This week’s reading comes straight from our very own tutor, Darrin Verhagen. The reading addresses and successfully makes explicit what I think many artists attempt to play on; that which is unprocessed by the viewer. In my first post, I discussed the idea that psychological expectations are responsible for the way in which we consume information around us, in this reading Darrin walks through the idea that any sound that enters the mind via hearing is processed in any of three ways, “(i) sounds which it pays to focus on (ii) sounds which can be left to a subconscious subroutine/”Zombie Agent”, and (iii) sounds which can be completely ignored.” Of course, Darrin acknowledges that this theory doesn’t simply apply to sound. This also applies to vision as well. I think Darrin is principally responding to two things in the reading: Synthesis and Attention. The way the mind is actively creating meaning vs. the way the mind is ignoring things to create meaning from.

I personally, loved the idea that by using extremely familiar sounds or by familiarising the audience with a sound using another medium (in Darrin’s example motion graphics). One of the things I’ve really started to notice is subtlety in the creation of tension.

In the theatre show I’m working on at the moment, myself and the audio engineer created this beautiful sub-drone from low-passed rolling waves crashing on the shore. The production is Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel which is set on the New England coastline in the late 19th century. The suspense it adds to the protagonists death scene is extraordinary.

The key was the ten minute fade in over the course of the scene. The distraction of the dialog on stage meant that basically the audience didn’t realise how tense the atmospheric sound was getting underneath the scene. Mostly it was just an excuse to use the ridiculously large subs we hired in for the show.

Immersion is very much that tension between attention and synthesis. The mind ignoring and filling in the gaps. As creators, we’re very much trying to interrupt the process imperceptibly wherever possible and that is I guess crucial to whether something is immersive or not.