Florian Hecker: Chimerization (2012) [EN, DE, Farsi, AAC, MP3]

Chimerization investigates human relationship to sound, spatial hearing, and psychoacoustics through processed photography created by Florian Hecker to dramatize the psychoacoustic phenomenon of the auditory chimaera. The term auditory chimaera metaphorically employs the notion of the chimaera from Greek mythology, a hybrid creature whom, according to Homer, was “of divine race, not of men, in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the middle a goat, breathing forth in terrible manner the force of blazing fire” (Iliad,6.181).

Originally developed at MIT by Bertrand Delgutte, Senior Research Scientist at the Research Laboratory of Electronics, the concept of the Auditory Chimaeras allows one to explore the relation between pitch perception and sound localization as they reveal a possible acoustic basis for the hypothesized ‘what’ and ‘where’ pathways in the auditory cortex. The concept of Chimerization takes a fresh and novel approach on the mapping and transferring of sonic qualities between different sound sources. While sound morphing has a tradition within the field of electroacoustic music, this rigorous scientific approach–the mapping and exchange of the phenomenal features of different sounds–opens the ‘phenomenological gap’ within the field of psychoacoustics while providing an intense experiential notion.

With an introduction by Chus Martínez
Publisher documenta und Museum Fridericianum, Kassel
Series: dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken No. 102
ISBN 3927015512
26 pages

review (Grayson Currin, Pitchfork)

project page
upcoming book with extended material

PDF
ZIP (PDF+AAC)
ZIP (PDF+MP3)
related: Florian Hecker: Speculative Solution (2011/2012)

Casey O’Callaghan: Sounds: A Philosophical Theory (2007)

“Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science has traditionally focused on a visual model. In a radical departure from established practice, Casey O’Callaghan provides a systematic treatment of sound and sound experience, and shows how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships between multiple sense modalities can enrich our understanding of perception and the mind.

Sounds proposes a novel theory of sounds and auditory perception. Against the widely accepted philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, O’Callaghan argues that, on any perceptually plausible account, sounds are events. But this does not imply that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one’s environment at or near the objects and happenings that bring them about. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time, and situates sounds in a world populated by items and events that have significance for us. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities.

O’Callaghan’s account of sounds and their perception discloses far greater variety among the kinds of things we perceive than traditional views acknowledge. But more importantly, investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. Sounds articulates a powerful account of echoes, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories, and also reveals a number of surprising cross-modal perceptual illusions. O’Callaghan argues that such illusions demonstrate that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that the visuocentric model for theorizing about perception – according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry – ought to be abandoned.”

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2007
ISBN 0199215928, 9780199215928
193 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-8-4)

Ursonate Fanzine, 1-2 (2010-2011) [Spanish]

Nº000

Published in public domain, 2010
62 pages

More info

Nº001

Coordinación: Jose Luis Espejo, Oscar Martín
Reseñas: Miguel Angel Tolosa
100 pages

More info

Ursonate_Fanzine surge con la única pretensión de generar un organo más de expresión, encuentro y reflexión alrededor de la comunidad involucrada en el arte sonoro, el ruido y la escena de netlabels y labels independientes.

PDF (Nº000)
PDF (Nº001)
ZIP (Nº001, sound compilation Sound of Ebb)