Score for '​​To see the sun at midnight/ loving against time', a film by Arshad Hakim (2022)
______

This is the story of light, of its endless transformations and what they do. This is the story of an eclipse, or many eclipses – the change in/of light making us believe in the magnificent and the insignificant. 

Moving away from a heliocentric view of light, the film takes its cue from “The Stellar Rays of the Stars” by Al-Kindi and a re-reading of Iblis’s narrative by Husayn Ibn Mansur al-Hallaj— foregrounding the image and the phenomena of the eclipse. Framed within a dialogue, the film speculates the effects of light changing and marks them on the registers of the ethereal, the emotional and the theological. 

Film Conceptualised, edited and coloured by Arshad Hakim
Sound design and Composition by Suvani Suri

Audio Mix/ Master: Abhishek Mathur
Text Editor: Sarasija Subramanian
Acknowledgements: Rujuta Rao and Stuti Bhavsar

This film was made possible through the support of the Generator Cooperative Art Production Fund, 2021-22

The Stellar Rays of the Stars

A contemplation on biospheric homeostasis voiced in a speculative syntax. Drifting through excerpts from James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, H.P. Lovecraft, Caspar Henderson, and the H.W. Thesis of Cosmic Biology, we stumble upon fictional fragments of singing Cephalopods and their autopoetic interventions.

Contribution for Ignota’s platform The Mountain to mark the launch the of the title Gaia And Philosophy by Lynn Margulis And Dorion Sagan, published by Ignota books, 2023
https://ignota.org/products/gaia-and-philosophy

Entelechy or What the Octopus Potentially Unhears

Produced by sampling hypnagogic pop sounds of the early 2000s. An acoustic mosaic– a tessellation of oneiric patterns woven into sonic textures, durational tricks and auditory illusions. The echoes of the waking life make their way into the lucid (ludic) sonorous kernel of the dreamscape.

puncture the firsts of

A sonic catalogue of instances, objects, artefacts and excavations of an inaudible kind. Structures, arrangements, phenomena and utterances inhabiting fictional histories and the dissonant present have been selected, re-arranged, enumerated and vocalised to bring the inaudible into the folds of the thinkable.

Part of the project ‘On mining the ear for the nearly-but-not-quite-there’ that takes on concerns around the various modalities, registers and politics of frequency frequently associated with disquiet, the weird and the eerie. Through a series of sonic happenings, the proposition examines the limits of audition, sense and sensibility through a movement from the perceptible processes of hearing towards an ‘uncanny listening’.

The project is realised within the framework of Five Million Incidents 2019-2020 conceived by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan in collaboration with Raqs Media Collective.

--
Five Million Incidents-
http://fmi-digital.github.io

Project page/ On Mining the ear for the nearly-but-not-quite-there
https://www.goethe.de/ins/in/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=22025932

--
Source List:
https://www.notion.so/Source-List-5e86ed2d06134486ae6b0e018a9ca0f7

An Index/ On mining the ear for the nearly-but-not-quite-there

In the summer of 1997 were heard a series of sounds, unrecognizable at first and classified as strange, even monstrous. The unfounded nature of the underwater sounds, onomatopoeically named 'Bloop', captured popular imagination and stirred up a rather fantastical speculation of their likely sources. Nearly a decade later, it was concluded that this mysterious sound spectrum was "consistent with icequakes generated by large icebergs as they crack and fracture" and dip down under with a loud and resounding 'bloop'! 

Bloop is a resurgence of sound in art and design. An entry into the immenseness of the sonic space. An unpacking of sound. A hearing, as much a listening as an investigation. An inquiry into the language and limits of the acousmatic as the medium of expression. A provocation finely crafted in the material of the heard. A conversation about sound-in-itself that flows and meanders, through place and time, listening in to the silent notes and the cadences that linger long after.

Bloop is an attempt to step away from the visual and alternatively approach the design of information, interactions, media, spaces and participation, from the auditory lens. A collective tuning into a sonic practice of composing experience in time and space. Trespassing into the digital and the physical, the focus lies in exploring the plurality and contextuality of everyday sound and sonic objects. 

While we discover the art of listening to understand, reflect and respond, we wish to design to listen in to the concerns of our time, sonifying the distinct social, political, conceptual and philosophical realms of our being.

Contrary to what it ‘sounds’, this particular instance of the bloop is a deliberation, not an erronerous utterance.

bloop

Popular tracks