For Sounding Materiality I made piezoelectric transducers, which were attached to different surfaces in order to make the recordings. The transducers were designed to sense audio vibrations through solid objects. Unlike normal air microphones, contact microphones are almost insensitive to air vibrations but sense only structure borne sound. They are passive and high impedance and this can cause them to sound ‘tinny’ unless used with a matching preamp. The recordings are of the sounds transmitted through different materials with the use of piezoelectric transducers and using software instruments. The recordings were then amplified and manipulated with the help of sound synthesizers.

 

The eyes work as an ordering tool: segregating according to differences and aligning references to build up meaning within the field of vision. Images are dialectical, expressing themselves against each other. They are a chain of differences however mobile. The ear, when it operates not in the service of such a visual organization, does not order things but produces its own ephemeral order. Sound can give an indication of left or right, high or low, etc. but this is not the orientation of objects and of places but of itself. Sonic listening is not dialectical, it works not on differences and similarities but hears cumulatively. It stacks things against each other indiscriminately, hearing whatever is at hand; it can do so because it operates in the dark, unseen.