VIDEOLESS AUDIO

Abstract:

This essay presents the workshop “Videoless Audio”, first experimented during the III Laboratory for Image Studies Symposium (labIMAGEM) at the São Paulo State University (Unesp). By exploring the realm of acousmatics, the exercise proposes a participatory activity based on deconstructing the relationship of sound and image in audiovisual practices, stimulating the imagination of listening. “Videoless Audio” is an invitation to record, silence, manipulate, and scramble videos, engaging the participants with the poetics of sound as an invisible and ephemeral phenomenon, fostering connections between people, the environment and the unseen. This essay compiles key references, methodologies, and potential outcomes derived from the first iteration of this educational workshop.

Listening to the video

A massive concrete ball falls into a metal well, surrounded by seawater. This is the description a woman brings to a sound engineer. She seeks the origin and reproduction of a rumble that apparently only she can hear. We, however, as the audience (from the Latin audientia, “the act of hearing”), are also part of this process. We hear what she hears, and in doing so, we draw closer to her agony in the face of the unknown, speculating and investigating, creating trial-and-error narratives to answer: what is the source of a sound? The protagonist of Memoria (2021, Apichatpong Weerasethakul) eventually realizes that the attempt to give shape to what is within her, carries a cumulative sonic baggage, fusing imagination and memory from a primal time – long before the markings on cave walls. Transmitting and receiving sounds is a facet of a world that exists beyond humans, a non-representational system operating through the vibration of all things – or, as the character describes it, a rumble from the core of the world.
Within the microcosm of the sounds we know, we share the same instinct when dealing with those we do not. Imagining, pondering, deducing, these are mental connections that seek to register a subconscious archive of what surrounds us, since every sound depends on its medium, and reflects and reverberates across surfaces and objects, including our own bodies. This form of happening, in which sound arrives, presents itself, and dissipates, serves as a reminder that our perception is both intimate and collective and that the conception of recording devices was humanity’s attempt to retain the ephemeral. Listening to a recording is, in a way, a return to a specific moment in time, a means of somehow reliving something that has already passed. This is a gesture of shared concern ¹ , one that addresses the future. To get a device, to charge through cables and batteries, to turn it on, to make sure it’s functional, to press record towards something; all of these gestures are communal gestures, even when they come from subjective intentions.
Imagine the last time you have received a voice recording from a loved one: perhaps you could deduce their expression, the turn of their mouth, the cadence of their breath, the tone that reveals emotion. While your ear listens, your mind makes connections, directly linking to your affections and memories. But also, there’s a gesture coming from the sender when it comes to choosing their device’s position. Intentionally pointing it towards the mouth, makes this audio embodied, preserved from external noises, isolated. In most times, a voice recording is the closest we get to an active recording and listening of sounds.
Now imagine this same person in front of you with a mesmerizing landscape behind them. The mobile urge to record space and time into our storage clouds. We press record and suddenly every corner matters, every position. We are currently documenting three-dimensionally. And in doing so, we are also capturing the sonic world around us – each other’s voices too, but also the wind, footsteps, the rustling of the leaves, traffic noise from a far distance, a bird. Somehow, despite its amplitude, this sound is often neglected.
How can we reorientate our devices?
What are the possibilities of audiovisual in its fullness?
Or, how to open our earlids in a visual culture?

Sound Images or a Very Brief History of Acousmatics

The ghosts we hear on our recordings are our own selves. And this distinctive perception is both certainty and assumption, a speculative baggage that carries over into our encounters with the unknown. The mental images we produce emerge from an apparent lack of meaning that is, in fact, all meaning – they represent our relationships with people, spaces, and time. To record, is therefore, to register and to interrogate, and to deal with sound, is to deal with areas of subtlety and nuance. But more than that, to deal with sound is to deal with the heterogeneous, with implications both material and social, with resonances and different perspectives. Sound is an individual collective experience.
Our devices act as intermediaries ² in a dependent relationship between listening beings and the technologies of capture, storage, and reproduction. Due to the necessity of such apparatuses, the ‘late’ arrival of the phonogram’s ingenuity “did not provide the world of sound with the same cultural destiny reserved for visuality” ³ , that’s why we have been historically detaching sound from the sensory faculties of the visual arts and linking it almost entirely to the notion of music.
By the end of the 19th century, humans have dealt for the first time with the dematerialization of signs – represented by the innovations of the telegraph and photography. The word “noise” was considered for the first time in communication media discussions. Theorists such as Friedrich Kittler, Claude Shannon, and Warren Weaver have said that noise began to be understood as an inherent and functional part of the channel-recipient-sender relationship. Initially perceived as an interference in message reception, noise came to be understood as a guarantee that the device was working properly and that it could also transmit new information ⁴ . That was a gesture of comprehension: it became clear that new forms emerge within noise. Therefore, noise – understood as everything outside intentional communication – could be both a tool for technological development and a political tactic of interruption, insertion, and dissipation employed by amateurs. However, the political relationship of noise unfolds in a broad and complex discussion that surpasses the limits of this work. Let’s retain the idea of noise as capable of resonating with new signs, a strange and ghostly potential.
If we position the concept of noise within the broad universe of ‘sound’, we recall that a human sense is still the discussion – an intrinsic nature of the physical world. Rodolfo Caesar highlights the fundamental support for the existence of every image, which, before any technological apparatus, was bodily, supported by the senses and its gestures. In this sense, he emphasizes that sound is a catalyst for images “even when the only available support is the brain” ⁵ . We are even more abruptly stimulated when dealing with sounds whose source is not visually accessible.
One of the turning points in the attention to sound as representation was experimented by John Cage in 1952 with the notorious and broadly covered piece 4’33”: a piano performance of near-music and apparent silence. In this exercise, everything around could be heard while no note from the instrument was played. One listened to oneself and the surroundings, creating mental images regarding the absence of the piano’s sound and the minute audible details perceptible for those who were more attentive.
If we want to analyze the sovereign perception assumed by sound after the advent of radio, we should listen to Pierre Schaeffer. In his Traité des objets musicaux, he distinguished ‘direct’ listening, where one sees the object producing the sound, from ‘reduced’ listening, where this source is not visible. As we had found out, the latter would create various mental images, given the fact that a sound without a visual reference triggers directly our memory and imagination. We would only see the term ‘acousmatic’ being coined as a theory in the mid-1940s, having its first publication in 1966.

Silences speak; the slightest noise – a crumpled sheet of paper, the slam of a door – and our ears seem to listen as if for the first time. Yes, things now have a language, just as the very resemblance of words suggests: image, which is language for the eye, and bruitage (sound effects), which is language for the ear. ⁶

The investigation into the concept of acousmatics has been widely explored by scholars of both sound and image, particularly in audiovisual theories at the turn of the century. While deconstructing Schaeffer’s concepts, Michel Chion ⁷ expands the understanding of acousmatics by tracing the Greek origin of the term (akousmatikoi), a reference to Pythagoras’ method of teaching through voice from behind a veil – this was a tactic designed to command attention without the visual-corporeal apparatus. Chion highlights the deceptive nature of the term, which might seem to confine itself to the ‘subjective’ perception of the listener in contrast to the ‘objective’ presence of the sound’s source. He draws attention to the fact that it is precisely due to its ‘invisible’ quality that the source of sound can interfere with its reception. Through this notion, we can infer that the territory of acousmatics is processual and relational – mediating between resonance and listening. Here, we are reminded once again to be drawn to subtleties, to the seemingly inopportune, to what is perceived in shifts of tone, in sighs and murmurs, in pauses.

The acousmatic can be understood as an agent that reinforces the material intensities of the things around us while relating them to the spectral qualities of what is missing or withheld behind the “scene” of the real. It incites a kind of psychic work oriented toward the retrieval of a certain body […]. In doing so, the acousmatic acts as a hinge, placing us between the intrinsic uncertainties of hearing and the necessary effort to navigate the ongoing drama of the visible. It educates us on how every image is shaped not only by what it reveals but also by what it conceals. Under these conditions, the acousmatic generates a form of affective knowledge that serves as the foundation for a “listening activism” – a mode of listening that can intervene in systems of visual capture. ⁸

It is through the listening perspectives of Brandon LaBelle in his Sonic Agency, the project Videoless Audio began. Understanding of sounds as capable of destabilizing vision is our starting point. How can we incite imagination by detaching sound from its source? LaBelle speaks of an “ethics beyond the face” ⁹ , where invisibility has the potential to mobilize – circumventing logic, provoking the improbable, and summoning the specter of the unknown. What are the possibilities today, with recording and manipulation tools readily available, to develop a practice that harnesses this imagistic quality of sound apparatuses? As we have said, to reorient the devices towards an active listening practice. This is an experimental audiovisual process that, despite its limitations, seeks to blur the theoretical and practical boundaries between the domains of sound and image.

Videoless Audio: a communal experiment

The first experience of this workshop took place at an image symposium held by the São Paulo State University. We are in a specific context: an academic meeting for researchers, practitioners, and professionals in the fields of communication and arts, with the main focus on visual image. It is curious how a sound practice found its way into this realm. Perhaps because we are dealing with an institution that teaches both visual art and radio, television and architecture (or petrified music ¹⁰ , as Goethe used to call), so sound gets this in-between area that is somehow linked to the work of every subject. Hence, Videoless Audio began with a discussion about some of the qualities of sound that could be extrapolated, intertwined and associated with the natures of other domains, as presented:
Temporality: as in the irreducible aspect of the sonic world. To understand the happening of sound in its arrival, presence and disappearance is also linking specific sounds to specific places and beings. Sound brings with itself a reminisce of the place where it was emanated. Sound, in its linear presence, is attached to context and culture. The temporal can be collected.
Invisibility: more than just because of the acousmatics and the force of imagination, but also to bring consciousness to the corporeality of sound. To listen to the vibrations incites attention and carefulness to the subtleties and nuances we have spoken about. To be aware of the sonic environment as a whole, in all its presences, as tiny as we can sense them. The invisible is a force.
Ephemerality: is closely tied to the notion of temporality but it also exposes another important condition. We can only listen to something that exists and is manifesting itself. So sound can dissipate, both intentional and unintentionally. This ‘right-here-right-now’ moment of listening to something that, in some cases, can be recorded and reproduced, is a journey through time and space, but it can also disappear forever. The ephemeral is an alert.
Interruptivity: because sound can cut through a situation without warning, causing reactions and linking it to other senses. “Staying with the trouble” ¹¹ , as Donna Haraway said, or to keep finding ways to make someone or something heard. We are talking about ruptures, about suspending something unwanted without warning. But also, of course, the other way around. Sound can be disturbing, imposed, brutal, unexpectedly violent. This nature is both a defense and a struggle. The interruption is an instrument.
In this sense, we are interested in conscious gestures. This was the workshop’s proposition, to leave the classroom and get back after 20 minutes with video recordings to share. The participants took their own smartphones and three provocations: listening / attention / hypothesis. To get these devices and to record videos, but being open to the intrusion of sound, realising that the images being captured are not only visual. How to incite each others’ imagination with simple yet powerful equipment? Which are the methods to create ghosts? To use the metaphors of LaBelle, we are relating “to the unseen, the non-represented or the not-yet-apparent” ¹² . That’s why we are using video, to reorient the position of our daily-use devices. To go into a hunting of images only to destabilize them through the surrounding sounds.
When everyone returned, an entire universe apart was created. As soon as the videos started to come in, I realized we were into something together – it was a first time for all of us, we were in a communal investigation. Not only the videos were recorded based on the idea of acousmatics and the poetics of sound, but they were made in a context of small groups that debated and found solutions of creation. This adds a second layer of imaginative induction, one that comes from a reverse and relational process: two or more individual subjective sound images being imagined and debated, then being recorded for others to relate and to imagine on their own. This gesture is deeply symbolic, since it creates a space for cooperation and acts towards the future – even in this case, the future being in the next 20 minutes.
We only had one computer, so the ideal practice still wasn’t possible (this included many versions being edited at the same time, where everyone would create something with each others’ videos). But yet still, we could do something quite uncanny. Without playing any of the videos, all of them were loaded into an editing software, the audio tracks were extracted and scrambled randomly. Rendered. Firstly, we heard only the audio track of all the videos and looked at each others’ faces with awe. The audio was strange, and someone mentioned that they couldn’t remember which of the sounds were their own. There were layers of sounds-in-contact that became something else – these different sounds spoke with each other. Then we watched the video. A relational moment of discovering, unveiling a work that was made together.
Video: The canopy of a tree swaying in the wind. Sound: Small objects being dragged. Video: A small plant in the corner of a wall. Sound: Static noise from some equipment; someone making a ‘pop’ sound with their mouth. Video: Small ants carrying pieces of leaves. Sound: The crackling of some metallic object, perhaps a chain, moving back and forth. Video: A white light post flickering. Sound: The wind hitting the microphone strongly, almost like a directed blow. Video: A person hitting their head against the trunk of a tree. Sound: Almost inaudible and faraway, like small stones being kicked.
LaBelle has said that “[…] the sound can slip through the fingers to elude description” ¹³ , and we tried to prove that. It was empirical, speculative, and we did it together. Different people, with different backgrounds, from different reasons to attend that symposium, all related to this same active listening method. I describe it as a “beautiful chaos”, to use Édouard Glissant’s term, which LaBelle also gets inspiration to theorize about the “pluralism inherent to life with others” ¹⁴ . The gesture of recording something is a gesture of hope, an attempt to keep something alive. And to do it in a collective context provoques a practice of both tolerance and autonomy that is in most cases undervalued for the academic moral. The great importance of aesthetics in institutional sound art is also not the foreground for this kind of activity.
We are working towards an in-between process that is methodologically tied to art in educational and participatory realms, an experimental practice of radical openness, where the efforts for the final product is not known until the end. And this final product, as an audiovisual piece, works in favour of active consciousness, to turn the ears around to hear the possibilities, transcending the representational urge to define and to be sure of all things. This radical openness we speak of is related to the group work, that like sound, is potent in its happening. It cooperates through shared waves. It belongs to a common movement. Sound is everywhere, around everything, including ourselves – a shared vibration. To imagine and to ruminate it together is to create a present consciousness towards a reoriented future.

References

Bayle, François. Musique Acousmatique. University of Michigan, 1993.
Caesar, Rodolfo. “O Som Como Imagem.” In IV Seminário Música, Ciência E Tecnologia: Fronteiras E Rupturas. Departamento de Música - ECA/USP, 2012.
Chion, Michel, and Pierre Schaeffer. Guide Des Objets Sonores: Pierre Schaeffer et La Recherche Musicale. Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1997.
Goethe, Von, Johann Peter Eckermann, Frédéric Jacob Soret, and John Oxenford. Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. London: Bell, 1913.
Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
Jussi Parikka. What Is Media Archaeology? Cambridge ; Malden: Polity Press, 2012.
Keylin, Vadim. Participatory Sound Art. Springer Nature, 2023.
Labelle, Brandon. Sonic Agency. Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. London: Goldsmith’s Press, 2018.
Schaeffer, Pierre. Traité Des Objets Musicaux: Essai Interdisciplines. Paris: Éditions Du Seuil, 1966.

Footnotes

1. Vadim Keylin, Participatory Sound Art (Springer Nature, 2023, p. 8). ↩
2. François Bayle, Musique Acousmatique (University of Michigan, 1993). ↩
3. Rodolfo Caesar, “O Som Como Imagem,” in IV Seminário Música, Ciência E Tecnologia: Fronteiras E Rupturas (Departamento de Música - ECA/USP, 2012, p. 260). ↩
4. Jussi Parikka, What Is Media Archaeology? (Cambridge ; Malden: Polity Press, 2012, p. 261). ↩
5. Rodolfo Caesar, (2012, p. 260). ↩
6. Pierre Schaeffer, Traité Des Objets Musicaux: Essai Interdisciplines (Paris: Éditions Du Seuil, 1966, p. 69). ↩
7. Michel Chion and Pierre Schaeffer, Guide Des Objets Sonores: Pierre Schaeffer et La Recherche Musicale (Paris: Buchet/Chastel, 1997). ↩
8. Brandon Labelle, Sonic Agency. Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. (London: Goldsmith’s Press, 2018, p. 64). ↩
9. Ibid, (2018, p. 37). ↩
10. Von Goethe et al., Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret (London: Bell, 1913, p.146). ↩
11. Donna J Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press, 2016). ↩
12. Brandon Labelle, Sonic Agency. Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. (London: Goldsmith’s Press, 2018, p. 12). ↩
13. Ibid. (2018, p. 20). ↩
14. Ibid. (2018, p. 6). ↩