Field Report #3: Art Encounter

One of the readings for class, Sounds of the Season by Ivan Peterson, stresses the need for us to open our ears. It suggests we should take the time to listen to the details of sounds, particularly the sounds of nature. It talks about wind and birds and barking. I wonder if any of them have ever listened to the sun. There are so many things were can listen to beyond what our naked ears can perceive, and Semiconductor’s Brilliant Noise and Jeanne Liotta’s Observando el Cielo provide some amazing examples. I was struck at first by both films mostly because my final project for another class was an animation of an eclipse that used the sounds from the magnetosphere and other satellite gathered radio recordings. So I was at first very surprised, but also I was so excited to see other films using this material. I will limit my discussion only to Observando el Cielo though because of their similarities. There were a couple things I noticed about the sound besides its familiarity. The first is that for most of the film it felt like a separate entity from the image. It always complimented the image, but there is hardly any fidelity between the two. I feel if the image and sound were to be separated each could stand alone as its own piece. I think this is a result of the filmmakers intending to put these sounds, which most people have never heard before, on display. I get the feeling like they want to display the sounds purely and don’t want the sounds and images to combine. But then there are points at which they do synergize, and what sticks out to me is the lunar eclipse sequence. This sequence also involves the second aspect of the sound that I found incredibly interesting. This sequence uses, what I’m assuming, is a bounced back a.m. or f.m. radio signal from decades ago. It gave me this incredible feeling of time passing, but the scope of time is so small compared to the age of the universe and the millions of years the light from the stars has traveled to be captured on that piece of film, and then that is paired with the cyclical nature of eclipses and the time lapse photography. It all combined to from this crazy sense of time travel.
I also want to talk about the sound in Takashi Makino’s Elements of Nothing. The first thing the sound does in this film is progress with the image. It varies at parts, but mostly in the beginning the sound is a sparse, solitary piano and the image is very dark. In the middle the piano has gained in volume and melody and is also accompanied by other instruments while the image has lightened , spotted with color, and the trees are easier to make out. Then at the end the piano gives way to a siren like tone as the image is overtaken by the strange light. Secondly the sound is repetitive. The piano repeats measures of notes, establishing a pattern, but every once in a while there is a flat or sharp or wrong note thrown in to disrupt it. It seemed to me like the soundtrack was trying to develop a melody but it was intentionally denied. This works well with the image because it is equally denied to us by appearing barely long enough to be perceived on a single frame. Thirdly, the sound is also very combative in a passive/aggressive way. Chords are hit that do not mesh together. There are sometimes two notes played that are out of tune. These cause each other to wax and wane as they boost and cancel each other out, creating this disturbing warbling sound. This echoes the combative nature of the images as each frame competes for its fleeting time on screen. Lastly I want to mention how although the pacing of the image never changes, always one image per frame, the sound’s tempo changes dramatically. I found myself experiencing the film according to the tempo of the sound. I think it is a good example of the influence sound can have over the image.