Aural representation systems : an investigation in cross-modal and multi-disciplinary ways of creating and experiencing sculpture through sound

Abstract

This research investigates sound as a sculptural medium, a medium that through fabricated aural representation systems, augmented by digital media has the ability to distort matter by directly intervening upon the socio-­‐cultural fabric, a man-­‐made scaffold that imparts meaning to everything within it. This research and the resulting research project challenge the idea of constructs and fabrications within the Western world in order to reconsider the notion of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’, which is for the most part a fabrication constructed in the image of social and cultural frameworks. The first construct that this research aims to dismantle is the segregation of the arts into rigid and distinct disciplines, proposing instead a unified hyper-­‐disciplinary practice with no distinction between media and modes of engaging with and producing art, through the use of a common denominator -­‐ the night sky. The research project makes use of the night sky as an interface with which to manipulate fabricated systems of representation across multiple modalities. A qualitative study was carried out to evaluate the position of various practitioners across different disciplines in relation to cross-­‐modal and interdisciplinary practice. The results that emerged from this study indicate how practitioners from different disciplines take distinctly different positions regarding the idea of a hyper-­‐disciplinary practice; a mode of practice that does not segregate artistic interventions to a particular discipline. This indicates that perhaps practitioners within the arts are not comfortable with expanding the reaches of their practice beyond their respective disciplines. There seems to be an emergent pattern which points at musicians and visual artists taking directly opposing stances. Whilst most practitioners agree to the idea of cross-­‐modality and interdisciplinarity in principle, their practice of and their views on art, together with their attachment to their respective discipline, does not reflect this.