My thesis project explores how cinematic space can be articulated within an acoustemological framework. Resituating cinema within a sonic – rather than a visual – ontology affords a capacity for privileging sensory and sensual forms of mediation that have been for the most part subsumed by the dominance of the image. Transmissions from the Technological Sublime is an audio-visual work comprising seven audio channels (comprising six regular speakers arranged in a hexagonal array and one subwoofer) as well as a durational, large-scale, 3D animated video projection employing an extra-wide aspect ratio of 16:3.
This project draws upon an expanded notion of sound as a medium that is not only vibratory but also anamnetic, encompassing the immaterial as well as the tactile and manifesting itself as topological, temporal and subjective. It also approaches the idea of space as a site that embraces the cognitive and cultural, and that can thus be similarly apprehended as both imaginary and substantive. Building upon a broadened approach to field-recording as a central research methodology and deploying the affective and tactile capacities of sound to bring a fictional, animated environment to life, the project seeks to engender an awareness of space that is vibratory, textural and evolving, rather than merely perspectival or fixed.