“I was so filled with longing
- is that what sound is for? – ”
Mark Doty, “Migratory”
Sound is unavoidable: in every situation, there is sound. It may be the musicians on stage; but it is more likely the fan, the radiator, the plane passing overhead, the sirens screaming by, the dove cooing outside your window. These ambient sounds, whether or not we consciously note them, have a direct effect on the way that we perceive our immediate environments. It can break our focus, inspiring feelings of frustration; it can remind us of elsewhere, bringing with it attendant feelings of nostalgia, loss, or contentment; it alters, sometimes drastically, the way in which people relate to each other, to themselves, or to their environment. Sound frames our emotional experience of nature; in turn, as Lacan says, “nature provides…signifiers, and these signifiers organize human relations in a creative way, providing them with structures and shaping them.” As we navigate through a maze of visual information, sound is always already there, reflecting the past and echoing the future, providing the backdrop against which we formulate meaning and content. Altering this backdrop freezes the act of signification, complicating our “human relations” as the real rushes in. Through sound – its absence, presence, echo, or implication – my work aims to into question the assumed relationships between information, space, and individuals by obviating or obfuscating the signifiers that organize our lives. I refer to this process as “queering:” in its original sense, “to question;” in its later sense “to make strange;” in proud defiance of its current (derogatory) sense; in proud solidarity with its current (reclamatory) sense.
Jacob Wick, 2011
Leave Your Response