The thesis includes one and a half years of artistic practice and research on sonic experiences.
The research starts off from a first-person perspective – myself; what am I listening to now?
The surrounding soundscapes are represented by sound notations in an explicit form and explored through listening performances in order to understand the structure of hearing in a philosophical way.
Then, the thesis shows how the writer’s interest moved to ‘the other’ (second or third person perspective) with the question: What am I listening to and how is it different to what you’re hearing?
This brings forth the element of fiction by which a third person’s sonic experience is revealed. Bus 22 is an audio playback of a fictional story with visual instructions.
It is based on two main aspects; Anamnesis: mnemo-perceptive effects, and Voice in thoughts: storytelling.
Finally, the thesis talks about the encountered difficulties during research and making processes. The conclusion encompasses the value of perceived and narrative-based sound arts.
192 + 8 (2020)
3rd semester started, I was taking the exchange workshop in the Sonology department, Wavefield synthesis by Ji Kang.
This is the workshop description, “Wave Field Synthesis (WFS) is a sound production technique designed specifically for spatial audio rendering. Virtual acoustic environments are simulated and synthesized using large numbers of loudspeakers.
The WFS system from The Game of Life consists of 192 speakers, arranged in a square formation of 10x10 meters. This possibility of being able to move sounds ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the direct listening environment offers endless creative opportunities for the artist...” It was a rare opportunity to play with an immersive setup and doppler effect. In the workshop, I explored an artistic method, how to build sonic experience in-between, space of physical presence and human perception.
I decided to develop the 7:30 in the morning piece, WFS system revealed acoustic in reality and headphones revealed acoustic in the dream and made them intermingle through the narrative.
Through the workshop, I found a nice method to give an immersive feeling of in-between acoustics using the interaction of speakers (192) and headphones (8). Plus, storytelling with voice efficiently leads the audience, and not to let the piece too vague.
Categorising and Listing Studies (2020)
This study came from the curiosity of the previous practice. From the physical event of sound, what kind of sonic effect we can expect in both physical and psychological way. Also, try to categorise sounding object kinds.
The Listing study was strongly influenced by the book, the teacher Raviv Ganchrow recommend reading: “A guide to everyday sounds Edited by Jean-Francois and Henry Torgue”.
Those studies and the book helped me to know about two polar contexts of acoustics which are psychological acoustic (sound in here) and physical acoustic (sound out there).
Background: Life back in Seoul (- 2018)
It is weird to start writing about the past since a lot has changed.
I was usually interested in the sound produced by computer algorithms and synthesisers. I used to reign as a goddess of my digital world. If I set the condition, the computer generates unexpected things and surprises me. I spent most of my bachelor years on generative sound and live coding performances.
From this, I learnt the mathematician’s perspective by making models by using logical language. Since around 2017, my interest in the above was decreasing.
I still can’t grasp the proper reason, probably I missed the interaction with nature and the human, not in a simulated world; no more nerd. The most crucial moment was, just after a live-coding performance, I was walking in the city and the beautiful sound texture of the wind filled me with a certain emotion.
I thought ‘this feeling produced by the experienced sound is something that I cannot reproduce with my computer. In order to learn what is sound, I need to stop making sounds, and rather start listening.
Listening Performance: Ingest, respond ...listen (2019)
When I came to The Hauge, the local art scene was new to me. I came from a screen-based audio-visual background, and I had seen more non-screen-based artworks in the first two months in the Netherlands than in my whole life in Seoul.
It was exciting, a good opportunity to escape my comfort zone. I was struggling, at the time, to find out what it is what I really want to do.
I was able to narrow down my interests during the development of my first piece at the beginning of my studies at ArtScience: ‘the listening performance: Ingest, respond ... and listen’.
The aim of the sound performance was to analyse the feedback generated between the act of ingesting food and listening to the ambience in my body at the same time.
One day, I was in class, the classroom was quiet and all of a sudden I noticed the rumbling noise of my digesting stomach. It was loud.
I felt embarrassed but when I tried to stop it seemed as if the sound was only getting louder. Yes Cringe, mf! On the other hand, I was interested in how my body connects to my hearing experience.
I develop the concept for the listening performance during the Sound World II workshop given by Robert Pravda. I recorded the digesting sound of my stomach and played it back with a multichannel system.
After the workshop, I slowly started to build the ‘Listening Performance: Ingest, respond ... listen’. I performed it a couple of times at the academy. The people were lovely. They were sitting on their chairs wearing headphones and looking at me. I started off by attaching the microphone to my belly and when they started hearing my heartbeat, they were surprised. When people heard the rumbling noises of my stomach, however, they laughed. After 10 minutes the performance was over, silence.
I took an exchange workshop named Aural Tectonics by Raviv Ganchrow in the Sonology department. The description of the workshop was as followed: “Aural Tectonics explores the site-specificity and context-dependency of in-situ sound and hearing by fostering a critical awareness of, and attitudes towards, environmental ambience. Founded in a practice-based approach, the workshop develops situated strategies for listening, recording, sound montage and mapping as well as experimental approaches for contextual sound synthesis and site-specific interventions.”
The workshop dealt with the ‘Atmospheric acoustic’ and entailed an assignment:
a) find the Sounding Atmosphere in/around home
b) draw a schematic diagram
c) reconstruct the Atmosphere into an audio file.
I was mainly interested in representing the atmosphere through the explicit form of schematic diagrams. I thought: ‘How interesting! As soon as I try to describe a subjective experience through an explicit form (diagram) it loses its sensory effect.
Further, if I try to close the gap between the effects of the sensory experience and language representation, the diagram is getting too complex.’ After trying for several hours to bridge both elements I gave up. The funny thing, however, was that the diagram looks a bit like abstract art.
After the pleasant experience of the workshop, I try to figure out how my hearing was structured by notating the atmosphere in an explicit form.
March of the last year, we all punched into the face to, yes Big C. I am one of those who got it harsh, mentally. So, before the total knockdown, I should go to my family house in South Korea.
Surprisingly, I was having the same level of toughness, at the bottom of the family hierarchy and missed my liberal life in the Netherlands. Probably, because of this dilemmatic situation, One day, I dreamt of the Netherlands. In the reality, I was in South Korea.
As I am waking up slowly, the dream was mixing with reality. It was a wonderful moment, also interesting to see how two geographically distant spaces can merge and even interact in my perception. From there, the sound created abstractly. I draw the diagram of it, focus on how hearing experience built in the imaginary space, dream.
After this, I felt one step close to understanding the hearing experience, analysing the dream help me to understand how (un)conscious effect it.
Do it yourself (2020)
(Finally) I got back to The Hauge, the summer in here was perfect, and I didn’t want to dive for theories, rather stay at the beach more, or to make DIY devices to move my ass and turn my mood up resist from C-affects, regardless to my research. I wanted to build a portable loudspeaker and a converter biodata to vibration; eventually, it connected to my study, though. I was designing, soldering, cutting wood, assembling, and painting.
The first time in my life to deal with scary electric saws and dusty work wears, I took an intense month but after all, I proud that I didn’t cut my finger.
The portable loudspeaker, I tried to shoot impulse and noises to the physical spaces and to know how the architecture effect to sonic experience.
The converter is to reveal my perception to sound. I put electrodes on my forehead and the data from my brainwave converted to vibrations.
It was good to think about how the physical architectures are sounding, furthermore, to concern how this affects our psychology.
Several months later, after done building the devices, I talked about this to the teacher, Robert Provda, and he introduced the book. It was a nice surprise that I had been made 19 stuff after theoretical inputs, but this time was the other way around, I followed my instinct then found the context. I realised, do something with the un-logical flow with open-minded can bring a deeper understanding.
The other's Sonic experience (2020)
“What is I’m listening to now and how is different what you’re hearing? “
In two years of ArtScience, I had been working for sonic experience through my perception. Even I understood theoretically, our hearing is personal and subjected; all different, I couldn’t talk about the other of it for an obvious reason: I haven’t been into the others auditory perception.
Then, I wondered, there is a mature method to assume and tell the others of it through fiction that certain genre, film, and literature, are taking advantage of it, why not sound art? And I realised, a fiction only with sound is hard to distinguish from music, however, once it includes narration, then easily perceived as a general audiobook.
Of course, I’m nothing against music or audiobooks, but the point is to explore the subjectivity of sonic experience; the science of sound, and convince audiences in an experiential way. It made me a challenge but in a creative way.
The idea came out from my early project named Bus 22. In the project, I choose a random person on the bus, then guess and construct the audio about the person’s sonic experience, considering the bus route. Even though the early one was more focused on the sound inside of the bus, I thought it’ll be a nice concept to reveal the other hearing experience in-between space of city acoustic(outside) and the person’s perception(inside) through a window, and the bus route already have a storyline so that narration doesn’t need to contain a story, rather like be an instructor lead audience to listen the sound; like the narration of previous developed piece 7:30 in the morning.
Therefore, I planned to make a new version of Bus 22. This is the structure that I would follow.
1) Get on bus 22 and observe a person.
2) Imagine and write about the person’s sonic experience on the bus, Considering the Hague locale. 3) Based on the script, composing an audio playback.
Who's on First? Heterophenomenology Explained (2003), Daniel C. Dennett
“Discusses the study of human consciousness which involves phenomena that seem to occupy dimensions: the private, subjective, 'first-person' dimension. It explores the relation between the standard 'third-person' objective methodologies for studying things like human metabolism or bone density and the methodologies for studying human consciousness. It explains the method of heterophenomenology.”
Daniel C. Dennett suggests the other's phenomenology as the counterproposal of the conventional phenomenology that hardly can prove its objectivity. He mentions, if the conventional one is ‘I experience X’ then, the heterophenomenology is rather put an extra bracket like, “Why the person says, ‘I experience X’”, and explores its objectivity 36 with scientific evidence to match the person’s argued experience. Even though, there is no clarification of sonic experience, however, some aids to construct the story of the other perspective with scientific analogies.
Since I have been investigating for sonic experience inbetween outside and inside using voice instructions, I would like to introduce artists and pieces in the sound art field which can be connected to bus 22.
Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989), Hildegard Westerkamp
“...She reveals the metaphors, the hidden entrances, within sounds that take us into other spaces. A listener travels with Westerkamp into worlds of tiny sounds and tiny voices, dreams, and places of fantasy and the imagination. She challenges us as listeners to re-establish our place within the world around us ... Westerkamp effectively promotes the changing of listening habits; the distancing of individuals from oppressive sonic environments; and the regaining of an individual's inner voice.”
In Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk, her voice leads listeners to various spaces jumping through reality and 31 dreams. Audio mixed by real sound in Kits beach, artificial sound, and music. It suggests atmospheres of each space, only by sound without any visuals.
Rameau’s Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen (1972–74), Michael Snow
“The “authentic ‘talking picture,’” as Michael Snow describes Rameau’s Nephew, is an epic treatment of the spoken word and other sounds generated by the human body that is susceptible to the recording.
The film is a segmented series of encounters with 32 figures in recognizable or at least nameable settings who are conversing, reciting, reading, discoursing, or otherwise generating sound. Some of these emissions are effortful, such as tapping, whistling, or smashing.
Others seem simply to emanate from the body—the best example would be farting—while still others, from the same corporeal region, need to be staged in such a way that amplifies their qualities and enables them to be recorded: a pissing duet is amplified by the use of buckets... All manner of cinematic sound is under consideration, including voice-over and an off-screen voice giving direction. The apparent source of the sound is pictured—a speaking figure— but this is no guarantee that the voice will be in sync; the film intends to counter such common assumptions.”
To construct the others sonic experience, I was looking at how outside of sound art mediums such as literature and film have been revealing the phenomenology of the others with narratives. Although the concept usually consumed in Sci-Fi, I had been aware not to restrict specific genre references, otherwise, it might be set the own limit to aesthetics.
Sans Soleil (1982), Chris Marker
“Sans Soleil is a French documentary... a meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory, and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories is affected... Sans Soleil is composed of stock footage, clips from Japanese movies and shows, excerpts from other films as well as documentary footage shot by Marker.”
In the film Sans Soleil, the protagonist, the woman received a letter from her friend who travelling all around the world as a cameraman. The narration of the woman connects fragmented video footages which contained the real story of each city and reconstruct the story of the other's memory by subject interpretations.
Acoustic Atmospheres (2000), Gernot Böhme
“...He spoke of ecology as the relationship between the quality of an environment and people’s state-of-being inside that environment. This relationship creates what he calls the atmosphere of a place or situation. Acoustic atmospheres become the centre of discussion in this article, examining both music and the soundscape as well as people’s forms of listening in the context of ecology.”
Sound Walks (1991 -), Janet Cardiff
“Audio and video walks that respond to particular locations and indoor installations—situated at the intersection of cinema, theatre, radio, literature, and sculpture—immerse viewers in transformative scenarios that range through time and space, using fictional narrative and sound effects to question sensory experience.”
In Janet Cardiff’s Audio Walks, she tells the story of the specific site based on her memories and feelings through her signature voice’s narration and binary recorded sound effects. Audiences explore the site with headphones, some of her pieces additionally use AR technology to give more autonomy and immersion.
Being John Malkovich (1999), Spike Jonze
“In this quirky cultfavourite comedy, unemployed New York City puppeteer Craig Schwartz reluctantly takes a temp job as a filing clerk for the eccentric Dr Lester. While at work, Craig discovers a portal that leads into the mind of renowned actor John Malkovich...”
In the film Being John Malkovich, the characters continuously experience in the mind of the other, John Malkovich’s. The intriguing element is, the film plays with a relationship with embodiment and language with or of ‘the other’ and the story from it, such as, once the people got inside of his body, as the context of him is disappeared and revealed like the John Malkovich is not himself anymore or people got existential ego confusion.
Bus 22 is an audio playback piece about the other’s sonic experience, constituted by sound compositions and voice narration.
From September of last year, I had been taking the bus 22 in the Hauge. In the bus, I observe and analysed passengers to set the fictional characters who would reveal ‘the others’. I picked three people, considering age and gender, most of all, I concerned the combination of three. In December of last year, I chose, one is the boy with a soccer ball who looking outside of the window with sparkling eyes. The boy made me think, the sound conceived by kids might be intriguing that most places are playgrounds to them.
The second person is the woman with luggage who seems like a traveller or an international student. There are several reasons to pick her. First, I thought the person from another cultural context can bring a fresh perspective to the city, second, since I can not exclude the C-Situation (yes, corona) and to reflect the time-specificity, the character can proper show it.
The last person is the old lady who seems like a genuine resident. It was quite an obvious motive that the experience from a deep understanding of the city can give resonant to piece, plus, also can be a nice ending.
From January in this year, based on three characters, I concerned the stories, with the question, ‘What are they experienced in the bus 22’. At those times, I tried not to think about the hearing, I just wanted to grasp a holistic picture of ‘the others’.
Then, in February, I started to write the script to construct the audio playback. In the process of writing, I drew each character’s perception map regard to the Hague locale, it helped to get ideas to develop the story.
March, finished the script and tried to construct the audio playback by recording and composing sounds. If the former process drive by logic, the constructions include my artistic intuition using experiment with different mic technics such as a biaural, XY stereo, directional.
Organise the travel bag
In the journey of the other's sonic experience, sometimes my travel bag was getting too heavy, especially when I had good inputs, I tried to squeeze them all into a tiny bag.
Eventually, I got overwhelmed, plus, at some points, the research could not make me excited, just force me to finish it; Few months were circulated in empty. As long as I noticed it, I decided to put out the things which I cannot manage at the moment and only took the things that I would play with for fun.
Although, I got rid of fascinating knowledge which can be elaborate my words to the higher dimension, but for them, I’m looking at the next journey. The stuff that survived in my bag that had been with me was ‘sound in perception’, still wide, but considering the bus 22 initially included keywords such as ‘city scape’, ‘psychogeography’, the research was being minimal; big lesson: say only what the piece is pointing.
Two keywords
So, I was focusing only on sound inside of perception, which can not be measured by devices, but no doubt about their existence, because we can feel it; for instance, when we are dreaming, some sounds patently audible.
Therefore, when I was working the bus 22, I tried to think of two keywords that can explain it. Anamnesis: mnemo-perceptive effects, and Voice in thoughts: storytelling.
To explain the detail, Anamnesis is “an effect of reminiscence in which a past situation or atmosphere is brought back to the listener’s consciousness, provoked by a particular signal or sonic context. Anamnesis, a semiotic effect, is the often involuntary revival of memory caused by listening and the evocative power of sounds.”.
It is the sonic effect that accurately talking about sound inside of our perception. In bus 22, I tried to construct Anamnesis effects from the perspective of the others; Of course, the Hague’s environment naturally dragged in, however, the piece didn’t particularly describe the geography of it.
If the constructions of Anamnesis effects built fragmentary ideas, through the Storytelling: Voice in thoughts, it threads of the ideas and leads the listeners with instructions.
I was being aware of the concern: it can be belonging to general music or audio-book. In that sense, voice instruction was an important role to mark the position in sound art. Once I set two keywords, my life improved in many ways.
Finally, I was being able to make progress, stop overeating(or drinking) and stop being rude(after over drinking); I know those statements are too personal, but it was a nice turning point.
Fiction!
The core of the research is to create fictional characters and assume their hearing. The tricky part was characters being interesting, at the same time, and make them likely to seem somewhere in bus 22.
It Sounds Like a black consumer, on the other hands, I felt it is possible. Because characters can be special in the usual way like all people are already extraordinary in their context.
I thought ‘If I weave the assumed histories and personalities of three people in a precise and realistic way, then the piece will be grown itself’. It was true that as much as I put effort to make the characters, assuming the hearings were getting easy, however, it was not a self-grown something as my story-telling condition was the desolate desert; no rain, no grow.
It was a challenge. It was quite a work. Efficiency-wise, I should not have to do this; it took four months; I usually don’t put these amounts of time to make one. The things that motivated me to continue were related to pure joy.
In fiction, I can be the other’s perspective and hear the world. It is a rare form of communication, especially in the modern ego-centric world. I felt pleasures when I took one step closer to understand people.
Narrative based Sound art
With bus 22, I perceive a personal necessity to dig more into sound in perception with narratives. I know that it is difficult to deal with it in the sound art field, which usually talks about aesthetics in the science of sound; it makes sense that objectoriented sound arts are taking the majority that can be simulated and existed itself with clear physical causality.
In contrast, non-object-oriented works; narrative-based sound arts, are with ambiguities, since it is not focusing on the mechanism, rather it presents a phenomenon which floats amid sounding object and audience.
However, I think the inherent vagueness in the language of it makes the work exclusive with the state of art, splitting the boundary from science, but still having intersection with it, in the way of the thought experiment aspect. For this reason, I see many possibilities of it as an artist and will continue.
Last thoughts
At the moment, I’m writing the last page, and can not get rid of the strange feeling, even I’m chased by the draft deadline; no time to feel something.
To me, two years in here were quite tough. There were a huge jump and many changes, cultural difference, the human disaster 47 or so. I want to say like ‘Yeah, it was fun, haha' with a cool smile, but I am far from cool.
I can vividly recall the moments of frustration, and how people helped me to learn from it.
Robert, thank you. Raviv, thank you. Arthur, thank you. Cocky, thank you. Classmates, thank you. Nika, thank you for fixing words (even though you gave up after 2 hours). Minsu, my best friend, thank you. Mom and dad, thank you and I always thinking of you.
The most precious thing, I ever learned here was a new way of ‘communication’. In the midst of many linguistic miscommunications, I faced constraints I had never experienced in Korea. I couldn’t express my feelings maturely and describe situations accurately; I felt I’m a 8-9 years old kid and I was lonely. However, In the process of trying to get out from miscommunication and loneliness, I learned how to observe various contexts such as subtle facial expressions, behaviours and atmospheres of the space, beyond verbal expression which is quickly flying away. Then weirdly, not even people I met here, I realised totally new side of my family and friends in Korea who I’ve been know long time. Actually, miscommunications have been everywhere, sometimes it used to covered by verbal fluency. One sure way to close the friction is to care to the others, and love will always accompany me as a good fuel.