Abstract
Buddhism has a rich visual history of ancient paintings and sculpture used to evoke spiritual and archetypal concepts. One of the key figures in Mahayana Buddhism is the celestial Buddha Amitabha, also known as the Buddha of Infinite Light. Several Buddhist texts describe the “Sukhāvatī” the land that that Amitabha inhabits. The texts not only describe the physical characteristics of this environment but also the soundscape. This paper discusses the process of transcoding an image of Amitabha into sound to create an interactive sonic environment. This process explores how choosing sounds based upon the literary description, can be a way of creating a link between an image and the literary counterpart.
Highlights
The system presented in this article is a continuation of a system developed for the project, Hearing and Feeling Memories: Connecting Image, Sound and Haptic Feedback to Create a Multisensory Experience of Photographs [1]
Harvey has used the description of the Pure Land to inspire the chosen sounds in Towards a Pure Land, such as woodwind evoking birdsong, and percussion that suggests the breeze as described in the sutra
The mapping techniques described enable an integrated audio-visual system in which the repository of digital information stored in the form of pixel data can become a way of organizing the compositional output
Summary
The system presented in this article is a continuation of a system developed for the project, Hearing and Feeling Memories: Connecting Image, Sound and Haptic Feedback to Create a Multisensory Experience of Photographs [1]. After the loss of Matthew Evans’ father in April 2019, the project investigated how mapping image to sound could be a way of linking various artefacts left of his father This included an image and audio of his father playing the guitar and the guitar itself. One of the modes of interaction developed in the previous system was providing an ability to be able to click on areas of an image and trigger a sample This enabled an exploratory and reflexive relationship with a chosen image, a concept that this article seeks to expand upon. Like many religions, has a rich symbolic tradition to represent various aspects of its doctrines and teachings This project seeks to explore how a linked audio-visual approach can create a relationship between an image and a literary counterpart. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it has not been possible to realise the work in a gallery space, a demonstration of the system that will eventually be used to create the The Sound of Sukhāvatī is presented
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