What can visual communication learn from acoustic space and sonicstructures, and how can this be applied to visual content in order to createan experience that shares characteristics with acoustic space?
Introduction
Theorist Marshall McLuhan describes Visual Space and Acoustic Space as two contrastingexperiences. He argues that Visual Space is characteristic of modern Western society, an artifact of Greek phonetic literacy, typography and the Gutenberg technology. It is a space perceived by the eyes in a linear fashion, when separated from all other senses (McLuhan, 1989:71). Modern Western society is a highly visual culture, and sight has become one of the senses we trust the most (I’ll believe it when I see it).
McLuhan contrasts this experience with what he calls Acoustic Space. This is a sensory experience that is non-linear, in harmony with the natural environment, a space that surrounds you and engages multiple senses at the same time. It doesn’t demand that objects be dissected in order to be understood. To understand it you take in all of it simultaneously, rather than focusing on one part. Preceding the visual world, objects resonated with each other, the world was multi-centric and reverberating, gyroscopic, 360 degrees, like living in a sphere. Time was circular, rather than progressive (McLuhan, 1989:68-71).
I am interested in visual communication which transcends what can be perceived as the limitations of Visual Space, and which shares characteristics with Acoustic Space. McLuhan himself admits exceptions to his definitions, such as the poetry of Eliot being tactile, or of how cubism can be acoustic (Theall, 84-89). I am interested in this overlap because I believe it can bring us closer to a human experience that we, who live in visual space, have learned to repress or ignore.
Strategy for the practical assignment
Why are acoustic spaces so effective in engaging the senses? What makes sound so potentially immersive? As a case study for the practical component of the project I will be using dub music. This music genre traditionally uses a range of analogue sound effects, the most characteristic being echo, reverb and distortion, in order to create an immersive acoustic space. Dub music taps into concepts such as the nonlinearity of time, and the projection of past sounds into an unknown future space.
If reggae is Africa in the New World, then dub must be Africa on the moon; it’s the psychedelic music I expected to hear in the ‘60s and didn’t. (...) Dub is a kaleidoscopic musical montage which takes sounds originally intended as interlocking parts of another arrangement and using them as raw material, converts them into new and different sounds; then, in its own rhythm and format, it continually reshuffles these new sounds into unusual juxtapositions. (Ehrlich, 1982:104)
Using the results from my research (described in the next section), I will attempt to translate dub music’s most characteristic sound effects – echo, reverb and distortion – into visual effects that can be applied to a visual composition, hopefully resulting in a viewing experience that resides in the overlap between Visual Space and Acoustic Space.
The process of research, experimentation and results will be documented in the form of a book, linked to a corresponding digital interface (website, iPad publication or similar) if motion and/or sound needs to be documented. The book will be accompanied by posters displaying the final results of the three “translated” sound effects applied to a visual composition. These will be mounted in or together with an installation, if the nature of the applied visual effects requires this. Although the main focus lies on the still image – as this is closer to McLuhan’s description of Visual Space than, for example, video – the process of creating this still image may require a more dynamic display surface than a poster, and may be relevant to include in the exhibition of the project.
Theory
Research question: What can visual communication learn from acoustic space and sonic structures, and how can this be applied to visual content in order to create an experience that shares characteristics with acoustic space?
With McLuhan’s theories on Visual and Acoustic Space as a point of departure, I will explore where these two spaces may overlap. Through quantitative research I will examine the works of visual artists that share characteristics with Acoustic Space (Kandinsky, Len Lye, Yukultji Napangati, Bridget Riley, Yayoi Kusama, Brian Eno, Fredrik Skåtar...), and explore the history of attempts at creating visual experiences that correspond to sonic experiences (for example, the color organ). What have they done? Why have they done it? How have they succeeded? The theoretical perspectives of painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky, hailed by Picasso’s admirers as a visual musician (Sadler in Kandinsky, 1977:11), will also be useful when attempting to answer these questions.
The works and theoretical perspectives of Kodwo Eshun (More Brilliant Than The Sun), Steve Goodman (aka Kode9, Sonic Warfare), and Julian Henriques (Sonic Bodies) will be relevant to understanding and contextualizing acoustic space and sonic structures/cultures in relation to dub music.
All quantitative research will be supplemented with first-hand qualitative research, through experimentation and in depth-interviews with musicians, sound technicians and relevant visual artists/communicators. The results of my research will then be translated, through the prism of dub music, into visual content.
Literature
Ehrlich, Luke. “X-Ray Music: The Volatile History of Dub”, in Reggae Interventional, ed. Stephen Davis and Peter Simon. R and B Books, New York, 1982.
Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. Quartet, London, 1998.
Goodman, Steve. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. MIT Press, London, 2010.
Henriques, Julian. Sonic Bodies: Reggae Sound Systems, Performance Techniques, and Ways of Knowing. Continuum Books, New York, 2011.
Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Dover Publications, Inc. New York, 1977.
McLuhan, Marshall. “Visual and Acoustic Space”, in Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music. Continuum Books, New York, 2006.
Theall, Donald F. The Medium Is the Rear View Mirror, Understanding McLuhan. McGill-Queen’s UP, Montreal, 1971.
