Listening Into the Lattice

Jorge Boehringer

This exposition details the opening phase of new research between an experimental sound artist and an archaeologist, with a detailed examination of critical epistemological questions that have arisen from the beginning of this project. Both collaborating researchers are situated within hybrid specialisations. As the project unfolds, archaeo-chemical data is explored and animated through methods developed from intersections of data science and musical practice, resulting in performance and installation environments in which knowledge of material culture of the ancient past may be made present through listening. However, beyond a case study, this exposition points to how interdisciplinary artistic work produces results that have value outside of normative paradigms for any of the fields from which it is derived, while offering critical insight about those fields. This exposition is formed of these insights. Readers are introduced to the structure of the data, its relationship to the materiality of the artefacts described, the technological apparatus and compositional methodology through which the data is sonified, and the new materiality of the resulting artistic experiences. Sonification exists at a nexus of sound production and listening, interwoven with information. Meaning and interpretations arise from artistic decisions concerning sound composition and the context for listening to take place. Meanwhile, listening teaches us about data and about the physical and cultural spaces into which we project it. In this way, sonification is always already interdisciplinary.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE RESEARCHERS

Listening into the Lattice arises out of the individual research of Dr. Jorge Boehringer and Dr. Camilla Bertini at Newcastle University.

Shared interests in cultures of the prehistoric past and how knowledge of them is constructed from artefact and materiality energised a field for interdisciplinary investigation. Material artefact and sounding result are weighted against scientific data, which represents one and from which the other is derived. The weightless inequivalence resulting from this union of material, pressure, and concept takes the form of a molecular data sonification, providing a space for phenomenological investigation on the part of listeners. Our operating question was: “How might archaeological glass data be rendered in sound, and what do experiences of this afford listeners?”

Participation in interdisciplinary research concentration MATCH: Materiality, Artefacts, Technologies, Culture and History invited researchers to think cross-disciplinarily about their disciplines. MATCH supports the Newcastle Experimental Archaeology Research Network (EXARN). The author is currently a Research Associate for Project Radical, a Leverhulme Trust research project that interrogates foundational questions regarding sonification from an emerging aesthetic of listener-centric spatialised sound.

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