Issue: 2. Phenomonology

DON IDHE – Listening and Voice - phenomenologies of sound

“We “believe” that we can isolate one sense from the others; we “believe” that we “build up” or “synthesise” an object out of “sense data” or some other form of sensory atom” … But phenomenological “empiricism” inverts this understanding [and] shows as foundational that at the first level the “synthesis” is what appears. Even a rather superficial reflection on normal and ordinary ongoing experience would show that we have no conscious awareness of “processes” that gather data … the object “primitively” stands before us in all its richness and unity” (p43)


“Within my visual field there is a “centre” of the clearly and distinctly perceived that shades off into a “periphery” of “fringe” of the indistinctly perceived. (pg37)
This horizon always tends to “escape” me as I try to get at it; it “withdraws” always on the extreme fringe of the visual field” (pg 38)
Together (i) focus, and (ii) fringe, make up the totality of the visual field, the totality of explicit to implicit visual presence” (pg38)

NB in other words, vision is bounded by what can be seen, or just about seen.

In the region of sound “there is also a horizon, characterized … as a horizon of silence that “surrounds” the field of auditory presence. NOT NECESSARILY THAT WHICH CAN BE SEEN (pg 53)
“An inquiry into the auditory is also an inquiry into the invisible. Listening makes the invisible present in a way similar to the presence of the mute in vision.” (pg 51)
“Sounds are frequently thought of as anticipatory clues for ultimate visual fulfilments. The most ordinary of such occurrences are noted in locating unseen entities” (pg 54) NOISES OFF

SIDE NOTE Prof Smalley discusses ‘the wide open sonic world […] encourages imagination and imagined extrinsic connections because of the variety and ambiguity of its materials’ – actual or imagined SOURCE BONDING constructed by the listener.
SIDE NOTE 2: Colin Blakemore Professor of Neuroscience at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick and former Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council mentions in a recent lecture "The Unbearable Lightness of Seeing" that vision is largely ‘sleight-of-brain' – ‘an extraordinary conjuring trick that creates the reassuring sense of reality out of almost nothing.’
(Friday 15 February 2008; http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000000800 )

Idhe: “However, strictly copresent with the appearance is the reflective awareness of this experience as “my” experience. It is “I” who does the focussing.” (pg 39)
“As I turn to “inner” experience in the mode of the imaginary, I note that these experiences may “echo”, “mimic”, or “re-present” any “outer” experience.
“Imaginative acts … implicate the “self”. As “my” imaginings, particularly those that I presentify to myself at will, the sense of an “inner self-presence” entices the very notion of a “self”. In imagination I am able to “experience” myself.” (pg120)

IS HE TALKING ABOUT A THEATRE EXPERIENCE?

Another provocative statement:
What I am suggesting is provocative: that Sound Theatre transcends the limits of specificity that form, material, shape and subject essentially present in visual theatre