ABANDON NORMAL DEVICES PT.2 // LISTENING TO THE DARK
Peak Cavern ~ Beatrice Dillon // Mike Fell
James Ferraro & Nkisi set // Peak Cavern // Sept 2017
"Listening to the Dark is a series of prodigious sonic experiments, explorations and expeditions that can be found deep under the earth in the subterranean bunkers of Peak Cavern." [1]
' Listening to the Dark' combined a number of sound artists' technological, experimental practice within the underground location at the festival. The sounds were grandiose in contrast to the raw surroundings of the cavern. There's something provocative yet unnerving about something synthetic in a space as organic as a cave. It seems almost invasive to construct a synthesised world around something cherished for its natural history. The notion that a slight vibration could allow the walls to founder perhaps triggers this adverse thinking about sonic sounds in the space. The experience within this space had a certain dimension that was extended way beyond the visual.
Beatrice Dillon - Listening To The Dark // Peak Cavern - Sept 2017
With no obvious visual subject, attention is drawn to alluring lighting that appeared to sensationalise the surrounds of the chasm. Having these lights in higher positions added a celestial quality to the experience, having to look upwards also distorts balance and a sense of physical awareness. This, combined with the intense sonic vibrations from Beatrice Dillon's compositions created an atmosphere of reflection and contemplation that attaches itself to the festival's whole narrative of a relationship we have to nature that's now (in the 21st century) also connected to new media and technology. In 'Listening to the Dark' music/sound reverberates through our physical selves and the boundless space of the cavern, intertwining the three in this sensory experience.
"Musical experience forces an encounter between mind and body, clearing a liminal space that is simultaneously charged with affect and fraught with tension. Musical experience seeps, exposing the arbitrariness of binary divisions between memory/imagination and subject/object." - Robert DeChain [2]
DeChain articulates a connection between ourselves and musical sound that is felt in both the mind and the body, that sound has an immense power over us to release tension or to create it. It can inject a sense of pleasure on a monumental scale that can consume us as beings entirely. The location in the cavern, the ethereal lighting, the immense sonic audio; initiate the conditions for this grand sensation within us.
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| Beatrice Dillon // Peak Cavern // Sept 17 |
There's something profoundly intelligent about removing a sense of sight that is pertinent to our perception and understanding of our physical locations to allow us access into a heightened sense of auditory awareness and an acute, responsive imagination.
"Neuroscience research has demonstrated that disruption of sensory input from one sense can improve the function of the remaining senses, such as auditory localization or tactile feedback." [3] The fugitive flashing of light distorts perceptions further by combining a blue/red hue that tricked the eye, leaving traces of vivid light behind in the dark. The contrasting hues work to create a stereoscopic 3D [4] effect, creating an illusion of depth. A device used in cinema traditionally to distort realities and transport audiences into another dimension of experience. The silences in between Fell's audio transitions were most memorable, the intensity of the strobe lighting with the audio volume left remnants in the dark as one sound moved into another. John Cage speaks of "the ultimate music experience is the absence of music." (1963) [5] . In this sense the sonic frequency leaves traces of Fell's musical compositions ringing in the ear; creating an audio depth that compliments the visual one. This proposes an interesting narrative that connects to the work of both Dillon and Fell. There's a meditative, zen nature to the experimental sounds vibrating around the cavern and within the body. The theme of listening and thought reverberates with the audio in the mind creating an intense sensory space of reflection." Because sounds are so fleeting, so transitory, the presence of silence is felt all the more profoundly, a moment has communion with eternity when sound meets silence to create music." [6] It extends the 'Listening to the Dark' experience to a spiritual, philosophical realm. An interesting antithesis to the traditional brashness associated with electronic sound and technology. These provocative pieces signaled a new age and understanding of sound and how it affects and influences our human experience.
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