Beyond the found object
Mining | Meaning | Memory
The Shoreswood Archives
Sounds | Familiar
When one brings to mind the objects that form a fundamental part of our daily lives, the instinctive impulse is to picture those tangible visual objects, keys, utensils, furniture etc. However just as we can become defined by the mundane objects that underpin our routines and our existence, so too do every day sounds inhabit our sense of self. It can become easy to tune out the background noises —the ticking clocks, the whirring of washing machines, the murmur of pipes—but it is within the unique combination of these keynote sounds that we distinguish, however subconsciously, our personal sonic landscapes. Whilst these sounds generally exist unnoticed, they would become conspicuous in their absence. At first these sounds may not feel significant or tangible enough to be considered as 'objects' in the same way as the physical things we interact with daily. Our instinct is to associate objects with solidity, permanence, and physical presence—things we can grasp, place, and move. Sounds, by contrast, are ephemeral, existing only in the moments they are heard, dissipating as quickly as they arise; a active sound alone cannot be held, stored on a shelf, or placed in a pocket. Surely a sound is not a object...
Enter the subject of scrutiny in this piece: the doorbell. Without its sound, it is merely a purposeless trigger. To those who perceive it, the sound is the doorbell; the sound is the object.​​​
If we believe this to be so, where does that leave our understanding of objects? If something so intangible can hold the essence of an object’s function, might other sounds, too, demand reconsideration? The hum of a refrigerator, the chime of a phone, the creak of a well-worn floorboard—each tied not just to a thing, but to the experience of it. Perhaps, then, the boundaries between objects and sounds are less rigid than they first appear, and what we hear is just as fundamental to our material world as what we see and touch.
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The doorbell tones used in this work were painstakingly recreated from detailed and somewhat inscrutable descriptions written in W M Curtis' "Compendium of Door Signals and Bells - A New Catagorisation of Historical and Modern Alert Mechanisms". Whilst the intentions of this text were to create a standardisation of sounds, the human process of translation and reconstruction brings with it variables that never quite manage to fulfill this perfection. Instead, minute, almost imperceptible quirks create sounds that uniquely define the character of the 'space' they occupy.
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There exist two fundamental versions of this work, one created as a physical installation, consisting of eight suspended speakers each containing a unique patented doorbell tone. The landscape of these sounds evolves and intertwines to form transient evocations that shift from orchestral flourishes to melancholy whispering to energetic bursts, all interwoven with moments of anticipatory silence.
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The second version has been created and optimised for listening on headphones and places a more focused emphasis on the sounds and the spacialisation.
Physical Version
Sounds | Familiar Set-up plan
Audio Version
Sounds | Familiar - Audio