Researching sound in silence
Jurgen De Blonde · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2011
Aifoon is an educational arts organization that investigates sound in silence. We investigate poetic and communicative possibilities of everyday sounds. Our aim is to have people communicate about their immediate surroundings in a non-verbal way by using sounds taken from those surroundings. In our workshops, we teach people to record sounds, we teach microphone awareness, we open ears, draw sounds, and compose with these drawing, compose with sound, make a montage on a computer, and talk about the results. We avoid using music and words since these two elements are too coded. We take the results and the questions that rise from our work back to artists, researchers, and the public for further interpretation and investigation. We have taken our core philosophy as a basis for an exposition, a number of events, an ensemble, and a couple of installations in an attempt to take our educational role beyond the workshop session into the public space. This has proven successful and has often helped us to explain our ideas and outsiders to understand them.