All sound is not noise
Live MintSome time ago, I came across a podcast episode with US-based sound artist Brian House, who records everyday sounds that are beyond the range of human hearing and makes them audible for us. He’d used special microphones to record the street sounds of New York City and then isolated the sounds the rats made—and when he remixed it to the frequency humans could hear, it sounded remarkably like a form of speech though the overall effect is rather disquieting. I can’t remember the larger point about coexistence he planned to make with his installation but as he took you through the process of stripping away the layers of noise from city life, it was a reminder about how much we can’t or don’t hear though we surround ourselves with sound. Our World View column is a look at a fascinating yet playful series on life inside a studio and the process of creating art, Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot, by William Kentridge, and somewhat as an antithesis, we have director Nikkhil Advani discussing the dramatisation of the 1975 book Freedom at Midnight.
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