Final Proposal - Peut Etre

For my initial project I looked everywhere for the sound of silence in my surroundings but failed miserably. At any given moment, where I thought my surroundings were completely silent, I was followed by the sound of my breath and beating heart. It prompted me to reflect upon the essence and symbol of our life-force, the breath. It also made me contemplate about the last sound one might hear before going into unconscious states like sleep or death. With an initial experimental sound video of breathing skin, I wanted to recreate the last sounds I hear every night before I fall into deep sleep. These sounds are unusual to me as I've been born and brought up in Mumbai, a heavily populated metropolitan city in India that has forgotten the quiet of the night. These sounds to me are the last rung on the ladder before silence. It is a soundscape that I notice everyday here in Pont Aven but quite rarely these past 25 years.

I've been practicing meditation for about a year and am quite fascinated by the various personalities/avtaars my breath displays which are usually reactionary. With the most common style of breathing being from the chest, I find that in diaphragmatic breathing, (breathing from the abdomen, where the abdomen rises and falls with each breath) I'm the most calm and relaxed. To correspond with the inhalation and exhalation of the breath, I've used the contraction and expansion of an ambiguous piece of flesh to represent the process of diaphragmatic breathing in the soundscape.

On further and continuous observation, I’ve noticed 4 recurring independent sounds that can be heard from within me in moments one would normally describe as ‘piercing silence’.

1. Breath

2. Heartbeat

3. Flatline Extreme High Frequency ear-ringing

4. Stomach rumbles.

I may or may not include all these sounds in my Final Project. I plan to continue with the movement of flesh to accompany the ones I choose like explained in the first one.

For the presentation, I’m torn between blending them into one video with a dynamic mixed soundscape and as separate pieces. I will have to try them both and think about this further and am facing editing difficulties and clear sound editing issues. I might create a box to fit my laptop. If possible a big box to house a person?

This subject of this project is quite personal (with the use of my body sounds and skin) but I hope to touch on sounds that relate to all viewers.