Originally ‘based on an ancient Indian fable about a group of blind men who undergo a first time encounter with an elephant,’ an experiment was conducted in a modern day scenario and aired on BBC Radio 4 in order to recreate the tale. Listening to a transcript from this radio show I felt there were a couple of similarities between the blind participants acousmatic experience and my own sonic observation as a displaced listener.
- The instinctive visualisation due to a lack of image and the excitement of having to rely on hearing, giving a different sensory perception, as if experiencing something for the first time all over again.
- The use of imagination to create individualised interpretations of what is being heard.
Sound as a prompt for visualisation can make the resulting mental image personalised, as we draw on our own life experiences and certain stereotypes. I found this freedom to individually attach our own ideas and interpretations to sound as fairly inclusive, as one feels like less of an observer and more like an active participant in the nature of whatever is heard. The resulting experience is therefore more complex as it is cued by sound but coloured with imaginative faculty.
The term ‘all radio listeners are blind’ is a poignant way of putting the visual experience of radio art across, despite its aural form. It connects us in a way that makes us feel collectively powerless to what is being heard, but all the more powerful in the ways which we are now able to perceive it. In a psychological sense radio art and its sightless format lends an opportunity to explore our own subconscious manifestations of what we hear and why we see the things we do. A gateway into the psyche.
On the other end, the soundscape of ‘Touching the environment’ really sets the scene in ways that a visual medium may not. The whistling of the birds, the crackling and swooshing of the fabric, the sound of children playing in the background among much more really immerses you in a sonic environment that brings more nuanced detail than a moving image could. The combination of music, speech, sound fx, nature and even silence can all be combined in ways that can change the context of a piece entirely.
Understanding this concept of sightlessness in radio art will be key to conveying the theme in my groups collaborative radio piece correctly. Basing our piece on ‘The Society of The Spectacle’ by Guy Debord we have a clear theme surrounding social media and its implications and the curation and arrangement of samples will be paramount in aiding the induction of emotion, insight and ensuring that concept clearly enough to avoid misinterpretation.
References
“Touching the Elephant | Rockethouse Productions Ltd.” Rockethouse.co.uk, 2015, www.rockethouse.co.uk/oldsite/elephants/. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
Wikipedia Contributors. “Touching the Elephant (Radio Programme).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Nov. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touching_the_Elephant_(radio_programme). Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.
“‘The Pictures Are Better on Radio’: A Visual Analysis of American Radio Drama from the 1920s to the 1950s.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2018, www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2017.1332189. Accessed 14 Feb. 2021.