On The Inner-Perceived Sound Objects
Isabelle Delmotte
“Some individuals perceive a wider amount of sonic information from out of, and within, the body. Pauline Oliveros describes the sonic envelope of the earth, the sonosphere, as made of resonant frequencies that couple bodies to the earth’s magnetic fields, feeding each other: “All cells of the earth and body vibrate”. Bodily effects of inaudible high frequencies and low frequencies, singled out or combined, stimulate a non-airborne auditory system activating a biological, non-neuronal and intracellular messenger apparatus. The revealed cellular changes to the brain thalamus and brain stem suggest that to base sensory knowledge on airborne sound conduction and the traditional notion of audibility – between 20 Hz and 22 kHz – overlooks important findings, as an ‘unrecognised sensing mechanism’ might exist.
…Life feels interrupted under the grainy frequencies of all sorts that reside inside and outside my skull. But there is a dot and its lines that kill thought. This is a diary of frequencies without dates, without cardinal places in the world but with points and lines within the cellular, a continuum of light and darkness that It wakes from short and dense slabs of sleep; It, a realm of sounds so unsound. My inner calendar is bounded by its presence and interludes when It goes to sleep, short nights. It may be tired to have yelled this tirade that annihilates my thoughts: they have no answers to calm It down. What does the constancy of its high pitch demand? To be left out of the volume of my body’s skull, free of its cartilaginous and bony borders? When It bounces linearly within that space is it to stay and change its pitch, to find comfort, or to flee? Will its voice deepen again? ”
Isabelle Delmotte has engaged with audio-visual digital technologies since 1989. Over the years her multi-media practice has been included in many solos and collective exhibitions in Australia, Europe and North America. Previous artistic endeavours and academic enquiries have explored notions of consciousness and became valuable interdisciplinary vehicles at the junction of art and sciences. Over the past seven years Isabelle has been exploring phenomenological aspects of sonic environments and their links to cinema sound making, perceptual agency and acoustic ecologies. While being academically published this research also includes modular creative outputs that can be installed in different settings. Her current enquiry brings together documentary film making, sound practice and television audiences. Isabelle is a lecturer in Screen and Media Studies at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.