Sonic Imagination: Body, Visual Mental Imagery, and Nomadism

Abstract

The science and technology needed to achieve the finesse of the visual mental image stimulated by a sonic experience are still in their infancy. Visual mental imagery relies on the subjective, internal experience and environment of one individual. Why, then, investigate it? The ‘inner’ first person experience in relation to the ‘outer’ sonic environment may illuminate the mechanisms involved in listening—which differ from the mechanisms of hearing. The relationship between internal bodily experiences triggered by external ones, and vice versa, forms a whole. Subjective and first-person experience, dedicated listening, embodiment, affect, site-specificity, and practice-led research into sonic arts are, in this chapter, contextualized through two works exploring the listening act in the Amazon rainforest and through EEG as applied to sound and architectural space. The investigation of an audience’s perception of visual mental imagery observes whether—and if so, which—common patterns emerge from their listening to five sonic artworks. Two artworks are inspired by, and are the result of, the outcomes of such investigation. An analysis of the experience of an artwork necessarily includes the creator and focuses not only on the ‘beholder’. Here, the experience is contextualized within a project by a nomadic lab, which transforms ideas and works according to site-specific contexts, alongside the perceptions of different cultural audiences. Such a journey stimulates questions about memory and consciousness when exploring perception in the sonic arts. It includes visual mental imagery as a first-person experience and considers cultural contexts of perception.