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Sound Scripts

Sound Scripts

Audionano—Vibrating Matter

Abstract

This essay considers the act of listening as situated by philosophies of immanence, psychoanalysis and musical practices, with a view to discussing issues of sensation, experience, time and immersion. The main body of the text consists of a subjective theoretical preface to issues of immanence with respect to aesthetic perception, before concluding with a discussion of immanence in US Minimalism since the 1960s. The piece draws on the work of various authors, notably Gilles Deleuze, whose perspective on immanent perception in the moment might be opposed to the historical and symbolic model implied by Jacques Lacan and psychoanalysis. The essay explores a case for a phenomenological approach to aesthetics and composition, in which materialist concerns—that is to say sound as matter with which to provoke (pure) sensation—are privileged over representation, where in the latter case sound and music largely act as a vehicle for meaning. Although not specifically focussed on the sound/image relationship, this essay derives from my thinking about my own audiovisual practice, one of these pieces being exhibited in the Festival.1 Thus although the discussion focuses upon sound, it has implications for both image and sound/image relationships in articulating a practice which moves beyond the dichotomy of sound and vision to be located in immanent materiality.

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