no. 23 Editorial
Moodboard

ISSN · 2183-5527

Visual Essay + Author in residence

7 Portraits

7 Portraits

João Fonte Santa

VHS, 29' By João Fonte Santa, assisted by António Caramelo The video Sete Retratos was created for the exhibition Mundo de Aventuras, curated by José Alberto Ferreira, and features 7 video portraits, …

7 Portraits

B, Y, R

Visual Essay

B, Y, R

Henrique Biatto

Água Viva

Visual Essay

Água Viva

Lander Patrick, Gonçalo Marques, José Soares

Through the longest path

Visual Essay

Through the longest path

Margarida Rodrigues (MAR)

Working with mountains is easy

Article

Working with mountains is easy

Isadora Alves

Process Of Unframability

Sound Essay

Process Of Unframability

Frantz Loriot

Drowned, in the shame of light

Visual Essay

Drowned, in the shame of light

Isabela Abate & João Castro

Workbook on the adaptation of the play The Man Outside (1947)

Visual Essay

Workbook on the adaptation of the play The Man Outside (1947)

Pedro Paiva

Sightings

Visual Essay

Sightings

Francisco Novais

HALF A STEP FROM HOME

Visual Essay

HALF A STEP FROM HOME

António Olaio

Misfits

Visual Essay

Misfits

Fabrizio Matos

Out Of Here

Sound Essay

Out Of Here

Quatroconnection (Carla Santana)

Weiße Rose

Visual Essay + Author in residence

Weiße Rose

João Fonte Santa

it was just drained, drained

Sound Essay

it was just drained, drained

André Hencleeday

Lavagem

Visual Essay

Lavagem

João Jacinto

XXX

Visual Essay + Author in residence

XXX

João Fonte Santa

The hand with no specialty

Visual Essay

The hand with no specialty

Carolina Lino

Wrong Wrong n.23

Misfits

Author in residence 22.08.2021

Is silence real?

Rafael Toral

Being offline is an opportunity for a much needed space of quietude and stillness. And it seems that we carry silence within ourselves in personal ways (silence as a listening experience, that is).

Silence is usually associated with lack of sound. We have known for decades that this notion is not quite real. As John Cage recalled in his story, he heard two sounds on a sound-proof chamber: his own nervous system and his own blood circulation, he was explained after he got out. That epiphany from 1952 was groundbreaking for all music that followed and its ripples are still felt. We are always hearing sounds, silence is impossible.

I've been interested in silence for a long time, especially after i got more involved with ways of thinking about sound which are more typical of jazz musicians. I was fascinated with how musicians like Miles Davis would use silence inherently in their musical discourse and how silence around sounds determines their impact and meaning.

So, from a sound-maker's perspective, silence is a sound you don't make, or sound-making inactivity. In other words, it's a relative lack of sound, as every other sounds will continue ocurring. As one decides to be silent, the result is opening up the space to the infinity of sounds happening in that very moment. Sei Miguel, a trumpet player and a master composer, calls that remaining soundscape «a quality of silence», even if it's full of sounds.

For a listener, though, silence has a different nuance. Being true that silence is impossible, it can be discussed whether silence is something that occurs in counsciousness. Therefore, when one is asleep – or dead – one is not hearing sounds, or at least one is not aware of any sounds. Is that silence? As in the thought experiment «If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?» – it surely makes a vibrating wave, but a sound is only a sound when it's heard, so... no, i'd say. And the same must be true for silence; if you are not aware that you are not experiencing the hearing of sound, is that silence? I would say no, because you should be aware of silence for it to be real in your experience.

Leaving that aside behind, silence is then perceived as a quality of quietness. How quiet does it need to get for silence to occur? An empty church? The distant hum of a city? One's bedroom at night? It seems it's up to each of us. For silence to be «silence», it needs to meet each person's own qualifying standards for it. A listening experience that matches one's conception of silence.

The consequence of that is that silence is after all the flipside of noise, for slightly different reasons. Noise is nothing but a sound somebody doesn't want. It's a subjectively dysfunctional attribute of sound, therefore it has no real substance as a thing. Noise doesn't exist. It's interesting that silence in turn, being a hearing experience of sound that matches a subjective idea, doesn't exist either.

Aseptic synesthesia

Inês Norton & Pedro Tudela

Author in residence

OFFLINE