Nearing Walls

The writer is a sonic artist based in London. Since 1996, he has worked on an array of installations and projects which explore 'space' and 'surface' from non-visual perspectives. He has completed a two-year post-graduate research project investigating the ways 'touch' and 'grasp' may be used to mould 'sound' using computers which have no visual interface.

It is most usual to speak of sound as an accessory to vision - after all, we don't hear the presence of someone standing behind us or the texture of a wall as we walk past it, do we?

There is no doubt 'visual culture' dominates; the eye is celebrated in human society, in art and science, as the most potent and powerfully expressive sensory faculty we possess. It is historically bound up in the act of recording (drawing, painting, writing and photography for example) and is the instrument through which we realise our obsession to capture and 'visualise' our experiences. Visualisation, however, is by definition a mind-centred skill that is by no means constrained to visual thinking: we visualise auditory and touch experiences in the same way, we do not live by light alone.

In some ways I have been given the gift of transience: I see more by sound than light and visualise the world around me by interpreting the soundscape arriving at my ears.  It is not so much that I inhabit a world void of light, more that in light I can see no detail.  By saying these things, I expose myself to misinterpretation since living by listening is not an approach understood by many, and one which, if truth be told, most will no doubt consider a rather one-dimensional existence. I can say, having experience of both 'styles of living', that neither is superior in experiential quality - it seems we live more by 'the sum' of our sensory experiences than by the information we derive from any single source. To communicate something of what I am saying, I have, for the first time, written out in words my thoughts during a recent collaboration at a gallery in East London, and in places expanded on the ideas.

"How did you know I was here?"

It was the sum of many things about 'the air' around me, that primed my expectancy, that set a mild breeze blowing and a mountain range of flags gently waving and pointing towards there being a change in the pressure of air. It wasn't so much that I knew you were there, more that a new object now occupied a space which, previously, was just air.

At least 30 yards away to the right, across the expanse of dusty concrete that reached out to the loading bay, a leaf scratched over the ground, moving in erratic starts by gusts of wind, its dry frame etching a path in sound alone. Turning my head as if to watch the leaf’s journey, I must have glanced right at it, although it was far too small to see.

I was still unfamiliar with this gallery, an old aircraft factory with walls built to withstand huge pressures of unmeasurable vibrations. The factory manufactured propeller blades for fighter aircraft many decades ago and had the feel of an extraordinarily heavy construction. To my eyes, there were no doors on any wall of the space, anywhere, although, at intervals just long enough for my mind's eye to settle on something else, I would become aware of a door opening and closing, way off behind me.

Turning round, not fast enough to perceive any change in the bare white walls which rose up 40 feet or more, a person's footsteps approached, then joined by the infinitesimal folds of fabric friction, they pass very close, say nothing, then, framed against the glare of the loading bay, decline in size and sound before turning the corner and becoming washed away in a passing car. All this would set the leaf swirling, up off the ground where I lost it temporarily, before it scratched at another piece of the floor revealing itself once again.

"Where do you want the camera?"

This is an awkward question, as it also means 'what is it you're about to do ?', neither of which I could really answer. There is a wall directly out in front, the click of the tripod’s leg extenders reflected off this, and hinted that the wall must be 10 yards or so away. After ten paces towards it, I resisted the urge to hold my hand out for protection, preferring to trust my judgement, as I have learned to do. What it is that seizes up my legs and tenses my stomach well before I reach the wall is not clear. I can relieve this sensation by forcing breath between my teeth, a subtle hiss will light-up the wall brightly, allowing me to hold my finger out, pause, and then to touch with perhaps less than one inch to spare. In another part of the city, there is a corrugated bridge. If one walks with head turned sideways, and hisses at the corrugated wall, the reflected sound is equivalent to that made by hissing and fluttering one’s tongue at the same time, a fluttering hiss. Since discovering this, I now hiss at a lot of things when walking, just for the pleasure of listening to the reflections. Walls coated in pebbles, walls of roughly angular stone, smooth featureless concrete and traditional brick, all reflect the hiss in subtly different ways.  Hard glossy surfaces sound bright, dull honeycomb surfaces seem to absorb most of the 'sssss' of the hiss, but still reflect enough information about the surface texture.  

"Put the camera over there in the gap."

Now with my back to the wall, I could clearly perceive a conduit from where part of another soundscape was spilling through into the space: this gap might well be a 'walk-through' between this space and another part of the gallery - it was hard to tell. The camera and scraping tripod legs moved into the conduit and seemed to suddenly diminish in size. It was, like the hissing sound I make to light up walls, showing me there was indeed a gap which drew its sound into the other space. The fact that I could perceive no evidence of the scraping conveyed back along the conduit, told me the other space was acoustically different - perhaps larger, perhaps more absorbent. As the conduit did not convey a similar soundscape to the loading bay, it could not have been outside. This was made plain by the momentary sound of a car back-firing on the loading bay side. Such an intense sound would have rolled over the top of the factory and been present along the conduit moments later, so I knew it was an interior space.

In the hour before, when I had emerged from the underground station, ascending the steps into an unfamiliar soundscape filled with the familiar sounds of engines, squealing brake pads, horns, pneumatic tyres rolling over tarmac roads and the other sonic signatures of modern city life, I had been glad to hear the explosion produced by a badly-tuned petrol engine. The bang, like a burning flare hovering over a military encampment, lit up the landscape, each building pealed out its presence revealing the layout of the area around me in staggered reflections. This 'flare' lasted only one moment in time, not sufficient to interpret in detail, but its energy rolled over a long distance and served as a momentary 'scenic view'.  There was no need to hiss at walls here, the high frequency noise generated by fast moving cars lit up the near surroundings, doorways, alleyways, shop fronts and even the fabric glossiness of peoples’ coats.  It is autumn, there are many raincoats and umbrellas moving around me.

Two small beeps indicated the camera was ready, it was now time to improvise and experiment, using my body to explore the space. How could I communicate what I had been thinking about sound to the camera?  Like everyone else, it was looking and not really listening, but I needed it to listen deeply - or did I? For the sake of the visual image, I tied a rag around my eyes and walked away from the wall, carefully measuring the distance until I reached the auditory centre of the space, perhaps 30 paces or more. Turning round to face the wall, I adjusted the blindfold to optimise my forward hearing by tucking the rag behind my ears.

The wall had now disappeared: hissing at it from this distance yielded nothing. Suddenly, playing to the camera, I began to run towards the wall holding my arms at my sides, my purpose being to raise my hands at the precise moment prior to impact. Hissing as I ran, the wall remained hidden from view, it would light up only at the last moment which meant I must be very quick with my hands.  

I remained still after impact, half to communicate visually how close my head had come to the surface and half to consider how little time there really had been to perform this manoeuvre. The wind in my ears had affected my listening, the fast motion had altered the process of anticipation, though with practice, I may be able to run faster.

What did the camera see of this? Indeed, what can anyone else see in the bizarre act of running headlong at a wall while blindfolded? For me, this act was nothing more than an extreme version of a relatively mundane listening skill, one tiny part that makes up 'living by listening', a skill we all possess but must use in different ways.

Hugh Huddy