Embodied Sensoriality

Our engagement with the world is saturated by sound. Quite often, sound is associated with the most ethereal realities: that of song and lyricism or the vaporous ephemerality of illusions. But sound is also a sensitive layer through which we experience the proximity of a body, the harsh surface of walls around us or the vastness or oppressing nature of a place. Sound is a material reality whose experience is deeply ingrained in our engagement with our surroundings.

Since sound is always an expansive phenomena which unfolds inherent to the vibration of a mass (of air, or other materials), it is not possible to “locate” sounds in the same way that we locate points in a diagram. The way we experience the spatial and material qualities of sound are inherent to the ways we make sense of the coupling of our ears with a vibrating mass. The material nature of the acoustic is often inaccurately addressed by applying categories born out of the visual domain or diagrammatic models aimed to identify physical objects.

The point is not to oppose the auditory and the visual, but rather to acknowledge different regimes of the sensorial that apply to both realms. As cinema scholar Laura Marks states “Cultural traditions that do not separate vision so radically from the body have less need to deconstruct and reimagine visuality” ¹ Sound Theory (The Clouds) explores the material qualities of sound reproduction technologies – not hidden as a seemingly anonymous screen. The spectator is prompted to make sense of their diverse material qualities and the adjustments that listening needs to perform to engages with the technical infrastructures of sound reproduction.