Blindfolds and brownian noise at the Sean Dower exhibition

On Saturday I embarked upon the De La Warr pavilion with the intention of leading people around the excellent new Sean Dower exhibition – the voyeur – in a whole new way. I brought with me blindfolds, ear protectors and some brown noise on an ipod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_noise). Visitors were then invited to walk and be led around the exhibition, one blindfolded, one with no hearing in a bid to invigorate the imagination and experience the exhibition in a whole new way. The response was amazing! It seems that taking away a sense re-awakens another, and this is something personally I’m very excited by (check out www.earfilms.com – a project which I have long been working on). 

The responses were too involved to publish all of them, but here are a selection:

From the people who experienced the exhibition first without any sound:

‘I imagined the wall making a sound like rubber bungs being pulled in front of a tight wire’

‘I think that these pictures would sound like wind from the hills flowing over roofs.’

‘I imagine this wall to sound like a random graphic equaliser’

‘I think the room would sound like an empty auditorium, just waiting to be filled’

And from the people who experienced the exhibition first without any sight:

 ‘It sounded like I was inside the bowl of a drum, or a terrible storm at sea howling around me’

‘This sounds like a mad scientists lab where someones just turned up the dial’

‘This is like the distant roar of a jet engine, or a huge cathedral choir’

‘It sounds like I’m right on top of the sound, like I’m in a big ship, hissing and rustling’

 

If you would like to come and have this experience then why not come along on the 18th of August when i will be back doing it again.

 

Daniel

Posted by Ryan Coleman on Wednesday 18 July 2012