The Shape of Sound

My studio work imagines the experiences of non-human animals and finds ways for humans to approximate them or imagine forms of entwinement between species. Sound-sculpture has been at the centre of my practice-based research at York University over the past five years. I have used this medium to consider what an expanded range of human senses might be if we move beyond the five that Western culture typically acknowledges. Sound can bend and bounce, it can penetrate and vibrate through bodies, it can move objects – and yet hearing and touching are often thought of as separate. Imagining the sensory experiences of the non-human world is one way of thinking-with other species. The culmination of my research is The Shape of Sound, an exhibition and written dissertation.

It is the in-between spaces – and the potential for shifts in behaviour because of proximity to another – that inspire me to imagine alternate ways of thinking about the world. The richness of liminal spaces has influenced my studio projects and I have consciously approached my written research with these proximal influences in mind. I have used the craft of twining – the hands-on process of twisting and wrapping together two or more strands to make a cord – as a structure for this paper. While the chapters have themes, they are entangled with one another. They shift, transform, and reemerge.

Collaborative methodologies are part of my studio practice and have the potential to be transformative relationships. They are dialogues that can shift ways of thinking and generate outcomes beyond what would be created by an individual. To extend this approach to my writing and broaden the discussion of the male-dominated field of sound art, I have conducted conversational interviews with women artists who maintain multi-disciplinary practices that use both sound and object. Excerpts from the interviews are woven throughout the text, adding a polyphonic voice to the dissertation.

Ecopoetics is another strand of The Shape of Sound text. Poems are included as a counterpoint to prose. Ecopoetry contends with the human-nature entanglement while acknowledging the current climate crisis; qualities that are reflected in my studio practice.