Tag: reverb

  • Surfing at Cosmic Speeds

    Echo is a relational phenomenon, always relative to the observer.

    If we were to surf the soundwave at the same speed it moves, we wouldn’t hear it (theoretically, at least). There would be no return of the sound — only silence, unless we fell, and the wave would crash over us.

    Surfing the soundwave is surfing in complete silence. But surfing the lightwave is even crazier. Because light travels through space at maximum speed, from the point of view of the photon, there is no temporal shift between the moment it is emitted and the moment it arrives at its final destination. Everything it sees on its journey stands in absolute stillness.

    If a soundwave had a memory, it might see you as an echo on its journey — passing you by and returning to you a moment later (after reflecting off the wall). But light appears to exist in a completely still, omnitemporal world. It couldn’t have a memory because, from the perspective of the photon, everything from its birth to its death happens at the same time.

    This difference between the visual and auditory senses has been noted by philosophers such as Nancy, Husserl, Bergson, and Ihde, among others.

    In his book Listening, Jean-Luc Nancy writes: “The visual persists until its disappearance; the sonorous appears and fades away into its permanence.”

    And: “Listening takes place at the same time as the sonorous event, an arrangement that is clearly distinct from that of vision […] Visual presence is already there, available, before I see it, whereas sonorous presence arrives.”

    It would be easy to overlook this difference by attributing it solely to the biological differences between the eye and the ear, or by assuming it applies universally to all audio-visually sensitive lifeforms. But I believe there is deeper poetry at play here.

    The luminous world is capable of stillness because the speed of light allows it; the sonorous constantly fades in and fades out.

  • An Animated Wave

    An echo can be understood as a temporal shift in the soundwave. Our minds register the same soundwave returning to us, slightly altered by time and space. From the differences between the original and the time-shifted instances, we are able to read the material qualities of the space we are in. By listening to the echo, we gather information about the space around us and our position in it.

    The fading of the echo is caused by the energy loss of sound as it spreads through space. But while the wave loses energy as it travels, it also gains new information. A sound is not just a wave but also a record of its own journey through time and space. Sounds traverse time and space, but they do not just quietly fade away. They bump into obstacles, rush through materials, losing qualities and resolution, until a filtered, broken, mangled version is left — which, as the energy fades, finally transforms from a lively wave to total stillness.

    For the listener, the fading of energy and timbral changes in sounds are significant markers of their own existence. These changes on our timeline, like the tiny differences between film frames, are what animate our experience. We locate ourselves in time and space by listening to the change of the world.

  • What Is an Echo?

    Not a copy. A return.

    Imagine yourself in a vast architectural space. “Hey?” you send your questioning greeting toward the distant walls of the building, and after a second, you hear your voice return, slightly blurred and diffused by the hall. “Hey, ey, ey…” After a couple of repetitions, the voice seems to fade away.

    We tend to think an echo is a slightly altered copy of the original sound. When you speak your words, the voice is your own, but when your voice is returned to you as an echo, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It seems to exist outside of you, as if it had a life of its own.

    But an echo is not a copy. It is the exact same wave that you launched with your voice. While traveling through space, the wave goes through gradual changes as it is shaped by the materiality and form of the room, as well as the distance the wave has to travel. An echo is the same sound — but an older, wiser, and more fragile version of itself.

    In order to become an echo, the sound has to return to you. And by becoming an echo, your voice has become less yours. It now belongs to the space.