‘Becoming Air: On Sonic Spatial Metaphysics’

Ouzounian, G. ‘Becoming Air: On Sonic Spatial Metaphysics.’ In Detlef Diederichsen, Arno Raffeiner, Jan St. Werner (eds.) Sound - Space - Sense. Das Neue Alphabet (The New Alphabet) Series (Volume 21). Leipzig: Spector Books, pp. 13-21.

Abstract: This essay proposes that ideas of sonic space -- which have historically been examined in connection to physics (acoustics) and psychophysics (psychoacoustics) -- can also describe a metaphysics of sound: an exploration of the nature of reality through sound and sonic experience. It explores how a sonic metaphysics emerges in connection to a range of spatial sonic practices that include the singing of sacred songs inside a super-reverberant cave-monastery in Armenia; the sound work of Terry Fox, who, starting in the 1960s, sought to transform the material and energetic nature of architectural spaces through ritualistic sonic actions, and who sought to levitate by 'entering the air'; the esoteric music of Sabisha Friedberg, whose multichannel work Hant Variance seeks to produce a 'phantom sonic space' and aural disorientations; and the anarchic sonic practice of Jan St Werner, who proposes that sound is 'the inversion of everything solid' and whose practice dwells in sonic displacements, movement, dynamism, and relationality. In different ways, these sonic practices reveal solid matter -- objects, architectures, bodies -- to be vibrant. They produce 'vibrant materialities' that disrupt traditional notions of object and event; and they confound the sense of bodily stability by putting the listener into dialogue with their environment through sonic relations, proposing that a listener can become a channel, entangled with architectures and spaces through sound.

Read the essay here

With warm thanks to Jan St Werner, Arno Raffeiner, and Detlef Diederichsen for the invitation to contribute to this volume.