Introduction

FRAME
The visual dominance of our society has restricted space to the arrangement for
physical objects that we stand back and behold !rewster"#
$ur visual awareness separates us from the world# $ur e%perience is ta%ed by that
knowledge of distance# In contemporary architecture& namely& the built environment
of our daily lives& !rewster writes there is an 'empty distance between the viewer
behold and the object of our attention(# )e believes architecture should not just be a
categorical composition of physical objects for us to stand back and behold * as there
is no intimate e%perience in this# This rigidity has resulted in a void of e%perience+ 'The
empty feeling which accompanies the repeated overindulgence of meaningless(
Arford , -au ./0"# 1ound fields enable us to close that lonely distance between the
perceived and the perceiver#
$ur e%istence and our understanding is deeply rooted in e%perience& and our
e%periences are based on our environment# The environment shapes our e%periences
through our engagement with it# Integration of the aural can 'augment the
possibilities for increased social interaction and enhanced e%periential engagement
with the local environment( * thereby forming a connective tissue between the
corporeal& mind and our city and its spaces#
Instead of repressing the acoustic qualities of sound for unnaturally silent environments,
this creates a direct disengagement from our environment, while simultaneously reducing
our aptitude and spatial cognition of an environment.
It is important to note that I am not promoting the aural as superior to the visual&
rather the aural can render the image real# Sound fleshes out the image and
renders it real; it gives the image its spatial dimension and temporal dynamic
Voegelin xi
2oid of e%perience
3ooking at space as a form of e%ternal e%perience rather than just a physical setting *
creating a perceptual field#
Space may be defined as a form of external experience, rather than a physical
setting in which objects are arranged, the relationships between objects in space
are revealed by the experience of the perceiving subject. A perceptual field is a
filed in which perceptions are present in time and space. Space is modified and
restructured by time.
The constitution of sound as a temporal structure allows us to e%perience space as a
perceptual field#
4EFI5I56 1$754
1$754 , !$4-
8e are all separate entities#
1ound is an ontology of vibrational force * acknowledging the basic process of entities
affecting other entities# 8ithin this e%pansive spectrum& audible sound is only one
small segment# 7nderstanding sound as a crossover between vibrational force and
human perception#
"An ontology of vibrational force delves below a philosophy of sound and the
physics of acoustics toward the basic processes of entities affecting other entities.
Sound is merely a thin slice, the vibrations audible to humans or animals
Understanding sound as a crossover between vibrational force and human
perception.
"If we subtract human perception, everything moves. Anything static is so only at
the level of perceptibility. At the molecular or quantum level, everything is in
motion, is vibrating. Equally, objecthood, that which gives an entitity duration in
time, makes it endure, is an event irrelevant of human perception." (SONIC
WARFARE p83)
Towards an ecology of vibrational effects. Understanding sound as a vibrational
force in which a body becomes merely another actual entity in a vibrational
event, assuming not necessarily any more significance than he resonances
between other entities within the nexus. The body can be seen as a multi-vex unit,
a transducer of vibration as opposed to a detached listening subject isolated from
sonic events. SONIC WARFARE
Brian Massumi has described the affective sensorium in parallel fashion:
It is best to think of it as a resonation, or interference pattern. An echo, for
example, cannot occur without a distance between surfaces for the sounds to
bounce from. But the resonation is not on the walls. It is in the emptiness between
them. It fills the emptiness with its complex patterning. The patterning is not at a
distance from itself. It is immediately its own event. Although it is complex, it is not
composed of parts. It is composed of the event that it is, which is unitary. It is a
complex dynamic unity. The interference pattern arises where the sound wave
intersects with itself. The bouncing back and forth multiplies the sounds movement
without cutting it. The movement remains continuous. It remains in continuity with
itself across its multiplication. This complex self-continuity is a putting into relation of
the movement to itself: self-relation. . . . Resonation can be seen as converting
distance, or extension, into intensity. . . . With the body, the walls as sensory
surfaces.
Sound and its vibrations act as a catalyst for generating awareness of spatial boundaries,
it can solidify a void when sound pressure levels interject between audience and space. It
activates, occupies, even becomes the continuum that connects all things
We imagine our bodies as separate entities, discrete physical unities, sovereign and
autonomous, but by solidifying this void with sound, boundary perception
eventually collapses. All things become inseparable and one - all physical matter is
part of the continuum [Arford 2002].
As we engage in our daily activities, we tend not to be conscious of our bodies and we
take them for granted. his is the body that is !passed by in silence" #Sartre, $%&% '$%()*+
Sound is a sculptural phenomenon that you can walk through.
,ow can you e-perience the material and physical .ualities of a space through sound
/elebrating our spatial e-istence, our boundaries of movement
0aking you more aware of the physical nuances of a space,
,eideggarian method of perception, of just being.
/reating a spatial e-perience which transcends the physical dimensions of an actual
space
0aking you more aware of your own movements
,ow can this dialogue between us and a space change our perception1
he method of perception here might be more about actively listening, as there a live
relationship being created between the user and the space
2hysically it is the continuum which connects all things, but you only become more aware
of this through such responsive environments. 3ou become more aware of your own
actions, other peoples presence and the space"s .ualities.
giving some tangible e-perience to some kind of unified field.
0aking a space and the corporeal one pulsing organism
Martin Heidegger (2001) draws a distinction between corporeal things and the
body, questioning whether the sense of embodied selfhood that we all possess
needs to coincide with the limits of a corporeal body. The corporeal thing stops
and is bounded by the skin whereas our sense of embodied selfhood our
bodiliness may extend beyond this bodily limit. Heidegger uses the example of
pointing, where our sense of bodiliness does not stop at the fingertip but, instead,
stretches out beyond the skin to the object captured in our gaze. Perception,
action and interaction are interconnected as body and world merge, at least to a
degree. Our bodies, phenomenologists argue, are not just contained by what is
inside our skin; they reach out into the world.
Sound can eventually help us understand the extent of our lived body, which
opening the way we look at the limits of our bodies.
Reasons for transposing, mutating the sounds created within a space.
We think we know perfectly well what seeing, hearing, sensing are, because
perception has long provided us with objects which are coloured or which emit
sounds. When we try to analyse it, we transpose these objects into consciousness.
We commit what psychologists call the experience error, which means that what
we know to be in things themselves we immediately take as being in our
consciousness of them. We make perception out of things perceived. And since
perceived things themselves are obviously access- ible only through perception,
we end by understanding neither. We are caught up in the world and we do not
succeed in extricating ourselves from it in order to achieve consciousness of the
world. [5]
The eventuality is that sound is the genome that can turn our spatial entities into a
breeding ground, where objects become vectorial entities, passing non their
affect like a parasite from one animal to another, contagious - a complex spatial
ecology, a thriving organism.
Entities become organisms in a an ecology of spatial affect.