over the week, let's make some models to listen to (like sea shells). We can start to work out the form of the interior via the way it sounds. We maybe need to do some research into the phenomena. We thought that the sound of a vessel pressed up to the ear probably intrinsically involves things like blood pulsing - ie body movements - so the question was whether a microphone could ever record such a sound. But what we'll do is record the resonance of the model in order to then produce sound fields such as the one we listened to in the studio.

This image seemed relevant:

It's Athan asius Kircher Spionage-Or, Entwurf einer Abhoranlage, Spy-Ear, Draft of a system drawing, 1650

The Shell and the Ear

pia says: Potential for this project to head toward a thoroughly integrated enactment of sound and form is just becoming evident. Thinking about shapes to make had me listening to lots of different things around the house and a few things struck me

• one was how important materials are; a chamber won't house resonance if it's absorptive + the material itself is probably needs to be a conductor of vibration (i'm guessing - needs research). the ear drum is obviously a tight or stretched surface and this taughtness gives it its sensitivity to vibration. The internal skin might want to be sensitive in a similar way. Someone mentioned a JamesTurrell piece in which you experience an amplified awareness of your heart beat - the sounds of the body fill the space. maybe we should also be using the body as an instrument more actively - such that the sound is produced in a relational manner between the structure and the body that enters it (this, after all, is the isue at work in the perceptula variations of Bruce's loop recordings)
• another was that long thin things work well and that a shell is a long thing that spirals. I had a flash back to a plan drawing that Bruce did the first time we met up about this project which was a spiral. he was thinking that we could acheive a greater sound isolation by creating a passage that one passes along to get to the inner shower. My concern at the time was that the installation as a whole would get too big and cumbersome with that much floor area... But now i'm thinking we need to think about this issue further. One thing that springs to mind and seems very pertinent is that an ear is shaped like that - like a shell. I did some research in the past on the inner ear because of its significance in relation to disorientation, dizziness and a theory discussed by DonaldTuzin that the inner ear is a site of sensory integration (ie it's not simply an instrument of sound).

The Body and Sound

I blogged a few links about healing and sound - all concern theories about bodily vibration