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ARTISTIC RESEARCH ON CATCHING THE SOUNDS OF THE MIND:
SONIC IMAGINATION AND VOICE
,
INSTUTE OF SONOLOGY

In the sonic imagination, the act of listening internally and externally occurs simultaneously, as a polyphony—a synthesis of sounds imagined, expected, mimicked, remembered, and perceived. They are the instant moments of sonic hallucinations drifting in between real and imagined. 

Sounds vanish the moment they appear; their physical energy disperses and becomes inaudible, yet they linger and leave a trace in one’s mind as a form of memory or sensation—fugitive behavior of sounds makes it even harder to catch them in the realm of imagination. 

Though, the voice is always present in the mind. Ones coexist together; the act of listening externally finds responses and merges with the inner sounding, and the voice echoes, choruses, and contrasts with what is being listened to in the moment and perceived. One’s inner sonic world ventriloquistically speaks through the voice that permeates and mirrors the interior and exterior sonic realms. Could it be a fundamental core in the formation of the sounds of the mind? Voice is nowhere and everywhere, catching the sounds of the mind. 

I overhear voices everywhere, as in seeing faces in the configurations of clouds, rocks, and patterns. I search for voice-ness in the non-vocal sound sources; I hear them in the whistling of an airstream leaking through the pipe, sometimes in a machine humming. A moment of synthesis in between my imaginary state and perceptual attention, an auditory pareidolia. 

Dear readers, whose means of musical creation at first starts in an immaterial manner and begins in their minds, How accurately could you listen to the imagined sounds or create them in the process of composition? How do you materialize them, through what means?

⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​

nowhere and everywhere

I. sensations in the throat I 

II. sonic catcher will linger in the mist.

III. sensations in the throat II—voice wants to tear the body.

IV. a river whale searching for a voice-ness in her blue essence.

 

(2024) 

24mins

stereo mix-down, originally 8-channel

composed for Institute of Sonology graduation concert

 ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​

Her research looks at catching the sounds of the mind. She explores voice as a potential that has a role in the formation of sonic imagination to be employed for dealing with electronic music composition and algorithmic performances. How accurately could one listen to the imagined sounds or create them mentally in the process of composing? How are they materialized, and through what means? 

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By using the malleability, dynamic aspect, and rich spectral content of the vocal sound to control time- continuous and real-time sound synthesis parameters, the motivation is to create a digital voice interface to explore the relationship between real-time synthesized sound and materialization of imagined sound in the process of electronic music composition. During the project, creative mapping approaches, analysis, and processing techniques over the vocal content have been investigated through implementations on Super Collider for live performances. Throughout the research, various algorithmic approaches have been developed for voice-driven live electronics and for processing vocal sounds--exploring a blurry, malleable sonic space that shifts back and forth in between flashbacks of sonic memories and traces of the vocal material that plays with the mode of listening and perceptual attention, alternating in between pure, distorted, and processed vocal materials.

⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​​​ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁​​

​These questions are concerned with drawing attention to practices in electronic music composition to address a specific audience of composers whose means of creation at first starts in an immaterial manner and begins in the one’s mind. Addressing those who are not concerned with creational situations that emerge concretely out of their materials in the first place. Not every composer starts the process of composing by interacting with physical objects, computer algorithms, employing recording techniques, instruments, etc. The main concern is how to work with sonic imagination for those who have rather active inner sounding, for those who often lend their ears inward. How does the inner sounding sound like? Does the inner sounding always include our inner voice? Don Ihde, who “acknowledges that the inner voice is present, but mostly in the background, or ‘nowhere’ and ‘everywhere’ at the same time.” 13 If the inner voice is always there, how does this presence influence the way musical sounds are auralized and composed? How can one deal with this co-presence and concurrence in a musical setting?

Research Diaries:
#1 Perpetually, whenever I begin the process of composition, I carry an excitement of inexpressible musical ideas within me. I go through a feeling of compulsion. I fidget around with an urge to compose the imagined sounds so that I don’t forget about them. I inhabit a level of stress, a restlessness. How can I translate them before they evaporate from my mind?


#2 I often find myself improvising over a piece of music, with or without using my voice, sometimes only in my head where moments of overhearing occur or sonic hallucinations, but not as hearing one thing as something else but as a matter of “doubled sound” as Don Ihde describes it.

(Schäfers, Marlene. Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey. University of Chicago Press, 2023.)

#3 The experience of sonic imagination can be polyphonic, the inner voice is always present. We co-exist together, I open my mouth and release the sounds that linger in my head, those sounds wander across the pool of my imagination.


#4 As I’m perpetually aware of the presence of my voice in my inner sounding in which the voice is anchored. Vocalizations, inner and outer, give a tangible form to the imagined ones, the voice decodes through its own lexicon.

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In my research study of voice stands as a malleable form that carries out different affordances. Instead of privileging the content of the voice —defining what voice is or what it symbolizes and represents—it fundamentally look at various forms that voice takes, essentially entangles the vocal form that permeates internal and external sonic realms and its role in this.

There have been many assumptions about the understanding of the voice, especially from Euro-American perspectives, as Marlene Schäfers quotes in her book Voices that Matter from anthropologist Amanda Weidman, who assumes that modern ideology of voice relies on two implicit assumptions:

“The first is that the voice constitutes a direct and authentic expression of the interior self, assuring self-presence and truth. The second, linked assumption holds that the voice functions as a transparent channel of communication whose acoustic form is inconsequential to the content transmitted.”

 

A further elaboration on how these assumptions might fall short could be explained through oral practices in the Kurdish context. According to Schäfers, for them, voice functions less as a representation of the self, authenticity, and conveyor of personal feeling, which stands as a central assumption in the modern ideologies of the voice. As she describes it:

 

“Rather, in the context where subjects lend their voices to express the pain of others and where disembodied voices have the capacity to touch their listeners, voices emerge as mobile implements capable of distributing affect, in this way drawing subjects into their fold, establishing relations of pleasurable exchange, and engaging experiences of dispersal and loss.” 

Schäfers concludes that the characteristics of this vocal form contribute to “detaching voices from the subjects pronouncing them and rendering voices socially potent.” In such a way, through giving this oral practice as an example, she proposes to destabilize ideas about “the voice as a direct expression of personal will and interior.” She argues that voices do not always have to represent those whose enunciate them, and she refuses stable associations between voice, self, and identity, but she suggests that it can also be a “technology of affect,” meaning voice can be conceived as something that can be used in order to harness specific effects. it proposes that it is not only about representation but also about the multiplicity of listening, perception, affective aspects, and experience of the vocal.

Throughout the research, I realized that the perpetual presence of my inner voice inflects and infects the way I compose, the way I listen, and the way I make meaning out of things, the world, and the internal and external. In this research, it is investigated mainly through the domains of imagination and perception, materiality, and multi-sensorial phenomena—listening, sensing, feeling, producing, imagining, and perceiving the voice.

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photo and editing credits: Aisha Pagnes

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