SonoLexic
2017-2020, Experimenta Make Sense International Triennial of Media Art
Do words have desires for themselves?
SonoLexic is an exploration of how we process the listening experience through language. Foregrounding the intimate cross-modal association of sound and words, the artwork proposes a new variant of synaesthesia – ‘ideathesia’.
A soundscape frames the space, in which a seemingly hovering voiceover, meditating on the act of listening, is delivered via an ultrasonic hyper-directional speaker. The glowing plasma tube – a proto hologram – displays liquid images of sonic visualisations and text. Sound is simultaneously seen and heard. SonoLexic seeks a language of listening, and questions the extent to which a description of sounds can stimulate sonic imagining.
An Experimenta and Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) Commission.
Concept, text, sound and video by Gail Priest.
Object design and fabrication by Thomas Burless (tomikeh).
National Tour 2017-2020
RMIT Gallery, Melbourne: 2 Oct - 11 November, 2017
The Lock-Up, Newcastle: 3 Feb – 18 Mar, 2018
UTAS - Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart: 21 Apr - 27 May, 2018
Tweed Regional Gallery And Margaret Olley Art Centre, Tweed Heads: 27 Jul - 23 Sept, 2018
Latrobe Regional Gallery, Morwell: 6 Apr- 30 Jun, 2019
Language of Listening Encounters
As part of the public program for the touring exhibition, Gail conducted as series of one-on-one interviews talking with participants about the way in which they process the sounds around them, also playing them short samples of interesting listening. The conversation attempted to find ways of creatively describing what we hear. The intention was to enhance our understanding of listening by making ourselves more conscious of how we process this through language — learning how to listen to our listening. The interviews were be recorded and a poetic condensation of each exchange was included in an evolving archive — an interactive e-publication — that explores multiple aspects of this proposed language of listening.
Language of Listening E-Publication
SonoLexic: the language of listening, is a hybrid audio-reading experience produced to compliment the art installation SonoLexic, presented as part of Experimenta Make Sense, touring Australia 2017-2020.
SonoLexic is a sound driven installation that contemplates how we process the listening experience through language. It playfully proposes a variant of synaesthesia — an intimate cross-modal association of sound and words. It poses questions as to how language plays into the way we understand and communicate the listening experience and alternately how words can generate an imagined act of listening.
The e-publication includes an adaptation of the six-part text that comprises the spoken and written elements of the SonoLexic installation augmented with sound fragments, offering both a reading and listening-reading experience.
Subsequent chapters present material gathered in interviews with interested visitors as part of the Experimenta Make Sense public engagement program. The interviews are one-on-one encounters in which participants discuss how they experience the world through the aural including responses to a range of sounds — figurative and abstract — that are also included in the book.
SonoLexic: Language of Listening iBook
Multitouch iBook vs3 including RMIT, Melbourne, The Lock Up Gallery, Newcastle & Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart
(Mac, iPhone, iPad required) - from iTunes
SonoLexic: Language of Listening PDF
Full version to date - Interactive PDF vs3
(option or alt click to download)