limited language: rewriting design: responding to a feedback culture

limited language: rewriting design responding to a feedback culture

Colin Davies, Monika Parr inder

limited language: rewriting design respondi ng t o a f eedback cult ure

Birkhaussr Basel , Boston' Berl in

Layout: Oskar Karl in This book is set in Monotype Grot esque (captions and references), Berli ng (body t ext) and Monoikos (all headers), Oskar Karlin designed Monoikos specifica lly for t his book,The t ypefa ce is based upon Monaco in 10pt which was used on th e original Limi ted Language websi te. Cover image: Luna Maurer + Kri st in Maurer De Zee naar Harderwi jk (The Sea at Harderwijk) www.dezeenaarharderw ijk.nl Comm iss ioned by SKOR Foundat ion Ar t and Public Space . The Dut ch coas t line at th e Ooster scheldekeri ng in Zeeland is st reamed live (w it h sound) t o pat ients at t he St. Jansdal Hospit al in Harderwijk, The Neth erlands. Every fi ve minutes a film st ill is archived online and patie nts receive a weekly post ca rd of images shot duri ng t he previous week, Technical real isati on: @Xit Courtesy SKORjP hotography: Teo Kr ijgsman

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009934863 Bibliogra phic inf or mati on published by t he German Nat ional Library. The German Nati onal Librar y list s th is publica t ion in t he Deut sche Nati onalbibliografi e; det ailed bibliograph ic data are available on the Int ernet at htt p:// dnb.d-nb.de. This work is subject to copyr ight. A ll rights are reserved, whethe r t he whole or part of the materi al is conce rned, specifica lly th e right s of t rans latio n, reprinti ng, re-use of ill ust rat ions, rec it at ion, broadcast ing, reproducti on on microfilm s or in ot her ways, and storage in data bases. For any kind of use, permission of t he co pyr ight ow ner must be obt ained.

© 2010 Limit ed Language

© 2010 Birkhauser Verlap AG Basel· Boston Berli n P.O. Box 133, CH-4010 Basel, Swi tze rland Part of Spr inger Science+ Bus iness Media Printed on ac id-t ree paper produced fr om ch lori ne-free pulp. TCF 00 Printed in Germany ISBN: 978-3-7643-8934-5

98765 432 1

www.bi rkhauser.ch

FDr i ouki«, Joseph and Christian FDr M ia an d Eve

Acknowledgements Thanks, To everyone who has cont ribu t ed to th e Lim ite d Language projec t over t he years, For publishing the book

Bir khii user Verlag Robert Ste iger. Commiss ioning Edit or Daniel Morgent haler. Editori al As sistan t A rc hite ctu re & Design For the design

Sofi a A ndersso n. ass istant designer Am alie Bore-Hansen, assista nt designer Oskar Karlin , Web and book con cept and overall design Luna Maurer, f or her generosity in discu ssions over t he cover For sub-editing the text

Emma Ang us M ic hael Clarke All the kind coll eagues who have helped with reading, advisi ng and recom mendati ons to the publishers

Jeremy Ayns ley, Jess Baines. Adri ana Cerne , David Crow ley, Adr iana Eysler, Ian Horton, Joel Karamath, Joe Kerr, Dene Oct ober. Rick Poynor, Sarah Temple, Tony Todd For research fund ing and research leave in th e preparati on of this book London College of Commun ication Royal College of Art University of th e A rt s, London Un iversit y of Wolverhampt on Everyone who has so generously suppli ed image copyright Finally. from Colin , Monika (f or her endless pati ence). my children (again).

Mum and Dad, and Emma. And from Monika,

Ben. Bet h and Lynne f or discuss ions about t he book, and everyth ing. Matt. Mu m and Dad, fo r everyth ing. In me mo ry of

A lice Swanso n who died on 8 July 2008. Ben Kin sella who died on 29 June 2008.

The Limited Language project In brief..

In detail...

The original idea, which ignit ed the Limited Language project, was to create a brand that used the Web as a platform for generating writing about visual communicat ion. The idea of the brand in this context was a deliberate conceit - to explore how word s, like images, are commodities. C utting, pasting and recycling are all properties of conte mporary image cu lt ure and are present in th e way we generate ideas. Thoughts and con versation s are cut and pasted from one context to the next, taking on a new signicance in each. Limited Language aims to capture this as a working process for new writ ing. Anyone can be part of Limited Language by respond ing to tri gger articles. We encourage people to recycle comments in their own research, as we collage them int o our own writing. An y comment event ually used is credited.

We began writing under the guise of Limited Language in London in 2005, as two lecturers/ practitioners in visual culture and theory. We were searching for a way to engage with visual culture, largely one in which image is read as text. We were aware that the words we wrote with, in many ways, shared the same outcomes as images. To us, word s and images have the same systems, same st ruct u res, same fetish and commodity value : you can buy and sell words, ideas and criticism as you might a Picasso, a bag of ch ips or pornography. Sometimes, of course, that's a Citroen Picasso. What we became increasingly conscious of was the way that, although some might talk of the possibilities of language as unlimited - of the procession of images, simulacra, as unending - to us, Language is Limited in two respects. First, the vocabulary of postmodernism; its flattening of critical positions into an atonal mantra of relat ivism - where high and low culture lose their magnetic North and become one and the same. The second is in the visual realm, where increasingly our worlds are shaped by sound bites, lists made up of top tens, anthologies, page layoutscommunication concertinaed into byte size representations via SMS messaging, the looped voice mail, a scrolling message board, or the chat room - where text and image are brought together in an online stream of emoticons and fcuk©ing abuse. From this starting point, we dec ided that our subject should be process. And, if we were

to write about the creative process, then we should at least explore how processes from within design culture (a culture of recycling and mash-ups etc .) inspire collaboration and cross-media!cross-di sciplinary practice and by extension new ways of generating and distributing wr iting about process. Limited Language is an attempt to weave these modes back into a framework - a nar rative to be used, re-used and again recycled. Not, we promise, just another rehash of the remix though - a cop out, to fill media space - but here we re-use and rec ycle as a deliberate technique because to revisit concepts in different contexts, at different t imes is to enrich, expand and hopefully capture the serendipity of creative process. On the website, designed by Oskar Karlin, we decided to invite practitioners and critics to post essays on subjects from their area of discipline or expertise, with relevance to issues of 'process'. The aim became to explore how ideas and processes transfer across disciplines. This idea informed the Web design, whereby we run three concurrent articles at once, allowing readers to read! comment across debates. The articles posted on the site are not intended to be 'finished' (although many are) but rather, provide ideas and questions which allow responses to integrate with the original text. These responses often take on a life of their own: existing articles may divide and multiply... paragraphs from one topic may be isolated to

generate new thinking elsewhere. Our remit always intended to go beyond a traditional design blog, where discussion is an end in itself. The Web here - immersive, responsive, collaborative - becomes a useful mode of facilitating research. In turn, this becomes synthesised and redistributed through print publishing: from journal articles, published lectures to this book. (But the book is a starting place, every article ends with an URL for the conversation to contmuel] Our writing on one topic migrates from the Web to print, via lecture halls, and back again. It is an ongoing 'collaborat ive' process. Just as walking down the st reet is as much about the mutterings and the conversation that you hear as it is about what you see, we use this feedback culture to construct our cr itique. Th is critique focuses in particular on the process and experience of design , visual cult ur e and the everyday. In Photoshop you can 't save to print unless you have 'flattenedthe layers. We don 't aim to flatten, but to produce a lamination of outputs, a composite for use and resale .

Book methodology Which design audience?

What is feedback culture?

We started out by looking at visual communication but any demarcation between practice d isciplines was soon corrupted and the site came to occupy the in-between space of process and practice: how we craft/create/ discuss/think/reinvent. We write about art, design, architecture, sonic and visual cultures and practitioners from all these disciplines have contributed writing to the site too - some of which we have included in this book.

Feedback culture is one of the cultural spinoffs of the Web 2 .0 inspired velvet revolution in cultural agency, where design increasingly facilitates, rather than simply providing bounded social practices in communication. Whilst many get themselves into (postmodern) knots discussing the true benefits of these cultural changes ; websites such as Twitter and Facebook are changing how the world is perceived and how we perceive ourselves within it . Increasingly the image has been sidestepped by 140 digit tweets and downloaded MP3S - screen based culture is fast being eclipsed by touch-screen tactility. Everyday, through screens, keyboards, wireless networks and Bluetooth accessories we are performing agents in a feedback culture. We have taken the responses from the Limited Language site as our starting place. Sometimes it has been a simple passing-ofthe-baton where we write on a subject and the responses have carried on in the same vein - maybe fleshing out more detail or giving a more mappable path - but equally tied to the original writing or response. We do not agree with everything written by others under the Limited Language banner but, rather, enjoy the serendipitous path it might inspire us to follow. Many of these journeys can be found in the writing in this book .

Structure of the book

The book is organised into chapters which do not follow disciplinary lines but coalesce around certain themes that have emerged as recurrent concerns over the years. The book layout is divided into two columns. The first, in black, is a starter article which has already appeared on the Limited Language website or elsewhere and which has tended to frame some sort of question or provocation. The second column, in colour, is our reflective response. This reframes the question in relation to some of the feedback received on the site (whilst taking into account its new context and changing events since originally posted). The starter articles comprise both our own writing, and writers and practitioners we asked to contribute to the Limited Language site. The book can only cover a small proportion of the writing published on the site over the years and we are equally indebted and inspired by those not appearing within these pages. We had no absolute criteria for selecting material for the book but have tried to choose the articles that captured certain themes and investigations regarding practice and process. In the end it can only be an arbitrary selection to try and give a feel of the ongoing Limited Language project. The responses to the starter articles are not only re-realised in our own writing but we attempt to explore the thinking process through the practical work, which has always inspired us (although the work is never physi-

cally represented on the Limited Language site: each article in the book ends with an URL for you to return to the Limited Language site . We decided upon a text only website to provide a focus on words (and thinking) as apposed to image/colour/text: the predominant blog format is image/text...image/text etc. On the site we have made use of hyperlinks to allow readers to go off elsewhere to feed the need for images and the physical realm! As design historians, this book seeks to revisit old work as much as new, and to explore how it materialises, and focus on its making. To this end we show sketches where possible, to try and capture work in progress. We're interested in what designers are doing and try to make sense of it in a wider context: its relationship between disciplines is as important as its cultural ramifications. Beyond the book... the Limited Language Web-platform will capture how our reflections here coalesce in a feedback culture: readers of the book can post onto the Limited Language website - providing a point of departure for new discussions in an on-going process. Each chapter's opening spread includes keywords that we have identified as critical moorings to the proceeding essays. In brackets, we have shown their Google hit rates when added to the word 'design'. This is of course ever changing, but it gives an idea of what is out there.

Table of contents 8

The limited language project

10

Book methodology

15 17 25 33 41 49 59

Cr it ical moments The problem with design / What voice can design have? Design in cris is / Too much history Pat ronising Prada / Crit ical effects Love/hate / Base and superst ructure Shock and awe: t he polit ics of product ion / The process of consumpt ion Mult iverso / Embodied inf ormat ion

67 69 77 87 93 99 105

Agency Modernism 2.0 / Designers of possibilit y Design polit ics / Design and th e good cop/bad co p scenario Ben Wilson / Noti ons of visibility Work et hics / How much of th is can we ta ke? Escape from the t yranny of th ings / Susta inable design Sta te Br itain / Rebuilding protest

113 115 125 133 143 153

Tactics Visual comm unicati on in 0.4 seconds / The buzzword and creat ivity Rethi nking t act ile graphics: a proposit ional metho dology / Rethi nking craft Boredom, b'dum, b'dum... / Boredom to f reedom Part of th e process / Community service Slow tim es... / The slow fas t

163 165 173 181 189 197

Topophilia Skyline and cityscapes / The bumps of fl at ness - th e terr ain of design Ana logous citi es I Captu ring t he imaginary Exposing t he line in fil m and video I The curve of imaginat ion Report f rom th e Hawk-Eye camera / Soft f orm Kodak moments and Nokia digit s... / Used condoms and f orgott en names

205 207 215 223 231 237

Sensibilities The sacred and the holy / Transient urban spaces The ext ra ear of th e other: on liste ning t o Stelarc / The paras it ical and t he para -crit ical Earl ids and brainlids: on thoug hts and sounds / Sound Polaroid White cube noise / Between t he gallery and t he st reet Images of images: phot ographs of pain in war / The slow look

247 249 255 261 269 273

Mediations After digital .. / Sense making? Digit al glass / Digit al behaviours Speech, wr it ing, print... / Serifs and conduits New readi ng spaces / Print vs. screen This page is no longer on th is server... / The infl uence of neighbours

282 Collaborators' biographies 284 Biographies 286 Index

Limited Language Ezri Tarazi Nicky Ryan Johnny Hardstaff Limited Language Limited Language

Lim ited Language John Russell Esther Leslie Mario Moura Aaris Sherin Lim ited Language

Limited Language Julia Moszkowicz David Crowley Limited Language Limited Language

Limited Language David Phillips Adam Kossoff Tom McCar thy Limited Language

Lim ited Language Joanna Zylinska Angus Carlyle Mon ica Biagioli Lim ited Language

Limi ted Language Jon Wozencroft M ichael Clarke Max Bruinsma Lim ited Language

Critical moments The problem with design / What volce can design have? Design in crisis / Too much history Patronising Prada / Critical effects Love/hate / Bose and superstructure Shock and awe: the polltics of production / The process of consumption rtutttverso / Embodied tnformatlon Till s chi] P!~ r

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Limit ed Language I Agency I Modern ism 2,0

John Russell

Design politics It could be argued that the progressive depoliticisation of politics has been mirrored in recent times by a superficial pseudo repoliticisation of art and design - in other words, the transformation of political action into merely symbolic action or pseudo-activity. The art critic J.1. Charlesworth describes this tendency when he criticises this new politicised art as 'an excess of representation of the political' which he claims is 'an effect of the disarticulation of political agency within western democracies after the end of the Cold War'.l In this respect, Jeremy Deller's Battle of Orgreave (2001), where a key moment in the 1984 British Miners' Strike was re-enacted by many of the original miners , could be seen as the equivalent of Adbusters magazine's anti-corporate gestures. Designers are very good at saying what they could or should do . For example, from the graphic design realm, The First Things First Manifesto (2000), which in itself was an up-date of a 1964 manifesto calling for des igner consciousness, said this: 'We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mind shift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and pro duction of a new kind of meaning . The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of de sign.? These types of call-to-arms seem to be based upon the generally held belief that, because design is in the business of communication, it is in a privileged position to manipulate this communication to political effect. But, does this ever happen? For instance, on a previous blog on this site Paul Bowman calls for •... all visual communicators to address the world', and goes on to urge: 'SREBRENICA: EUROPE, 1995, DECLARED UN SAFE HAVEN, 7-8000 MEN AND BOYSMASSACRED. What

Star er article

Design and the good cop/bad cop scenario The origina l post by John Russell and its ensuing responses capture a critical problem in all visual culture and, specifically, graph: communication: the possibility of politica l reflection /action . The post and responses can be seen to create a good cop/bad cop narrative through which it tries to interrogate the possib ilities of political affect on visual culture as a whole, and graphic design in particular. The cri tical deba tes regarding the political effec tiveness of art are complex and multifariou: but their very existence exposes the soft underbelly of des ign to attacks on its political forti tude. For,art has long entangled itself with represe ntation. In t he 1 920S George Lukacs, in his essay Cri tica l Realis m and S ocialist Realism , proffe red art a political role: vis-a-vis to provide a critical reflection of society. Or late r, t he eventual rupture from realism with Marcel Duchamp and the Read ymade: the urinal. or a mustachiocd Mo na Lisa, all acting as cognitive attacks on a bourgeois assimilation of aesthetics. In Design, the trajectory of aesthetic and intellect ual inquiry is less clear. The questions asked in the original post are made with a Nietzschian de light (a. bad cop) where the slippage in political realit ies is exposed by providing a modern day conte xt for the observation of Nietzsche t hat it is a 'u tilitarian fact that only when we see things coarsely and made equal do t hey become alcula hle and usab le to us'. I This coarseness and, in modern parlance, dumbing doum of political life is illustra ted by John Russell's reference to t he American animated TV show The Si mpsons which he comments, provides a 'correct ive moral function '. To provide an interpretation of this phenomenon : at its narrative centre The 77

Head - Polit ica l ts Eman (Hea duet o IT schum i (2008) . Kopf an Kopf - P0 litikerport ste rraby . hibit ion po . . Por tra it s) ex Itung, ZUric h. M useum f ur Gest a

SimpSOIIS provides a conllauon of moral and

liberal thinking in contemporary .oc u-ty. In the show the had \ haracter, M r. Burn, (owner of the local nuclear power plant), can we do people?') This see ms to be ask ing for some-

is confounded bv the good blue-collar

thing like politics, but designers/artists seem singularly

nai] of Homer imp on (employee of said

unqualified to communicate political ideas. (Becau se

nuclear fa ility]. The sto ryline often

they haven 't got any?)

a simple moral talc of good and bad, The

What is political de sign ? D oe s it exi st ? What does it do? And what d oes it look like ? Or, is it all pseudo-

use of iron) (a nuclear spill due to H orner's

incompetence, exposes the danger of lai ': ezfaire economic, but will always end happily

ac t ivity? John Miller makes this last point abo ut pseudoactivity in a

;111011'

2002

roundtable d iscussion in the magazine

Octob er, with reference to art criticism/ critical theory: 'Joh n Miller: And of course art writers don't mo stly write for cash (for there is none), it 's more for the position in academia that's secured by publishing. So the payoff isn 't the writer's fee, it 's mostly the prestige that comes from fir st establishing an apparently ne gative relationship to the market per se. As it accumulates, that symbolic capital can always be converted to real

capital. "

for in ranee], compounds the liberal viewer not ion of right and wrong: without any recourse to critical, cog nitive expe ndi ture. The narrative t r u t u re o f The S impsons provides a fal. c con ciousncss: a helief that through the assi milation of radicalism (wa tching the Simpsons as ap posed to a Walt D isncy-csq ue animation , for instance] we achieve an equivalence of being radical. We an equally .ee the same action with Adbustcrs, the Canadian 's u bve rt ising' magazine, where t he words and image s of

See fu rt her images here

hig brand advert: are reworked to overturn

www.lim itedlan guage .org/ imag es

their meaning [utilising the same language of promotion and con umpt ion as the advertising

Refere nces J.J. Charle sworth. 'Twin Towers: The Specta cul ar Disappearance Of Art And Polit ics.' Thir d Text , Vol. 16, Issue 4 (2002), 357·66. 2 The First Things First Manifesto was written by Ken Gar land in 1964and republished in 2()()() in conjunct ion wi t h Adbusters and a few ot her key internat ional design maga zines. With t he except ion of a few m inor wor d and prod uct changes. it remained t he same in text and spirit. 3 Paul Bowman in a reply (26/05/2005) t o his ow n post Il lustrators. rather like women in the Bible. '" Limi ted Language. May 2005. http ://b it.ly/ paul_bow rnan 4 John Mill er, 'Round Table: The Present Cond it ions of A rt Cri t ici sm ', in October, No. 100 (Spri ng 2002).205.

it denounces]. In both c: .amplcs, we ee a .hift from a material to a ' ) mbolic politic. That i. , we watch and consume our politic ', ra ther than haw a material engagement with them : strikes, bomb, and collective revolution . By e.' te nsion, th L lead s to an ava ntga rdc, a ulti mate bad cop, whose response to t he cog n itive, et hical and aesthetic is q ui te u neq uivoca l. Truth is a lie: morali ty tinks; beau ty is sh n .? If the had cop advocates an impossibi lity of po litics or any cognitive, aesthetic, visual language, the good cop uses a soothing rhetori of colle tivc consc iousness. In Britain, this is seen to be played out t hrough i .ucs of class a nd union isation against the idyll bac kdrop of village green and indu trial lands apt's. For

III

ranee, Orgreal'e in northern

England; the site in 19 4, of one of the most trident cia he between mkine miners and S ar er artlC

79

the British Police dur ing t he re ign of Margaret That her. He re, t he Trade Unions acted as t he upcrcgo of capitalism - filteri ng out the more carnal, base cle men ts of t he capi ta list psyche. T his eve nt is recast in the work of artis t Jeremy Deller's The Boule of Orgre(/lle for instance, whe re th e J 984 M iner s' Strike was res taged by ma ny of those origin ally invoked. T his art wor k assim ilates a col lcc uvc con sciousness; where me n fight on the [ro nt line andher in doors' pa t ient ly paint s placard s and fights t he bailiff at t he front door... T he /I o/l-art form of Graphic De ign, with its long histo ry of po litical co mmu nication, is the hos tage bet ween th e two dia logues of nvant-ga rd i .m and commercial opport unism: it wants to be pa rt of th e di sco u rse as bot h insider and ou t icier; producer and con. urner; T hi is pa rt of the t reache ro us grou nd

t hat J.1. Charlesworth ' and others, in t hei r replie to the post, have mined. But ca n po litica l des ign e xist? For ma ny it is unequivoca l: like Ko u rosh his hehga run, who comments: 'My firs t grap hic designs with po litical subjec ts date bac k to 1975 . I de signed a poster for peace in Lebanon t hat was then involved with the civ il war. As an Iranian artist I inte nded to be present in important world issues so in that poster I had a symbolic look at peace t hat was emerging in Lebanon bac k then . I regarded that peace w ith skep t icism and the fu ture proved t hat I was right in my perception. T he

SAVAK

(Iranian

intelligence service) interrogated me' that year on my intention and p urposes." I

ow com pa re th is wit h Shepard Fairey's

'iconic' Bara k Obarna Hope poster, for instance. Part of t he reason why gra phic communicators feel as if they have a legitimate pos ition in contempora ry politics is due to ail interpretat ion of the history of t he cli cip line . Dacia, Constructivism and De Stijl have a t rad it ion in the (political) pos ter. Indeed contemporary des igne r, Hami sh MUir, a founder of Svo, descr ibes the poster as t he graph ic desig ner's ver ion of an artist 's ca nvas. (Although, it is 80

Lim ited Language I Agen cy I Design polit ics

An Obama post er by the art ist Shepard Fairey (2009). He is most well known for his Obey Giani stree t post er series. The Obey campa ign has been described by Fairey as an 'exper iment in Phenomenology' which att empt s to 'reawaken a sense of wonder about one's environment' . http://obeygiant. com/about Design for Obeme. This is a website which collates Obama poster s and rat es th em. The f ounders write; 'Many arti st s incl uding Shepard Fairey have alread y proven that poster art is not a dead medi um in the Un ited Sta tes and have also shown how much of an impact a single poste r can have... At such a t urbu lent (yet excit ing) time in our natio n's

hist or y, collaborat ion has never been more import ant.' http://designf orobama.org/

also worth noting that Svo de politicised their work by using the term 'visua l engineering' when describing their late r work at the end of the 1 980s.) But today, the connection to t hese early zo t h century ar t/desig n movements i appropriated as a visual su rface a lone. It becomes

disarticulated from t he mater ial reality of it s context - of cons truc tion or creation. i\ prime example of t his appropriation is the Constructivist aesthetic which has long influ enced t he work of graphic designers Nevi lle Brody and Jon ath an Ba rnbrook .

t\ visual language thus appropriated, provides a politi s of symbolism rather than an embodied - from cra dle to grave - political sphere of 1920. Russia. Constr uc tiv ism was a movement which aimed at 't he creat ive processing of prac tical materials'.' Here, the 'polit ical' is evidenced within all disci pline, of the t ime: graphic des ign, art and arc hitectu re; not in and of t hemselves bu t as agents in the e xternal material world of housing and lite racy for exam pie - constructing a new era! '[Hly means of intellect ual-mate rial prod uction, the constructivist joins t he proletarian order for the truggle with the past , for t he conquest of the future ," Of course, any visual style is historically contingent and to contemporary eyes at least, can be litt le more t han symbolic at be t, and ironic at worse. Hut , t he processes of pol itics are still available to us - although they might be incr easingly found in a convergence of med ia. Where a 'converge nce is characterized by the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media indu . tr ies, a nd t he migratory behavior of media audiences'." Design as a poli t ical act is difficult to define, but as part of t he process of enlighte nment - lead ing to poli t ical awareness - it ca n be an active partic ipant. Graphic design is in t he process of redefining itse lf in digital cultu re - and the possibilities of convergence - and it will need more than man ifc .tos to recstubli hits centre-of-grav ity. But it i worth remembering, th e Graph ical User Inte rface 82

Lim ited Language / Age ncy I Desig n poli t ics

JOH N RUSSEll \ Vas a popular and charmingjokcsrcr.

Not Just a Statistic cam paign (2004), N ew Yor k Cit y,

Poster by Bijan Sayfou ri. Mahri z Publi shers (2009). Saadi (Persian: /'2fXi. on creche acint.es. raCI~ITI fal s n. cenusis etc Arberor Hadn 001 2'200:)

lflregulation on scient ific and medical d -vcloprnent , her alternative et hic work io« ard - a 'non-normat ive ethical re ponsibilit) . Put .imply, thi refu -es to take a moral evolution but which become pos sible through engineering, are often interpreted as simply meaning that the body is both inadequate and unnecessar y, that it is only an obstacle in our technological age. The French philosopher Paul Virilio even went so far as t o accu se Stelarc of enacting a new version of 'clinical voyeurism '." A dangerous st rat egy aimed at imp roving the human but, ultimately signalling, for Virilio, both the end of art and th e end of hum anity. So what doe s it mean to really hear Stelarc and respond to him? How can, or should , we engage with his Stomach Sculpture (1993), Partial H ead (2006), or Extra Ear? On what grounds can Stela rc's projects themselves be described as responsible (or not)? What values does his reworking of the architecture of the body challenge, and does this challenge imply any broader epistemic tr ansformat ion? Stelarc repeatedly tells us that he has no ambitio ns to be a philosopher or a political the orist. He refuses to be pre scriptive in his work and so will not instruct us as to how we should tr eat our bodies, or how we should coexist with technology. However, I believe listening to Stelarc will allow us to envisage a more effe ctive politics and et hics. Th is will be a te chnopolitics of di stributed agency and su spended command, informed by an ethics of infinite - and at t imes crazy, shocking and ex cessive - hospitality towards the alterity of te chnolog y (t hat is always already part of us). Th is is not t o say th at 'we are mach ines' or th at 'we are all Stelarcs now', as A rt hur and Marilou ise Kroker put it. 3 As hum ans and mach ines are collapsed (as the y tend to be in some current accounts of 't he network society ) into a fluid epist emology in which difference is overcome for th e sake of hori zontal affective politics, it is not clear any more who enco unt er s, responds to, and is responsible for whom in an ethical encounter. Or; what is more import ant , why it should matter at all. Thi s is why I want to suggest that we need t o retain, even if while placin g it in sus pension, t his idea of th e hum an (and that of the body). The narr at ive of seamless coevolut ion between d ifferent

po ition (like the tabloid headlines) and al. 0 to engage in singular et hical posiuon \\ 11Ich re pond to partuular real-world rcnario (. hould the) remove hereditary genes from the

baby-to-be"]. It dol' . not tell us what to think , hut ask: us to question how we think - and \\h) . It" In this coruc t that she invite u to c .plore the 'prorni: In' ethic al ambivalence... of the ' \\ an ' (and 'u 'I) due kling ') of makeover l ulturc. '10 look at telarc Ear 011 , l n ll, .l introduced In the original urtu le, i to fate a more recognisable grote que than the grotesqueries of everyday life. The urtk lc uses the device of the ear, not a a phy: iological or technolom tal entity, hut a a conduit for thinking about Ii tcning, \\ ith Zylin ka a king: \\ hat would it mean to reall) hear him, and re .pon I to him" Thi depend on who li: telling ... it ' worth noting th at till. que tion i po cd \\ uhin a parucular philo . ophu al Framework. lu: t a. Stelarc's work provide : a paruc ular wa) of looking at the body . Sielarc 's ear IS Internet connected : to Ii uen to him is to turn around ideas of the bod y a a clo ed, impenetrable , kin-tight container, " "or ielarc : Alte ring the archuec ture of the bod) rc uh in adju ung and e. tending It awarene of the world', Ill' eem : to bc u king u. li ten to tel hnolo ' y a counter -part . This resonate \\ ith Z) lin ka s biocihic: , \\ h« h ask u to fate difference [alterity], sa) of icchnology, as we fate others: hospitably, as equals. Earlier, Judith Butler had Introduced the bod y as a moral dilemma : There i always a rt k of anthropocentri rn 1 ...1if one as. urncs that the distin ·tI) human life I valuable... or I the only way to think of the probl em of value . But perhap to ounter that tendency to

it i nece .sary to a k both the que tion of life and the que tion of the human, and not to let them fully collapse together.' I Zylinska 's work follows Butler ' tr ajectory for the bod ) , 51 rter arncie k

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but introduce: n into a tel hnologised and phcre, With thi .vorne: the need

economic to

rethink cthu al pos iuon . It brinas in the>

econorrur: of the hioindu: try. Whd t Z) linska i crit ical of the di c iplming nature of makeover culture, a already noted, he I: also committed to exploring it. 'promising ethical ambivalence', This seems to be part of the bigger que .uon: how can we embrace future forms if w are till using preconceived idea ? The way that we name the (future) body world i. important he au . e it determine how we u. e It. The body hear: the environment 10

a different' 'ay than th eye . ces it, and

:0

it \\"III make .1 different .cnsc of it. Tran .latthis to design and names/brands such a

109

Thmkl'ad' and 'Laptop' are terms designed to rnak people comfortable with the computer a an extension of the hod) hut they also frame the way we will think about it. There is a difference though, in naming, between art and de ign: wherea naming in design tend to minimi se cognitive disruption for a new user, naming in art and philosophy enjoy . it. Herein lie. a lassical : plit bet ween art and design . Art may invoke old ideas, but to ask new que tions. Art asks questions to tc st new boundarie '. Design concrcuscs. It makes thing. under, tandable. It makes things utilitarian . It often makes them .puriou '. The wa) that d 'ign concreti

- make .

literal - coul i he een at the 'tart , where de ign ha already brought telarc' idea into the world un remarked upon . However, whilst Ear

011

Arlll is absurd, a B1uetooth connection

fitted around the ear i. not. De ign can also be a kind of pedagogy. In one e . ample, bioengineer have worked with de igner. to bring ti ue-cngmecrin a.

biological and cultural entities that depicts the whole world as 'connect ed', it seems to me, threatens to overlook too many points of temporary stabilisation that have a st rategic political significance . It is via these 'points of temporary stabilisation' that partial decisions are being made, connections between bodies are being established, aesthetic and political transformation is being achieved and power is taking effect over different parts of 't he network' in a differential manner. And yet at the same t ime, 't he human' should not be seen as an essential value or a fixed identity but rather as a st rategi c quasi-transcendental point of entry into debates on agency, human-technology, environment, politics and ethics, Ethical thinking in terms of 'originary technicity' (which brings forth the very concept of the human) allows us to affirm the significance of the question of responsibility, without needing to rely on the prior value

syst em that legislates it or re sort to unreconstructed moral convictions. This re sponsible re sponse to the difference of technology (which is not all that different) is one non-didactic lesson we can learn from Stelarc. This is an edite d excer pt fr om The Extra Ear of the Othe r: On Being- in D ifference, an essay in a ca t alogue ac co mpanying th e exhibition of Stelarc's work (1,30 June 2007) at t he Exper imental A rt Foundat ion in

A delaide, Aust ralia.

See f urt her images here www.limi ted languag e.org{images

Ref erences Jacq ues Derri da, The Ear of the Other: Otobiography. Transference. Translati on (New York: Schocken Books. 1985), 32-3. See also Nicholas Royle, The Unca nny (Manc hest er: Manchester Un iversity Press, 2003), 64.

2 3

Paul Vir ilio, Art and Fear (London and New York : Cont inuum, 2003),

43.93 . Arthur and Maril ouise Krak er, 'We are Al l Stel arc s Now ' in Mar quard Sm ith (ec .), Stelarc: The M onograph (Cambr idge, MA : London: MIT, 2005), 63,86.

a debate to the public realm. Biojewellery: became th conduit; asking ix oupl s in to donate bone marrow, which could then be

218

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I Sens ibilit ies I The extra ear of the othe r: on list ening to Stelarc

'N ipple' f rom Body M odifi cati on for Love by M ich iko N itt a (2005),

gro« n together around a ring-cast, sized for the couple. lien', an invasive medical proceJure is made 'sensible' through ;1 rl'l ognisable socral custom. The roll' of prototypes/projects

like these is 'to help imagine what the social dimcn ions might be, even though the eventu;,\

to create new transgenic creatures, half-

[hurnanjspcrm/half-lcttcr. .. Rut, what for: Is this a potent reminder of the power invested in both 'dentists and designers: Finally, this brings us bad to why ethics are irnportan . Design, art or science - literal, ut ilitarian or spurious - at worst, any of these projects can have a parasitical role in relation to biotechnology, That is, they can unquestioningly fetishise it. The design historian David Crowley makes a useful distinction here where, at best, the parasit i al could be transformed into the para-cr itical. I; Ry this he means they deliberately feed off biodevelopments, in order to call them into question. If we look back to the kind of beauty body modification discussed at the start, we can -ee that this is called up for debate in the surgical 'art' work performed on the body of artist Orlan I. who ha worked to, 'reveal the damaging impact of the perva ive images of 220

Limited Language I Sensibi lities I The ext ra ear of the oth er; on listen ing to St elarc

Typosperma by Oded Ezer (2007).

......--..-- , Site by Itama r Lerner ; 3D rendered by Am ir l.ip sicas. Photographed by Ruth ie Ezer. Scientific consulta t ion by Hagit Guet a. A ssisted by Ifat Yairi . http;//www.odedezer.com/t yposperma.html

female beauty in \Vestern culture',' Surgery, a art, might he open to jlifIercncc', but when it's invariably offered a~ the 'late, t look', sold at reduced prices on the high -street and squeezed into the lunch break, it gal' one step further to creating a world without difference, So, \\ hat's wrong with a corset: I lathing of course, but it 's a useful device to see how technology be ames csscnt ialiscd: where a

19th century object designed to 'discipline' a woman's waist becomes a surgical procedure today. Carry or he converse ron here Ill ' [yiltmy.ctIchapler5_2

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The extra ea r of t he other: on listening to Stela rc

Angu s Carlyle

Eartids and brainlids: on thoughts and sounds "Can one think without speaking?" - And what is thinking? Well , don 't you ever think? C an't you obser ve you rself and see what is going on? It should b e simple. You don't have t o wa it for it as for an astronomical event and then perh aps make you r obser vations in a hurry.' (Ludwig Wittgen stein, Philosophical Investigations, First published 1953). \ 'Well these are the simple facts of the case - There were at least two pa rasites one sexual the other cerebral working the way that parasites will - And why has no one asked "What is the Word?" - Why do you talk to yourself all the t ime?' (William S. Burroughs, Th e Ticket That Exploded, First published 1962).2 A pale light eases its way through the white curtains, a brittle mixture of the nearby st re et lamp and the slowly bri ghtening sky. I run my palm ac ross the fr iction of four d ays of st ubble and the image of a mat ch being st ruck, su rfaces th en di sappears like an ornamenta l fish. I hook my arm under the bed to retrieve the red bike lamp that is always there. Resting it , unl it , on my chest I grope for the travel alarm clock I bought in Berlin . Its luminou s dial points to four o'cloc k. Replacing th e clock on the wooden floorbo ard s, I switch on t he lamp . The alarm clock now seems to have taken on a more st rident tone, as if it , too, has been woken from a more dormant state. In the red glow of the bike lamp, the ticking mechanism see ms irre gular, shift ing from fast er to slower, as I move my head on the pillow. Intri gued, I attempt to manipulat e th is effect only to discover that with intensified concentrat ion, the clock lapses into a stable tempo and then falls ba ck into a more subdued participation in the bedroom's atmosphere. In its place come other sounds. My wife's breathing st ruggles through the cold that she's not been able to shake; her inhalat ion the te xture of pipe s and drains, her exh alation like air from a balloon neck. A softe r

Sound Polaroid In hi ' beautifully emotive t:'~ .IY, Angu Carlyle apturc a. ound PolaroilP of a waking family. Rut it i a orne landscape bristling with the \ i. ua l, where 'a match being struck surface:

then d. appear like an ornamental fish'; or 'Iuminou. clocks' and 't he red glow of the hike lamp' illuminate, metaphorical ly and literally, the scene. Carlyle hnngs into foc us the clash of two enso ry cult ures: sonic and visua l. l.ong b for' t he 'visual turn' of Structu ralist th lnk ing.! t here has bee n a sensory order. Th is inclu des t he bina ry of inside/ ou tsi de , bet ween t he thoug ht and the spectacle. I lere , inside means the psycho logical wit h the outside being the phenomena l world , Film has explored t hi relation hip [e pedally in the genre. of horro r and su pen e) where t he three-dimen ionali ty of sound is used to good effect, for instance approac hing foot reps from behind a clo. ed door or wind rubbing again st a Windowpane. The opening paragraph of Carlyle'

I'

sa) read like a Foley

ani t's storyboard, connecting the visual experience to it. onic Other. The former i. exposed in the light whilst the latter remain ' perceived - ou t of . hot' David Toop' rcspons to the original artide makes t he outer/i nner con ne t ion explici t when he ornrne rus on listening to the, 'elk-king of our cat ' lal\ on he wooden floor" and how th is ignites his later evocation of Edgar Allan Poe, who he read a a chi ld, I lis comment cncap ulate how the aural outer world ignite. our psy hologica l inner space, Wh en did creaking floorboard. shift (a t hey did for Toop) from simple inde xical link to pre encc and to a more, 'fearful I. tening':' " Toop' comment pecifically mention . The Fall of the l louse of Usher, t he Edgar Allan Poe tale, which open, 'Du rmg the whole of

51 r er ar ocle

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a dull, dark, and . oundlcss da) ..." The short tory ' protagom-t i. Ro lenck Usher, who lives \\ ulun the confine of a delaying goth« lOUlItr) hou e, which bear his family name.'] he

hou l' i de l nbcd a being in a groie que tate of del a), whu h I mirrored in the physical

and p . cholozrcal demeanor of Usher him df. Among t other ailment. ,he uffer [n m of acou neophobia where It

I. ,

111 .

form

'Onlv...peculiar

ound ,and the . e from tringcd whu h did not

.1

111

trumcnts,

pire him with horror'.'

In man) way . Usher's 'morb id acuteness of the Sen

"c a n be :een as an indu trnent

of mo lernuy. It is a story of the rational and irrauonal: II here the latter, the ancien regime, IS

iran formed by Enlightenment thinking. The sociologist Fran '(on kiss in a lOI1-

temporary context captures this relationship bet ween . ound and modern urban IiI mg:

'C it ie: , after all, insist on the sen cs at the level of ound . It is easier and more effel1I1e to shut your eyes than it is to (over your ear . Ear. cannot discriminate in the way eyes l an - a with smell, hearing put us in a ub rru sl e,

n. uou relation II ith the

City'.

Wherca for the Poe character the . Ol11l clutter of encroaching modern life

I.

a . cnten e of morbid horror, today we have developed trategi s to perform in the . onic realm. Tonki

call , one . uc h trateg)

deafne

I.

. This

octal

where p oplc develop irate-

gil" to filter out ound and create personal aural .pace: - it '

:I

psychological Spall' II here

' no one is Ii tcning' creating an individual rather than a communal space. Think of someone ' pe a k ing loudly into their mobile phone in an otherw ise silent train carriage or coffee . hop - oblivious to tho. e around them! Thi: indiv iduation

IS

further fine-tuned

with the technology of the lI'od and Blucioorh head ets. We cocx i: t in a . trauficd Ol11l territor), where th • mncr and outer, earlier de cribcd.

I.

echo emerges from my young daughter's sleeping body, less troubled and more steadily rhythm ic. From my son, sprawled nearest to me on top of the du vet , arm flung across his sister, hardly a sound escapes. No more th an the ru stles that accompany his shift s and turns and the occasional glutinous thumb-sucking th at no promise of toys or adventures is incentive enough for him to relinqu ish. Out in th e st reet beyond the curtains, seagulls mark th eir temp orary territory. The flying gulls offer th eir charact er ist ic cry, rising and recedin g as th ey move between th e te rraced hou ses. Once sett led on a rooftop, another call. Th is time an insistent 'ugg, ugg, uggl' signals th eir presence. Rubbing the beginnings of my beard again for comfort, without, thi s tim e, eliciting the image of a match, ] switch the bike lamp off and place it on top of th e small pile of autobiographies I keep on my side of th e bed; guilty primers for a lived life. A gentle rain has begun to fall, ru stli ng t hrough the early Summer leaves of th e tree outside ou r window and tapping on the car roofs below. Another, smaller, but un ident ifiable bird can be heard , a br ighter refrain. Per haps a starling? A blackbird? The bird song almost, but not quite, repeate d, melod ic variation wit hheld and th en une xpe ctedly given. The window frames rattle percu ssively in response to the growing bre eze. Behind th e sleeping family and th e gulls and t he birds and the gentle rain, t raffic noise is now d iscernible. Not yet in th e focused form of a vehicle in our st reet, but st ill there as an ambient backdrop of ty res on wet tarmac and ill-defined engine murmur. I am consciou s now of my own breath, a shar p release through my nostrils. Conscious too , suddenly, of the sounds of my body's movement in th e bed, of legs dr awn up th en extended against th e sheets , of my hair brushing against th e pillow and my nails scratc hing the skin of my upp er arms, of the cart ilage in my finger joints as I snap them through a nervou s routine. Listen ing below thos e surface sounds, a persist ent hum

p vchologu al and can prov ide a

t n Ion between mdrvrdual and community . In Topophilia, Yi-Fu Tuan' magi tcnal inve ti ration of th 224

material world, he oh ervcs

how in mall cale socicue ,a with fore t

Limited La nguage

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Earlids and brain lids : on thoughts and sounds

You Are Ear. A rt Directi on by Angus Carly le (2009). Phot ographs by Matt hew Hawkins.

.,..

Mot orsounds, BM W M Mode lle, Haus der Baur eihe.

BM W Mu seum, spati al cho reog raphy by A RT+COM (reopened June 2008).

/

/

dwellers, sound become: important in, 'a pcrvasivc environm nt undistingui .hcd hy landmarks'

and people will 'att ribute pet ial importance to the unfocu ed sound" - of singing, chanting emerges at the threshold of audib ility. It seems t o come

or rnu .ical instrument for in tance. '[Slound ...

from somewhere inside . Maybe it is nothing more than the fridge down stairs or mayb e it's an acous t ic illu sion born of exc essive attentiveness combined with that spe cial fatigue that is th e privilege of those who should be asleep. Whatever its source, I t ry t o gra sp it and discern

serve ' to draw the attention'; this provides a mapping of the forest . Thi: form of c holoca-

mor e of it s shape and colou r. Before I can capt ure th e elus ive drone, I become aware of another noise - this t ime one that is un amb iguous ly int ern al - the noise of my thought s. Thi s is not ju st the sound of nouns and verbs shadowing in di stinct, then indi stinct, ways what might have been spoken aloud; that is what happens when we are thinkin g as W ittgenstein might have said. My thoughts now, with the bike lamp back on and my wife 's snor ing much gentler. My thoughts, as I write

to another, a if being drawn into the canopy

th en pau se, writ e then pause. My thoughts also consist of fu zzy renditions of assoc iate d ideas; forms of what has once been heard , but as might emerge from a turnt able whose sty lus has acc umu lat ed a little coat of fluff. The start of the match sc rape ; th e wet ripple above th e fish and a ch ild's voice to the left ; th e thump of a snowball against my t ax i in Berlin; the ru sh of water beneath a manhole cover and reverberation through a guttering pipe . My brain is too active to let me lie any longer. I swi tch off th e bike lamp and return it to the floo r. I swing my legs out from under th e du vet and ri se, unstead ily, t o my feet. One hand holds the pencil and paper, the ot her probes the be ginn ing of a spot at the corner of my mouth. I cree p out of the bedroom, like the worst actor portraying the worst burglar, As Mar shall Mcl.uhan' once obser ved, th ere are no earlid s. For th e vast majority of human beings, there is no escaping the external sound world, even when asleep. Yet although complete escape is not an option, retreat remains a po ssibility, a pos sibility that seems ever ywhere to be read ily gras ped . The enduring de rogati on of sou nd in stubbornly visua l cult ures can be t raced ac ross a number of indices, to o many to be capt ured in this

tion i. reminiscent of the use of musi in the large and femurclc s department stores where the escalator moves you from one sonic sphere of a , trauhcd world of modern consumption. 1ming from the ja/./ of the coffee shop to the post-punk of a Die ellD franchise, sound can hx you in the non-spaces of modern con umeri m. A 'temporary territory' in the words of the original article. Inevitably, it i often consumption (as the simple pul e of the everyday) that acts as a conduit between design and sound culturcs. The . en e: [inc ludmg sound) are carriers of socral values and not simply rncchani 'tic receptor of information . Thi documented

111 \

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well

isual cultures, in relation to

cultural SPl' ihdt} of colour for lI1 ranee, hut the contin cncy of sound is less evolved in sensual discour e . The psychologist -lark F. Zander, among other, has inve: ugated how musical tom position can influence our con .urnpt ion patterns and, pccific ally, how musi al tempo and rhy thrn tan alter our perception of urne: tudie looking at adverti erncnt and

audience perception of their length found temporal awareness wa: influenced by the accompanying music al style when vicv, ing. In a broader context, The roll- musk play. must he considered carefully bccau 'e it attract - attention, transport: implicit and c .plicit me ' 'age , generate emotion ' and help one retain information . To Imbricate ound (with music heing its dominant language) into the design-world Is important in situating de ign into a broader immersive environment. ound can he used as a vchi lc for sense of self, place and imagination.

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'..music

In

the large and f eat ureless depart ment sto res where the escalat or

moves you fr om one sonic sphere to anothe r, as if being dra wn into th e canopy of a stra ti fie d worl d of modern consumption.' The Self ridges depart ment store, Birmin gham UK : A rch itect s: Futur e Systems (comple t ion 2003). 'The inte rior is planned around a dramat ic roof lit atri um cri ss-cr ossed by a whit e eat's c radle of sculpted esca lato rs and a smaller but equa lly powerfu l at rium' . htt p://bi t.ly/dept_sto re

short article. As one brief measure of sound's marginalisation, it is worth conducting a concentrated listening experiment like the one described above, if only to compare your discoveries to the soundscapes conventionally represented in film and to hear what was once rich , dynamic and engaging, rendered banal. Another dimension that emerges from such experiments is the extent to which a significant proportion of the soundworld we inhab it cannot be located externally. Sound-proofed window s and walls, ear-plugs and active noise reduction systems can muffle the sounds from 'outside'. Cranked-up headphones or stereo speakers may replace certain exterior sounds with others that have the values of having been chosen and being predictable. None of these systems, however, can drown out the sounds from within. The sounds of metaphor and association played through that dirty turntable I mentioned; the match scrape, the fish plop, the Berlin snowball, the gurgling pipe s. That inner voice articulated by Wittgenstein and Burroughs at the st art is also, I believe, a consistent cont ributor to our personal soundtrack. And finally, in this clamour, there are those mysterious hums and whines of obscure origin that emerge, paradoxically, both in moments of relaxation and of enervation . Just as there are no earlids, nor are there brainlids . Nada Brahma: all the world is sound."

for this ynthe: is and design groups like RT+ M, an as ociat ion of designer ', scicnust ,artists and technicians have a twenty year history in thi: area . The H\I\\ Ius .um in Muni h is an example of an ecology of digital means and .ensual needs where:' patial choreographies of projections, light and sound create a dynamic backdrop for the seven "exhihit ion houses ". I The currency of zeros and ones, which is the in piration for collective like ART+COM, mean all creativ practice from typography to film, itlu. tration to soni arts i. part of a n w digital e onorny, Just as de .ktop puhli . hing made people aware of typography (to a lc .ser or gr rater extent) or, likcwis ,editing soft ware makes photo-manipulation second nature for the most amateur photographer; incrca ' ing ace. s to ound .ofrwarc, from Simple arnpling to more sophisticated notation programme, inevitably leads to .ound gaming greater and greater prevalence in our creative lives, ound has become one more digital tool for the creative impulse .

See f urt her images here www .limitedlanguage.org/ images

Referenc es Ludwig Witt genstein, Philosophical Inves ti gatio ns (Oxfo rd : Bla ckwell, 2(0 1), 327(First published, 1953). 2 William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded (London: Flamingo, 2001), 144 (First published 1962). 3

4

rt

T

Marshall McL uhan and Quent in Fiore, The M edium is th e Massage: An In vento ry 01 Effec ts (New York: Hardwired, 1996), 142 (First published, 1967). Joachim-Ernst Berendt, The World Is Sound: N ada Brahm a: M usic and the Landscape of Cons ciousness (RochesterV T: Inner Tradit ions, 1987).

51 Iter arncie k

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Re rences 1 Interview with Scanner In CMJ New MusIc Monthly 2

Octo r 1999. S ructurahsrn developed the Idea that human culture ISto be understood as a system of Signs and was heavily mfluencec by the work in linguistIcs led by

3

Ferdinand de Saussure. The Foley ar 1St creates many of the natural. everyday sound effects in a film.

4

Edgar Allan Poe. The Fall of the House of Usher (New York: American Book Company, 1907),

5

Ibid

6

Fran Tonkrss In MIchael Bull and Les Back. The Audl/ory Culture Reader. Sensory Formations series

(Oxford: Berg. 20(3). 510. Y,·Fu Tuan. 1990).

8

toooonin» (Columbia Unoversl y Press.

ark F. Zander. 'Musical Jnfluences on Advertising : How MusIc Modifies First Irnpress.ons of Product Endorsers and Brands' In Psychology of MUSIc. Vol.

34. No.4 (2006): 465·80. 9

230

ART -t-COM: www.shrmktfy.comjtsk

Limi ted Language I Sensibil ities I Earlids and brainlids: on thoug hts and sounds

Monica Biagiol i

White cube noise Sound has an amorphous quality about it that, when coupled with the word 'art', presents a very real and immediate problem in terms of presentation in a gallery space. In its pure, unfiltered form, sound has no tangible boundaries. It just is. Means used to create, capture, and transmit it often become the unwitting focus in presentations of sound-based works. Installation art approaches can engage audiences in active participation with the listening elements of the work. Yet, often, in the journey from sound to sound art, visual representations become more of the focus . How can we take attention away from the vehicles, trappings or visual representations of sound and place it back where it belongs? Steven Connor has addressed this problematic headon, in a talk at the Audio Forensics Symposium at the Image-Music-Text gallery (IMT) in London in 2008. His talk, entitled Ear Room, explored language as a container and argued for a more forthright approach to sound aesthetics through semantics. Why talk about sound and space? Why not give body and shape to these formless terms and refer to them as ear and room? He argues that this focus, this pinning-down, would provide sound art with a solidity it now seemingly can only find via its vehicles, trappings and visual representations. However, this assumes that fitting into a container is what sound art wants to do, and yet many of the manifestations of sound art avoid receptacles altogether via ambient strategies (radio and Internet transmission being two examples). But this does not solve the problem of the white cube. How to put focus on the sound in sound art within the gallery space? If the amorphous and ambient elements of sound art are to be featured, any physical representation, be it object-based or installation, can draw attention away from the sound. A way of addressing this problem is to embrace sound's invisibility and place focus on its more

Between the gallery and the street 'W hat are days for? Days are whe re we live. They co me , they wake us T ime nne! time ove r. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days?' (Phili p l.a rkin, Days 1953)' In l.arkin's poem, the open nne! close of days prov ides more than the rhythm again st

whic hour lives arc set. Day 'wake us '. They frame and inform human experience. It's in this way that the temporal mate ria liscs in the curation of Monica Biagioli, author of the original article, which proposes that art ists and visitors think about time in the gallery, and not the spatial exper ience alone. Biagioli worries that the visual trappings of sonic presentation detrac t from the experience of sound itself. She suggests that u: ing les: abstract, more visce ral languag« i needed

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provide un alternative to the visual conception of the gallery. Not sound, he suggests, but ear; not space but room . It is also useful to think about time in terms of days, Biagioli remarks 'On any day that yo u walk into a gallery, at t hat moment you will experience the space slightly d ifIcrcm ly - to t he people that came in before you, or the last t ime you came in. Yo u will only capture t hat mome nt' ,' The gal lery, here, is e xplored as a tra nsient place - a series of mo ments - making the connection back to the outside world? We can see t his in Sound Proof' a series of yearly sound e xhibitions Biagioli is curating over a five yea r per iod which focus on th e transformation of t he

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record ings cre ate an audio cartography of the transformations, l apturing t he sonic chang's of t he conversion From waterways and mar .hland to building Sill' to global lourist attraction . Just as sounds come and go,

some will inevitably disappear. In

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