Re-turning as a 'circulating practice': How to re-turn to our experience of writing-reading together, as a collaborative practice in-and-of itself? How to re-turn to the artefacts, memories, reflections, experiences generated by the score or prompt Acousmatic? We agreed to take some time to re-turn to the materials that we had generated in relation to the score Acousmatic, whilst also trying to bring to mind again the experience of writing together in the square. We came together online on ZOOM [30 May 2023] to practice re-turning together.
RE-READING PRACTICE (SEE zoom recording RIGHT)
We each took turns to read aloud a section of the text that we each had generated in response to the score/prompt Acousmatic. It could be a fragment or a section or a longer length of the text. We continued going around the circle until everyone has read aloud their full text. How was the new ‘sense’ or meanings emerging in the meeting of fragments, and the sense of space-time that emerges therein? How could reading together operate as a way of re-turning to, and revisiting the practice and site of the square.
SPEAKING CIRCLE — A CONVERSATION
We then each took turns to speak/reflect in relation to the score/texts/experience of Acousmatic. The ‘Speaking Circle’ adapts a model based on Nancy Kline’s ‘thinking environment’ or ‘time to think’ approach, where individuals are provided a period of time of uninterrupted time for thinking-speaking.1 It was possible to stay silent, to pause, to speak single words or fragments, to use more than one language. We activated three ‘circles’ or ‘rounds’ where in each round we had 5 minutes thinking-speaking time.
1. See Nancy Kline, Time to Think: Listening to Ignite the Human Mind, (London: Cassell, 1999).
ABOVE: Recording of our zoom-based Reading Practice. Click to play. Double click to open full screen.
BELOW: We present a reworked transcript from the Speaking Circle (A conversation) as a further attempt to explore way of collaborative writing. We have highlighted sections of the transcript (which feel pertinent to both our own enquiry and the notion of 'circulating practices' more broadly), and redacted out other parts (that felt tangential).
Acousmatic : Speaking Circle
I will attend to or respond on the very sensations I had while listening. to you. Not so much on the questions … to give a little pre-note to what I am going to say. So it is live speaking which is different I think from scripted, from reading from a script. Because I was very surprised – while I was reading your texts I was thinking oh there is similarity between the acousmatic script of Andrea – acousmatish if we want to call it in terms of a language, acousmatish – and Finnish and Hindi. But then when you were all reading I realised OK they are all different languages, of course, and they came alive.
And I was hearing the ambulance., I was hearing Andrea’s birds. Yet at the same time I didn’t see your mouth, and even if I had seen your mouth Andrea, this would have been an acousmatic or technical trick because I would have only heard your voice through the loudspeakers and this would not have been the real source. It would have been an illusionary source, of seeing your mouth and thinking, of course, that is your voice. I was thinking then also, this took me back to your comment in the text, because you wrote,
Is my voice acousmatic? Something along the lines – Is my voice acousmatic to myself? Which made me think and yes, then I was also attending to Finnish and the after sound of Finnish and the sound of aa and ee — and how different this is, reading this Finnish and hearing it. And the same goes for Hindi., it is right. Please bear with me if I got it wrong or if it is another language. The sound of something that goes inwards. And all these thoughts were somehow then of course, I was relating it back to the space that we were writing in and how it relates to the very physical space. And I want to attend also, or give back, or respond, to Emma’s text.
The word guesswork stood out for me when I heard it and when I heard it again — the guesswork that we undertake when we try to render something, try to letter something., that we hear.
And this reflection of your writing is very much, I can follow your path of thinking: in German I would call it Nachvollziehbarkeit, which means I can literally re-sense how you think and how the words, how you follow a word-path, the ‘train of thought’ as you call it. And how you try To encircle the guesswork or the intranslatability at the borders of language. When I heard you speak I realised cause rhymes with source. So it is very much This moving, the moving and the attempt to render the space alive: and it works very well when I hear it. While when I was reading, I had much more of a sense of the frustration, your frustration with being just, or coming to, yes, how would I call it, and also the temptation to go into another medium because of that lack, that lack of language. the impossibility to render, to be just the sounds. Yes, listening to the reading, I was struck by two things really – one was to do with This search for a language for kind of translating, or giving, yes, translating the sounds that we could hear in the square into another sounding, a sounding that comes through language. So this act of conversion, or translation, from one register of sound, in sound if you like, into something that exists on paper and in voice.
So yes, this act of translation from the one to the other.
But I was also struck by The sense of not only listening to the sounds of the square through the writing but also listening to the experience of the listener: So the writing somehow also evidencing or recording how listening, how a listening experience was for each of you. So yes, I like This double register of the texts: in a way – that on the one hand, they, in places, evoke or invoke the sounds, the actual sounds, the acousmatic texture if you like of the square. But they also attest to each of you being there, and your own act of listening. So I was interested, What is the text, what is the writing attending to? Is it to the listened to or to the listening? And it seems as if it moves between the two: this listened to, this external register of sound, and then this, private act of listening. somehow. So I was adding the listener … we talk about writing and reading, these Site-specific writing and reading practices., but also I think something here expanding outwards to other practices. I think that in much of the writing there is this site-specific observation, this visual looking which informs the writing. But In Acousmatic, for me, more than any of the other scores, it is listening that is activated, that is the sensorial register. So We become these listening-writers, these listeners who are writing. And I am struck by the change in register that this affects in language. And yes, maybe reflecting on my own struggle in a sense to find a language, or to allow the emergence of a language, for this listening-writing. I think in particular in terms of this acousmatic, This attending to sounds whose source cannot be seen,, I think it made me realise how in so much of my own experience of writing, writing is tethered to what is see-able or looked at in some kind of way. And how This act of looking and writing is often one of naming, or noun-ing. And The acousmatic seems to invite that possibility of not naming, or non-naming, or moving away from things, into a different kind of languaging, much more verb-al form, verbing. With Vidha’s, I really enjoyed the relationship between seeing the text, and seeing also the English translation of this, and then The sounding of this ing-ing that I think I could hear in the words. Yes, and then, I realise listening to all of you, It is not so much that language has its limitations, because in your readings the sounding was invoked, and invoked in so many different ways … but I think it is that sense of habits of how language is used, my own habits, that are not practised enough to somehow to attend to this sounding space. So I will, I will pick up here. I guess that this score is one of my favourites for a few reasons. Firstly, Reading the text and listening to the text immediately brings me back to the moment of writing as it is in my memories: I can really picture the square, the groups of people, and the cheekiness of a group of teenagers who were playing pranks with somebody on their phones. And I think it is kind of, we all do it, we can revisit places with our mind’s eye and with our experiences, and then what is interesting is, can you measure that? Can you measure how much you revisit – like do you revisit 20% or 60 or 80, or do you really go 100% back in time to June 2022, one evening? So it is a kind of both like a play with memory, how much can I remember and can I train my memory, but then it is of course the text that is the incitement, the go button to go back. And this tells me something about the quality of the score, and the quality of the writing. That we can attach ourselves to certain times and places with the text. And I find that quite an amazing feature, to be able to do that. And also, I was kind of, as my text is in Finnish, and it hovers with me trying to find the appropriate words to describe what I am hearing – like a seagull. So the word Onomatopoeic. For me says something about the sound of a seagull above the square. But there were also other strategies of writing, I think. The other being can you actually write a sound with letters, and how would the sound of a seagull then be, if you just try to use whatever alphabet you know. Can you actually write sounds by using the alphabet to mimic the sounds? And I think that if we see these two ways of writing as different types of writing, there is such a huge space between them. Like What can you do with an alphabet, and when is the alphabet not enough?, so to say? And when do we start to fill in things, where we start to fill in the gaps that the letters cannot hold onto? So I don’t know, Is the score also about the possibilities and also the limitations of language. What can we actually grasp by writing? And I think I am kind of like that, because we are living in a time where it seems that everything should be possible and that there are no problems only challenges, but when you actually try to do a pretty simple thing – meaningTo notate what you hear — you figure out that everything is not possible. And I think that when we say that everything is not possible, then we really start to kind of readjust, maybe our hearing, in that moment and in that square. And I guess to go with Emma, that you know, When we write what we hear, we are writing with our ears. For me, it was very interesting to listen to the scores again and as we were moving from one person to another, It almost felt — if I was to translate it in a visual form, or a text form again — it was almost like all the punctuations and all the capitalising of letters, or any stresses, like all of that had been erased. And I was listening to a text that was written without it. So there was a kind of equalising, if I can call it that, and it was almost interchangeable, in a way that … also to think that when we were writing this, we were around the steps, so we were in a space quite together, which is also reflected in that some of the texts have similar sounds. But then, now we are reading, sounds have a different way of overlapping and we feel familiar, if that sound is familiar. Even if we don’t understand that word correctly or if it is intended to be there. So those things were quite interesting to observe. And, and The acousmatic score for me is also an absorption paper sort of thing, of the social space, in a different way, where we are actively listening but somehow passively participating. So that again is, how to say it, I think that is also something that is constantly there when we are doing this writing exercise or even the other ones. But especially with the acousmatic score, I think that the participation or the difference in the participation was more pronounced for me. And then, that we were doing it together in that same space, and now, so many months after, listening to it makes me want to … I mean I can’t remember exactly but of course, Some of these sounds remind me of that time. Or at least, after we had finished that score, that time, we were reading it out and we were remembering more immediately, where did we hear it or confirm it with each other. So right now, since it is so far away from that time, I think that The texture of these sounds became more prominent: for me. I wasn’t paying so much attention, or I wasn’t trying to make sense of it, or trying to time it. It was also affected by the fact that we were all either reading fragments of it or for example, I was reading it a couple of times, changing the order sometimes. And for me, it again, to read it out, I was trying to remember, why had I written it, and what was I listening to at that point of time. And as I kept reading it again and again., it was all coming, you know, I was reminded of it. Of why I had made that particular notation. So, that was what I observed. Ah, I think that there were some things that resonated from what everyone was saying. And also it was an interesting experience to hear you again because I have also had the experience of going through the recordings, editing, something between the sounds we make when we stop talking and we begin again. And I thought it was very interesting to hear those noises, because I was trying to see if I could hear them here, live in our reading, but I think that this mutes the ambient sound a lot so there was none of that. But in the recordings it was very audible, though In between moments:, I found them very interesting, because each one of us has a thing, or not a thing like, but not a thing is also a thing.. And here since I couldn’t hear the sounds: I was listening to the rhythms of reading. And I started to think about that because When we have been on the square, and someone reads in a different language that I cannot understand, I like to focus on the rhythm and let the pen move on the paper with the rhythm like a life-line, like a horizontal line that goes up and down. And When I was listening, it was also interesting to, somehow the rhythms would take me to different formats of texts: like with Lena was reading it was a clear list of things; in my head. And then, when Vidha was reading, I know she writes poetry; so I was formatting it like that in my head. And Emma has for me more of a storytelling rhythm (it is very soft and takes you); And Cordula is like a combination of haikus that merge together. So it was in a way, I was trying to focus on the sounds without giving priority to the meaning, or without trying to make sense of where I was listening in a way. And I was also thinking about what Cordula mentioned about the acousmatic of the experience here itself, I mean I didn’t consider what Cordula had said – that even if we could see each other like the sound comes from a speaker. But We cannot see each other so it is acousmatic:, and that thing about our voices being acousmatic for ourselves. It is something – It is also a bit scary: I don’t know why. thinking that my voice is acousmatic. But, yes, that is where my head was, with the sounds of listening here. In a way, trying to make a relationship with the layered experience of writing, listening, speaking and all of this layered in years and months and days and now here in minutes. It is like that. Yes, I was trying to build a cake of layers of things I trying to make sense, if not sense, just to have them together somehow. Yes I will take up some Threads and thoughts: Lena, when you were saying about this scale of how much can someone immerse in memories in a place, it is funny that you come up with a quantifiable degree of immersion? And it made me think … and You also mentioned language as almost an anchor in time that allows us to immerse again, or to reconnect the there of being now here wherever we are with that moment in the place. And I think I would guess This capacity of language of re-anchoring us in this very physical space has to do with the fact that the text has gone through our body or through sensations. We may all know these sensations, it also worked otherwise when we pass by a specific part in a town or a light-post or a corner and all of a sudden this memory comes back or the very sensation that we once had at this very point. Yes, so the question I would like to continue thinking about – what this very score, this acousmatic score does. And what specifically it brings out, and I think for me, More than any other score, Acousmatic confronts us with the very medium that we are also. Not only with the limits in language. Yes, what is this score about or what does it bring about? Yes, I was thinking from a quantitative sense if I look at the length of the texts, and what I mentioned in relation to Emma’s, I can almost see that her thinkings and writings, I fantasise that she is Taking the time of being in the space and writing: Whereas others have very short texts so what is interesting to me is this parallelisation of texts in time and quantity of words, independent of their sense, their semantic value. And it also brings me somehow, somehow gives me a sense of how we were in the space. Maybe just looking or writing. Is that writing a continuous, almost thinking-writing, or is that writing this being-there perceiving and once in a while (discontinuously) making this scribbling, this writing thing. And it also takes me back to a thought, a very basic thought, you also mentioned this Lena, that We now tend to think everything is recordable, everything is translatable. whatever. And here, we realise, while we write we have to see what we write, and we can probably hear and see the source of our writing, the very sound of the pen. But Yet the very act of writing makes it impossible to fully attend to the things that surround us. Yes, this is what I wanted to say — it brings out almost a kind of, it dismantles or deconstructs the sense of “I” as a contained form. I use “I” in my text, but it becomes absolutely absurd – those connotations of what is a man, woman, because somehow the sounds somehow are questioning and unmaking the self. Yes, there is so much. Yes, on the one hand … where to begin? There was something about This sense of synesthesia: that I was thinking about, maybe in terms of this invitation or possibility of translation of one thing into another. So this, you know, Within synesthesia sound becoming shapes, or being perceived as shapes, or a name becoming perceived as a colour. So this sense of one experience being experienced through the sense of another. One sense being experienced through the sense of another. And that sense of listening, listening to these sounds, in a way to these disembodied sounds, these disembodied sounds dislocated from their source, and then exploring ways for registering them through a different kind of sensorial register — through language. So the sense of the onomatopoeic dimension was very interesting in some of the writing: that attempt to find this alphabetic form that conjured the sound, that almost like yes almost conjured or manifested the sound again. But it is not, it is not a sound recording and I suppose that there is something there that I got interested in – for what What we were doing was not a recording as such: we could have made a field recording. And There is something very distinct about trying to write this or trying to, trying to make this act of witnessing tangible through something other than a sound recording. So yes There was this onomatopoeic dimension and then Lena you were talking about — can we write a sound, is it possible to write a sound with letters? And I know in my own enquiry at some point, particularly in the notebooks it becomes more evident: the scribbling of writing shifts into mark-making and there was this kind of crisis of language at some point where marks became much more viable as a way of notating, or somehow being able to attest to the intensity or the shrillness or the frequencies and vibrations of sounds, without recourse to language, but still using language. I was Using punctuation — commas and slashes and hyphens — as a way of yes,marking the sound on the page. There is something about What is at stake in trying to do this through language? that I am interested in. And I think somehow There was also the question here of what is the difference between acoustic and acousmatic? And I think that one of the things that strikes me about the acousmatic is that there is this, There is a very activated split in the invitation to focus on sounds whose source can’t be seen, and what this does conceptually or cognitively: it plunges you or it plunges me into this space of unknowing in a way. I mean, I know that to begin with I can’t not name what I think is the source. Even though I cannot see the source of the sound, I still want to name it as a car or as a bird or as a person. But the invitation in the acousmatic is to almost forget these sources, or to dislocate all that knowing. And I am struck by what a perceptual, cognitive exercise this is — what a training ground this is, to try to suspend all knowledge of what we think is making the sound in order to just attend to the sound, only sound. And, yes, Maybe there is something about these scores being quite radical exercises in perceiving otherwise, or challenging our habits of perception. You know, Cordula, you were talking about The dislocation of the “I”, yes, I think that there is something not only about dislocating the “I” but also our habits of perception as well. I think now I am both back in the square in Vaasa and both in this conversation and trying to connect with different thoughts. Some instantaneous comments, I was just posing myself the question that When we are in the Market Square and there are different types of sounds, how much do these sounds reverberate in our bodies? I mean, we can have drilling sounds and we can have the sounds of an ambulance, or we can have shrieks but we can also have quieter sounds. So how much do we actually respond with all the bodily fluids to the sounds, because I guess that the fluids will respond with a kind of movement. And, I guess also, can we know about that? And then I was also Thinking about the space — the space here online with the five of us, and all the distances that the voices travel when we speak now but also about the social space on the Market Square. Because I guess that is one of the functions of the Market Square, to create a place for people to meet. And how central squares are in urban architecture. And this also brings the particularities of the square, in Vaasa, it is very big and you feel … the square in Vaasa is so big it is easy to feel quite alone there, even though it is a Market Square. So I was thinking that with our active presence, and I think Vidha you said, We are actively listening but passively participating in whatever happens in the Market Square. And this brings my thoughts to a specific kind of attention, and maybe even to something called the ‘middle voice’. And I also understand in this conversation We are really talking about layered activities, not only in the writing but also regarding the qualities of presence, that if we are actively listening but passively participating we are engaging with the Market Square but we are also engaging with ourselves in the Market Square very much so as we are trying to write what we hear. And I am thinking does that effect also in how we perceive ourselves? And I think Cordula you said Something about deconstructing the “I” in a condensed form, the “I” as in me, and even towards an unmaking of the self, and maybe that unmaking is about the boundaries, because listening is very much about the porosity of the body. That We don’t have any hard borders to the body — we are very much like porous beings, and things that happen not only travel to us but also through us. And maybe what I am really thinking is How layered this is, and how much we pay attention to different registers of writing. Earlier on Emma, you were saying, we were hearing the square in the score and also Now we are hearing the words, and hearing the words without seeing the mouth. And it is just so complicated when you start to picture everything that is going on. Even though The basic intention of the writing could be seen as super straight-forward — like, here is the score, write what you hear but what you cannot see. I am right now feeling also, I am feeling that The reflection is extending the immediacy of that moment to something more larger., it is interesting in a way that there are a lot more words and thoughts added to the score. But apart from that, I am not feeling that there is anything I could add to what has already been spoken. I definitely agree with many of the things that were also said by you Emma, yes, so staying longer with those questions. So if there was another time to participate in something like this, perhaps these experiences and these reflections will have an effect on how I reply myself. But I am also thinking do these reflections, I am kind of thinking about these more spontaneous Time-specific and site-specific activities: do they stretch the texture out too much? These are just my thoughts about what happens in this process of reflection. Not what happens in the process of reflection, like why we are talking or why we are adding to it, but what happens to the score and the texts that was written by this reflection, and how does it effect the next steps of action especially if it was going to take the form of a similar kind of writing exercise. I also feel, I am in two minds, for example, sometimes I think that it is good to approach something with a lot of preparation, I enjoy the process of preparing to experience something, to write something, yes, to make another intention possible with better understanding of what I am getting into. But then, I am equally excited or sort of curious to see what happens when, say for example, with this score when it gets said spontaneously and then we carry it out. Not with fully discussing what we will write or how we will listen – except for maybe the time and the space where we were sitting. So yes, I am with these thoughts at the moment. Yes I was trying to thread some thoughts together. I don’t know why I keep trying to do that today. They still remain very much scattered. When I was listening, I was thinking when Lena mentioned before about Re-living or re-visiting the experience in the square — how in a way the experience feels like very alive. I am not sure if I am misinterpreting – but this is what stayed with me and what I heard. And I was thinking, it is said that Memories are not like this storage thing but we are re-living: the brain re-lives when you think or when you remember. And then when Lena said about How the sounds reverberate in our bodies, when you think again of that, how all the experience in the square is this. I was thinking about a cake before and I was thinking about the cake because in a way it is like this layered cake, whose layers permeate or they merge together into each other., the flavours go from top to bottom or side to side. It is all together but it is made of different things, and the experience of being in the square feels a bit like that. And also then Lena mentioned the mouth and then thinking about the body, then the first thing I thought was this video of Samuel Beckett – he wrote this text called “Not I”. And when they pass it to the screen it was only a mouth – it has been done twice, in the 70s and then in the 2000s, I don’t remember which year. But you can see only the mouth moving and saying the text, and the fact that the text is “Not I” – and then, trying to link that with the acousmatic of oneself and then not being there. I don’t know, it is this thing about trying to link these things but cannot thread them, but they are there bouncing against each other. And then I also realised that this time when I was listening, I decided to close my eyes to listen because I just wanted to listen, to just hear the voice. And the experience changed a little bit, like the sounds of your voices changed in my ears, like if I was pressing, I imagine myself pressing my ear against a wall and trying to listen through the wall. And you could be there, it feels as if it could be close by or if you had one of these paper cups with a string. But like you become more space in a way. My head in general keeps returning to sounds and how things are heard, and what Emma said about The difference between acousmatic and acoustic and what their relationship could be. Even if they relate to different things, they are still related to each other and conversing with each other in a way. Yes.
BELOW RIGHT: We present further annotations and comments (the different fonts reflecting our different voices), through which we attempt to continue the dialogue, keep the emerging ideas in circulation. An attempt is made here to 'show' or share an emergent practice of collaborative writing, through its resulting artefacts and documents, rather than necessarily present a text comprising resolved insights, arguments or conclusions.
Acousmatic versus onomatopoeia: If the acousmatic tries to attend to the hearing experience, the 'sound itself', to try to forget the source — onomatopoeia seeks for a reconnection with the source, to summon the thing again. Composed of onomato- 'name' and -poeia 'making', the words that imitate sounds seek semblance through naming. I'm reminded of animal sounds like 'oink' and 'cock-a-doodle-doo' in English or 'grunz' and 'kikeriki' in German. Onomatopoeia want to convey that 'this is just how it sounds' yet by differing in each language (English pigs don't sound like German ones) we're reminded of the artificiality of the language system
Like a conductor: Activating those particles in the system of language that relate to rhythm and intensity, not anymore to 'content'.
I am curious about the relation between "reading" and "voicing" practices. Our "voicing" of the texts feels at times a better way of describing our "readings", since we have such different approaches to the act of reading aloud. Somehow I was thinking of Roland Barthes, 'The Grain of the Voice' here too, where he says: "The 'grain' is the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs", in Image - Music - Text, (Flamingo, London, 1984), p. 188.
So, are we looking at language as something else than representation?
Is this score the most open, the most generous to let loose of meaning and attend to sense, the sensorial?
Out of all the scores this one seems to most encourage the writer to become a medium of something. To invite the non-sensical, the sensorial into the script.
Is it about not having control?
Mladen Dolar considers the voice a strange phenomenon that is nor entirely language nor body. The voice is what does not contribute to meaning, what cannot be controlled. "One is too much exposed to the voice and the voice delivers oneself, one embodies too much and utters too much." Mladen Dolar, His Master's Voice. Eine Theorie der Stimme, Frankfurt 2007, p. 110.
"Where does the voice come from? Where do we hear it? How do we distinguish the outer voice from the voice in the head? This is the first ontological decision, the first epistemological break, the source of any further ontology and epistemology." Mladen Dolar, His Master's Voice. Eine Theorie der Stimme, Frankfurt 2007, p. 109.
Guess — from gessen "to infer from observation, perceive, find out. To infer — in logic, "to 'bring in' as a conclusion of a process of reasoning," 1520s, from Latin inferre "bring into, carry in; deduce, infer, conclude, draw an inference. How to write without this inference, to keep writing inconclusive?
I am thinking on the lack of language as a shadow obscuring meaning, hindering something to take place or then, as a glitch that enables some-thing/-body marginalised to gain agency.
Pierre Schaeffer defines the adjective acousmatic as "referring to a sound that one hears without seeing the causes behind it." As a phenomenology-inspired composer of concrete music, Schaeffer was fascinated by the acousmatic experience as it allows to move away from the physical object that causes an auditory perception. According to him this allows us to understand what is at stake when we hear at all: "Often surprised, often uncertain, we discover that much of what we thought we were hearing, was in reality only seen, and explained, by the context". Can we argue the same when it comes to writing? While trying to attend to the sounds of the square we realize how difficult it is to get rid off 'sources', a source and cause-based thinking at all, even if those sources only exist in our minds. Pierre Schaeffer, Traité des objets musicaux, (Le Seuil, Paris 1966), p. 91-93.
Writing as a listening practice. What would be the implications of thinking about writing as an act of listening? A more receptive mode?
The text catapults us back to the square. Yet what does the same text do to a reader that has not been on site?
This makes me think how sound waves are being visualised in softwares and that this visualisation of sound as a wave, of course, is also not the natural representation of sound, but how we have chosen to visualise it
I find this interesting, to dislocate knowing, to un-know. It is interesting as it connects to making space for other kinds of knowledges.
This focus on "sensations" helps to clarify also our emphasis on a specifically corporeal, sensorial and bodily approach to language, to writing. Perhaps there is also something about how 'sensation' mediates between inner and outer realms, is the product of a sensory-nervous system responding to external stimulus. This edge (between inner and outer realms, even if illusory) feels pertinent to our enquiry. What is at stake in our emphasis on the bodily and corporeal?
Because the writing takes place in a central Market Square which is dominated by corporate language or signage directing us to go in certain directions the aspect of consumerism and market economy is prevalent. We could think of marketing and commercial messages, and how they have their lingo and how we are affected by it.
Vibrations and reverberations, and the porosity of bodies. Whilst seeing reinforces the illusion of the separateness of the inside and outside (of the body), listening blurs this line. Feeling the sounds through the whole of the body as a fully sentient, sensorial act, rather than only through the ears and trying to render sense from that experience.