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.

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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

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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.