(11/26/2013)
Olaf Hochcherz – watching
Olaf Hochherz, a fellow PhD Felow at The School of Creative Media at CityU gave a talk on his sound art research of associative fields. To put it simply, Hochherz work starts with an array of synthesizer parameters. He then ‘walks’ around this multidimensional array, trying to define sub-arrays of parameter combinations which will sound like ‘real’ sounds (he took the example of bird sounds). He then maps and interpolates transitions between the ‘good sounding’ sound parameter arrays.
I see the main difficulty in defining when a sound ‘sounds’ like something real and when not. As we have seen in abstract paintings or the Rorschach test, the association of an object of perception is often very loose, almost arbitrary and it often tells us more about ourselves or the context then about the object itself. Sound, which is generally even more abstract than visual information, proses an even greater challenge: How can we describe what we hear in terms of meaning? What is a ‘real’ or ‘good’ sound?
From more practical angle, I can understand Hochherz’ endeavor: It is a quest for an ‘artificial bird’ or more broadly ‘artificial nature’: Making a synthesizer sound like something one would not expect from a synthesizer, creating an illusion, which is (or is not) revealed at some point as such. In this way I see his endeavor close to the aims of realism in painting, with a possible extension into the sur-real: The initial aim of identifying and sculpting the sound object can be replaced by the aim of augmenting the resulting reality with additional nuances.