Soundwalks and random encounters

During the research I have performed multiple so called sound walks and searched for interesting auditive phenomena and objects to capture for the material. Sometimes I have accidentally encountered something that had caught my attention and luckily I have had a zoom in my pocket to store these soundscapes for further study.

What has been interesting that during these recordings I haven’t had a very clear understanding about what I have been searching for. I followed my intuitive impulses and recorded the sounds and phenomena that felt somehow relevant to the subject of periphery.

During the research I realized that this intuition was basically big part of the actual subject I was dealing with.

On this page (threshold) I present clips from some of my recordings and try to open the actual processes I have gone through while exploring. The concept "threshold" in this context is an attempt to articulate the space or probably phase that exists or happens in between the "internal periphery" which consists the processes and associations of auditory imagining and the "external periphery" which with in this case I refer to the dimensions of actual auditive phenomena, soundscapes and objects that I see one way or another as peripheral.

Threshold is the area where I evaluate the heard, find points of focus and make the interpretations about what is interesting in the soundscape and what is the actual essence of it. In this threshold happens the extracting observing, changing of perspectives and also all the rational contemplations about the phenomena addressed.

Interpretation and periphery

As Salome Voegelin states that listening is actually action of exploring rather than just perceiving (Voegelin 2010) I also find evaluating and interpreting the sounds as a sort of process where you observe details and dimensions of the herd phenomena and at the same time filter some away. You can intentionally shift your focus and perspective and try take in notice certain frequencies, textures, evidences of objects, materials, distances and movement.

And at the same time subject is reflecting these perception against ones own ideas, emotions and aesthetical interests. In a way this threshold is a part of this perception/interpretation act where the peripheral auditory material affects the subjects inner peripheral noise. I see a resemblance here to Eero Tarasti's idea of existential semiotics where he states that "In existential semiotics, one is simply looking for the individuality and particularity of phenomena, their "soul. " (Tarasti 2000, 9) This soul of the phenomena in my perspective is the subjective experience caused by the perceiving and interpreting the phenomena that affect your aesthetical meaning making.

Same way as Voegelin talks about the perception of auditive art piece or landscape being more as a walk or a exploration, Tarasti sees the transcendental interpretation of existential signs as a journey.

In a way I see that this journey, walk or exploration is in my subjective experience this threshold between the inner and outer aesthetical periphery. The place or the act where the perception and interpretation forms my aesthetical meaning making and ways to experience places, landscapes, soundscapes, art pieces, noises and situations encountered daily, that hold with in them a phenomena of peripheral dimensions.