Sound, time and self, moving through the aural landscape
Abstract
Sound, time and self, moving through the aural landscape explores the interactions of perceptions of sound to the notion of silence, the heard and not-heard, as dynamic relations that influence the space of sound.
In a quest to encounter silence and understand the relationships formed by the body, sound and space, I have used both an anechoic chamber where silence is recorded only as a measurement of self and looked below the surface of the earth where the usual criteria that measure time such as sun, moon, temperature and everyday routines of human and animal, are rendered ineffective. Underground, sound comes from within one’s own body often accompanied by the sound of dripping water. While sound is durational, so the time water takes to percolate underground bears no relation to the hearing of its happening above ground. A drop of rain on the surface may take 1 minute, 1 year or a thousand years to reach a particular point underground, gathering as it does, fragments of rock and dust causing the chemical reactions that result in stalagmites and stalactites. Thus, the measurement of time can be seen as only relevant to the constructed world. Applying this to sound, the duration of a sonic experience is directly related to the trajectory of the body only in so far as to its mechanical nature. It can be said that sound relates to our perception of the space of our daily lives and also our experiences within and without that space. Silence is included as a composite part of that sonic experience which brings with it ideas of time and also flow.
Therefore, my argument is that the construct of time, closely linked to the routines of our daily life, becomes an anomaly when experienced in the space of underground and constructed silent spaces. This indicates that the intricate layering of sound, human experience and space is directly related to the moment and creates a sonic landscape governed by natural and unnatural events.
https://soundcloud.com/chris-a-wright-917928995
Keywords – sound, time, silence, space.
Essay
Can we hear a stalactite forming? Steven Connor writes ‘We say, (on) hearing a sound, that it is a siren or, that is the sea, both objects are only the occasion for sound, never their origins. And there is no sound that is the sound of one object alone. All sounds are the result of collisions, abrasions impingements or mingling of objects’ (Kelly 2011:135). A stalactite, or stalagmite for that matter, begins when a single drop of water deposits minerals that it has gathered during its passage from outside to inside, onto an inner, underground rock surface, a collision of materials. This continuous action eventually, over thousands of years, creates a column of deposited minerals. Through this action, from the rain falling outside to its reaching inside, there is an expectation that sound will be produced, and, if a sound is made, it can be heard (by some means or other). There is a discrepancy, however, between the event of the rain falling outside on the ground and to the event of that drop appearing underground. Presupposing its audibility, the sound heard is completely removed from the its origins, the time that a drop of water takes to percolate from the outside world to the cave underground bears no relation to its initial happening, that of the rain falling outside. A drop of rain on the surface may take 1 minute, 1 year or a hundred years even, to reach the particular point underground, gathering as it does fragments of rock, minerals and dust and causing a chemical reactions that result in stalactites and stalagmites. Whilst acknowledging the natural delay caused by the physical properties of sound waves between the creation of a sound and the hearing of it, I am using the term sound-time to indicate the durational event where there is a further discrepancy between the initial occurrence of an event and its hearing to the resultant secondary action and its potential audibility especially where there is the possibility of a singular continuous sound event as in the drop of water finding its way through the rock.
The question, ‘can you hear a stalactite forming?’ is at the intersection of sound, time and self, suggesting movement and relating to space thus crystallizing the title of this text. The premise is that the sound of the everyday becomes anachronistic when underground or otherwise removed from daily soundscapes. Comparisons will be made between silent or near-silent spaces such as the naturally formed, as in cave, and the unnatural, as in artificially constructed space, such as an anechoic chamber. The relationships to time are integral to these ideas. The construct of time is closely linked to the routines of our daily life which becomes an anomaly when experienced in the space of underground and constructed silent spaces. The similarities and differences of the natural and unnatural spaces develops the relationship between sound and silence and between the heard and the not-heard, which indicates what is heard and what happens but that is not, or cannot be heard. It explores the interactions of perceptions of sound to the notion of silence, the heard and not-heard, as dynamic relations that influence the space of sound. I am using the term not-heard as a direct result of experiments undertaken in an anechoic chamber where words seem to hang in the air rather than are reflected, or bounce around the space.
The ideas explored here are from an artist perspective and are not a technical study of the physics of sound, its recording and editing, but a first-hand knowledge of how I use sound to investigate spatial and temporal aspects. Through extensive art practice and research, it includes first-hand experiences such as time spent recording and observing underground and in an anechoic chamber, humming to explore spatial qualities through preverbal sound production, blowing bubbles in confined spaces to see whether their popping can be heard as well as hearing a person’s final breaths.
Sound-Time
‘Sound, both implied and actual, become inseparable from the realisation that the viewer’s perception of a work of art transpires in time which, as John Cage has observed, “is what we and sound happen in”. The artist’s gestures and moments of thought also unfold in time’ writes Suzanne Delahanty (Kelly 2011:61). Sound does not stand alone, it is inherent within time and space whilst the experience of its hearing brings with it the notion of self. This includes not only the hearing of one’s own body sounds from the familiar breathing pattern but more outward manifestations such as the sounds that accompany everyday life such as traffic noise and regular routines. The relationship of the sonic environment to the self is taken for granted, one is used to hearing one’s own body sounds. Sound for a child or other mammal in the womb is the regular beat of the mother’s heart and the pumping of the blood around the body. It is expected that those sounds are present, there is no need to take notice - except when the beating stops. That silence becomes almost immediately discernable, even though one was not aware of hearing the heartbeat previously.[1] It is this expectation, and acceptance of sound that denies us the chance to be fully aware of our aural environment. It is surmised, however, that to do so would create an overload, an overwhelming cornucopia of sound, of self, environment and mechanical creation.
To apply this knowledge to the hearing of one’s own body sound in a natural or unnatural silent space creates a dilemma. The presence of self in that space creates a collision within the aurality of that space. The musician, Kjell Samkopf in Some Thoughts on Soundscape Composition sums up five ways that sound is created for an instrumentalist.
1. Sound is movement
2. An object that moves makes sound
3. The sound an object makes is the result of how it moves
4. How it moves is a result of how it is put into motion
5. How it is put into motion is a result of how you move (Rudi 2011:298/9)
Applying this to body sounds using the analogy of body as instrument, the inherent structure and workings of the body are about movement, however small, and however seen or unseen, felt or unfelt. The bodily sounds are involuntary and the hearing of those sounds is accepted as part of a general personal soundscape, individual to each of us. Jøran Rudi writes ‘sound envelops us, it invades our personal space; it becomes our personal space. Nearly everything that happens results in or has a sound component, and soundscapes are normally overflowing with all types of information about what is taking place around the listener, be it salient or less important’ (Rudi 2011: 175).
There is also a discrepancy between the moment the sounds are produced and the moment when the sound is heard that is similar to the way water progresses through the rock structure as discussed earlier through the creation of stalactites. This indicates that time is more than just the measurement, it is also duration. Looking at the relationship between sound, the concept of time and the act of walking gives an overall outline to the ideas involved. Sound is a continuous and ever-changing accompaniment to walking, a process involving time and space. The sonic environment is uncontrollable to a large extent and includes sounds both external and present in the surrounding environment and internal body sounds which are in addition to those that are created by the process of the movement itself. It illuminates the dichotomy between time as a natural occurrence, measured by physical properties of the galaxy, and time as measurement which can be seen as a tool, essentially a social function. Walking gives a spatial dimension to time, both its passing and its duration. The ideas of Henri Bergson are pertinent here. He used the word ‘duration’ (la durée) for a processional measurement of time. That is, there is a layering, which is a multiplicity of states that relate to the existence of passing moments where duration measures those moments and places them in a conventional framework that can be understood universally. Past, present and future exist in multiple states as a mental notion. This co-existence of different time-states is relational to the identity of the moment for the social function of humankind and is closely linked to memory. Exploring the auditory environment through these ideas of space, time and memory places the self at the centre of that environment. The space that is created by the process of walking, however, is one that creates boundaries that could be said to be the limit of one’s hearing. The idea of transferring between different ideas of measurement such as distance to a physical object has been explored in the work 37/300/5created in 2007.
This work used the process of walking to measure large amounts of space through the unravelling and then ravelling of a ball of string. (The sound produced was that of grasses rustling as they were moved when the string passed through them, footsteps and occasional heavy breathing due to exertion). Thus, the length of string was a tangible object that could be distance or duration, that is, the amount of time that it took to measure that distance. Therefore, the ball of string could be called 37 minutes or 300 metres or it could also be measured purely by the mass of the ball such as 5 cubic centimetres. This is a similar idea to John Cage’s work 4’ 33”which could be four foot and thirty-three inches rather than the time measurement. The personal experience of the work, 37/300/5, was that space was measured by time and distance and was thus a limit of experience. Experience can exist in different ways such as mental and/or physical. The ball of string, however, is a measurement of space not time. The body created the measurement of time. It was made by the process of walking, a series of processional moments. Therefore, the ball of string is about the process of duration. The site existed in the past but was experienced in the present. The physical artwork produced that is the ball of string exists, in present but is experienced by way of past whilst the future is an empirical state. Bergson’s notions of the fluidity of experienced time states that spaces of flow can be applied to the production of sound and to its hearing.
Brandon Joseph in Random Order, Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde writes ’For any perception of duration, however, a certain form of memory is required. According to Bergson, the past that changes continually also continually builds up, increases as each moment in the present is retired and past piles upon past. This preserved past, which enables the realization of the present, is memory in a non-intentional, non-individual sense’ (Joseph 2003:63). The way sound is perceived is dependent on our experiences. We interpret a sound, the hearing of it, that is, not its origin, through memory as a multi-layered durational experience. In addition, our way of hearing can be manipulated, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the origins of the sound and its location. Suzanne Delahanty writes of Bruce Nauman’s work Sound Waves ‘Bruce Nauman, by contrast, warps our habitual way of hearing and its capacity to inform our sense of proper physical location in space by removing or reflecting the ambient sound along his thirty-foot wall constructed from acoustic insulation. When we walk past Nauman’s wall, the presence of ambient sound in one of our ear’s and its absence from the other alters our customary sense of balance’ (Kelly 2011:62). The way this work influences the way in which we hear is commonplace in everyday life but when it is isolated in a gallery becomes more apparent. Bringing together the concept of memory and how the location of a sound can alter the way of its hearing makes it obvious that we do not hear objectively.
Looking at the notion of sound-time where sound is taken as an aural experience and time as duration, sound-time is not only the way sound is created, it is the movement of one thing to another, or, as Connor puts it, the abrasion, collision or impingement of one thing on another, but also the way sound is listened to and heard. Henrik Hellstenius writes about listening intentions and asks particularly relevant questions – ‘Do we listen differently when the sound is not organised in the manner of music than when it is? Do we use the same cognitive precepts when listening to soundscapes as we do when listening to music? Does referential, reflective and contextual listening exist separately, or do they merge in us? (Rudi 2011:197). He proposes strategies ‘aspects and qualities of the listening experience, listening for timbre, density, layers of the different sounds and sound objects, as well as sensitivity to any possible connections and forms created by different objects’ (Rudi 2011:200). To recap, in sound-time, the process of hearing is not always contingent with the moment of occurrence (strictly speaking, it is scientifically impossible to hear the exact moment due to sound’s physical properties). The delay between these events could be seen as a pause, a wait where the results of that wait are often unexpected. In a simple way, the echo of a sound creates a delay between first hearing the sound and its repeat. Where the first occurrence of the sound is not heard such as the water drip underground, it is presumed that the sound is isolated and that hearing is its first occurrence. Whilst the manipulation of the way something is heard may be directed for artistic purposes, the editing of the recording skews results. Samkopf and Anders Vinjar argue for ‘accepting sonic environments as they are, and their recordings of sounds underpin that perspective – the component of the human interference is part of the experience; one can in a sense hear the artist’s ear’ (Rudi 2011:178). Acceptance of the status quo is important for me as an artist and researcher and especially true when in a constructed or natural underground space when trying to record silence.
Heard and Not-Heard
The premise is that the sound of the everyday becomes anachronistic when underground or otherwise removed from daily soundscapes as in, say, an anechoic chamber. This exposes the durational aspects of sound and its perception. The usual criteria that measure time such as sun, moon, temperature and everyday routines of human and animal are rendered ineffective due to the durational aspect of the way sound is heard. The presence of the sound of self or other living creature impinges on this near silence of underground so the aural landscape comes from within one’s own body where it is often accompanied by the sound of dripping water. This is especially true of the limestone caverns where the research was carried out.
Taking the information gained by recording underground, my quest to encounter silence and understand the relationships formed by the body, sound and space were then done in an anechoic chamber where silence was recorded only as a measurement of self. It followed that the measurement of time can be seen as only relevant to the constructed world. Applying this to sound, the duration of a sonic experience is directly related to the trajectory of the body only in so far as to its mechanical nature. It can be said that sound relates to our perception of the space of our daily lives and, also our experiences within and without that space. As Murray Schafer writes ‘A soundscape consists of events heard not objects seen’ (Kelly 2011:111). So, whilst sound is accepted as part of everyday life, to include silence as a composite part of that sonic experience brings with it ideas of time and flow. Using the constructed silent space as in an anechoic chamber brings us to John Cage’s experiments in 1951. Joseph explores Cage’s view of silence explaining that his early views of sound and silence were seen through the lens of theology. Later, he began to see silence and sound not as opposites but ‘to understand them as inextricably interrelated’ (Joseph 2003:46). Joseph writes of Cage’s experiments and quotes from various writings.
‘the experience enabled him to overcome the remaining distinction between silence and sound. Once inside the room, specially dampened so that no sound could either penetrate the walls or reverberate inside, Cage heard not the absolute silence he had been expecting but rather two distinct sounds emanating from his own body: One was the low tone of his blood circulating, the other the high tone of his nervous system. As a result, Cage came to understand the strict impossibility of silence, famously redefining it as the presence of unintentional noises. “The situation one is clearly in,” Cage concluded, “is not objective(sound-silence), but rather subjective (sounds only), those intended and those others (so-called silence not intended” (Joseph 2003:46)
Whilst this partially echoes the view formed through my own experiments within an anechoic chamber, I have interpreted the experience slightly differently. It is my belief that I have recorded silence. I imagine that I have done so but I am unable to confirm it due to aural pollution, both from self and the surrounding environment. It may be that it is solely the hearing of silence that is unachievable rather than the presence of silence. In the nature of Gedanken experiments - an appeal to the imagined experience - this does not qualify because the position of the artist is that the experiment was carried out. It was not imagined even though the results have to be imagined. However, the listening process creates an aural landscape pertaining only to that moment and that location that could be said to create a form as valid as any sculpture. Hearing the imagined presence of the shape of silence becomes impossible due to this aural landscape. It becomes a Gedanken experiment on the part of the gallery visitor. To carry out these experiments, I experienced what Cage experienced in terms of sound but it also confirmed my earlier statements that sound is created by movement. To stand within the chamber, a slight movement revealed that my body was an ill-fitting bag of bones and tissue where the slightest movement created a grating or other sound. From this came the realization that I could not attempt to record silence when I was there. Therefore, I set what I believe is a silent recorder playing and left the room. However, on playing back the recordings, it was obvious that whilst I appeared to have recorded silence, it could not be heard (accepting that silence, in an obtuse way, could be heard) due to extraneous noise and, of course, the presence of myself as listener. The idea of heard and not-heard is the experience of that sound especially in relation to the space where the sound is formed and where it is heard/not-heard. Introducing the concept of not-heard directly relates to the experiments that I have undertaken in an anechoic chamber and to exploring the idea that silence can be achievable but cannot be heard, therefore not-heard indicates that it happens. The perception of sound, as an individual thing, is only as perceived, it cannot be more than the sum of its perception. Does sound exist when not heard and conversely, is sound only what is heard? Alvin Lucier writes ‘careful listening is more important than making sound happen’ (Kelly 2011:112). Can silence be heard? My view is that the relationship of sound to silence is not oppositional but a linked space of sound. However, whilst silence may exist in the empty, specifically constructed space of the anechoic chamber, it is not present in daily life. The near-silence of, for example, a second world war concrete bunker on Mersea Island, UK where the space was echoic had an immediate presence, almost a buzz of near-silence. I used the space to test the spatiality of the location through the use of humming. This introduced the idea of a poetics of sound that is outside the physical aspects and relates purely to the senses. Whilst this is generally thought to be the province of music particularly classical, orchestral music, I feel that there is a particular pertinence of applying poetics to sound[2]. The initial idea of heard and not-heard related to the fact that sound, or silence, can occur but cannot be not heard. It is not in the capacity for a human being to hear or it is a physical impossibility to hear as in the notional occurrence of silence. The meaning is that sounds occur even though we cannot hear or comprehend them. Here, I am suggesting that there is a sense of near-silence that occurs due to particular locational and atmospheric occurrences that creates a feeling of the lack of sound but whose echoic location creates a presence of absence.
Whilst this space suggests absence due to its construction as in any space where earth is removed, such as excavations on a building site imply ‘nothing’, ‘not here’, but by the same token, there is an inference that something has been here; that something one expected to be present is missing but also that something will be here in the future. This indicates a temporal aspect to the state of absence. There is a physical sense that someone or something should be there or that someone has been there or is going to be there. It is relevant to explore these notions further as they give a sense of how expectation can create a sense of presence such as in the bunker. This can then explain how sound creates a sense beyond its physical qualities. Jean-Paul Sartre[3] discusses a planned meeting with his friend Pierre in a café. On entering the café, Sartre observes that Pierre is not there, in other words, he is absent. Sartre lists other people who aren’t there, but they weren’t expected to be there thus their absence is unsurprising[4]. However, on the fact of Pierre’s absence, Sartre writes ‘my expectation has caused Pierre to happen as a real event concerning this café’ (Sartre 1969:10). Absence is as much an event as presence created by that expectation. Sartre expresses disappointment but this is attributable only to his expectation. The absence that surrounds the expectation is similar to that of the building site, which can be seen as possibility rather than lack. This indicates a perception of what should be present rather than the actual physicality of what is absent.
Referring this to a sonic experience, when a concert is attended, it is expected that there will be music. The space of the venue is activated by that sound. Is this created by the expectation? The presence of sound is not only an auditory experience but also a sensory one. It is not expected that there will be silence. Does one expect to hear silence? The absence of sound does not indicate silence. Not-hearing a stalactite forming is more an indication of the expectation of not-hearing, the event of not-hearing becomes important. The poetics of the sonic space of the underground include the event of the stalactite forming and, perhaps, its sound-time.
Drawing together these ideas and how sound, time and self relate and also contribute to the aural landscape, it seems that different sound-times occur. The passage of time can be measured by the natural movement of the earth around the sun and the position of moon and stars tells us what month and time of day it is. Time is experienced as a part of our daily routines that creates a measurement by which we live by, both our own and others daily habits including, to some extent, both domesticated and wild creatures. For example, birds begin to sing just before sunrise (different birds sing at different stages of the morning). We often wake at a similar time each day and our neighbours have regular routines. A dustbin cart arrives at a particular time on a particular day on a weekly basis. From the sounds of these events, we can make reasonably accurate guesses as to the time on the clock. Thus the link between sound and event and time is made. Removing these markers of both the natural and unnatural, creates a vacuum whereby the measurement of time is no longer discernible. It becomes anachronistic when experienced in the space of underground and constructed silent spaces. This indicates that the intricate layering of sound, human experience and space is directly related to the moment and creates a sonic landscape governed by natural and unnatural events. Time as a measurement becomes an incidental happening that has little or no relevance. However, time as duration increases in importance especially when looked at in terms of sound. The sound that occurs outside the cavern or chamber is divorced from the hearing of that sound within. Sound-time is the durational and erratic measurement of the amount of time that occurs between the sound of the event happening and the secondary event of sound occurrence. This is explored through the creation of stalactites through the passage of water through rocks where there is a likelihood of a continuous sound event.
The general principle of the natural delays that occur between a sound happening and the hearing of it, and the processing of it within our brains, creates a certain time difference due to the physical properties of sound waves within the location and our way of hearing is understood and accepted as part of the way we understand sound and are not used here as part of the explanation but could be seen as a sound-time event. The quest to record silence was the impetus for exploring underground. As a failed experiment, it opened up possibilities as the where silence could be recorded. The opportunity to record in an anechoic chamber, in effect, repeating the experiment that John Cage carried out, allowed comparisons as to how sound and silence were possibilities in the natural world of the cave and in the constructed chamber. In the cave, silence was impossible due to the passage of water and the presence of self. In the anechoic chamber, the presence of self created the results similar to Cage’s and the interpretations of those sounds were accepted as correct but, in addition, I believed that silence was recorded but that the hearing of it was impossible creating what is known as a Gedanken experiment for the listener of the recorded work. Questions occur such as ‘does sound happen when it is not-heard?’ Is silence not-heard? The relationship between silence and sound, and, by extension, between sound/silence, time and self allows us to think about how links are formed which goes to create an aural landscape that includes the possibility of silence.
The conclusions formed from these investigations, taken purely from an artist’s rather than a scientific viewpoint, are that silence exists, at least to the limit of our own hearing capacity, just as sounds occur beyond our capacity to hear them. that the heard and not-heard is the difference between one durational event and another, accepting that silence exists and that it has a presence, that a sound-time event is the distance between the hearing of an initial occurrence and the hearing of its secondary occurrence in a different time frame and different location. This is explored here as a naturally occurring event but further experiments will have to be undertaken to re-create that event. Is it possible to hear a stalactite forming? It is obvious that some sort of audio must be created from the drop of rain falling, is moving through a fissure in the rocks to the depositing of its minerals on a surface underground. The abrasions that must be caused by this trajectory, however slight, indicate the presence of sound. Although it is an expectation, it is based on the factual evidence that movement creates sound and sound is created by objects moving against each other. Sound, time and self, moving through the aural landscape explores continuously intermingling relationship between sound and self where space and time are immanent within the concept of sound, or the expectation of sound.
References
JOSEPH, BRANDON W., 2003 Random Order, Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, England
KELLY, C. (ed.) 2011 Sound, Documents of Contemporary Art Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press
RUDI, J. (ed.) 2011 Soundscape i kunsten Soundscape in the arts Notam
SARTRE, J., 1969. Being and nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology; translated by Hazel E. Barnes. London: Routledge.
Bibliography
BERGSON, H., 1911. Matter and memory; translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. Allen and Unwin.
WRIGHT, C. 2013 The Presence of Absence and Other States of Space
[1] This is taken from first-hand experience of my father’s last breaths rather than a scientific knowledge.
[2] I have long thought of the sound of darkness as an all-enveloping cloak of black velvet that is akin to how I feel about that peculiar state of near-silence that hangs thick and heavy.
[3] Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1905 - 1980 Born Paris, France) work Being and Nothingness (1943) looks at ‘the complex dynamics of the relationship between being and non-being, or more accurately being-in-itself and being-for-itself’ (Cox 2008:23). Being-in-itself is nonconscious and being-for-itself conscious thought although the two can exist at the same time even though exclusive.
[4] Possibility as oppose to expectation differs only in knowledge. Expectation is a human response (strictly speaking, this is also an animal response) to a kind of pre-knowledge whereas possibility appears to be less fact-based.
© Chris Wright 2024