‘Get out of the room…’ …Get into
the head: Headphones and Acoustic Phenomenology
Charles Stankievech
Concordia University
http://www.stankievech.net/
Summary
What does a phenomenology of interiority sound like? Roland Barthes
suggests we perhaps lack this phenomenology, while Bruce Nauman seems
to touch upon a certain instinctual prohibition that runs deep in our
nervous system with his sound installation “Get out of the room.
Get out of my mind.” Listening to a legion of disembodied voices
floating in the air today from radios to ipods, from parabolic speakers
to multi-channel soundfields, where does our subjectivity begin and
end, or what is our inside and what is our outside? Negotiating a membrane
between exterior and interior, the pressing question emerges as to where
we should set the brackets of our phenomenological <epoche>.
As a temporary strategy, shall we play deaf to “Descarte’s
Error” and choose the intuitive as a starting place, shall we
set our brackets at the perimeter of our head…at the ears? Forgetting
for a moment that listening is a whole body experience and not simply
limited to the sense of hearing, what role does listening play in developing
a phenomenology of interiority? In particular, continuing the trajectory
of listening first established by the medical stethoscope, what role
do headphones play in not only shaping our acoustic perception in realtime
but also our subjectivity in the long-term. Alongside writings
of neurologists, medical manuals on auscultation, and acoustic research,
I contextualise contemporary sound art, bringing to the foreground artist’s
mediation between sound technology and culture at large, as well as
their unique techniques in acoustic spatialisation. In the 21c, Bruce
Nauman maybe crying for us to get out of his mind, but several
sound artists are wanting more and more to get into our heads.
What matters is not only what they’re saying, but how they’re
saying it.
Biography
Charles Stankievech works in the constellation of cinema, architecture
and sound art. As a multidisciplinary artist, he engages with each project
at hand in its own unique necessity, undertaking in depth research while
experimenting with appropriate materialities. Having formerly studied
and lectured on theology, literature and philosophy, he currently lives
and works in Montréal, Canada finishing an MFA in Studio Arts.
