what is a microphone?

What would the results for recording and 'sound art' be if there were as many different kinds of microphones in the world as there are pairs of ears? If, indeed, it was possible to use a pair of ears as microphones, and to feed whatever resonated in those inner cavities and nerves directly through the inputs of a recording device?

The thought was prompted by a friend talking about the experience of hearing the world with inner ears full of fluid - the result of a respiratory virus. Apparently certain frequencies are blocked, making all pianos sound honky-tonk and out of tune, and causing some women's voices to sound high and squeaky/'little-girly'. My voice is apparently unchanged.

Speaking of filtering, I'm loving the effects of my Korg MS20 synth on the vocal signal from my Beyer Dynamic mic. Every time I change the settings it's like I'm working with a new and 'differently-abled' microphone.

I think I'm attracted to sonic experiences of mild disorientation. Such as the slightly hallucinogenic interaction of my treated voice with the 'clean' signal in among the cycas, my chant-like interpretation of Jen Craig's micro-story Perspective.

As in my piece Over the River the audio and text converge on a shared experience of the Shoahaven river  during our Bundanon residency, but unlike the other piece, among the cycas has no field recordings in it. It relies instead on the inflections in my vocal and synthesizer improvisation in the acoustic of the Dorothy Porter Studio at Bundanon. The text captures a shared experience of looking at the river through trees from a rock high above the water. Something about the perspective subtly undermined our sense of which way was up.

My performance of Jen's text at the time was completely in the moment. But reflecting on it now it seems to me that the play with tuning, overtones and shifting pulses aims to suggest a similar disorientation of aural reference points around a very simple, almost montonal chant. Perhaps while you're listening to among the cycas you may feel like you've got fluid in your ears...

text, sound and sentiment

Over the River, my second 'essay' (attempt) in responding sonically to Jen Craig's Absurd Enticements  blog began with a simple association of time and place.

We stood on the banks of the Shoalhaven River at dusk. I made a recording of the cries of an enraged spur-winged plover, complete with natural echoes from the cliffs opposite. The effect of these sounds as the very last of daylight faded from the sky was haunting indeed and also, like the songs of many of the birds of this location on the Shoalhaven River and in the bush above, intensely musical.

Jen was absorbed with her own responses to the site. She photographed the cliffs and water. Afterwards she wrote a micro-story, Furred Water, focusing on the visual atmospheric resonances of the work of Arthur Boyd in the water, cliffs and bushland he painted so often in the last decades of his life.

Putting text and field recording together was on the face of it a crude juxtaposition of disparate materials which just happen to be derived from the same location. But here the mysteries of place and association kick in.

Jen's text comes to a head around the image of the river's 'silent, maniacal fury'. The performance and juxtaposition of the text with the field recording opens up the possibility that the plover's voice is the articulate embodiment of this fury. The river's inarticulacy further feeds on the technical limits of my recording, the river's 'furred water' seemingly emphasised by the wash of air and intermittent background traffic sounds.

And if anything, the obvious sentiment in the resulting audio piece is heightened by the apparent obliqueness of a text that focuses on water, and a field recording that focuses on birdsong.  

It seems to me that the very uncertainty (open-ness?) of its referential content is key to sound's capacity to embody presence - the simultaneity and fusion of multiple divergent and convergent strands of experience. This capacity is what music is built on.

But enough flights of speculation. In this case, the obviously 'poetic' diction of my reading brings into play sentimental expectations, suggesting some reverential contemplation of the sounds of both the words and the field recording.

How would the sound and text be experienced if the text were simply read silently in the mind of a person while listening to the raw field recording? (Or even the doctored version I've offered up in cobbling together the most usable bits and boosting elements that underpin the delivery of the text.) Would any of the above associations be carried by this juxtaposition without the text itself being embodied and placed in a performative relationship to the river sounds and the plover's cries?

And how would the result change if the placement of the words was altered? Or if their delivery was more prosaic, even conversational?

All of which suggests that working by association rather than analogy or parody risks making texts less open, not more. Or did you hear my piece quite differently?