WHEN THE SOUND HITS THE WALL
Adhika Ferdinand

mixed media installation, 2019

The two most powerful senses that can have varying or complete control over our experiences and feelings are the senses of hearing and sight. But how to understand the sensory relationship between sounds and visuals? 

In the present world ambient noises and voices are often disregarded in favor of visuals and imagery. Reversing the familiar process of experiencing visuals before sound as is the case with fireworks, the artist translates sounds into visuals. The device takes sounds from important historical moments and other cultural sounds that follow a rhythm and renders them as images. Made out of mundane everyday objects, it uses vibrating movements caused by the sound’s frequency in order to draw a spectrogram. The surrounding accessories reference a club or party setting. The artist investigates how certain sounds and images, individually as well as in combination, can change people’s perception and at the same time seduce them into certain behaviors in an act of pleasurable conformity.