Theories about sound are always creation myths. The temporal and invisible nature of sound revels in such speculations. Like an iceberg in which the submerged outsizes the seen, sound’s elements of measurable provability are overshadowed by the phenomenal qualities that elude quantification. ¶ 1
Attempts to pin down sound usually involve some allegiance to one of the three ontological positions: the perceptual, the material or the cognitive/conceptual. The origin story I am telling here may seem to start with the material, but will at times slip sideways into the sensual, while dabbling in the cognitive and conceptual. ¶ 2
I offer a constellation of ideas exploring sound’s surfaces. In particular, the focus is on acoustic mechanical sounds: those that occur when two surfaces make contact—surface friction—resulting in a mechanical pressure wave. In order for surfaces to mingle there needs to be some form of energetic force that acts upon them, so does the sound start with the surface contact, or the force? Casey O’Callaghan (2007) contends that sound starts directly after this meeting, but before the wave, declaring sound a liminal “disturbance” event. While Mark Grimshaw and Tom Garner (2015) say the sound only emerges through our percption—as our brain registers it as such. ¶ 3
I will leave the “big bang” of sound’s birth for another moment because what concerns me here is the event of first contact. Force alone cannot result in a pressure wave until it has made contact with surfaces. (In the case of air whistling through orifices, we enter the world of fluid friction and vortex shedding, where air at speed creates its own kind of surface.) The two surfaces in action push and pull the air around them, creating compressions and rarefactions that then travel outwards from the fracas. On its journey, the pressure wave meets and interacts with a range of other surfaces, responding to their material qualities with the potential to be absorbed, reflected, refracted or received. When the pressure wave meets the surfaces within the embodied ear of the receiver, the mechanical processes are mimicked, miniaturised and transduced to the neuronal. In this referral from surface to surface sound meets listening. ¶ 4
Listening needs sound, but does sound need to be listened to? Christoph Cox (2019) says no—sound has its own flow going on. Salomé Voegelin (2010) says that sound and listening are intimately entangled. Perhaps I'm just insecure, but I prefer a reciprocal relationship rather than one of unrequited desire. ¶ 5
For more on the origins of sound see theory analysis: chapter 2, “Sonaurality: Ontologies of Sound and Listening”
Cox, C. (2018). Sonic flux: Sound, art and mtaphysics. University of Chicago Press.
Grimshaw, M., & Garner, T. (2015). Sonic virtuality: Sound as emergent perception. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199392834.001.0001
O’Callaghan, C. (2007). Sound: A philosophical theory. Oxford University Press.
Voegelin, S. (2010). Listening to noise and silence: Towards a philosophy of sound art. Continuum.