Читать книгу Critical Digital Making in Art Education - Группа авторов - Страница 35

In the vague event, enchanted listening, we explore how sound intra-acts via a tuning material, a paper cone, the body, and its movements. First, connect a sound source to a simple speaker element. Now play any sound and listen to the sound from the speaker. If a cone is constructed of paper and encloses the element, the sound will change. Even a cone made of light cheap copy paper will change the sound quality. The electrical sound signals are amplified via the components of the elements and are converted into vibrations and air pressure. When the sound that is converted to mechanical vibrations leaves the speaker element, the cone, acting as a membrane, transforms the sound, the form, and the material of the cone. When the cone is held, and moved around, the sound can be felt in your hands; a body sound relation. The more you refine the cone and engage with the sound, the more you notice about material relations with sound. There are many sound qualities as there are people. Everyone will create an individual relationship with the cone’s material and form, as well as the way the cone moves towards the element.

The form of the cone, the diameter of both the bottom and top will affect both volume and sound quality. The sound will change when the cone is moved away from the speaker element or closer to it as in Figure 2.1. This vague and relational quality of sound causes listening to be an intense sensation that uses impulses to change the sound quality. Small changes in the quality of sound begin to be heard. Once these spontaneously changed sounds are heard, you begin to listen to both the sound playing and the sound from the nearest environment with a higher intensity and engagement.

Here listening cannot be divided from making of sounds. The listening and sounding cannot be held apart, they are vague and connected. I listen and I move my body and the cones because I listen. These movements create other qualities of sound and these sounds makes me want to listen more. In turn, I want to make more sounds. The agency of listening and making sounds are not pre-decided, but mutually transformational (Lykke, 2009). Here, intra-action allows for an active part in traditionally passive listening. Again, the phenomena of being part of the environment as opposed to being situated in the environment surfaces in the experiment (Barad, 2007).

Figure 2.1: Enchanted Listening with paper cone. Source: Vague Research Studios, www.vrstudios.se