IT’S BEEN TWO WEEKS since I got back from training with Double Edge Theatre and there’s multiple things I understand about their work differently now. I will elaborate on those on a separate post. 

What I wanted to capture today has to do with sound. I’m taking this class called Sound Studies which is about reading multiple sound theorists, becoming a sound student, and ultimately (for me) developing a more nuanced and specific vocabulary regarding work with sound. 

The first article we’ve read is called “Sonic Imaginations” and it’s the prelude to one of books that contains a somewhat historicized version of the field. 

This is perhaps my favorite part of the chapter:

“Hearing requires positionality”. You have to think about where you are so can consider what you’re hearing, and how where/who you are impact what you hear. This has profound impacts for us as makers of theatre/music/dance/visual arts. We think so much about the meaning of what we stage visually, and sound comes second. How would our work be changed if we paid as much attention and thorough construction to what/how our audiences hears what we make for them as we do for the visual?

Ultimately, the author thinks about a “sonic imagination” – which I think is both a way to think about sound and with sound. But also to be able to imagine sound? I’m not sure. I get lost.