This is a draft version of an idea I’m working on for a sound/video/performance piece.
In it I use a set of binaural microphones, and my body, as an instrument. I use the microphones backwards (i.e. facing into my ears as opposed to out of them), exploring the sounds of me touching my head as heard internally, and later in the piece the microphones become directly implicated as an instrument of sound production as I use them on the surface of my head/ears/face to make sounds.
This piece is sort of intended as a critique of the idea of binaural recording, a fascinating but flawed technology, and stereo imaging in general, both being ultimately one dimensional and only concerned with the ears, and not with the body’s other means of experiencing vibration.
Ideally I’d like this to be a live performance piece however I’m kind of terrified of the potential for these mics to produce feedback, having not yet had an opportunity to test them out with a PA system. For the moment it seem to work pretty well as video.
Apologies for my face! I’m not an actor or a model and there’s nothing staged about what my face is doing, although maybe there should be. That’s just how my face looks when I’m making sounds/playing instruments/composing.
