The Auscultative City

Anna
Dakin

The Auscultative
City

How experiments in sensory deprivation lead
me to believe that we share a subconscious
rhythmic interconnectivity.

Tutor Gareth Polmeer
Word count 9815
Royal College of Art Information Experience Design
Contents
Introduction p5.
Chapter 1
1.1 Internal Retreat p8.
1.2 Experience of Hearing p10.
1.3 Anechoic Chamber Experience p11.
1.4 Bodily Rhythm p13.
Chapter 2
2.1 Information Communication p15.
2.2 Connective Relationship to Landscape p20.
2.3 Urban Soundscape p23.
Chapter 3
3.1 Sensory Deprivation p26.
3.2 Immanence p31.
3.3 Matter, Energy, Vibration p33.
3.4 A Dream Making Machine p38.
3.5 Cymatics p42.
Conclusion p45.
Bibliography p49.
List of Illustrations p50.
2
Abstract
This dissertation will contemplate sensory connectivity within human

environments, and explore the effect of sound on the subconscious. How
has the evolution of language affected human cognition? How do
embodied rhythmic sounds affect us? How do external sounds affect us?
What effect does the urban environment have on us psychologically?

Figure 1. Diagram of the Cochlea

4

Introduction
Air and sound are much the same: we breathe
sound and listen to air.1
Sound, put simply, is a fluctuating change in the pressure of our surrounding

medium; usually air. It is not possible to become separate from this soup-
like atmosphere; we are connected through this shared medium.

Anybody who can hear is exposed to the effects of
sound all the time, even in sleep.2
In this dissertation, I will consider the importance of the ambient sensory

information that exists within our interconnected biosphere. Sound is the
sense that I will focus on, as the sonic world is one that we have no
natural means of shutting out.
Sound signals are perceived by the entire body3

We exist within a network of sonic reverberations in air. As Kenya Hara
puts it, The mind is not singular and seated within the head. It exists

1 Toop, D. (2011) Sinister resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. London: Bloomsbury USA Academic.
2 Toop, D. (2011) Sinister resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. London: Bloomsbury USA Academic.
Kindle location 868
3 Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New Press, The, p7
5
throughout the body. 4 As well as hearing sounds with our ears,
frequencies of sound can also resonate with other parts of our bodies.5
A healthy young human can hear sound from about 20Hz to 20000Hz with
their ears. The cochlea (Fig. 1), an organ inside the ear, works like a
microphone sending detailed electric signals through nerves and neurons to the
brain, where meaning is extracted from this information.
However, the sounds that we hear are not always physically present, but
conjured up internally by our imaginations, bypassing the sensory process
altogether. A significant proportion of the sounds we inhabit cannot be
located externally. Aural experience is entirely subjective, and the
intangibility of sound makes differentiating between aural hallucination and
actual sound difficult. As I will investigate, subjective hypnagogic
hallucination can also be intentionally induced by physical stimulus.
It is likely that having a constant sonic awareness was a Darwinian strength,

and that we have evolved with a subconscious awareness that sound might
carry news of danger before vision. In our manicured world, has this state of
underlying anticipation lost its usefulness? Does our constant connection to
sound leave us vulnerable?
I will write this dissertation with the sounds of social spaces in mind, but
avoid the notable topic of sound in war. Volclers Sound as A Weapon (2013)
has heavily influenced my thinking. Investment in no touch torture and
articles such as The Mind Has No Firewall by U.S. Army Lieutenant
Colonel Timothy L. Thomas illustrate the darker forces at work in this field of
sensory deprivation. In many ways this research impinges on developments in
medical understanding of the brain, as I am certain that scientific discoveries
about our minds are kept secret in order to avoid military exploitation. I will
focus on developing an understanding of the mind and the material world from
the perspective of an installation artist and experience designer, leaning
towards research by artists and scientists, notably Oliver Sachs, whose
anecdotal accounts of patient case studies in Musicophila (2008) were useful
research sources.
I would have liked also to investigate the measured effects of Eastern

meditation practices, and the well-funded research by NASA in sensory
deprivation, which was designed to help understand the effects of long
distance space travel on the human body. I have been compelled to limit the

4 Kenya Hara, Ex-formation (2015) Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, Architecture of Information Chapter,
p158
5 Organs have resonant frequencies. When the body is exposed to sound at a certain frequencies, certain parts
of the body resonate, including the eyes at around 18 Hz (NASA) this experience can cause white patches to
appear in the visual field, leading people to believe they can see ghosts.
6
scope of this work to the effect of the ordinarily encountered sonic landscape.
Although throughout this research I have been deeply disturbed by learning of

the effect of our species on other species6, I will avoid writing too much about
this. My intention is to develop an understanding of the human experience of
sound.
Throughout this dissertation I write from the perspective of a reformed

Rationalist. Mind feels personal and separate from the physical world but,
as experiments with sensory deprivation will lead me to believe, mind is
closely dependent upon the external environment in an Empirical sense. I
will refer to evidence throughout this dissertation from a range of
scholarly authorities, as well as my own anecdotal evidence. I will
consider the brain as a collective enterprise7 and the interconnectedness
of the human species.

6 For example, Navy sonar is believed to be responsible for obscenely high numbers of whale deaths. The loud
piercing frequencies cause fractures in their heads, which have evolved to collect these frequencies for
communication, and when they rise quickly to the surface for air, these fractures grow, and get infected.
Explored in Science Issue 5504 (2001): Malakoff, D. (2001) ECOLOGY: A roaring debate over ocean
noise, Science, 291(5504), pp. 576578. doi: 10.1126/science.291.5504.576.
Thankfully, as indigenous theories about Animism become more recognised by academics (notably Nicholas
Bourriard), the devastating effects of subsonic man made sounds on other species are moving into the
peripheries of collective awareness.
7 Johnson, S. (2002) Emergence: The connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software. New York: Simon &
Schuster Adult Publishing Group, p115
7

Chapter 1
1.1 Internal Retreat

Figure 2. John Cage inside the anechoic chamber
8
It can be reassuring to retreat to the psychological landscape that lies
within the walls of the skull, seemingly separated from the external world
by the veil of a body, to find solitude there, away from the immediate
physical environment. Antoine de Saint-Exupry describes various
intrepid adventures in his 1939 memoir, Wind Sand and Stars, where he
documents experiences induced by the risky profession of piloting an
early aeroplane over deserts, oceans and mountain ranges. While
stranded in the remote Egyptian desert after a crash, Exupry suffered
from exposure to the elements and physical deprivation of water and
food. He believed that he would die in the unforgiving environment, which
drove him to retreat from the surrounding world in which he was
suffering, to a place seemingly inside his own mind. This drawn out near
death experience led to a desire to retreat from his physical situation to a
psychological space.

But now I have ceased to believe in my
surroundings; I have withdrawn into myself, have
shut my eyes8

This interior space, behind closed eyes, seems to be a private place of
refuge that any of us can choose to inhabit at any time. He goes on to say:
Do not blame me if the human body cannot go three days without water. I
should never have believed that man was so truly the prisoner of the springs
and freshets.9 In a dualist sense, it can feel as if this internal place is
independent from the physical situation that our bodies are in, and time
spent within the psychological landscape is excused from the
disintegrating passage of regular time and pain of the body and its need
for sustenance But Expury knows that we empirically rely on our
environments, he found out the hard way. He says:

We believe that man is free. We never see the cord
that binds him to wells and fountains, that umbilical
cord by which he is tied to the womb of the world. Let
man take but one step too many . . . and the cord
snaps. 10

The substance of the atmosphere is an essential support system that we
have evolved immersed within, because we cannot survive without it, the
biosphere is like a womb. We are enveloped by this environment; we need
to have more respect for the shared medium that we exist within.

8 de Saint-Exupery, A. and De Saint Exupery, A. (1901) Wind, sand and stars. United States: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt P, P75
9 de Saint-Exupery, A. (1901) Wind, sand and stars. United States: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P, P75
10 de Saint-Exupery, A.(1901) Wind, sand and stars. United States: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P, p75
9
1.2 Experience of Hearing

We are constantly connected to our world by sound. The body has no
natural means of shutting it out, so the sonic world is one that we all share
submissively, and must respect. As Michael McLuhan once said: We
simply are not equipped with earlids11.

There is always something to see, something to
hear, Cage wrote in Silence. In fact, try as we might
to make a silence, we cannot. 12

Silence is a relational concept, relative to habitual noise levels. True
silence does not exist, as there are always ambient atmospheric sounds.
As I experienced myself in a sonically deprived environment expanded
upon below, even our bodies make noises. Attention is the oxygen of
information 13 , and when the external sound world is dampened,
introspective attention is heightened, and with it the perceived loudness
of embodied sounds.

Even our ears, our natural tools for hearing sounds, produce sounds, a
phenomena Danish artist Jacob Kirkegaard explores in his work Eustachia
- for 20 Voices (2016). For this work, Kiregaard recorded the sounds of
spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, which he describes as an acoustic
fingerprint. The sounds produced by the minority of people that do
produce them are unique. These mysterious sounds come from the
minute expanding and contracting of the small hairs within the cochlea.

We have an intimate relationship with sound; ears draw sounds in
through holes in our heads. Our constant connection to sound was likely a
Darwinian strength, Juliette Volcler describes the ear as an organ of
warning14 for the reason that it cannot naturally be separated from the
environment. Nevertheless, sound can prey on our vulnerabilities. We are
also exposed and submissive to whichever sounds reach our ears,
whether they help or impinge on our continued survival.

The ears only protection is an elaborate
psychological mechanism for filtering out
undesirable sound in order to concentrate on what is

11 McLuhan, M, and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Message. Penguin Books, London
12 Cage, J., Aus, A. and Jandl, E. (1995) Silence. 2nd edn. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag Gmbh. P97
13 Van de Velde, W. (2003) The World as Computer. Proceedings of the Smart Objects Conference, Grenoble, p2
14 Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New Press, The, p20
10
desirable. The eye points outwards; the ear draws
inwards.15

I became interested in separating myself from the external flow of
information. By separating myself from external sonic stimulus, I
intended to explore my proprioceptive physiological position, without the
insistent guidance of an external sound world. David Toop takes note that
The urge to escape is a complex and paradoxically inescapable component
of human nature.16 I was hoping to understand more about myself as a
single entity by separating myself from my sonic surroundings. Was this
idea of an absolute self a non-contingent rationalist ideal?

1.3 Anechoic Chamber Experience

Figure 3. James Turrell Soft Cell (1992)

As a child my brother had trouble sleeping as he used to mistake the
sound of his heartbeat for a dinosaur walking up the stairs. The sounds of
ones own body functioning can seem unfamiliar. We are not used to
being in quiet enough environments to hear them, and could go our whole
lives without understanding that the auscultative sounds that are usually

15 Murray Schafer, R. (2004) Soundscapes and Earwitnesss, in Smith, M.M. (ed.) Hearing History: A Reader.
Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, p9

16 Toop, D. (2011) Sinister resonance: The mediumship of the listener. London: Bloomsbury USA Academic,
Kindle location 4165
11
reserved for the stethoscopes of doctors, that can sometimes be heard in
those quiet moments before sleep, are our own.

In 2015 I experienced an anechoic chamber for the first time; a room
designed for almost total silence. In this extremely quiet environment, I
lay down with the lights turned off, and experienced a deprivation of
external sounds. My sonic awareness was heightened and I became
consciously aware of the sounds that my body produces. The location of
my self within my body felt more fluid than ever as I attempted to hold my
focus and explore the origins of the bodily sounds that I could hear. I
realised how otherly certain parts of my own body seemed; in that dark
and quiet landscape the gurgling of my stomach proclaimed a great
distance from the whoosh of blood which I could hear pumping around
my ears. I felt separate to the sonic phenomena that I was observing,
although the physical vessel from which I was observing, inescapably, was
producing them. I realised that I was always observing. My mind is linked
to the material world through its embodied ability to be present.

It was unnerving and temporally disorientating to sever the constant
sonic connection to my external world, even more so for my peers of
urban roots, who are used to a constant underbuzzing. cities after all
insist on the senses at the level of sound17. Experiences of the anechoic
chamber notably influenced the artistic practices of both James Turrell
and John Cage. Developments in Cages understanding of ambient sounds
popularly understood as silence have been prolifically written about, and
Turrells endeavour to recreate the psychologically destabilizing
experience of sensory deprivation in the anechoic chamber have been
expressed in immersive installations Soft Cell (1992) (Fig. 3), essentially
an anechoic chamber atop a small staircase, and later in Perception Cell
(2010), a later work from the series of immersive installations by the
same name. In Perception Cell particularly, Turrells work is realised
subjectively in the minds eye. Relatively minute scraps of sensory
information are carefully curated within the circular single-person-sized
cell. A light show fused with sound (played through headphones, which
highlights the mind as intentional space for this work to be fully realised)
intends to induce hallucination in each individual isolated experience.

Steve Goodman notes that noise is always a relational concept18. Quiet
environments for me, who grew up in the rural Northumbrian
countryside, are natural. In fact the acoustic properties of anechoic

17 Fran Tankiss, Earlids and Brainlids essay, within Davies, C. and Parrinder, M. (2009) Limited language:
Rewriting design: Responding to a feedback culture. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser Verlag AG, p224
18 Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear (Technologies of Lived Abstraction) by Steve Goodman,
Kindle location 229
12
chambers are often compared to open fields on windless days. In Spaces
Speak, are you Listening? Blesser and Salter note that The acoustics of an
open area can produce feelings of either freedom or insecurity.19 In my
experience the anechoic environment is reminiscent of the vast beauty of
rolling hills and big skies, a place that inspires feelings of freedom for me,
but might disturb people who are more familiar with urban soundscapes.

We dont have a natural means to shut out sound, For the vast majority of
human beings, there is no escaping the external sound world, even when
asleep.20 Nor do we have the ability to hush the sounds of our internal
bodily workings. Until we can separate ourselves from something, we
cannot understand the impact that the constant experience of that thing
has on us.

Perhaps the significance of being immersed in senses that are constant
throughout our existence is undermined by our inability to experience
any moment without them. We cannot analyse the impact of the
sensation of hearing from a distance because we cannot stop hearing;
even with earplugs inserted the sounds of our internal bodily functions
illuminate the sonic darkness. Perhaps this is why vision is the
dominating sense; we blink and close our eyes, we are constantly
reminded of the difference between seeing and not seeing.

We are continually repositioning the temporal context of ourselves in the
moment, and subconsciously re-calculating our proprioceptive location in
relation to this unending stream of sensory information. Attempting to
separate our dualist selves from that stream marks the division between
mind and body as rather unclear. In the anechoic chamber the usual
perceptive features do not mark ones sense of time. I found the
experience temporally disorientating, but not unpleasant. The lack of
perceived time facilitated very fluid thinking.

1.4 Bodily Rhythm

Our circadian rhythms, a 24-hour cycle driven by the rhythmic dance of
daylight and dark, guide our digestion systems and utilisation of energy.
When disrupted the parasympathetic system conserves more energy than

19 Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Barry Blesser & Linda-ruth Salter (MIT, 2009).p2
20 Angus Carlyle, Earlids & Brainlids: on thoughts and sound essay within: Davies, C. and Parrinder, M.
(2009) Limited language: Rewriting design: Responding to a feedback culture. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser
Verlag AG, P223
13
usual, presuming perhaps that there will be less engagement in the
external world, and less immediate need for energy. This rhythm relies on
external stimulation. In the Mars105 21 experiments No significant
differences were found in the length or phase of the sleep-wake periods
when participants were confined to dimly synthetically lit facilities for
105 days. Although when confined for longer periods (Mars500
experiment) participants digestive cycles did begin to fluctuate from
regular circadian patterns. The retaining of this rhythm for so long
without external stimulus could suggest a subconscious embodied
method for time keeping?

External phenomena guide bodily rhythms, but do the smaller intervals of
time embedded in the embodied rhythmic sounds of heartbeats and
breath offer up more detailed information for our subconscious temporal
orientation? Could the beat of a heart act like the ticking of a clock?

Our consciousness of bodily rhythms such as
breathing or heartbeats makes us aware of the
necessity of repetition that also marks physiological
time. Bodily cycles that have sound manifestations
punctuate biological life by expressing its formal
framework and thereby establishing a perception of
reference.22

We do not have the ability to silence the sounds of our internal bodily
workings. Until we can separate ourselves from these sounds, we can only
speculate about the psychological impact of this constant experience. As
well as being unable to stop the flow of external sonic information, our
lack of earlids commands blindness to the effect of both internal and
external rhythms on our minds.

21 Mars105 was a 105 day experiment of human confinement for the purpose of the scientific study of long
distance space travel effect on the human body.

22 Augoyard, J.-F., Torgue, H., McCartney, A. and Paquette, D. (2014) Sonic experience: A guide to everyday
sounds. United States: McGill-Queens University Press, p93
14

Chapter 2
2.1 Information Communication

Figure 4. A feedback loop illustrated by Adam Basanata
15
Mapping a trail of thought through the dark interior undulating world of
the mind is difficult. There are no signposts inside the mind, but speech
and writing and image making create an external infrastructure for
referring to specific quantified information. Spoken words help to
externalise thoughts, although they have an interesting relationship to
time, evaporating from air when spoken. When written down, words have
a more stable relationship with time; their physical marks are used as
psychological signposts.

I am a human being, addressing you, another human being, through the
medium of words. This information made physical through printing or
pixels, is no more than an arrangement of light and dark shapes,
representing a language that has emerged over time from enduring
attempts by our species to communicate something from the individual
interior world that we inhabit. As Claude Shannon, father of information
theory put it, The fundamental problem of communication is that of
reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message
selected at another point.23 The information transmitted by a physical
vessel, through a physical medium, to another physical vessel, is reliant
upon the mediation of a physical form to relay information from one
entity to another, in symbolic arrangement.

Every new medium transforms the nature of human
thought. In the long run, history is the story of
information becoming aware of itself.24

As a human being, you, like I, Im sure, find the illusion of thoughtful
autonomy utterly appealing, however, there appears to be feedback
between our ability to communicate and our ability to think. Although we
feel like individuals, self-awareness and the ability to identify that self as
an individual has been a collective evolutional enterprise. This feedback
between depth of thinking and ability to share and preserve thought
clearly marks our intellectual evolution as a collective effort.

Brains can be a collective enterprise. Being
individual organisms, were inclined to think of
brains as discrete things, possessed by individual
organisms.25

23 Gleick, J. (2011) The information: A history, a theory, a flood. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group,
P221
P12
Schuster Adult Publishing Group, P115
16
I would not be writing if it werent for thousands of generations of human
beings developing language, and tools for pausing the erosion of that
information (paper and ink rather than minute vibrations of speech on
air). The concept of our collective connectivity marks our consciousness
as inclusive of the effect of our environments, and not exclusive to the
undefined space behind the physical walls of our skulls. Our knowledge is
acquired a posteriori, through sensory information and communication.
Reading is done with the senses; our sentience a cumulative effect of the
collective history of human understanding and belief, we exist as a part of
a feedback loop between thinking and making thought physical.

The lexis is a measure of shared experience, which
comes from interconnectedness.26

Words are small abstract chunks of experience; words can be deceptive as
reality is not so easily divided, but useful for talking and thinking about
specific things. However, as Derrida explains, to give a name is to
sublimate a singularity and to inform against it, to hand it over to the
police27

The sonic world has overlapping blurred boundaries, whereas visual
information exposes edges and can be spoken about empirically. Written
words make specific shapes, reference specific things, and facilitate
shared interaction with ideas in the physical world through mark making,
writing and repeated speech. The expanse of our psychological plane has
grown over time in relation to the uniquely human ability to store and
share parts of our minds with future versions of ourselves and others.

The fossil record, combined with recently revealed
genetic evidence, suggests that human language may
have arisen between 50 and 100,000 years ago, in Africa.
Fossil skulls suggest that human brains underwent
significant change over that time period, with the size of
the cortex expanding tenfold.28

The evolution of language clearly affected our capacity to think; the brain
and body, as Keith Frankish, contemporary English philosopher, puts it
are not acting as separate interacting systems, but as a coupled system,

p81
27 Derrida, J., Leavey, J.P. and Rand, R. (1986) Glas. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p7
28 Lloyd, S. (2010) The computational universe. In Davies, P. and Gregersen, N. (Eds.) Information and the
Nature of Reality. Cambridge Univ. Press, p93
17
tightly meshed by complex feedback relations, and we need to look at the
whole in order to understand how the process unfolds.29

Figure 5. Adam Basanta A Room Listening to Itself (2015)

Sound artist Adam Basanta examines feedback loops in A Room Listening
to Itself (2015) (Fig. 5). A feedback loop occurs when the microphone that
is being amplified is close enough to the speaker playing its sound that it
re-amplifies the sound that is being played. The sound of itself gets stuck
in an infinite loop of repetition, and can get louder and louder. The same
principle can be applied to writing and thinking, as human thought is
given room to develop with writing, and the lexis expands, like a feedback
loop getting louder and louder.

Andy Clarke and David Chalmers explore ideas about psychological
feedback loops, and snowballing effects in an interesting short article The
Extended Mind. The pair propose that although there are no signposts
inside the mind, there are plenty in the exterior world, and go so far as to
say that It may be that language evolved, in part, to enable such extensions
of our cognitive resources within actively coupled systems.30

If, as we confront some task, a part of the world
functions as a process which, were it done in the head,
we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of
the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (so

29 Frankish, K. (2016) The mind isnt locked in the brain but extends far beyond it Keith Frankish | aeon
ideas, Philosophy.
30 Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. (1998) The extended mind, Analysis, 58(1), pp. 719. doi: 10.1111/1467-
8284.00096, p11, 12
18
we claim) part of the cognitive process. Cognitive
processes aint (all) in the head!31

The written word preserves the fleeting spoken word, and has made story
telling and sharing of aural information through time possible without the
presence of a body. Richard Dawkins points out in his theory of Memes;
language seems to `evolve' by non-genetic means, and at a rate which is
orders of magnitude faster than genetic evolution. 32 He goes on to say,
Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body
to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme
pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense,
can be called imitation.33 I believe that we would be less sentient were it
not for the capacity of ideas to pass between people.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine from our individual position
an existence any more or any less sentient that the one that is subjectively
presently occupied. As Thomas Nagels famous question what is it like to
be a bat? illustrates, we cannot know what it is like to be another person,
(or species, or to exist in a different location in time). It can be difficult to
appreciate the effects of sound on the mind as relational comparatives in
states of consciousness are not easy to map because we move fluidly
between states, and not from high to low in sudden jumps, and these
states are subjective.

Without writing, words as such have no visual
presence, even when the objects they represent are
visual. They are sounds. You might call them back
recall them. But there is nowhere to look for them.
They have no focus and no trace.34

I believe that our attention has been drawn away from the immediate
effects of sound on the air and towards the visual sense. Sound does not
leave a material trace and it is more difficult to empirically define the
effects of sound through history. We think about things through the
linguistic boundaries that define them, and easily overlook experiences
that there are no words for. It is more difficult to think about the things
that lie outside of linguistic boundaries, but that does not mean that their
effect is unsubstantial. Although the progression of communication

8284.00096, p2
32 Dawkins, R. (1989) Memes: The New Replicators, in The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press,
33 Dawkins, R. (1989) Memes: The New Replicators, in The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press,
34 Try to Imagine, Walter J Ong, Orality and Literacy (London, 1982), quoted in Gleick, J. (2011) The information:
A history, a theory, a flood. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, p28
19
expanded psychological possibilities, we looked away as the noise that we
impose on the world grew to a level of material affect on the brain.

The name, in effect, is the very thing [John Cages]
work aims to erase or silence, for it concretizes
definition according to a prescribed set of terms.35

2.2 Connective relationship to landscape

In the Beginning was frequency, NOT the
word! [] Everything can be expressed in
frequencies, if its sound, if its smell, if its
colour.36

Everything is frequency; you can translate even a landscape into music. On
stage at Hans Ulrich Ulbrichts 2015 Transformation Marathon, Mary
Bauermeister recounts a story; as she walked through a valley in
Germany, after a period of fasting, she was more in tune with the
landscape than usual, and describes, I suddenly heard the whole valley
singing, and it was singing in a canon. I cant sing you a canon but I can sing
you the melody of that valley. I went there a year later and it was still
there.37 She sings a distinctive melody, which takes a few of us by
surprise, and goes on to describe the distinctly different rhythm of a
valley in Africa. These sounds could be the The keynote sounds of a
landscape described by Schafer in Soundscape (1994). He explains that
these sounds are:

created by its geography and climate: water,
forest, plains, birds, insects and animals. Many of
these sounds may possess archetypal significance;
that is, they may have imprinted themselves so
deeply on the people hearing them that life without
them would be sensed as a distinct impoverishment.

35 LaBelle, B. (2006) Background noise: Perspectives on sound art. New York: Continuum International
Publishing Group, p21

36 PRO, S.G. (2016) Serpentine transformation marathon 2015: Mary Bauermeister. Available at:
https://vimeo.com/146649586 (Accessed: 1 October 2016)

37 PRO, S.G. (2016) Serpentine transformation marathon 2015: Mary Bauermeister. Available at:
https://vimeo.com/146649586 (Accessed: 1 October 2016)
20
They may even affect the behaviour or lifestyle of a
society.38

I believe that the unique rhythms and melodies Bauermeister experienced
in rural Germany and Africa are local sonic fingerprints, present in all
landscapes, including the city. The impressions of these keynote sounds
were clearly deeply embedded on my urban friends, who in the Anechoic
Chamber felt uncomfortable without them.

Bauermeister worked closely with John Cage as the Fluxis art movement
was born, where syntheses of all things was an important philosophy.
Cage famously explored these ambient sounds sometimes described as
silence in his work 433 and famously proclaimed:

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty
time. There is always something to see, something to
hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we
cannot.

Cage was fascinated by the sounds of social space, and paved the way for
the practice of detailed listening and sonic awareness. I believe that the
ambient sounds in the environments that we grow up in imprint on us,
affect the atmosphere of our subconscious minds, and times spent away
from them can be relieving or impoverishing.

From a holistic approach to understanding systems based upon the links
and interactions between the component parts and their relationship to
each other and the environment within which they exist. 39, Complexity
Theory grew.

It is not the amount of knowledge that makes a
brain. It is not even the distribution of knowledge. It
is the interconnectedness.40

Sebastian Seung, neurobiologist, investigates the importance of complex
connections between neurons in the brain. Seung explains that although
a single neuron falls far short of being intelligent or conscious, that
somehow a network of neurons is. 41 Seung believes that within the

38 Schafer, M.R. (1999) The Soundscape: Our sonic environment & the tuning of the world. Rochester, VT:
Distributed to the book trade in the United States by American International Distribution Corp, P7
39 Cham, k and Johnson, J. (2007) Complexity Theory: A Science of Cultural Systems, M/C Journal, p1
p430
41 Seung, S. (2013) Connectome: How the brains wiring makes us who we are. London, United Kingdom: Penguin
Books, p59
21
configuration of neural connections, the essence of our personalities
exists. Our neural connections are established and strengthened by the
processing of thought. Sensory experiences catalyse that thought, and so,
our environments, in part at least, are responsible for the ability of
patterns to become established within our neural Connectome.

However, as Rosi Braidotti points out; it is by far simpler to think about
the concept A or B or of B as none A, rather than the process of what goes on
in between A and B. Thinking through flows and interconnectedness
remains a difficult challenge.42 It is difficult for humans to perceive their
environments as an inseparable part of themselves, because it is difficult
to believe that we are not singular autonomous beings, in complete
control of our own experiences. We are a part of a complexly networked
biosphere.

Mirror neurons link us to the actions of others. The same parts of the
brain are active when doing a task as when observing somebody else
performing that task. Interestingly, we seem to have a disposition for
recognising the sounds created by other humans. We do not
neurologically mirror noises made by non-humans internationally,
although Im sure a lot could be said for mechanical urban noises that fool
our brains into processing them as if they were human sounds.

Some recent experiments on human subjects led
scientists to hypothesize the existence of two
different brain mechanisms processing sounds
caused by a human action (e.g., the sound of
someone walking) and non-action sounds (e.g.,
thunder) [48]. They suggested that, on one hand,
action-related sounds activate the mirror system,
together with a specific motor action program. This
system represents how the sound was made. On
the other hand, non-action sounds rely solely on the
acoustic and perceptual properties of the sound
itself, without the possibility of activating any
action-related representation.43

Braidotti, R. (2012) Nomadic theory: The portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press, p15
42
Hermann, T., Hunt, A. and Neuhoff, J.G. (eds.) (2011) The sonification handbook. Berlin: Logos Verlag Berlin
43
GmbH, P89
22
2.3 Urban Soundscape

Figure 6. A sound map of the area surrounding The Royal College of Art by DEFRA

The city is dominated by one species, our species, and our
environmentally overshadowing soundscape is, now, mostly mechanical.
We evolved in synchronisation with circadian rhythms, the same rhythms
that drive the behaviours of other species, but more and more we have
found mechanical interventions separating us from the regulating effect of
natural day/night and seasonal cycles. Although our actions are loosely
based on the circumstances of our pre-domesticated evolution, our
persistent endeavours to keep comfortable have regulated our
environment. Levels of heat and light can be curated, and this has an
effect on the soundscape, as sonic side effects pollute our shared air.

Community sound traditionally follows cyclic
patterns, but (just as at the micro level) with room
left for meaningful variation. In tribal society or the
traditional community, daily activities of each of the
members follow predictable patterns, and hence a
strong circadian rhythm can be observed in the
resulting soundscape44

With these rhythms come sounds of community activity, which may
stimulate action in others, connecting groups of human beings together,
and shaping existence. The repetitive sounds of labour at a certain time of
day might inspire others to act, public sound in shared space may catalyse

44 Truax, B., Traux, B. and Voigt, M.J. (2000a) Acoustic communication. New York, NY, United States: Ablex
Publishing Corporation,U.S., p67
23
action as the weight of fair contribution to shared society burdens the
consciences of individuals.

In terms of the human-animal interaction the
ego-saturated familiarity of the past is replaced by
the recognition of a deep bioeglitarianism,
namely, that we are in this together. The bond
between us is a vital connection based on
sharing the territory or environment on terms
that are no longer hierarchical or self evident.45

The rhythms in cities are almost exclusively human, and probably much
less complex than the rhythms that gradually evolved in synchronisation
with the rest of the landscape. Human beings have built up exclusive
spaces; we mediate the complexity around us, and direct urban attention
back in on itself. The sound of the surrounding urban environment, which
when immersed in for too long can seem to extend to the edges of reality,
are like a shared auscultation. The body of concrete that we collectively
inhabit is a sonically shared body. Hearing puts us in a submissive,
sensuous relation with the city.46

The effect of the urban soundscape on living creatures is not limited to
our species. The song of the blackbird is notably higher in pitch in London
than other parts of the UK because they try to compete with ambient
noise levels. This change in pitch might seem like a quirky spectacle, but it
unfortunately alienates urban members of the species from rural birds, as
they can no longer integrate with city flocks. For this reason, Londons
blackbird populations are in decline.

A lot of the sounds that we make in shared spaces occur with little to no
communicational intention; rather, they occur as a side effect of lacking
efficiency of objects designed with other intentions. A car, for example, is
designed to transport a person from point A to point B, but when the
transportation needs of many people reach critical mass, a distinctive
rhythm emerges and underlying drone sounds can be heard.

Drones produced by machines and industrial or
construction equipment play a role in announcing the
beginning of work for all workers. The start-up of
ventilation equipment and compressors in a factory
or of a cement mixer on a building site play a role of

45 Braidotti, R. (2012) Nomadic theory: The portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press, p85
46 Fran Tankiss, quoted in Earlids and Brainlids within: Davies, C. and Parrinder, M. (2009) Limited language:
Rewriting design: Responding to a feedback culture. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhauser Verlag AG, p223
24
sound punctuation of working rhythms, even for
people who do not directly depend on their
functioning.47

Although I might not be going to work at the building site in my
neighbourhood, the sound that it produces announces labour, and might
stimulate a belief that I, like the people on the building site, should be
working. Rhythms in the city are louder, mechanical versions of the
sounds that announce activity in tribal communities. The city is an
extension of the body, a life support system, and these urban sounds are
as much a part of the individual internal auscultative soundscapes that we
inhabit as the external and inseparable rhythms of our environments.
This mechanical soundscape has a profound effect on the subconscious.

The auscultative sounds that we can hear of our own bodies working help
us to subconsciously situate our temporal location, but the city also
envelops us in constant ambient sounds. These sounds have rhythms that
punctuate time in a similar way; there is an auscultation of the city. We
share this rhythm as an extension of our own bodily rhythms.

sounds. United States: McGill-Queens University Press, p62
25

Chapter 3
3.1 Sensory Deprivation

Figure 10. Wassily Kandinksy Transverse line (1923)
26
When sensory stimulation is diminished the amygdala, the part of the
brain that processes sensory experience, can be seen to be less active48.
Our proprioceptive awareness, the subconscious understanding of where
the edges of our bodies are, becomes more fluid.

The amygdala processes sensory information and sends signals to the
hypothalamus, which communicates with the autonomic nervous system
(ANS) (Fig. 7). The ANS controls involuntary bodily functions, such as
breathing, temperature regulation and blood pressure.

Figure 7. Autonomic Nervous System diagram by Armando Hasudungan (2016)

The adrenal glands are also linked to the ANS. Fight or flight and many
other physical reflex responses are managed by this brain region. These
rapid involuntary responses are more immediate than those of the brains

48 Justin Feinstein of the Laureate Institute of Brain Research champions this discovery, and has conducted
research about the neurological effects for people with various kinds of mental health problems, including:
Feinstein, J.S., Adolphs, R., Damasio, A. and Tranel, D. (2011) The human Amygdala and the induction and
experience of fear, Current Biology, 21(1), pp. 3438. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.042, p21, 34-38
27
more slowly processed visual centres, and happen subconsciously, linking
us to the environment without any selective psychological barrier.

The fight or flight response was useful when we
were cavemen, but is not as useful now. My phone
might ring and I would get a little drive, and
produce lots of cortisol (the stress response
hormone). Stress leads to a lot of health problems,
and I think thats where we live in the urban
environment, with the phones, the emails, traffic,
and the tube I think we are always ticking
over.49

Loud noises, associated with danger, can increase the level of cortisol in
the body, which if sustained, can cause long-term damage50. When we are
deprived of sensory information, the amygdala is less active, and the
parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) takes over. Maintaining a healthy
balance between the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the PNS is
important. Stress (cortisol) levels drop, and a state of measured calm is
experienced. In the city, loud sounds and surprising experiences are
regular occurrences, and can even be heard at night, from the comfort of
ones own bed. These experiences have the opposite effect, increasing
cortisol levels and, therefore, stress. We are attached to our environments
by sound, and so need to take care of these environments in order to take
care of ourselves, and maintain healthy bodily rhythms.

To achieve a state of mind where the brain is not constantly searching for
input can take a little meditative training. As well as needing to
understand our proprioceptive location, constant anticipation of
unforeseen sensory stimulation is a part of the 21st century subconscious.
Edward Hawley, founder and director of The Floatworks describes the
interesting state of semi-unconsciousness that can happen in the flotation
tank (Fig. 8).

Edward Hawley (founder and director of The Floatworks), 2016, Sensory Deprivation Interview
49
Publications, H.H. (2016) Understanding the stress response - Harvard health. Available at:
50
http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response (Accessed: 1 September

2016).
28

Figure 8. A flotation tank at The Floatworks

Suddenly you feel like youre in that place between
awake and asleep. You cant feel anything and you
dont really know where your body is, and you have
almost stopped breathing. That isnt normal, and
suddenly you kind of snap out of it, but if you learn to
control that moment, and recognise it and stay calm,
you can go into quite a hallucinogenic state.51

Although the noise in urban environments is an extreme, Chalmers and
Clarke point out that it may be that the biological brain has in fact evolved
and matured in ways which factor in the reliable presence of a manipulable

51 Edward Hawley (founder and director of The Floatworks), 2016, Sensory Deprivation Interview
29
external environment.52. It is no surprise that the experience of such a
deprived level of sensory input is disorientating.

When in a flotation tank, while trying to build a picture of the world
surrounding my floating body, I found that I had no definitive sensory
grounding. Muscles relieved from the usual tension of gravitational
pressure ached distantly and gently, the silky water was just about
noticeable lapping up against my skin, which was difficult to separate in
the still, skin-temperature air (the water and air temperatures are closely
matched to body temperature).

My body became an abstract concept, my proprioceptive awareness was
less clear. Sensations were isolated from each other. Without vision or
mild temperature sensation to mark the distance between my shoulder
muscle and the slow dribble of water down a segment of my leg, distance
became abstract. For a moment, a version of the Ganzfeld effect53 (Fig. 18),
took hold as my brain amplified neural noise with hallucinations making
up for the lack of sensory signals.

Wolfgang Tilmanss work sensor flaws and dead pixels (Fig. 9) for the
Greenwich Observatory demonstrates the information contained in noise;
he exposes a blank image taken by a camera with its lens cap on to the
usual processes that images of deep space from Hubble go through, and
presents the micro information that comes from the camera lens and
flaws in the cameras chip in the same way that huge distant galaxies are
presented. In this context, Tillmanss image suggests a significant amount
of information contained within an image that is actually random digital
sensory flaws and specs of dust left over from the developing process.
Like neural noise, this minimal information is translated into a false image
of a material external world.

8284.00096, P11
53 The Ganzfeld effect occurs when structured sensory stimulation is diminished. The brain hallucinates as it
tried to make sense of disordered visual and sonic noise. The Ganzfeld effect has been known for many
hundereds of years, as dark caves invoked similar hallucinations, but in the 1930s psychologist Wolfgang
Metzger established the first psychophysiological studies about the hallucinations induced by low information
phenomena.
30
Figure 9. Wolfgang Tilmans Sensor flaws and dead pixels (2015)

Without detailed sensory information in the flotation tank, it was difficult
to build an empirical mental image. What I was experiencing became
intangible. The abstract paintings of Kandinsky (Fig. 10), who attempted
to visually map sounds on canvas, came to mind as my visually deprived
brain tried to make sense of what was happening. Although the visual
sense was the most deprived and the more spatial senses of touch and
sound dominated my perception in the tank, in my minds eye was a flat
painterly image, rather than an arguably more likely spatiotopic image.
Perhaps the familiar stability of the visual sense is comforting in
situations of sensual uncertainty.

3.2 Immanence

In states of sensory deprivation, I find myself desperately searching for
information, anything will do, a distant ringing, a slight ache in my knee. I
find it difficult to escape this introspective searching for sensation.
Although the psychological landscapes I was experiencing were abstract,
31
they were based on actual information. Justin Feinstein, leading
neurologist researching the effects of flotation describes the experience:

All the signals that are coming from your internal
body, but especially the heart and the breath, are
heightened. So rather than being a form of sensory
deprivation, [floating is] actually a form of sensory
enhancement, but for the internal body.54

I believe that what I was looking for in sensory deprivation was some
kind of rationalist core that is able to exist without a connection to the
external world such as Gillise Deleuze describes in Pure Immanence.
Deleuze talks about transcendental empiricism, a qualitative duration of
consciousness without a self, he describes sensation as a break in the flow
of absolute consciousness.55

Sensation, when experienced in the flotation tank, is a distraction. The
aim is to transcend bodily distraction, but this is paradoxical. Although
many measures are taken to diffuse the boundaries of self reference built
by bodily sensation, the ability to cognitively identify as a self is
dependent on the infrastructure of a body, and inhabiting a body comes
with is own internal auscultative sense-scape. Since Darwin, and the
discovery of DNA, the empiricist belief is that what we know, including
what we know of ourselves, comes from the physical world.

Can we ever achieve states of absolute consciousness, when the
sensation of our own embodiment eternally draws us out from deep
introspective investigation?

Rosi Braidotti considers, in her book Nomadic Theory, (about
subjectivity within an interconnected biosphere) that: In music, time can
be heard. It is a pure form of time through the mediation of rhythm56, but
as Cage famously noted: Unintentional music is indeed with us available
to the ear that wishes to perceive it in all spaces and at all times.57

54 Float Conference (2016) Justin Feinstein - float conference 2016. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kACzQUO0uVo (Accessed: 1 October 2016), 14.47min

55 Deleuze, G., Rajchman, J., Boyman, A. and Boyman, translated by A. (2001) Pure immanence: Essays on a life.
2nd edn. New York: Zone Books, p25

56 Braidotti, R. (2012) Nomadic theory: The portable Rosi Braidotti. New York: Columbia University Press, P106
57 Kostelanetz, R. (ed.) (1974) John Cage (documentary monograph). London: Allen Lane, p195
32
3.3 Matter, Energy, Vibration

It is impossible for matter on our planet to simultaneously be totally still
(and therefore devoid of sonic information), and for us to be alive and
perceiving. Sound is, quite simply, a repetitive change of pressure within a
medium. The presence of our perceiving bodies creates a subtle noise.
Although most of the information bouncing around in the air is not of
conscious cognisant use to us, it has a physical affect on our bodies, which
subconsciously sends information to the brain that can be used to
constantly update the coordinates of our temporal location.

[Matter] is not just sensitive to rhythms but it exists,
in the fullest sense of the term, on the level of
rhythm.58

Everything exists within an oscillating landscape of ancient atomic and
cosmic rhythms. From the vibration of atoms filling empty space, to the
rotation of the Earth around the sun, rhythm guides us and everything
else. Light, sound and matter oscillate at measurable frequencies. Nothing
is still. Riva poetically describes these physical rhythms:

Figure 11. Patterns of the universe explored by Alexander Calder in Triple Gong (1948)

58 Bachelard, G., Jones, M.M., Chimisso, C. and McAllester, J.M. (2000) The dialectic of duration. Manchester:
Clinamen Press, p137
33
Our universe is full of patterns. Every night the stars
move in circles across the sky and the seasons cycle at
yearly intervals. Our hearts and lungs follow
rhythmical cycles whose timing is adapted to our
body's needs. Many of nature's patterns are like the
heartbeat: they take care of themselves, running in
the background. 59

Riva goes on to say we have already discovered that nature's patterns are
not just there to be admired; they are vital clues to the rules that govern
natural processes.60 These rhythms seem to weave the fabric of reality;
micro rhythms fill the empty atomic space between things, medium sized
rhythms are scattered through our daily lives, and macro rhythms impose
seasonal variations in the environment that support a useful fluctuation of
environmental energy potential. Without these differences in energy
potential, prehistoric chemical reactions could not have happened, and
we would hang in a state of zero entropy. Reality seems to happen in-
between things. It seems to be the connections, on a micro and macro
scale, that hold together the fabric of the perceived world, and the
relationships between people that create cognitive feedback loops. This
solidity of that material world is a quantum illusion. Things are not as
solid as they seem. Brains are not singular entities, but rather, millions of
combined neurons, and neurons are composed of billions of combined
atoms, held together by rhythmic forces.

No individual neuron is sentient, and yet somehow
the union of billions of neurons creates self-
awareness.61

Somewhere between the pulsating rhythms that hold the matter of our
brains together, awareness and an individual sense-of-self flickers. This
impression of being a complete individual exists amongst billions of
individual components. With EEG devices (fig. 12), the electrical pulse that
marks brain regions as active can be seen dancing is this dance the
movement of that thing that is identified as a self between brain regions?

59 Riva, G. (2006) From communication to presence: Cognition, emotion and culture towards the ultimate
communicative experience ; Festschrift in honor of Luigi Anolli. Edited by G. Riva, M. T. Anguera, and Brenda K.
Wiederhold. Amsterdam: IOS Press,US, p187
60 Riva, G. (2006) From communication to presence: Cognition, emotion and culture towards the ultimate
Wiederhold. Amsterdam: IOS Press,US, p187
Schuster Adult Publishing Group, p204
34

Figure 12. An EEG scanning device

Just as the auditory system is quick to identify a
periodicity at the micro level of the waveform, and
hence to ascribe the phenomenon of pitch sensation,
so too a perceived regularity at the macro level of
event-to-event durations is a strongly compelling
feature. Many writers have ascribed this "sense of
rhythm" to corporeal regularity found in the bodily
functions of the heartbeat, breathing, and bodily
movement of the hands and feet.62
The conditions that facilitate this sense of self are always changing. We
need a difference in circumstance for a potential of energy to exist. If
everything were at the same level all of the time, there would be no
entropy potential, and no potential for energy transfers or change.

62 Truax, B., Traux, B. and Voigt, M.J. (2000) Acoustic communication. New York, NY, United States: Ablex
Publishing Corporation,U.S, p65
35
3.4 Cymatics

Figure 13. Chlandi plate experiment and nodal lines

Cymatics began in 1778 with the Chlandi figure experiments (Fig. 13). A
granular material like salt or sugar is poured over a rigid surface, and a
bow is run over that surface, making it vibrate. The granular material
forms linear patterns revealing still parts of the vibrating plate, the nodal
lines are revealed. These patterns reveal the shapes of different sounds.

Figure 14. Patterns revealed in water placed on a speaker

The Chlandi patterns can also be seen in water (Fig. 14). Nigel Stanford,
musician, artist and experimental scientist, explores this in viral music
36
video Science vs. Music63. Stanford places a cylinder of water directly onto
a speaker to reveal its patterns, and repeats a similar experiment with a
Rubens Tube (Fig 15), where resonant frequencies of the metal tube form
high and low compression zones, revealing the shape of the sound by the
height of the flame shooting up out of the tube; higher pressure creates
taller flames.

Figure 15. Rubens Tube experiment

As our brain tissue is mostly comprised of water, one might wonder
whether or not the pulsing vibrations of sound can physiologically affect
our brains, like the water on a speaker. Could the patterns of the billions
of neurons within our developing infant brains be influenced by
underlying environmental drone sounds? Could the compression revealed
with the Ruben Tube also occur within the liquid of our brains, affecting
the density of medium, and therefore distance and speed of electric and
chemical communications between neurons?

63 Nigel John Stanford (2014) CYMATICS: Science vs. Music - Nigel Stanford. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs (Accessed: 1 October 2016)
37

3.5 A Dream Making Machine

Figure 16. Edvard Munch The Scream (1893)

Sensory deprivation can function either by
neutralizing the senses or by bombarding them.64

64 Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New Press, The, Kindle Location
1057
38
Human beings are primarily visual creatures. Differentiating between
hallucinations and genuine information is more obvious than doing the
same for sound. Abstract psychoacoustic phenomena can fuse with actual
sound events in the mind.

Commonly experienced psychoacoustic phenomena
such as the phantom effect, in which the brain builds
coherent patterns of sound from noise or very weak
and even non-existent signals, or the hypersonic
effect of inaudible high frequency signals on brain
activity, call into question the shared reality of what
we hear.65

The Lucia N03 (Fig. 17) is fundamentally a flashing light developed by
two Austrian psychologists66. The speed of the flashing is designed to
correlate with the frequencies of neural activity in certain regions of the
brain67. This inconspicuous device that could easily be mistaken for a
floor lamp, catalyzes the most vivid visual hallucinations. Amazingly, we
experience these prolonged hallucination with our eyes closed!

Figure 17. The Lucia N03

65 Toop, D. (2011) Sinister resonance: The mediumship of the listener. London: Bloomsbury USA Academic,
Kindle location 3626

66 Edgelburt Winkler ((psychologist and psychotherapist) and Dirk Proeckl (neurologist and psychologist)
invented the Lucia N03

They took the fact that the brain does not recognize a difference between imagination and real events in key
functional areas, and therefore involved external light sources in their work from the very beginning. Eventually
they managed to achieve the desired light effect using a combination of certain frequencies of pulsed light.
Available at: http://www.gesund-im-licht.at/development.html (Accessed: 28 July 2016)
67 This concept relates to the Dreamachine, an analogue version of this device, which is also viewed with the
eyes closed. A cylinder with slits in its sides is placed on a turntable while a light bulb is suspended through its
center. The light appears to flash as the turntable and cylinder spin. Artist Brion Gysin and William S.
Burroughs's, and Ian Sommerville created the first Dreamachine.
39

Sensory deprivation, in my experience, refers to an attempt at silencing
the information that enters the brain via sensation. However, a
bombardment of the senses seems to produce similar hallucinatory
effects. Why is it that this kind of sensory overload creates such similar
effects as sensory deprivation?

Repetitive sounds could feasibly produce similar effects. In 1971 the
English Intelligence Centre gave a seminar to the Royal Ulster
Constabulary about psychological attack. Methods employed include
Subjugation to noise where prisoners are exposed to continuous loud
hissing68. The continuous and monotonous noise of a volume calculated
to isolate them from communication, acted as a sensory deprivation, and
directly affect[ed] the personality physically and mentally.69

A university psychiatrist judged that three of the
detainees had become psychotic in twenty-four
hours and were suffering from symptoms ranging
from hallucination to profound apprehension and
depression.70

Repetitive sounds are present in the urban soundscape, particularly
hissing and buzzing. Things like bus engines at traffic lights and industrial
air conditioning units produce these sounds mechanically. One could
speculate that the rhythms of these noises could feasibly correlate to
brain frequencies, facilitating hallucinations in a similar way to the
flashing light of the Lucia N03. However, the hallucinations in prisoners
induced by noise exposure could also relate to the Ganzfeld effect (Fig.
18), where the brain, desperately deprived of information, searches for
recognizable patterns in the perceptive void of disordered information:
Apophenia is defined as the perception of patterns within random data71.
This insistence on seeing patterns in random data could be responsible
for the Ganzfeld effect in human brains.

68 European Court of Human Rights. Strasburg (1978), CASE OF IRELAND v. THE UNITED KINGDOM (Application
no. 5310/71), quoted in Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013b) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New
Press, The,
69 European Court of Human Rights. Strasburg (1978), CASE OF IRELAND v. THE UNITED KINGDOM (Application
no. 5310/71), quoted in Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013b) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New
Press, The,
70 McCoy, Question of Torture, p58, quoted in: Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013b) Extremely loud: Sound as a
weapon. New York: New Press, The

71 Steyerl, H. (2016) A sea of data: Apophenia and pattern (Mis-)recognition. Available at: http://www.e-
flux.com/journal/72/60480/a-sea-of-data-apophenia-and-pattern-mis-recognition/ (Accessed: 1 October

2016)
40

Figure 18. The Gansfeld effect, created for experimental purposes by taping half a Ping-Pong ball to each
eye & playing static noise

Exploiting our dependence on external information by overriding our
need for sensation with over-saturated stimulation is a technique that
might more successfully facilitate states of sensationless consciousness,
which is useful for meditation 72 but dangerous if exploited without
consent.

Seven hertz is the medium frequency of the alpha
waves of the brain, which corresponds to an absence
of any kind of intellectual work.73

When sounds are experienced at seven hertz our attention is forcefully
taken hold of. In Music as Torture Cusick describes the inhumane
practice of repeating songs as a tool for psychological torture; by forcing
one to comply against ones will, against ones interests, because there is no
way not even a retreat to interiority to escape the pain.74 Sound has the
capability to restrict access to our own mental landscapes and can force
us to engage in the present.

Oliver Sachs approaches cognitive neuroscience from a much more
altruistic position, explaining that rhythms and music can draw patients
suffering with amnesia through a flowing trail of continuous thought

72 EEG scans evidence in Lucia N03 guide reveal patterns in the brain that would usually only occur after
several years of meditation practice P5

73 Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013b) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New Press, The, p26
74 CUSICK, S.G. (2008) You are in a place that is out of the world. . .: Music in the Detention Camps of the
Global War on Terror, Journal of the Society for American Music, 2(1)
41
because the action of creating and listening to music is entirely in the
present.75 He says, when we remember a melody, it plays in our minds, it
becomes newly alive. 76 This ability to make a person present through the
medium of music was, and still is, revolutionary for the families and
patients of Sachs, facilitating engagement in the present, drawing them
from a state of seeming disconnectedness. However this forced presence
is also dangerous. As Cusik illustrates, there are people with dark
intentions who exploit research intended to enrich human experience.

3.6 Mechanical Rhythm

There is certainly a universal and unconscious
propensity to impose a rhythm even when one hears
a series of identical sounds at constant intervals.77

Rhythm binds us together and has an underlying affect on our actions.
Loud rhythms can bind together many people at the same time, as Oliver
Sachs noticed when taking a patient to a Grateful Dead concert.

A binding is accomplished by rhythm not only
heard but internalized, identically, in all who are
present. Rhythm turns listeners into participants,
makes listening active and motoric, and
synchronises the brains and minds (and, since
emotion is always intertwined with music, the
hearts) of all who participate. It is very difficult
to remain detached, to resist being drawn into the
rhythm of chanting or dancing.78

Sachs is referencing musical rhythm, but the urban rhythm of
construction and mechanisation also affect all who are within the radius
of their sonic broadcast. There are rhythms embedded in all sonic
information. In the city, the rhythm is mechanical and imposed on us by
anthropocentric technologies, and often as a side effect to the intentional
function of the design of the object. The rhythms that arise organically, in
non-mechanical environments, which for the larger part of history we

75 Sacks, O.W. (2008) Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain. London: Pan MacMillan, P212
78 Sacks, O.W. (2008) Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain. London: Pan MacMillan, P244, 245
42
evolved alongside, come from a more diverse range of trans-species
sources and the rhythms of the larger enveloping environment.

Sometimes the deafening ticks of the machine seem
to organise themselves in a waltzlike rhythm of
threes, sometimes in groups of four or five. It is as if
the brain has to impose a pattern of its own, even if
there is no objective pattern present.79

As we live our day-to-day lives we are constantly processing background
sensory information, this information generally affects only the
underlying atmosphere of a place, there is a sonic relational aesthetic. The
rhythm of the city is mechanical, imposed, and generally composed from
an exhausting stream of micro information, unintentionally added to the
ambient score of the urban soundscape as a sonic side effect of design
whose intentions were most likely unrelated to sound. We are inclined to
subconsciously search for meaning in everything, looking for patterns and
feedback loops.

If machines were to simulate human activity more
closely, their rhythms would show more variation.
However, automation proves more advantageous!
When it exceeds human limits of speed and precision,
and therefore the sounds of the machine age speed up
to the point where rhythmic events fuse into the drone
or "flat line" of continuous sound.80

These sounds are uncanny, they may relate to aspects of the organic
soundscape, but are too precise to resonate at the same level as organic
sounds. When there is variation in rhythmic pattern, our brains might try
to regulate it, but when there is no variation, our minds become slaves to
it, submissively listening and never actively computing. The loud and
obvious sounds take hold of our main attention, but subconsciously our
environments affect our emotions. Studies relating to the impact of urban
noise reveal that the soundscape can be very repressive.81

The way that we, seemingly autonomous individuals, act and perceive is
deeply linked to our environments. We are fundamentally reliant upon
the atmosphere for life support, the whole earth can be seen as one inter-

79 Sacks, O.W. (2008) Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain. London: Pan MacMillan, p243
80 Truax, B., Traux, B. and Voigt, M.J. (2000) Acoustic communication. New York, NY, United States: Ablex
Publishing Corporation,U.S, p67
81 Highfield, R. and Science (2007) Noise having huge impact on health. Available at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561091/Noise-having-huge-impact-on-health.html (Accessed: 1
October 2016).
43
connected organism, and regimes that are aware of this can take control
of large numbers of people, particularly when the people are not aware of
their lack of autonomy. We need to take control of our environments if we
are to live with a will free of political impositions.

44
Conclusion

Throughout this dissertation I have considered the extension of the mind
into the physical world, highlighting the effect that our ability to preserve
words in time with writing imposes on our thinking. I learned that our
minds are closely connected to our environments. Our senses draw us
into the space beyond the architecture of the body, to a place where
existence is shared. We might find ourselves walking to the beat of the
sounds in the street, in synchronisation with people around us.

On one side is thought, and on the other being, reality
is exactly in the centre. Not our thought, not us as a
subject, not object but whats exactly in the centre. 82

The brain is not used to being separated from the sound environment,
and will use proprioceptive information and neural noise to invent
sensory phenomena from a false external world. Our local sound worlds
imprint onto our identities, as subjective responses to sensory
deprivation experiments highlighted. Rhythms from both internal and
external soundscapes affect our ability to think, but generally external
soundscapes are dominant.

As well as considering the physiological effects of certain frequencies and
volumes of sound, the subjugation of thought and the resonate
frequencies of our bodies, I have also speculated as to the effect of the
physical properties of sound on the biological matter of our brains. Does
the vibration of sound affect the way that neurons function, and the
biological process of brain function? Perhaps future scientific experiments
will reveal this.

As explored in the Chalmers & Clarke paper, our minds are not singular
and seated within our heads. We are psychologically malleable and
vulnerable to aural experiences. Regimes that take advantage of this fact
do not always have altruistic intentions.

The CIA spent ten years and billions of dollars testing the mechanisms of
mass persuasion and the effects of coercion on individual consciousness. 83

82 CCA, Tel Aviv (2015) Nicolas Bourriaud art in the Anthropocene: Humans, objects and translations. Available
at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgBQUE-ZaY4 (Accessed: 5 August 2016), 20.40mins

83 Alfred McCoy quoted in Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013a) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New
Press, The, Kindle location 1074
45
In the 1950s and 60s Nearly every scientist on the frontiers of brain
research found men from the secret agencies looking over his shoulders,
impinging on the research.84

Before the flotation chamber was a tool for meditative recreation, early
research by Dr John C Lily, who immersed two volunteers in water-filled
tanks, their eyes covered and the sound levels reduced to a minim (Fig. 19)
in order to research the nature of consciousness, was hijacked by the CIA
who sought to use the tank as a means to interrogate reticent subjects, in
order to break them down to the point where their belief systems or
personalities could be altered..85

Our interconnectivity and inability to retreat into an internal
psychological landscape when exposed to certain sonic phenomena
highlights our vulnerabilities. The city links us together in ways that we
cannot choose to opt out of without completely separating ourselves from
society. There is a huge potential for mass emotional and psychological
control within the ambient soundscape and, worryingly, people in power
are aware of this.

I discussed the prevalence of mechanical rhythm within the city, and the
way that certain sounds insistently take hold of our awareness. The
psychological effect of an imagined internal rhythm on motivating action
in the physical world is described by the already heavily referenced Oliver
Sachs, who broke his leg on a very remote mountain.

Before [the rhythm had entered my mind] I had
muscled myself along; now, with the beat, I was
musicked along. Without this synchronisation of music
and movement, the auditory with the motor, I could
never have made my way down the mountain.86

I believe that this landscape would have been very quiet. Sachs was
utterly dependant upon an imagined internal rhythm for physical
survival. I believe that this cognitive relationship works in two ways; as
well as having the potential to motivate action, rhythms that are not easy
to synchronise movement to, rhythms which are too fast or too slow, or
overlaid clashing rhythms could be a hindrance in this situation. As
discussed, our bodies have reliable rhythms that divide time into

84 Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013b) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New Press, The, Kindle location
1089
85 Volcler, J. and Volk, C. (2013b) Extremely loud: Sound as a weapon. New York: New Press, The, Kindle location
1117, quoted Marks, Search, p152

86 P233-234, Musicophila, Oliver Sachs
46
manageable segments. Faster and slower paced mechanical rhythms
found in the spontaneous soundscape of the city could displace this
biological relationship to time, and as the Lucia N03 hypnagogic light
experience led me to consider, possibly even correlate with frequencies of
the brain and induce hallucination.

An aural architect can create a space that
encourages or discourages social cohesion among
its inhabitants.87

Rather than simply masking the effects of mechanical noise which are
similar to military torture, and not fit for the context of the city, with
sounds designed to create an atmosphere that is considered more
comfortable or more suited to encouraging consumption88, aural architects
exploit the uplifting effects of collective social space. Aural architects
could design background sounds that encourage a more productive and
enjoyable environment.

If professionals are designing for this peripheral space, then what of our
own personalities and interior selves remains individual? Do the aural
architects of public space have custody of a part of our minds?

87 Blesser, B. and Salter, L.-R. (2014) Spaces speak, are you Listenting? Experiencing aural architecture.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (MA), p5

sounds. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, p62

47

Figure 19. John C Lily helps his wife into an isolation chamber
48
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ak0.pinimg.com/originals/1b/22/d9/1b22d90ca889a9accd47e1c592a1f237.jpg (Accessed: 4 October 2016)
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Nigel Stanford. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs (Accessed: 1 October 2016)
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September 2016).
Fig. 18 The Gansfeld effect
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September 2016).
50

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1.1 Internal Retreat p8.

1.2 Experience of Hearing p10.

1.3 Anechoic Chamber Experience p11.

1.4 Bodily Rhythm p13.

2.1 Information Communication p15.

2.2 Connective Relationship to Landscape p20.

2.3 Urban Soundscape p23.

3.1 Sensory Deprivation p26.

3.2 Immanence p31.

3.3 Matter, Energy, Vibration p33.

3.4 A Dream Making Machine p38.

3.5 Cymatics p42.

List of Illustrations p50.

This dissertation will contemplate sensory connectivity within human

Sound, put simply, is a fluctuating change in the pressure of our surrounding

In this dissertation, I will consider the importance of the ambient sensory

Sound signals are perceived by the entire body3

It is likely that having a constant sonic awareness was a Darwinian strength,

I would have liked also to investigate the measured effects of Eastern

Although throughout this research I have been deeply disturbed by learning of

Throughout this dissertation I write from the perspective of a reformed

Schuster Adult Publishing Group, p115

Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, p9

Kindle location 4165

Kindle location 229

distance space travel effect on the human body.

sounds. United States: McGill-Queens University Press, p93

Schuster Adult Publishing Group, P115

Nature of Reality. Cambridge Univ. Press, p93

Publishing Group, p21

https://vimeo.com/146649586 (Accessed: 1 October 2016)

https://vimeo.com/146649586 (Accessed: 1 October 2016)

Publishing Corporation,U.S., p67

sounds. United States: McGill-Queens University Press, p62

http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response (Accessed: 1 September

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kACzQUO0uVo (Accessed: 1 October 2016), 14.47min

2nd edn. New York: Zone Books, p25

Clinamen Press, p137

Schuster Adult Publishing Group, p204

Publishing Corporation,U.S, p65

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3oItpVa9fs (Accessed: 1 October 2016)

Figure 16. Edvard Munch The Scream (1893)

Kindle location 3626

invented the Lucia N03

weapon. New York: New Press, The

flux.com/journal/72/60480/a-sea-of-data-apophenia-and-pattern-mis-recognition/ (Accessed: 1 October

several years of meditation practice P5

at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgBQUE-ZaY4 (Accessed: 5 August 2016), 20.40mins

Press, The, Kindle location 1074

1117, quoted Marks, Search, p152

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (MA), p5

sounds. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, p62

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