Feeling Tones

This project is an interactive sound experience, exploring the concept of Vedana, or Feeling Tones, in an attempt to recreate the autistic experience of sound, alongside the attendant challenges of non-verbal communication.

Participants are encouraged to consider the limits of, and multiple avenues for, communication within ourselves and with others; how the body responds to sound, and how our own minds intertwine internal and external experiences, such that any communication fails to capture the full experience of others, who remain fundamentally unknowable. 

During the performance, I block off my senses of sight and hearing, listening only to the sounds of my own brain, via bone conduction speakers attached to my skull, and  communicate solely through my body and its inherent stress responses.  My body can be “played” by others, using their voice to control vibration motors attached to my hands, as my stress response is detected by sensors to control the sound in the room.  Aside from the sounds my body produces, participants have no knowledge of my internal state, nor what I am listening to, so that their inputs result in unpredictable outputs.

This conversely results in a deeper understanding, bridging the gap between myself and others, by inviting them into my own internal experience of autism.

Details of Performance:

Participants use their own voice, working together with me, the artist, to control the sound in the room.

I am seated in the center of the speaker array, blindfolded and wearing ear protection. Participants speak directly into the microphone, and their voice is converted into vibrations that I can feel, via a motor on my hand.

On my other hand is a conductivity sensor, controlling the surrounding sound (a recording of an MRI machine) circling through the speakers. The pitch of this sound rises and falls based on the stress levels in my body.

I also have bone conduction speakers attached to my head,  playing through my skull.  I am listening to sounds I created using data sonification of MRI images of my own brain.  

If together we are able to achieve a state where I am fully calm, the sounds in the room will switch from the sound of the MRI machine to the sounds I am hearing via bone conduction, produced from the MRI images. Thus, participants will join me "within", and also be able to hear the sounds of my brain.