Photoaudience

Abstract

This research paper explores the philosophical, conceptual and technical relations that surround and support the idea of photo-audience: the hearing of light through technologically mediated sensory expansion. Key ideas are presented through examples from both philosophy and contemporary arts practice, elaborating on the ways in which sensory experience is inherently inter-modal, and becomes further enhanced through the introduction of technological mediation. The examples presented in this paper are drawn from diverse sources including the experiential philosophies of Michel Serres and William James, Michel Chion’s understanding of mediated perceptions, and the scientific philosophies of Gaston Bachelard and Gilbert Simondon. The artists discussed in relation to these theories include David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, Robin Fox, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand, Michael Vorfeld and Stephen Vitiello.

The body of work that has been developed through this candidature attempts to open up a shift in attention, expanding the edges of what is available to perception by presenting experiences and recordings of photo-audient transductions of subtle light phenomena. These include the scintillations of starlight and the tiny flashes of bioluminescent marine algae. These works bring light and sound together, correlated into events of perception that are mediated through high-resolution technologies and open up experience and understanding through transduction and transformation.