art and biomed, displays/exhibits
Medical soundscape
In continuation of our former post on the auditory space of contemporary medicine — listen here to sound artist John Wynne’s recordings of the medical soundscape at Harefield heart hospital, aired in BBC3’s Between the Ears slot in June.
I guess the idea of the programme was to use the medical sounds as background illustrations to the interviews with the patients in the clinic. As such they do their work well. But I would also like to see a reversal of front and backstage — that is, bringing medical sounds to the forefront, analogous to the way, for example Jacob Kirkegaard creates musical compositions out of ‘natural’ biomedical sounds.
(thanks to Gustav and Speechification for the tip)
08 Dec 2008 Thomas
Just came across this post – don’t know if anyone will read this, but…
The medical sounds were not meant to be background but to share the space with the voices which emerge from it. I hope I am doing something quite different from the way sound is normally used in documentary, both in its prominence in relation to voice but also in the way the sound materials become abstracted sometimes, hopefully leading listeners to hear the environmental sounds a bit differently when the abstraction gives way again to ‘natural’ sounds. I also made other work from this project, including 2 installations and a video with photographer Tim Wainwright. One of these installations used no voice at all, only sounds from the operating theatre:
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Flow.htm
This was shown in the Old Operating Theatre Museum in London.
The video piece ITU also contained no voice but only sounds recorded in the Intensive Treatment Unit of the transplant hospital:
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Flow.htm
I have recently written an article about sound in the ITU for a publication about immersive soundscapes soon to come from the University of Regina in Canada.
We also made a 24-channel installation with photographs and sound in which the medical sounds were given more time and space than is possible within the scope of a radio slot:
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Transplant_installation.htm?code=42
And finally, we’ve published a book and DVD from the project, with essays by a patient, an anthropologist, a medical researcher, a sound art critic, an art critic, a performance artist, a psychiatrist and a patient as well as an interview with Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, who has performed more heart transplants than any other doctor.
http://www.sensitivebrigade.com/Transplant_book.htm
Let me know if anyone reads this!
John Wynne