Sourcing Sound: Experimental Works

The industrial use of sound matches an effect to its environmental source, heightening naturalism through logical sonic linkages. Experimental media seek to undermine that logic, preferring the disjunctive to the overly determined. This program pursues another path where sound and image are unified by the very medium that transports them. In Robert Russett's Primary Stimulus, the image and optical tracks are conjoined with precise graphical patterns to create a staccato union. For Light Reading(s): Visual Mix, Stephen Vitiello used a hand-held photocell to register manipulated light. The “reading” was then sent through processors, generating the inscription of light and its sonic stand-in. Rudy Lemcke's Lightning Field begins with a field recording of a stormy night. When lightning strikes, the visual field bursts into crackling equivalents. Suffering from hearing loss, Darrin Martin embarked on a cycle about auditory impairment. Monograph in Stereo explores binaural hearing as integral to our sense of site. Martin's metaphors of disorientation, injury, and cacophony express an enveloping bewilderment in which the senses, particularly hearing, are stymied.

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