic device. Our neurology and cognition enable all senses to learn, encode memory and become ‘vehicles for cultural knowledge’ (Marks, 2000, p. 22).
This present inquiry has not involved notions of neuro-phenomenology and neuro- cinematics that could potentially affect cognitive film theory. Rather, this study has focused on a Gibsonian attitude that Neisser paraphrased so simply: ‘the inside of the head was exactly the wrong place to begin’ (cited in Jenkins, 2008, p. 44). Human behaviour and ecological relationships necessitate a return to the essential, the cellular flesh as interconnecting entity. To some extent Merleau-Ponty concurs with this reasoning as he literally admits, in working notes posthumously published, that the problems that he poses in his book The Phenomenology of Perception ‘are insoluble because I start there from the "consciousness"-"object" distinction’ (1968, p. 200). The exhibition ‘Inaudible Visions,
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Oscillating Silences’ does not aim to annihilate such distinctions. However, by peeling creative phenomenological processes and altering the common chronology of cinema sound production, the exhibition questions the sensorial unfolding of daily exposures to sound.
Over time, mind and body have been re-assigned from being distinct entities as proposed by Descartes to being one, or at least the mind is now considered part of the bodily substance as asserted by Merleau-Ponty in his early work. However Descartes also recognised that the body was not a simple machine able to move of its own accord but that this entity had a soul that possessed ‘thoughts’, albeit without a language to express itself (Marzano, 2010, p. 265). The physicality of artistic practice allows for such a language to reveal itself. On one hand, the practice of cinema sound responds to a bodily binding to the world by activating the sonic ‘compost’ of our biological constitutions. On the other hand, an intellectual, and neurological, focus on visual information impairs cinema sound’s ability to engulf the panoply of 33 different senses suggested by David Howes (2009, p. 24) and which personify coenesthesia. Is a sensorial hierarchy necessary when axial and contextual adaptations are fundamentally the essence of our knowing of the world?
The conjunction of the exhibition with the exegesis has highlighted the explorative potential of the invisible flesh and the intrinsic interactions of the sonic unseen with the auditory dismissed visions. As a research project, ‘Insounds’ has explored ways in which bodies, sonic materiality and environments interact with or without human cognitive knowledge. Contribution to knowledge has been made on two fronts. Firstly, the perambulatory exhibition has an educational role as it incites an experiential questioning of the influence of vision on soundscape awareness. Secondly, exposing the doubts linked to the denomination ‘cinema sound design’ has unveiled the human factor of a creative practice which relies on an ability to share phenomenological knowledge.
My study leaves the door ajar for further inter-disciplinary studies on the human propensity to dismiss bodily influences of sonic activity, all the while craving its phenomenological influence in the telling of our lives. The case of cinematic silence, and the physicality of its experience, reflects an ideal for balanced and stable soundscapes that would leave visual worlds unhindered. These fictional ecologies are sometimes far from the actuality of daily interactions with sound; nevertheless, they can activate the body’s memories and guide us through unfamiliar territories. However, acoustic ecologies are also made of all that has not happened yet: soundscapes are living moulds that show the human
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adaptability to interact with sounds in the making. In the West, the avoidance of a digital silence on the soundtrack of a mass cultural product, namely a film, reflects the lack of trust that we have in our own physical competences. Movies depict human spatial engagements with the world and our individual states of insounds are adaptable, albeit dependent on each person’s unique constitution. Concurrently, Affect reveals the intransigence of cognitive, and collective, deafness.
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187 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
Appendices
Appendix A: Short biographies of creative participants
In alphabetical order
Damian Candusso
Damian Candusso is a multi-award winning sound designer with over 15 years of industry experience in film, animation, games and music. Some of his recent credits include: Happy Feet 2, Sanctum, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ha’Hoole, Daybreakers, Australia, and the 79th Academy Award winner for Best Animated Feature Film, Happy Feet. Other projects include To Catch a Fire, Candy, Little Fish and Anacondas. Currently Damian is a sound effects editor on the Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby.
Damian has been nominated for two Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Awards (U.S.A) for his work, including Australia, and again in 2007 for Happy Feet. He has worked on several Australian Film Institute (AFI) and Independent Film (IF) Award winning films, as well as being the winner of several Australian Screen Sound Guild (ASSG) awards.
In 2002, Damian received the Centenary Medal for Contribution to Australian Culture for his work in the Australian film industry, an award presented by the Commonwealth of Australia, on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II. Damian has also been recognised by the City Of Los Angeles for his contribution to the Motion Picture Sound Editors Board of Directors, on which he is the first ever Australian to serve.
Credits include: 2013 The Great Gatsby (sound effects editor) 2011 Happy Feet Two (sound effects editor) 2011 2011 Sanctum (sound effects editor) 2010 Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole (sound effects editor)
188 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
2010 Primal (sound effects editor) 2009 Daybreakers (sound designer, sound effects editor) 2008 Australia (sound effects editor)
Carlos Choconta
In 2008, Carlos Choconta started his career in film sound by being a Boom operator & Sound Recordist for short films during his studies in Audio, Acoustics and Illumination Design at The University of Sydney. At the same time he took the opportunity to work on the audio post-production for several of those projects. In 2010 he was part of the crew in the romantic comedy Up The Aisle and his work was extended to post production covering ADR, Foley and Sound Design. He was also involved in the production of the drama Brush (Sound Recordist/Boom Op) and the audio post for the feature film Horizons Crossing (Audio Editing/Sound Design).
In 2011 Carlos contributed to the feature films Sleeping Warrior (Boom Op), Suppose The Night (Boom Op/Sound Recordist) and the documentary Strategies of Survival from Below (Audio Editor).
Credits include: 2012 Missing Pieces (post production sound) 2011 Deadside (series) (sound recordist) 2011 Decline (sound recordist) 2011 Promise (sound recordist) 2011 Precognition (sound recordist) 2011 Are You For Real, Santa? (sound designer) 2011 Strategies of Survival from below (audio editor) 2011 Suppose The Night (Taste Like Sugar) (feature) (sound mixer) 2011 Brush (feature) (sound recordist) 2011 Are you Serious (short) (boom operator, sound mixer) 2011 Equilateral (sound recordist) 2010 Up the aisle (feature) (sound recordist)
189 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
Tom Heuzenroeder
Since 1995 Tom Heuzenroeder has worked as a sound designer for film and television, both in Australia and abroad. In 2006, he received an AFI award for his sound design work on Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer.) Tom has also been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Glass: A Portrait Of Philip In Twelve Parts (Scott Hicks.) Recently, Tom has worked with a facility in Wales (U.K) to do sound editing for Doctor Who.
Credits include: 2012 Storm Surfers 3D (documentary) (sound effects editor) 2012 The King Is Dead (sound designer) 2011-2012 Danger 5 (TV series) (sound re-recording mixer - 7 episodes) 2012 Wish You Were Here (foley editor) 2011 Shirley (TV movie) (additional ADR recordist - uncredited) 2011 The Hunter (sound effects editor) 2011 The Palace (short) (sound designer, sound editor) 2011 Collision (short) (sound effects editor) 2011 Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure (documentary) (sound effects editor) 2011 Le mec idéal (sound re-recording mixer) 2011 The Dragon Pearl (sound effects editor) 2011 Life in Movement (documentary) (sound editor) 2011 Stunt Love (documentary short) (sound effects editor) 2011 Red Dog (sound effects recordist - uncredited) 2010 Cropped (short) (sound designer, sound re-recording mixer) 2010 P.O.V. (TV documentary) (sound designer - sound editor - sound re-recording mixer) 2010 Salt (sound designer, sound editor, sound re-recording mixer) 2010/II The Kiss (short) (sound designer, sound re-recording mixer)
John Kassab
Since 2007, John Kassab has been working as sound designer, re-recording mixer and sound editor on shorts, documentaries and animation. In 2010, John received a
190 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
Winston Churchill Fellowship for his research project ‘The State of Post-Production Film Sound’.
Some of his professional awards are: 2010 Australian Screen Sound Guild, Best Achievement in Sound for The Lost Thing. 2010 Australian Screen Sound Guild, Nominated for Best Sound for Deeper Than Yesterday 2009 Australian Screen Sound Guild, Best Achievement in Sound for The Distance Between 2008 Australian Screen Sound Guild, Best Achievement in Sound for Monkeynaut
Credits include: 2012 Playpals (short) (sound designer) (completed) 2012 The End (short) (sound designer) 2012 The Tortoise (short) (sound designer) 2012 Mindseye (short) (sound designer) 2012 Full Circle (short) (sound designer) 2012 Cabbit (short) (sound designer) 2012 KIN (short) (sound designer) 2012 Vessel (short) (co-supervising sound designer) 2011 The Oscar Winner Short Films: Animation The Lost Thing (sound designer) 2011 Childhood of a Circle (short) (sound designer, sound mixer) 2011 Closing In (short) (sound designer) 2011 Husband, Father, Son (short) (sound designer, sound mixer)
Markus Kellow
For over 20 years Markus Kellow has been working as a sound designer, sound editor, sound supervisor, Foley artist and composer. Markus Kellow began piano lessons at age 8, composing at 12, and soon developed a love for the visual arts. While working in rock bands in the 90’, Markus has worked on all aspects of audio and film production including set design. In addition to his freelance work,
191 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
Markus lectures on sound design at RMIT, and recently completed a Bachelor of Arts there, creating an award winning short film in the process.
Markus has won awards for sound design, dialogue editing and audio mixing. In 2009 he shared an Australian Screen Sound Guild award with Doron Kippen. Markus enjoys blurring the division between the musical and non-musical in order that the combined harmonics of music, dialogue and special effects become one in an emotional sense. He feels that all sound is harmonic and that this attribute can be used to help guide the audience and enhance storytelling.
Credits include: 2012 Forget the Noise (short) (dialogue editor, sound designer, sound mixer) 2012 Not Drowning, Waving (short) (sound effects editor) 2012 The Game (short) (sound designer, sound mixer) 2012 Bino (short) (foley artist, sound designer) 2012 Core Competencies (short) (boom operator, sound editor, sound mixer) 2011 Bonegilla (short) (sound designer) 2011 The Sleep of Reason (short) (sound production) 2011 The Applicant (short) (sound designer, sound mixer) 2011 Rex Arena (short) (sound designer, sound mixer) 2011 Pinball (short) (sound editor, sound mixer, sound recordist) 2011 Two Guys in a Backyard (short) (sound designer, sound mixer)
Evan Kitchener
Since 2009, Evan Kitchener has worked as worked in many capacities on TV series and feature-length videos. After studying Audio Engineering at RMIT, Evan Kitchener focused his skills on the medium of film as a sound designer and composer.
Evan has a long time association with the Dank Films/Southside Productions house responsible for the dark features Bad Habits (2007-2009) and Burlesque (2010). His feature credits also include the horror zombie comedy From Parts
192 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
Unknown (2012), Asian pop-culture story Citizen Jia Li (2011), Infinite Shades Of Grey (2011) as well as a score of other Australian films, musicals, documentaries, TV and games. He is currently working on the musical score and sound design for his latest collaboration with the Dank Films/Southside Productions house Only The Young Die Good, a black and white film Noir.
Credits include: 2013 From Parts Unknown: Fight like a Girl (sound) 2011 Infinite Shades of Grey (sound recordist) 2011 Citizen Jia Li (sound editor) 2010/II Burlesque (sound recordist and music composer) 2009 Bad Habits (ADR, mixer, sound effects editor, sound recordist and music composer)
Benjamin Leon
Benjamin Leon is a graphic illustrator who produces visuals for marketing industries and advertising agencies. Benjamin is also a trained storyboard artist.
Roger Monk
Roger Monk wrote the feature film Walking On Water (2002) the most nominated Australian film of 2002, winning the Australian Film Institute, Independent Film and Critics Circle awards for best script along with the Teddy award and Siegessaule prize at the 2002 Berlin Film Festival.
Roger was co-creator, writer and associate producer of TV series of East of Everything for ABC TV (2009/10). Roger wrote for Dance Academy (2010) and The Secret Life of Us (2003) and was short listed for the 2004 Queensland Premiers Literary awards for the TV series Love Bytes (Fox Aust & UK Shine). In 2007, Roger attended Binger Film lab in Amsterdam with the feature project Dance For Me. The drama/thriller set in Johannesburg was also selected for Aurora in 2010. Roger Monk is currently head writer for ABC3 new young adult series Lost Boys for Matchbox Pictures. Roger is also in development with a romantic comedy
193 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
feature film Romeo & Cheryl, which has been supported by a Film Victoria’s Writer’s Fellowship.
Ben Vlad
Over the past five years Ben Vlad has been working on TV series as sound editor, sound mixer, sound designer and sound effect editor.
Credits include: 2011 Sinbad and the Minotaur (TV movie) (sound editor, sound mixer) 2009-2010 K9 (TV series) (sound designer) 2010 Beauty and the Beast (sound mixer) 2009 Regeneration (sound designer, sound mixer) 2009 Leader of the Pack (short) (sound) 2008 FarmKids (TV series) (post-production, sound effects editor, all 11 episodes)
Michael Worthington
Michael Worthington has been working as sound designer, sound editor, sound supervisor and Foley artist on features, documentaries and TV series. Michael Worthington owns and operates Soundworthy, a music mastering and film sound studio in the Byron Bay hinterland. Over the last twenty years Michael has honed his art at various locations, recording, mixing and mastering, most notably as Mastering Engineer at Rockinghorse Studios, Byron Bay, and working from his home studio,
Having a love for cinema and film, Michael focused his interest on surround sound in the mid 90’s, experimenting with, and researching industry practices in, surround sound in both film and music. Michael’s talent has attracted composers and directors to engage him for sound design and 5.1 mixing from across the globe, a combination of creative elements Michael refers to as Surround Design.
Credits include: 2011 Wrath (sound designer: Soundworthy, sound mixer)
194 Appendix A: Biographies of creative participants
2010 Grief, India, Finn & I (video documentary short) (sound editor, sound mixer) 2009 Collective Moments of Madness (documentary) (sound editor, sound mixer) 2007 Mu (short) (sound re-recording mixer) 2006 Whaledreamers (documentary) (additional surround sound mixer and designer)
195 Appendix B: Storyboard
Appendix B: Storyboard by Benjamin Leon ©
Page One
196 Appendix B: Storyboard
Page Two
197 Appendix B: Storyboard
Page Three
198 Appendix C: Schedule of interviews
Appendix C: Schedule of interviews with participants
Date of Duration of Status of Participant Location interview interview participant
Sydney, Non-creative Tony Murtagh 22/09/2010 The Carriages 90 minutes participant Studio
Melbourne, Creative Markus Kellow 25/10/2010 140 minutes Home studio participant
Michael Byron Bay, Creative 21/12/2010 60 minutes Worthington Workplace participant
Brisbane, Creative Ben Vlad 02/03/2011 90 minutes Coffee Shop participant
Tom Sydney, Creative 01/05/2011 120 minutes Heuzenroeder Residence participant
Canberra, Creative Evan Kitchener 02/05/2011 60 minutes Home studio participant
Damian Wagga-Wagga, Creative 03/05/2011 120 minutes Candusso Home studio participant
Melbourne, Creative John Kassab 29/07/2011 80 minutes Art Precinct participant
Carlos Sydney, Creative 01/08/2011 60 minutes Choconta Coffee shop participant
Ballina, Creative Benjamin Leon 27/06/2012 40 minutes Residence participant
Informal Creative Roger Monk 2009-2012 conversations & participant emails
199 Appendix D: Participant consent form
Appendix D: Participant consent form (sample)
CONSENT FORM
Title of research project: " Inaudible Visions: the impact of sonic surroundings on cinema sound designers"
Name of researcher: Isabelle Delmotte email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Name of Supervisor: Dr. Rebecca Coyle email: [email protected]
NOTE: This consent form will remain with the Southern Cross University researcher for their records.
Tick the box that applies, sign and date and give to the researcher
I agree to take part in the Southern Cross University research project specified above. Yes No
I have been provided with information at my level of comprehension about the purpose, methods, demands, risks, inconveniences and possible outcomes of this research, including any likelihood and form of publication of results. Yes No
*I agree to create a 55 sec soundtrack for which I will retain full copyright Yes No
*I am aware that this research project has no commercial output Yes No
*I agree to provide this soundtrack free of charge Yes No
*I agree to be interviewed by the researcher Yes No
*I agree to allow the interview to be *audio-taped and/or *video-taped Yes No
*I agree to complete a basic online questionnaire asking me about my professional skills and activities Yes No
*I agree to make myself available for further interview if required Yes No
*I understand that I can choose not to participate to this research at any time, without negative consequence to me Yes No
*I understand that any information that may identify me will be used at the time of analysis of any data. Therefore, any information that I have provided can be linked to me (Privacy Act 1988 Cth) Yes No
*I understand that my name will be disclosed or published and my soundtrack played in various locations without any financial gain, fees or royalties. Yes No
*I understand that the soundtrack that I will provide will be kept securely and confidentially for 7 years at the University Yes No
200 Appendix D: Participant consent form
*I am aware that I can contact the supervisor or researcher at any time with any queries Yes No
*I understand that the ethical aspects of this research have been approved by the SCU Human Research Ethics Committee Yes No
If I have concerns about the ethical conduct of this research, I understand that I can contact the SCU Ethics Complaints Officer Yes No
*I understand that my participation is voluntary Yes No
Participants name: ______
Participants signature: …………………………………………………………………………...
Date: ______
Please tick this box and provide your email address below if you wish to receive a summary of the results:
Email: ______
PLEASE FAX FORM TO 61 (0)2 6622 7968 or EMAIL IT TO: [email protected] OR [email protected] Thank you.
Contact details for the ethics offices are: HREC Secretary Sue Kelly Tel: (02) 6626 9139 Fax: (02) 6626 9145 Email: [email protected]
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