Helen’s recount of her journey to the current moment was an inspiring tale of resilience and perseverance through creative mediums in the face of serious medical calamities. By combining her research in south asian studies with experiments in corporeal acoustemology and developments in biophilic and interspecies music making she has created, what I find to be, an incredibly interesting compositional practice. In her reimagining of hospital radio through repurposed and rewired chemotherapy infusion machines, informed by her personal experience as a cancer patient, her work ‘Krankenhaus Funk And The Extrinsic Death Receptor Pathway’ fuses Indian mantras and the poetic form Ghazal with field recordings made in the hospital. These elements were treated with disintegrative sonic processes moulded after the naturally occurring process of ‘apoptosis’, whereby programmed cell death occurs in multicellular organisms and some single-celled microorganisms, further contextualising her work as a disruption of the traditional radiophonic dynamic. The end result is a listening experience that encourages emotional resonance with a patient’s experience and perspective.
What struck me as most interesting about her work was the idea of ‘sonation’, being the compositional method in which the combination of sonic elements are informed by processes and dynamics found in other fields, as I understand it. I have recently been looking into ‘sonification’ as a form of environmental sound art in order to give carbon sink data a new perceptual dimension. Sonification is the process of converting data into sound to analyze, interpret, and communicate it. I found it intriguing that sonification was only the first step in Helen’s creative endeavours, as she expressed that, as a sole tool, it was not creatively satisfying enough. As a means of perceiving and consuming data in a new way, I definitely recognise the value in sonification, and yet as a compositional process I can also see how it might feel a little shallow, leaving most of the creative task to the whims of the data at hand. Sonation, on other hand, pays tribute to context in a more conceptual way. Whether this or the other is more effective, in whichever creative purpose, I feel is ultimately down to circumstance, intention and interpretation.
As I reflect on which direction to take my upcoming portfolio work in, the interplay between these two processes have widened my creative prospects. Over the last few weeks, inspired by the laws of systems dynamics, I have thought about using non linear processes to affect audio. In this sense I have been thinking on the art of sonation, but I suppose I did not know the name for this process at the time. Perhaps I could somehow combine my ideas regarding sonification and sonation in the context of environmental sound art to increase the level of discourse formed between the listener and subject matter. I realise I am being quite vague at the moment. Solid ideas and themes are there but I am currently in the process of concentrating them and figuring out my focus, which for some reasons always happens to be quite an existential process. Aiming for process based realisations, but my brain always has other ideas. Learning to combine process with an unrelenting, and most likely ridiculous, need to understand the ‘whys’ behind my creative choices might be the way I get the better of my current creative block.
Over the first few weeks of term I’ve been overcome by a number of exciting possibilities and ideas, and in this flurry I’ve become lost to the motives that brought me here to begin with. After speaking with Milo in my last tutorial, his emphasis on using this year’s work as an opportunity to set a positive trajectory towards my long term goals have helped put my aims into perspective. Over the latter half of summer I had the privilege of working alongside a conservation team of ecologists, gardeners and rangers to create a soundscape of the ecological restoration site, Wadhurst Park. During my time here I spent an immense portion of my time going on hikes, mapping personal sound walks, listening intently, sound journalling, organising files and field recording. These habits, while gruelling, have been invaluable in honing my overall field recording practice and this is something I would like to continue to incorporate into this years endeavours. Most importantly however, this experience placed me within a team whose ecological ethos gave concrete form to my personal realisations. Being exposed to their sustainable practices, stewardship of the land and attitudes towards non-human life has been an experience I am profoundly grateful for. I think often of how to offer a similar experience to others through my creative practice.