Monday, May 30, 2011

Acoustic Ecology and Sound on Image

Reading the ecology article, I'm reminded of a scene from the film The Cove where they mentioned the sound recording of the Blue Whale sparking a mass upswing in environmental activism. I think there's a strange power to sound, even more so than with image. Perhaps it's because we have some instinctive link to the calming sound of the womb, the heartbeat, the blood flow, processing sound at a primal and urgent level. We might even connect the sound of the whale to some sense of forgotten memory. The article is incredibly poetic in terms of making the reader aware of the vast sound scape encompassing the world, and the importance of preserving the integrity of a balance between man/machine and nature. In terms of film, I think there is a great deal of practical application just based on the awareness of the potency of natural sound, and its juxtaposition and struggle against something more industrial. I think the two embody an inherent conflict that can fuel filmic productions in interesting ways. I also love how the second article, Sound on Image, drew upon sounds ability to create associations (much like how similar articles have established an associative link between two edited shots, ie Kuleshov Effect). This "added value" contributes a new tier of complexity to an already deeply layered string of image correlation. When we tap into some primal sensation through that sound we elevate films to greatness. I also love the distinction between the use of music in the second article, how a scene can take on the character of the image based progressing action, mimicking pace and tone (like fast paced action music for a car chase) or by creating a causal indifference. For the latter, I imagine the cool jazz of Elevator to the Gallows, where every criminal action takes a muted tone, as if offering commentary to the triviality of the pursuit of crime, the inevitable downfall, the emptiness of the character, like that.

In any case, those were the points I keyed in on. And that quote at the beginning of the ecology article, it's just beautiful. It makes me want to read that book. I fished up another couple quotes from the book out of curiosity:



My life and the world’s life are deeply intertwined; when I wake up one morning to find that a week-long illness has subsided and that my strength has returned, the world, when I step outside, fairly crackles with energy and activity: swallows are swooping by in vivid flight; waves of heat rise from the newly paved road smelling strongly of tar; the old red barn across the field juts into the sky at an intense angle. Likewise, when a haze descends upon the valley in which I dwell, it descends upon my awareness as well, muddling my thoughts, making my muscles yearn for sleep. The world and I reciprocate one another. The landscape as I directly experience it is hardly a determinate object; it is an ambiguous realm that responds to my emotions and calls forth feelings from me in turn.
p. 33

The animate earth – this moody terrain that we experience differently in anger and in joy, in grief and in love – is both the soil in which all our sciences are rooted and the rich humus into which their results ultimately return, whether as nutrients or as poisons. Our spontaneous experience of the world, charged with subjective, emotional, and intuitive content, remains the vital and dark ground of all our objectivity.



[For the sound in Elevator to the Gallows clip, notice how the music is impassive but the act of murder is accentuated by the hard, grating sound of the pencil sharpener and the knowledge of death is accompanied only by silence. Very interesting sound to image correlations]

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