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blake johnston
LISTENING TO YOURSELF LISTENING
a series of metaperceptual artworks
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METAPERCEPTUAL
metaperceptual works draw the audience's attention back on to their own perception
the subjective experience and perceptual idiosyncrasies of the audience are the core artistic materials
LISTENING TO YOURSELF LISTENING
is a series of sound artworks that manifest the metaperceptual philosophy. These works seek to draw the audience's attention back on to their own perception, revealing the uniqueness of their subjective experience.
your hearing them
What does your voice sound like?
This question may seem simple, but surprisingly, it can be problematic. The reaction to hearing one’s voice played back through a recording is often of disgust or disownership; “that’s not how I sound”. However, this version of your voice is much closer to the way others hear it. The answer to the question: “what does your voice sound like?” depends on who is asked.
Your Hearing Them is a wearable technology artwork that presents the experience of someone else’s voice from their experience. The headset allows you to hear their voice as they do. The experience is deeply empathetic, as two people can converse in a way in which their subjectivities are shared.
your hearing them
your localisation exposed
Your Localisation Exposed
Your Localisation Exposed rearranges the audience’s perceptual apparatus. The headset flips the wearer’s ears, making left right, and right left. By inverting the aural field, the wearer’s perceptual system is forced into a state of conflict, as the information from their visual and aural sense becomes incongruent. The contradiction brings attention to underlying processes that often go unnoticed. Our constant mapping of objects and people in our environment is informed by our aural sense, and walking through a busy environment while wearing the inverting headset can reveal how much we normally rely on this information. Through intervening in the audience’s experience of the world, the work forces them to renegotiate their perception, and draws their attention back upon themselves.
∞/ø
∞/ø
collaboration with Mo H. Zareei
∞/ø explores provision and deprivation through multiple opposing forces: light and darkness, noise and silence, and absorption and reflection. The work creates metaperceptual experiences through dramatic perceptual contrast. Provision is created by a speaker and light unit, emitting white noise and white light into the space. The stimuli are directed towards a large panel suspended on the wall, which is divided in to two. One half of the panel reinforces the stimuli, with a mirror’s surface reflecting light and soundwaves. The other half creates deprivation though a lack of stimuli, with acoustic foam covered in black cloth absorbing sound and light.
rise.risset
destructive passages
destructive passages one & two
resonant passages one & two are investigations into the perceptual interference that is experienced while listening to two pure tones. One organisation creates constructive and destructive wave interference, causing a beating tone to be heard. The other organisation creates binaural beating, a perceptual artefact that manifests itself as a third, slowly moving tone that emmanates from within the head.
resonant apparatus
resonant apparatus
In resonant apparatus, a bespoke headset acts as an appendage of the wearer’s body, extending the listening experience by vibrating the skull. Resonant Apparatus positions the listener’s head as the site of spatial exploration, creating sounds that move around and inside the listener’s body.
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