Soundtrack, The - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2012

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Abstract

Abbas Kiarostami’s cinema has been described as a cinema of ‘evidence’ (Nancy), ‘delay and uncertainty’ (Mulvey), ‘ellipsis and omission’ (Saeed-Vafa and Rosenbaum) and “displaced allegories’ (Mottahedeh). This article suggests that by applying a new and interdisciplinary interpretation of ‘silence’ as an umbrella term, the variety of these readings will converge into a cohesive system and result in a better understanding and appreciation of the oeuvre of this Iranian auteur. The focus of this article is mainly on the auditory configurations of silence and their performative functions and possible ideological implications. One of the conclusions of this research is that in these present absences we not only ‘hear things because we cannot see everything’ (Žižek), but we are provided with a forced freedom to find and perceive experiences through silences that otherwise would be hardly imaginable. Also, in addition to the role of the audio-viewer/interpreter, silence will be regarded as the main vehicle of representing a poetic and philosophical Weltanschauung that seeks ‘to be without being’ and ‘present without showing’. This is a cinema of silence, indeed, in which silence acts as a space for (re)birth of philosophical questions (Chion, Nancy), aesthetic emphases, and ‘witnessing and passing’ as an inevitable option.

Abstract

The seminal work of Michel Chion Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen ([1992] 1994) postulates an analogous concept to point of view for sound in the cinema, what Chion refers to as the ‘point of audition’. During his brief discussion of the concept, he touches upon spatial and subjective modes through which the film-maker can clue the auditor towards discerning the origin from which a sound is intentionally perceived. He also alludes to how the auditor might recognize point of audition by the behaviour of on-screen characters towards sound events, of sound events caused by characters, and the recognition of tone and colour caused by microphone positioning or its simulation with signal processing. This article expands Chion’s postulations on how the spectator experiences point of audition, and challenges Chion’s own somewhat limiting conclusion, that point of audition is determined by camera positioning and its subsequent image. By providing closely read examples from narrative and documentary cinema, Schiffer proposes that the implied agency of body-derived sound effects, or sounds that refer to the processes of recording devices themselves, enables the spectator to render points of audition independent from the image created by the camera.

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This article explores the hermeneutic dimension of sound design by conceptualizing five affective modalities that could be understood as interpretive pre-dispositions employed when creating sound–image relationships.

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Harmony Korine, one-time enfant terrible of the American cinema, returns to infamy with the uncategorizable Trash Humpers (2009), a ‘found footage’-style, faux home-movie that documents the abhorrent acts of four sociopathic ‘elders’ in the nondescript suburbs of the American South. It is a film that has garnered attention due to its goading amateur aesthetic (the film is shot on VHS and purportedly edited on two VCRs), non-narrative approach and pro-filmic oddities, including the titular characters literally humping trash while donning lifelike geriatric masks. However, despite its arresting and oft-perplexing visual content, it is the film’s unusual treatment of the soundtrack – or more specifically, the voice – that intimates meaning beyond mere provocation. Drawing on Michel Chion’s theories of vocal disembodiment in the cinema, as well as Korine’s continued remarks on the film’s childhood origins, this article proposes that by intentionally decoupling the voice from the body and divesting it of its linguistic capabilities, Trash Humpers presents a version of vocality regressed to a pre-lingual state, before its ideological subjugation to the body through language. This, in turn, informs the childlike rendering of the trash humpers, who seem to revel in libidinal fixations of the past. By utilizing the voice as a non-verbal, autonomous entity, Trash Humpers demonstrates the voice’s capacity to incite meaning outside the image, and furthers Korine’s stature as a boundary pushing film-maker.

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This article sets out to analyse the use of pre-existing minimalist music in film and media by looking at the film documentary Man on Wire. The application of pre-existing music in film has been the subject of recent studies by Stilwell and Powrie (2006), Citron (2011) and Vincent (2011), but the focus has been more on the analysis of pre-existing Classical or pop music than minimalist or post-minimalist styles. During the 1980s and 1990s Michael Nyman’s music was frequently used in a variety of contexts by film directors such as Peter Greenaway and Michael Winterbottom, but James Marsh’s recent Oscar-winning film documentary on the extraordinary life of tightrope walker Philip Petit (which culminated in his walk across the towers of the World Trade Centre in 1974) is the first to draw exhaustively on pre-existing pieces by Nyman. This article contextualises Nyman’s music, and by extension, the minimalist genre in general, by comparing multiple functions of the same music from a variety of films, ranging from The Draughtsman’s Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts, Drowning by Numbers and The Libertine.

Abstract

Music Video and the Politics of Representation, Diane Railton and Paul Watson (2011) Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 176 pages, ISBN 978-0-7486-3323-4 (U.S. $35 paperback)

Abstract

Sinus Aestum

Ears are Dazzled, Touched by Sound

Amongst a Sea of Scratched Orient

Run it by me First

Threshold

Awakening

The Fast Runner

Trainsposition

Empirical Data

Fear is a Man’s Best Friend

Berg

Terrifying Blankness

Patah

V O Y A G E

Appassionata

Plato’s Plates

The future of music?

Lines & Spaces

There are Ghosts

100% Shredded Wheat

F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N

Abiogenesis

Pieces of Jonestown

Drip Walk

The Difference Machine

Reterocognition

Liquid Amber

Beat

Magnetic Resonance Medley

Even if we think we know things

I.will.know.you

Green Becomes Black and Blue, Smokestack

A Fish’s Tale