The Listening Canvas

The Listening Canvas LUCIANA PERC, University of Portsmouth, UK Additional Key Words and Phrases: tactility, found objects, interactive sound, organic-synthetic matter ACM Reference Format: 1 PROGRAM NOTES The Listening Canvas is an interactive sound installation that invites audiences to discover the sounds of found objects by way of engaging in tactile interactions with organic (grains, leaves, stems) and synthetic (plastics, cardboard, fabric) matter within an open canvas. By exploring the sounds created with both vegetal and synthetic matter, audiences are called to participate in reconfiguring our understanding of and connections with the world that surrounds us challenging binary conceptions of nature and culture towards a new sound ecology. Fig. 1. Previous installation work: Brève Anti-histoire des Sons Trouvés 2 PROJECT DESCRIPTION The Listening Canvas is an interactive sound installation that invites audiences to discover the sounds of found objects by way of engaging in tactile interactions with organic (grains, leaves, stems) and synthetic (plastics, cardboard, fabric) matter within an open canvas. This sound installation displays a canvas made of multiple synthetic materials surrounded by hanging found objects. Audiences are invited to produce sounds by touching the surface of the canvas with their hands or with leaves and other vegetal materials provided. This tactile interaction is captured by contact microphones placed on the verso of the canvas. The sounds are modified and diffused in real time through two transducers attached to hanging found objects used as resonators, such as a frying pan and a watering can. The installation enables a two-sided experience in which listening and sound-making are equally encouraged. The aim of this artwork is to engage wide audiences, including adults and children, in experimental sound-making and active listening practices. They would be offered the opportunity to actively participate by way of touching art Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Copyright remains with the author(s). Luciana Perc. 2024. The Listening Canvas. 1, 1 (September 2024), 3 pages. Music Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression NIME’24, 4–6 September, 2024, Utrecht, The Netherlands 2 Luciana Perc objects in display, which is traditionally forbidden in exhibition spaces. The organic and synthetic matter used to produce sounds within the canvas’ surface is explored sonically in a way that fosters different modes of listening, disrupting the way in which meaning is typically constructed around nature and culture to explore an ecofeminist configuration. The work embraces a found object approach towards the discovery of and the interaction with found sounds. This can also be described as a form of concrete music in real time, as the audience can visually identify the sound sources of the electroacoustic sounds they are listening to and can use those sound sources to create sonic landscapes themselves. The aim is to enable a participatory creative experience in a meaningful sense, exploring the installation as a fun and engaging device, a sort of surrealist hearing artefact used to produce sound with one end and to listen with the other. This work draws connections with Leonora Carrington’s surrealist novel The Hearing Trumpet as well as with Donna Haraway’s new materialist philosophy. In Carrington’s novel, an elderly woman is given a hearing trumpet to be able to communicate with those around her, which is presented as an initiation device within a surrealist found object approach, while listening is presented as a transformative action. Upon being able to listen to, gather and plot with others, elderly people commonly underestimated in our society achieve an ecofeminist utopian ecology that entails new fairer forms of coexistence among humans and other species [ 1 ]. By exploring the sounds created with both vegetal and synthetic matter, audiences are invited to participate in reconfiguring our understanding of and connections with the world that surrounds us challenging binary conceptions of nature and culture towards a new sound ecology. This philosophical exercise also relates to Haraway’s concept of companion species, a new materialist framework for understanding relationships of co-constitution between human and non-human animals [2]. This interactive sound installation explores sound display though transducers placed on resonating found objects and thus engages with David Tudors’s sound installation Rainforest IV [ 3 ], which introduced this technique creating sculptural speakers. This paradigmatic sound art piece has been attracting audiences’ curiosity and playfulness throughout decades and its title suggests an agential exploration of static objects navigating their sonic properties across the exhibition space as if they were the specific flora of an imaginary, surrealist rainforest. 3 SPACE REQUIREMENTS This work would benefit from a quiet space to be able to fully appreciate the subtle nuances of the sounds produced on the canvas. A quiet space would also be more inviting for audiences to engage in sonic and tactile interactions. This may be in a gallery space or within the university. This installation could create connections between adjacent rooms or spaces within the exhibition, placing the canvas (capturing sound) at a distance from the resonating found objects (amplifying transducers) to enable sonic communication between distant visitors exploring the exhibition. This would encourage audiences to walk through different locations to either only listen to the sounds made by others or participate in creating sounds. 4 MEDIA LINKS •Video Recording of previous work exploring organic and synthetic matter: https://youtu.be/MniGxbFSxHQ 5 LOGISTICAL REQUIREMENTS The canvas needs to be hanged on the wall, for which hammer and nails are required as well as for hanging the resonating found objects. A table or baskets will be needed to place the vegetable materials for the audience to make sound with. These materials will be sourced locally. The Listening Canvas 3 Fig. 2. The Listening Canvas – Visual Reference 6 FEASIBILITY I created and exhibited my interactive sound installation Brève Anti-histoire des Sons Trouvés at Cité des Arts Paris, which contained certain elements of this installation and thus serves as visual documentation of previous work in this proposal. I have also explored making sound with vegetal and mineral matter in my work Landslide (2023) for Line Upon Line percussion. This chamber piece explores sound-making gestures performed with vegetal and mineral matter on traditional percussion instruments. Engaging with ecofeminist notions of hope, this work poetically explores the dynamics of human displacement in the context of the Anthropocene. Through embodied gestures and live electronics processes, the sonic textures of vegetal and mineral elements are combined with the timbre of different drums to create new sounds, interrogating the boundaries between human and nature, as well as between matter and meaning. The video recording of this work is included above as audio-visual documentation of previous work. 7 EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS The equipment needed for this installation consists of: Piezo contact microphones, an audio interface, two transducers with a class D amplifier, resonating found objects, a canvas frame, a canvas surface made of plastic, fabric, and cardboard, and vegetal elements sourced locally. To engage with ecological sustainability, I challenged myself to create this installation entirely with resources that were either found or gifted to me. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author would like to thank Cité des Arts Paris for hosting the exhibition of the installation Brève Anti-histoire des Sons Trouvés, which contained certain elements of this proposal and thus serves as visual documentation of previous work. ETHICAL STANDARDS For conducting this piece of practice-based research, principles of ethical and professional conduct will be followed in accordance with the University of Portsmouth’s Ethics Standards, Protocols, and Processes. If the exhibition of the proposed installation was to be recorded for promotional, documenting and research purposes, audiences will be informed in writing so that their participation is consensual. REFERENCES [1] Leonora Carrington. 1976. The Hearing Trumpet. Penguin Books, London, UK. [2] Donna Haraway. 2016. Manifestly Haraway. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. [3] David Tudor. 1973. Rainforest IV. University of Minnesota Press, New Hampshire, US.