Perceived Possibility and Sound Expansion
The large number of perception carriers carried by digital technology seems to have become an inevitable stream of sound and light that people cannot escape today. However, when we have the most powerful, fast, and convenient digital tools in history, do we naturally hear more, or are we overwhelmed and paralyzed unconsciously?
Using digital tools, works of art often present multiple perception media, and use the characteristics of different perception media to create a special perception illusion, which is one of the reasons why the importance of sound in multimedia art is highlighted, or it can be said that the characteristics of sound are indispensable to digital art. Moreover, due to the multiple spans of digital tools on perceptual materials, the description of a single perception to summarize works is no longer applicable. As Frances Dyson has noticed, the description of new media is increasingly moving to sound perception, which is different from the overall immersion of vision. However, now we turn to ask, if we look at digital art from the perspective of sound, how can we observe it from different perspectives, or even ask questions, if it has not yet been identified and still has many potential uncertainties from the perspective of observation?
Starting from sound
Sound is considered the most abstract object of perception, such as Michel Chion, who quotes Jean Racine at the beginning of his book "Le Son": "Yes, that's Agamemnon, your king, who awakens you. Come, recognize the sound that strikes your eardrum."
Sound is like something that has been preserved and left behind, often associated with lost things. When we miss it, we also catch it, as if it has been there all along. What is the sound coming from? Is it air vibration, waveform, digital encoding, or is it closely related to the perception of the ear? What is the connection between technology and the development of technology? When Thomas Alva Edison revealed the Cylinder Phonogram in Scientific America, the imprint of sound was first presented to the public. It no longer seemed ethereal, but became an object that we could identify, a special object, and the technology of capturing the "authenticity" of sound also began. At the other end of the technology, the perception of sound also echoes the development of technology. Walter Benjamin mentioned in Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit the spiritual light that replication technology cannot capture, which actually responds to the correlation between technological development and different perceptions.
What is sound related to? Or is it just about itself, as Musique concrete says? Do these assumptions, inquiries and developments about sound have new implications in the digital age? The enlightenment of sound in digital art, and how to feedback to society, as well as the practice of digital art. How digital technology is profoundly reexamining historical questions about sound and groping for its own future. First, the basic question is: is sound an elusive "abstraction" or an identifiable object?
Self generaLon of sound
Sound, through the use of technological media experiments and other perceptual connecLons, has already begun in early experimental films based on “abstract cinema color music”, such as Oska Fishinger and John Whitney.
The sound device Tu Yo Afrika, created by Canadian artist Jean François Laporte, features a black sphere that utilizes acoustics, aerodynamics, and informatics to create an interactive environment for different perception objects. The shape, position, and information captured through an internal lens of the sphere are all fed back to each other. This is a typical case of conducting experiments on different perceptual materials, connecting and understanding sound with other perceptual objects through different scientific theories.
Therefore, sound is vibration, collision of spheres, and feedback of light and shadow changes. But this does not only mean that digital tools can easily create the formula of "sound=X", but more importantly, they must identify themselves from the work, observe themselves, and identify themselves through the observer, that is, the audience. But this matter does not come out of thin air, and there are social conditions for us to accept that voice can be "self described" through others. When we listen, we need to connect with the work in order for the sound to self generate. Before we discuss social condiLons, let's take a look at classic examples in digital art since the development of color music. Ryoichi Kurokawa's Rheo: 5 horizons use five flat panel displays, each equipped with a single channel audio system, in which the sound and image stream in series. The five tablets and vocal effects are not only a dazzling technique of jumping and changing between the sound space and the screen, but also a physical "real" space with gaps. They provide a hidden imaginaLon space for sound and painLng, providing a reasonable inference gap for illusions. Through field recording, syntheLc sound, realisLc images, and abstract dynamics, from sLllness to madness, and from sLllness to burst, "Rheology" uses a very strong dynamic effect to achieve a stunning audio-visual fit.
Sound and image become each other's loop effects in these five channels, which means that the relaLonship between sound and image becomes a channel for the viewer to think and perceive the work. This effect loop makes sound and light seem like a self generated system, looking at the viewer like a living organism.
Listen to the 'process happening'
Steve Reich once said, "I hope to hear the process happening in the sound of music." This passage has revealed the transformation of sound in music art. The dynamic sound has been separated from the note structure, which is the result of recording technology. We will not elaborate on the theoretical transition here, but just remember that in John Cage's classic case of describing ashtrays, we observed that sound became a metaphor of life process: "With science, objects will become processes, and we can find the essential meaning through the" music "of things." Dummy sound created the sound with life.
This is a new dynamism, and this self generated sound seems to break away from the artificial causal connection, and also blurs the boundaries between artists and viewers, art works and audiences, and life and art. This is a perceptual condition, and it is also a social condition for digital objects to generate infinite possibilities of perception; Therefore, we have accepted all abstractions as' reality 'and brought more attempts to the digital' sound 'and' image '.
Noise: masking or stimulating
In the theoretical context, noise has become an important driving force in contemporary settings, appearing as a cross disciplinary metaphor. In art, it has become a special disturbance in the circuit of works. It is no longer based on semantic meaning, but rather on the intrinsic value of the medium. The avant-garde has implanted feedback loops into modern media systems, returning to emerging media channels, and mocking, disturbing, and accelerating established media practices. Taking sound as an example, the appearance of noise on playback devices is often seen as noise, And forcing us to observe the medium tools that play sound, it is like a communicator, reminding us of the release of sound and how it is released; In digital works, it is almost universally used to trigger the connection of sound desires. For example, in audiovisual devices, it often plays a role in state transition; That is to say, noise can timely and dynamically cover the perception gap between "sound" and "image", and highlight its own media practice, while delivering observation to the media technology of the work.
The filling of "sound" and "image", or the multi sensory connection of touch, smell, and other senses, seems to have become a driving force in the development of digital art. Of course, this is also attributed to the ability of digital coding to simultaneously affect different perceptual objects. The strong sound, light and shadow, or immersive environmental shaping seem to allow our perception to transition together to a special state. For example, in the digital era, commonly known as Audio Visual, on the basis of the interaction between sound and video, coupled with a laptop computer, it was brought to the performance stage, becoming a special type of DVJ in the digital era. It also uses strong sound and light effects to create a combination of different perceptions, also known as "apperception" or "synesthesia".
The naturalness presented by technology and the technological nature presented by natural objects
When using digital tools, sound can equip various colorful objects and move towards the boundaries of eternity, it also leaves behind a lot of possibilities for reflection, especially when the evolution of technology has opened up new thinking and changed the perception habits that were used to. This has opened up contradictions and tensions in the process of the times, forcing us to reflect on how technological objects profoundly affect our thinking. Bartholomäus Traubeck's Years can be seen as the best reflection on this process. He replaced the black glue on the phonograph with slices of trees, and different annual rings determined the singing degree of the music. The magnetic head analyzed the depth of the tree patterns using a photomicroscope and converted them into sampled piano sounds. Phonographs, as we are accustomed to playing media, transform the sound they emit into listening to natural objects through the intervention of digital operations. This is a question that goes from "the naturalness presented by technology" to "the technicality presented by natural objects". Looking back, we question the purity of replication technology objectifying sound.
As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out in A Thousand Plateaus, only exists when a tool is associated with a mixture that makes itself possible, or a mixture that makes it possible... Similarly, assembled symbols and assemblies are not associated with the production of language, but rather with the domain of symbols, associated with the machine of expression, and their variables determine the use of language elements. Obtaining independent reality from mediocre machines when performing functions as technical objects. And this observation method also causes the "thing" to lose its stability, and the observer notices this process and constantly rewrites its meaning. Therefore, sound can serve as an object or, like a metaphor for noise, enable objects to function as technical objects.
The art of sound brings an imagination that no longer uses analogies, symbols, and metaphors as expository texts like in the era of analogies, but is directly displayed through illusions, causing perception to float and constantly sway. Sound not only points to the development of possibilities, but also serves as a form of questioning.
