PURPOSE
The purpose of this exposition is to invite readers to share in the live and critical thought process of researchers initiating a new project at the intersection of sound and chemical archaeology.
Wide-ranging technical and philosophical discussion follows, substantiated by sound examples, sketches and photographs.
One might think of this exposition as a sort of onscreen installation or exhibition, another manifestation of the first stage of this project, beyond those discussed in the exposition itself.
HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS EXPOSITION
The pages may be visited in any order, and the texts read in any order. One may choose to read them linearily and the order given in the contents page as one option. Pages maybe navigated using the contents and next links found on the top and bottom of each page. As with all Research Catalog expositions, pages may also be navigated using the drop-down menu pictured below.
This menu drops down from the upper left of the screen when you hover between the top of the page and your browser's toolbar. From this "CONTENTS" menu, you may navigate nonlinearly, jumping between pages.
A NOTE ON THE INCLUDED MEDIA:
A key approach of both researchers at the start of this project was not to fix any research outcomes in advance. Rather, we sought to experiment with new research a meeting point between our fields of practice. For this first effort, we resolved that Dr. Bertini would contribute datasets and expertise about ancient glass and chemical archaeology, while Dr. Boehringer designed ways of sonifying this using spatial audio.
The outcome of this activity has taken form both in the materialised data-audio hybrid embodied within the sonifications themselves, and in the new experiences of listening that these sonifications offer. The form of the works produced are constituted by both of these elements, and as such the created sound and the potential experiences of this sound are as much of a part of the total research output as any other elements of the project.
'Potential experiences' are naturally difficult to quantify or contain. Furthermore, it is not our intention to do so. As this is the opening stage of this project, constraining or fixing possible results before the territory for experimentation is defined would be to lessen potential for discovery.
Thus we offer media throughout this exposition to invite viewers and listeners into the project by way of audio artefacts, photos, and drawings created during the author's design process. The dialogue we hope to achive with visitors to this exposition thus goes beyond what is possible with words alone.
PLAYING THE AUDIO
Each page contains a soundfile representing a single line from the dataset or several lines exhibiting a specific transition or selection of sonified elements.
The audio players are positioned in the same place on every page. Audio is accessed using the long black rectangular icon with the speaker symbol on the far right side. These are located at the top left of each page, above the main body text for that page. Each is accompanied by a small itallicized caption documenting what is being heard. Volume may be adjusted from the player itself or from your device. If no sound is heard when the play icon is pushed, please check your device audio to make sure your volume is raised and configured properly for playback!
Be aware that some of the examples exhibit quite dense, broadband noise behaviours. Some examples also exhibit high amplitude levels, and as pulsar synthesis is fundamentally pulse-based, many have sharp attack envelopes. Please listen at a moderate volume so as not to damage your ears or device.
All audio is mixed binaurally to try to give a sense of the molecular spatial models created by the project. This means that listening over headphones is best. Nevertheless, these audio files remain at best sketches for a more full-bodied experience that can be had by listening to the project live with the IKO ambisonic speaker array (pictured below).
DRAWINGS
The IKO speaker array and forms of several of the molecules sonified in this project found themselves developed informally into a series of images that complemented the author's design thinking process. These have been used accross pages of this exposition to offer further points of entry for consideration of a focused, dis-focused or even a idle and drifting mode of attention (with regard to this, the notion of the data flâneur is discussed in a later section).
Part of the reason for this approach is material. Many of the actual glass specimens referenced by this project are microscopic. Others were not availiable to the researchers. Although a few photos from museum exhibitions of similar historical glass fragments are included here, these are not the specimens that the data we were using referred to, but function here as visual examples. In other words, we have the data, but not the objects. A great part of this project was rendering this data, and our 'senses' of it perceptible. In this way, these inaccessible objects can be brought to dialogue in a different way. This exposition continues this process, with sound, text and drawings as a means of inviting readers into the design and conceptual process. This exposition exposes thought around the project.
Both science and art, when pursued in the spirit of inquiry of this project, are fundamentally indeterminate in the sense that our outcomes are not foreseen. While a similarly structured dataset would produce a related sound palette to what is heard here, there is no identically structured dataset (an issue for the domain, as discussed in the exposition). This sonification was designed around the structure of this specific, though ephemeral, material data.
At the conclusion of the opening phase of this project, we have more questions than answers. Thus, communicating a sense of the our questioning with regard to this material and what we are doing as practicioner-researchers is retained in the structure of this exposition.
We do not have all the answers, but by exposing our practices and artefactual first results here, the form of experience that reader-viewer-listener participants bring to this process create still another outcome of our project. Interpretations may differ from our own, but still reflect the deeper intention of the project as a curiousity-driven exploration of wonder and action in practice.