1 INTRODUCTION
This article discusses the results of a larger project developed by the author, exploring aesthetic and perceptual issues of the dynamic relations in sound and space perception (Forcucci Reference Forcucci2015, Reference Forcucci2017a). Participants to the Intention/Perception (In/Pe) project were invited to attend sonic art works from the portfolio of the author in order to explore their own subjective visual mental imagery of architectural spaces (imagined three-dimensional spaces) by a focused listening, which leads to a sense of embodiment as inner perception of body image. If the listener develops a visual mental imagery of architectural spaces and environments, then it may be anticipated that the resulting representation includes, too, the beholder. If there is a common perceived space among the listeners, what does it represent? Nancy (Reference Nancy2007: 37) proposes that ‘it is always in the belly that we – man or woman – end up listening or start listening. The ear opens into the sonorous cave that we then become.’ Therefore, the first common memory of space among human beings might possibly be the womb. Extensive philosophical questions defining the space and how it is perceived are proposed in The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (Reference Bachelard1992). The development of Bachelard is based on the poetic representation of space as internally produced by the imagination. Bachelard interprets metaphorically intimate spaces by proposing the house as a symbolic view of the body.
The representation of the body within a visual mental image is linked to its motor system (Gallagher Reference Gallagher2005; Berlucchi and Aglioti Reference Berlucchi and Aglioti2009; Tsakiris Reference Tsakiris2009; De Vignemont Reference De Vignemont2010; Blanke Reference Blanke2012; Seth Reference Seth2013; Dieguez and Lopez Reference Dieguez and Lopez2016). In addition, ‘[mental] imagery not only engages the motor system, but also affects the body, much as can actual perceptual experience’ (Kosslyn, Ganis and Thompson Reference Kosslyn, Ganis and Thompson2001: 641). Proprioception invigorates the idea that if deep listening induces spatial and visual mental imagery, it may include the whole body. Smetacek and Mechsner define proprioception as follows:
Proprioception provides information on the physics of the body, the momentary distribution and dynamics of masses, forces acting on the limbs and their highly nonlinear interactions. The maps derived from these complex calculations not only guide body movement, they also (together with touch) sense the size and shape of objects and measure the geometry of external space. (Smetacek and Mechsner Reference Smetacek and Mechsner2004: 21)
Bringing the concept of proprioception into focused listening and visual mental imagery opens fields of possibilities where the audience is sensually involved with sound, which generates an embodied experience. Proprioception in the current study relies on the perception of one’s own body within the visual mental image. More fully explored in dance, proprioception could enhance the perception of sonic arts in a potential rethinking of the notion of spatialisation.
The artistic and theoretical background is introduced in the first section. The section moves towards deep and heightened modes of listening. Then space is defined, along with notions of affect and atmosphere. Section 2 continues with the introduction to the Intention/Perception (In/Pe) project, where five electroacoustic pieces were presented to an audience for focused listening in order to stimulate the experience of a spatial representations in visual mental imagery. Section 3 introduces the portfolio of works for the research. Section 4 describes the process of development and proposes an interpretation of the results.
1.1 Background
The In/Pe project mapped visual mental imagery in order to foster the link between intention (composer) and perception (audience). The inquiry relies on the process of the development of the artworks (however, not presented here) not as a sole project, but in relation to and in osmosis with the audience perception. Those ideas are central to the current study.
According to Dixon, visionary French theatre theorist Antonin Artaud was perhaps the first person to coin the term ‘virtual’, describing in The Theatre and Its Double (1938) how ‘theatre’s virtual reality develops … [on the] dreamlike level on which alchemist signs are evolved’ (Dixon Reference Dixon2006: 24). Artaud establishes a relationship between the action of the theatre and the subjective perception of the spectator. He proposes virtuality as the relation between alchemy and theatre, which ‘are so to speak virtual arts, and do not carry their end – or their reality – within themselves … all that constitutes the virtual reality of the theatre develops, and the purely fictitious and illusory world in which the symbols of alchemy are evolved’ (Artaud Reference Artaud1958: 48–9). Sound triggers ‘purely fictitious and illusory worlds’, as a constructed virtual reality in the mind of the listener. The mind transforms sound into visual mental imagery, which is the subjective perception of the audience. Consequently, as an inner experience, the body becomes the theatre where the work appears.
The Brazilian neo-concretists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica included the body of the audience in their works. With her relational objects, ‘[Lygia] Clark’s experiences tend to merge the body’s interior and exterior spaces, stressing the direct connection between the body’s physical and psychological dimensions’ (Osthoff Reference Osthoff2004). The connection between external and inner spaces of the body explored by Clark emphasises the active participation of the audience’s body. Moreover, Hélio Oiticica pioneered works such as Parangolé, where the body of the participant becomes the theatre of the experience. In this sense, Oiticica in ‘Notes on the Parangolé’ (‘Anotações sobre o Parangolé’), mentions that ‘the spectator “wears” [veste] the cape, which is made of layers of coloured cloth that appear to the extent that he moves, running or dancing. The work requires direct corporal participation’ (Oiticica Reference Oiticica1965: 93). The participant embodies the work in Parangolé and becomes part of it.
The American composer Maryanne Amacher’s work included pieces, such as ‘Music for Sound Joined Rooms’ and ‘Mini-Sound Series’, directly relating to architecture (as structure-born sound), which allows the audience to embody the sound through space by exploring it during her performances. She composed using physiological properties, where the body is the sonic emitter and receptor. She claims that ‘when played at the right sound level, which is quite high and exciting, the tones in this music will cause your ears to act as neurophonic instruments that will seem to be issuing directly from your head’ (Amacher in Ouzounian Reference Ouzounian2006: 74). In an interview with Oteri she discusses the phenomenon of otoacoustic emissions.Footnote 1 They are directly produced by the listener, who ‘actually has vivid experiences of contributing this other sonic dimension to the music that their ears are making … it has to be done in such a way that the sonic shapes are lingering in your mind afterwards’ (Amacher in Oteri Reference Oteri2004). The embodiment of sound she proposes is a very sensual one. An experience that the listener will hear through his/her own body, a very personal experience, a response of his/her ears to a composition; the response is the work produced by his own body.
The American artist Max Neuhaus, who developed mainly sound installations, also created situations in which the participants embody the works. For example, in his Water Whistle series developed between 1971 and 1974, the sound is transmitted to the whole body, which is immersed in water. Neuhaus (n.d.) explains that ‘a network of hoses fed water through a configuration of whistle-like devices, each enclosed in a reflector … This formed a shifting sound texture, which varied, according to the listener’s position in the pool.’ In this piece, Neuhaus considered the body not only as the interface between the sonic piece and its perception, but also as the medium. Again, the artwork is then solely one’s own personal corporeal sensual experience.
1.2 Deep and heightened listening
The focused listening proposed here relies on the late American composer Pauline Oliveros and her concept of deep listening (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005), which is equivalent to heightened listening. Heightened listening observes each detail of sound: ‘this enables acute voice recognition, echo detection, spatial location, etc. Such heightened listening substitutes auralization for visualization (or seeing) by creating sonic pictures’ (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2010: 79). The pictures relate to the idea of sonic architecture (or ‘auralised’ architecture) defined in the next section. She developed ‘a practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible’ (Oliveros Reference Oliveros2005: xxiii). Oliveros specifically proposed sound imagining in her sonic meditations (Oliveros Reference Oliveros1974). The ideas of sonic pictures and sound imagining contribute towards the development of a new dimension in listening, composing, and perceiving sound. The heightened and deep listening modes are paramount in the exploration of the relation of sound and space, and for the current study of visual mental imagery induced by sound. If the listener experiences the space and environment in his/her visual mental imagery while deep listening, then it is expected that s/he will also perceive his/her body as part of the environment that can be acted upon and thus impart a sense of agency.
1.3 Space
For the purposes of this research, my definition of space refers to ideas and methods from the discipline of architecture, meaning that it extends beyond the concept of a container defined by borders and geometrical values. The architectural approach in this study refers to spatial relationships between sound and space, how the resonance, reverberation and vibrational properties influence sound in space and vice versa, and how this leads to an invisible sonic architecture, perceived only within one’s mind. Sound and space relationships define a merger, which is a sonic and immaterial architecture, an atmosphere experienced through focused listening. The sum of the relationships is felt and is actually the atmosphere that consequently affects and leads to perception within the body of the auditor. Böhme (Reference Böhme1993: 125) proposes that ‘perception is basically the manner in which one is bodily present for something or someone or one’s bodily state in an environment. The primary “object” of perception is atmospheres.’ Therefore, in the context of atmospheric architectures it is the felt architecture, or the relationship, that is established between the architecture and the body of the viewer/listener, thus the body is affected by the sonic architecture while deep listening. Moreover, Massumi (Reference Massumi2002: 28) insists ‘on the irreducibly bodily and autonomic nature of affect’. Massumi continues by underlining that ‘affect is synaesthetic, implying a participation of the senses in each other: the measure of a living thing’s potential interactions is its ability to transform the effects of one sensory mode into those of another’ (ibid.: 35). The synaesthetic experiences and how the body of the beholder is affected by these constitute the relationship between the sonic part produced by the author and the perception by the listener as architectural and environmental space. The perception of architectural spaces in visual mental imagery necessarily implies the presence of the body of the beholder, who in turn embodies the experience.
2 IN/PE PROJECT
The Intention/Perception (In/Pe) project is an empirical survey informed by phenomenology. The qualitative phenomenological methodology (Forcucci Reference Forcucci2015: 38, 194), however, not presented here, relies on a questionnaire investigating the experience of spatial visual mental imagery of the participants exposed to the portfolio of sonic art works. In Husserlian phenomenology it is claimed that ‘our experience is directed toward – represents or “intends” – things only through particular concepts, thoughts, ideas, images, etc. These make up the meaning or content of a given experience, and are distinct from the things they present or mean’ (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2013: 2). The In/Pe project investigated the experience of the audience’s ‘ideas, images’ (as perceptions) of architectural and environmental spaces, which make up the meaning, and it is thus distinct from the compositions per se (things they present or mean). Merleau-Ponty ‘focused on the “body image”, our experience of our own body and its significance in our activities … In short, consciousness is embodied (in the world), and equally body is infused with consciousness (with cognition of the world)’ (ibid.: 11). The aim here is to observe how the participants perceive their body (image) in the constructed virtual architectural and environmental spaces enacted by the listening experience. Husserl and Merleau-Ponty ‘spoke of pure description of lived experience’ (ibid.: 4), which is the lived experience, through listening, of the spaces currently being investigated.
The base of reflexion for the In/Pe project, which is the analysis of the answers to a questionnaire based on the portfolio of the current research, derives partially from the Intention/Reception (I/R) project developed by Landy and Weale (Landy Reference Landy2006; Weale Reference Weale2006). It ‘involves introducing sound-based works that are unknown to the listening subjects, and then evaluating their listening experience’ (Landy Reference Landy2007: 38). The convergence of both projects relies on evaluating the listening experience of the participants. However, the I/R is a research project ‘aimed at creating a bridge between the intention of the composer and the reception of the listener in the context of electroacoustic music by articulating the intent and by repeated listening sessions‘ (ibid.: 29), which allows familiarity with the artworks. This leads to questions related to access and ‘serves as a lobbying tool to demonstrate the potential interest in this music by allowing people to discover it’ (ibid.: 52). Thus, and as proposed by Landy, the I/R project wishes to facilitate access to electroacoustic music, whereas In/Pe’s aim is to explore the visual mental imagery of spaces through sound. Another difference between the two projects relies on the number of times the compositions are played. In In/Pe, the compositions are played only once, and thus the first impression is observed, in line with the proposal about the affective corporeal involvement of the philosopher Tonino Griffero:
The first impression is an affective corporeal involvement that, interrupting the habitual observational and pragmatic flux, can, for this very immediacy, represent for the subject an identity certificate much better than the cogito – and, even more so, better than objective facts, which as such are ours as much as others’, in principle. (Griffero Reference Griffero2014: 88)
The investigation explores first-person experience and how such experience affects the audience. Mental imagery visualisation of space through heightened listening needs consistency of attention from the participants. Such consistency is fragile and subject to shifts of attention. Following Griffero’s claim, the first impression is ‘an affective corporeal involvement’ and relies here on the auditor’s perception of inner space.
A majority of the participants in the survey were chosen mainly from among students in music, sound studies, media art and art, as well as established artists, musicians, composers, and curators; only a small fraction were not professionally involved in the arts. The reason for the selection lay in their inclination and their specific training in spatial representation. Artists in these disciplines usually have a clearer mental representation of space, because their practice requires constant and intense visualisation resulting in visual mental imagery (e.g. imagining playing a particular section of a piece or imagining a person or an object being drawn or sculpted). Thus, the choice relies primarily on their potential respective abilities ‘as artists to represent objects in space, and for musicians, because they perform well in visuo-spatial tasks’ (Brochard, Dufour and Després Reference Brochard, Dufour and Després2004: 103–4, 106–8). While the relation between their professional backgrounds as regards their perception is not analysed, it nevertheless provides information about their familiarity with experimental forms of art, music and spatial perception. The investigation was conducted without a control group, because it was observed through individual experiences with a questionnaire. In addition, most of the answers were provided during fieldwork, where organising any contributory features of control groups is problematic.
Between 23 and 35 candidates per piece, and not always the same ones, were invited to listen, no more than 35 minutes per session in darkened spaces, to each of the five pieces of the portfolio (the pieces were never played in the same order). They were recruited while in art residency in China and at universities in the UK, Germany and Brazil. The participants were introduced to the aims of the research before the listening sessions. They were asked to concentrate on their listening and on the visualisation of architectural spaces while listening. No prior information about the pieces and the questions in the questionnaire was provided; this was omitted deliberately in order to avoid influencing their answers. The participants themselves filled out the questionnaires in writing. All participants gave written consent for the study, according to the protocols of the human research ethics policy of De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. DMU’s relevant committee approved their written consents. None of the participants were remunerated.
3 PORTFOLIO
The author, who is also the researcher, developed five pieces. Although this may appear to have problematic aspects, it refers to the importance of including the author when studying perception of art as proposed in Section 1. The reason lies within the investigation of the subjective nature of the phenomena as inner experience, which necessitates first-person subjective experience. Then, the researcher must have experienced for himself the nature of the relationships between inner and outer spaces that are proposed to the audience. Moreover, the process, as practice-led research, observes not only the development of the artworks, but also the inherent audience perception, and the quality and typology of the inner spaces; hence the non-orthodox nature of the experimental design and procedure proposed here.
Ideas about de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation are approached, since ‘Reterritorialisation must not be confused with a return to a primitive or older territoriality: it necessarily implies a set of artifices by which one element, itself deterritorialised, serves as a new territoriality for another, which has lost its territoriality as well’ (Reference Deleuze, Guattari and MassumiDeleuze and Guattari 1987: 174). The study of spatial visual mental imagery is indeed a new territoriality within the mind of the participating audience, which has abandoned its external territoriality to become a constructed virtual inner space.
The focal points of the portfolio were the following:
• deep listening of sounds and spaces;
• plasticity of sound as a relation to visual arts;
• embodiment of sound and space;
• visual mental imageries of sound and space.
Number of participants and short description of the portfolio’s pieces:
1. The Fall – 35 participants attended the listening sessions.
The Fall is an eight-channel piece exploring the plasticity of sound, as a sculpture, and conceived to resonate with a physical sculpture as a sonic counterpoint. Moreover, the piece integrates the sounds of the site where the sculpture is located.
2. De Rerum Natura – 30 participants attended the listening sessions.
De Rerum Natura is an electroacoustic composition based on field recordings from the Brazilian Amazon forest.
3. My Extra Personal Space (Forcucci 2017b) – 33 participants attended the listening sessions.
The soundscapes of the city of Paris and the coastal town of Etretat on the Normandy coast in France are recorded during an exploratory soundwalk blending urban and natural environments.
4. Kinetism – 23 participants attended the listening sessions.
Kinetism invites the audience to take a sonic walk, where people might realise the dialectic between the internal and the external perceptions of space through sound: one’s own body’s sound (internal auditory space), mostly unconscious, is balanced against the sounds of the city (external auditory space).
5. Music for Brainwaves (Forcucci Reference Forcucci2018 ) – 30 participants attended the listening sessions.
The piece is based on an interface employed in collecting physiological data from a performer. Then, the algorithm (based on Xenakis’s own Gendy3) processes the collected data, and the consequent generated sound is projected in a (resonant) performance space; the result is heard by the performer, and thus included in a neurofeedback loop. This work was inspired by Alvin Lucier’s composition Music for Solo Performer.
4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This article explored an experiment, named In/Pe, where the fully consenting audience was required to listen carefully to the portfolio of sonic artworks, and later asked, through a questionnaire, to describe the experience as visual mental imagery. When comparing the results of the survey among all the pieces in eliciting perceptions of architectural spaces, similar patterns appeared as follows:
• The Fall : smaller spaces such as a cave, tunnel and pipe were triggered by the sound of the dripping/flow of the water in them.
• De Rerum Natura : a dark, confined space (such as a cave and underground).
• My Extra Personal Space : an internal space (a building, studio, beach house, or shelter).
• Kinetism : an enclosed space (inside the human body, a box or a room).
• Music for Brainwaves : a room (apartment, closed room or dark room).
Similar typologies of small architectural spaces appear in visual mental imagery of the candidates when cross-comparing the answers. The mental representation of space through perceptions of the body links to what Woelert calls ‘the body as the generative interface’ and ‘human conceptual thought’ (Leroi-Gourhan in Woelert Reference Woelert2011: 115–16). The body acts as the interface between the physical movement into the external environment and the inner mental perception of the world. That is, exterior environment and ‘human conceptual thought’ (here, visual mental imagery) are not two separate processes; they are closely related and form a whole. The proposal of this research relies on the relationship between the visual mental representation of architectural and environmental space as demonstrating their embodiment through sound instead of through sight. Accordingly, the areas investigated focused on the production of space in relation to the body (Lefebvre Reference Lefebvre2000: 190). The idea includes the ecological context in which the sonic event is perceived (Gaver Reference Gaver1993; Gibson Reference Gibson1979).
The intention/perception link between the composer and the participants pushes further the idea that ‘there is no basic difference in this respect between what happens when a person looks at the world directly and when s/he sits with his eyes closed and thinks’ (Arnheim in Biggs and Karlsson Reference Biggs and Karlsson2011: 149). The claims proposed by Arnheim differ from this study, because the same mental phenomenon or perception of space proposed by Arnheim is not solely for one and the same person; in this research, it includes both the composer and the participants.
Finally, the concept of deep listening was a paramount component since, for the composer, it allowed for emphasis on the perception of the environment when recording the sounds in the field for the production of space (intention), and for the audience when asked to concentrate on its own visual mental imagery (perception). Therefore, the perception of visual mental imageries through a focused mode of listening by the composer and by the participants leads to an essential link between intention and perception. Moreover proprioception in the current study relied on the perception of one’s own body within the visual mental image while deep listening. The common patterns of small architectural and environmental spaces perceived among participants are proposed here as the possible representation of the body of the beholder.
