BEN BYRNE – TREMORS
Paper, Ink, Half Wine Barrel, Water, Stones.
Just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air; so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself’.
-Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo Da Vinci was arguably the first thinker to engage in any sort of study of the nature of sound, recording the thoughts above in his notebook around 500 years ago. In fact, as Jonathan Sterne noted in his book The Audible Past, ‘prior to the nineteenth century, philosophies of sound usually considered their object through a particular, idealized instance such as speech or music’ (Sterne 2003; pp.23). According to Martin Kemp, in his book Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man, Da Vinci understood sound as ‘a series of successive ‘tremors’ rather than as linear movements of actual material. He noted that tremors from different sources crossing the same space will mingle yet remain discrete and separately discernible, as revealed by the manner in which we can simultaneously see more than one light source and distinguish more than one source of sound, just as the circular ripples from two stones thrown into water intersect yet retain their geometrical integrity’ (Kemp 2006; pp.114). It is in this way that the construct of ‘tremors’ presents us with the Aristotelian potential of sound. Giorgio Agamben explains in his book Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy, speaking of Aristotle, that ‘the potentiality that interests him is the one that belongs to someone who, for example, has knowledge of an ability. In this sense we say of the architect that he or she has the potential to build, of the poet that he or she has the potential to write poems’ and similarly, following the work of Leonardo Da Vinci and many others, we now each have the potential to bear witness to our own ‘tremors’ (Agamben 1999, pp.191).
References
Agamben, G. (1999). Potentialities: Collected Essays In Philosophy. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
Kemp, M. (2006). Leonardo Da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past. USA, Duke University Press.
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BEN BYRNE – NECESSARY PROTECTION
Noise Generator, Melamine, Directional Speaker, Audio and Speaker Cable, Amplifier, Plastic Vent, Flyscreen, Gaffa Tape, Vertical Blind Cord, Staples.
Colin McCahon was a painter who produced a phenomenal body of landscape and text painting throughout his life, almost all of which dealt with his relationship to his faith and his native New Zealand. He produced the Necessary Protection series while living at Muriwai, one of the infamous black beaches on the west coast of New Zealand’s north island. Necessary Protection was a series of progressively more abstracted paintings based on Moturoa Island, which McCahon could see from his house at Muriwai (Bloem and Browne 2002; pp.217). A small rocky outcrop that had been separated from the mainland through the action of the elements Moturoa Island is home to a colony of gannets that reside atop the island itself as well as on its landward cliff and the cliff face opposite on the mainland, the unique landscape providing the ‘necessary protection’ for the colony to survive (Bloem and Browne 2002; pp.217). Colin McCahon found Muriwai, Moturoa Island and it’s surrounds to be truly inspirational, apart from his interest in the landscape’s role in the lives of the gannets he was also concerned with the necessity to protect the environment of Muriwai itself in the face increasing pollution in the area and consumed with the rich symbolism he saw there (Bloem and Browne 2002; pp.217). Early paintings in the series depicted the mainland and outcrop as rough, black masses on a white backdrop, with smaller black markings denoting the gannets themselves and, sometimes, the ocean. The Necessary Protection series gradually became more and more abstracted, the landscape eventually simplified such that the island and its function were represented only by two black rectangles separated by solid white space.
References
Bloem, M. and Browne, M. Eds. (2002). Colin McCahon: A Question of Faith. Amsterdam, Craig Potton.
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BEN BYRNE – SELF-PORTRAIT
Ultrasound, Bracket, Lightbox, Power Cord, Tape.
In his book Noise Water Meat, Douglas Kahn recounts John Cage’s infamous experience visiting an anechoic chamber, describing how ‘he heard the ever-present sounds of his body, the low sound of his blood circulating, and the high pitch sound of his nervous system in operation’ (Kahn 2001, pp.159). It was then that the man who had introduced the totality of all sound to the western musical tradition became fascinated with the notion of always sound, an idea which he extended ‘outside the operations of his body to hear the vibrations of matter’ such that ‘sound was no longer tied to events but existed as a continuous state as it resonated from each and every atom’ (Kahn 2001, pp.159). He came to realize that ‘everything always made a sound, and everything could be heard’ (Kahn 2001, pp.159).
Building on this notion of sound as a continuous resonance through all matter, in the plateau “1730: Becoming Intense, Becoming Animal…” from their book A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari assert that ‘there is a mode of individuation very different from that of a person, subject, thing or substance. We reserve the name haecceity for it. A season, a winter, a summer, an hour, a date have a perfect individuality lacking nothing, even though this individuality is different from that of a thing or subject. They are haecceities in the sense that they consist entirely of relations of movement and rest between molecules or particles, capacities to affect and be affected (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, p.261) It is in this way that sound exists, as a haecceity it is distinct and discernible and yet resists any attempt to ontologise it.
Investigating the nature of being Rene Descartes came to the conclusion that he, as distinct from his body, ‘was a substance whose whole essence or nature resides only in thinking, and which, in order to exist, has no need of place and is not dependant on any material thing’ (Descartes 2008, pp.29). It is important, then, to realize that this spirit, as such a notion of self is often known, has no physical place of its own and instead is located conceptually in the body. Although we see ourselves as our body we locate our selves within but separate from it.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, delivering his lecture ‘Man Seen From The Outside’ in 1948, described the notion of spirit as Descartes had outlined, ‘spirit is not a thing at all, does not occupy space, is not spread over a certain extension as all things are, but on the contrary is entirely compact and indivisible – a being – the essence of which is none other than to commune with, collect and know itself’ (Merleau-Ponty 2004, pp.62). Merleau-Ponty believed that Descartes theory of spirit ‘gave rise to the concepts of pure spirit and pure matter, or things’ (Merleau-Ponty 2004, pp.62). Most importantly, however he also felt that ‘it is absolutely clear that I can only find and, so to speak, touch this absolutely pure spirit in myself. Other human beings are never pure spirit for me: I only know them through their glances, their gestures, their speech – in other words through their bodies’ (Merleau-Ponty 2004, pp.62). It is through haecceities such as sound that we experience everything around us, even our own body.
‘It is not the breaking down of borders of sound and not-sound that should fascinate us but rather the continuous constitution and transformation of the two’, stated Jonathan Sterne in the conclusion of his book The Audible Past (Sterne 2003, pp.348). Sound exists as a rhythm between milieus, as a haecceity rather than any kind of stable being. Sound is a presence and an absence, a potential that exists all around us, wherever we may situate our selves. We form sound and are formed by sound. Sound flows through our very body and constructs our place in the world.
References
Deleuze, G. and Guattari F. (1987). 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming Animal, Becoming Imperceptible… A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota: 232-309.
Descartes, R. (2008). A Discourse On The Method. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Kahn, D. (2001). Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2004). The World of Perception. New York, Routledge.
Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible Past. USA, Duke University Press.
