◡◶▿ Small sounds

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's quietly noisy surfaces. Plus: an annotated index to our Advanced Amateury module. | Summer sound letter #7

Think of the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Quiet, aren’t they? And yet, very noisy. Can you hear all those crickets? 

Weerasethakul’s films are filled with spirituality and mythology. However, this filling is mostly embodied in very physical natural forms. The feeling of a Weerasethakul film is weightless, like thought. But the substance is earthly, of human beings as human bodies. Even the ghosts and spirits have a kind of body odour.

Weerasathkul leaves sonic clues to the matter of his cinematic universe that is not embodied in the image. A microscopic chorus of surface sounds.

Those crickets, for example, are a fact of life, but their loudness calls attention to the scale of the human tale against the scale of the universe and the scale of nature. Or rather than scale, calibration, maybe. Different matter (cricket legs, human legs, planets turning) vibrating at different rates in terrible harmony. Listening to crickets is like listening to a river: it sounds like just one sound, but you can make out countless currents when you shift focus.

In the second part of Tropical Malady (Sound Designer: Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, 2004), a soldier wanders the woods alone at night. Indistinguishable voices crackle from his two-way radio and scatter among the cacophony of life in the dark woods. The radio voices merge to become an animal or anthropological sound. Instead of providing direct information, this sound describes the hum that humans make.

Weerasethakul’s Mobile Men (Duration: 4’08”, 2008) is a documentary. “Two young men in a pickup truck are filming themselves.” The sound of the wind brushing the microphone is overbearing. It could be taken for a technical oversight. Usually, this type of sound would be avoided, or minimised in post-production.

The choice to favour the abrasive wind draws attention to the physical conditions. The wind itself, the time passing, and the filmmaking apparatus on the truck. The wind also approximates a non-verbal voice to the characters. Indeed, it harmonises with the primal scream unleashed by one of the young men towards the end.

Screaming, he removes his lapel mic (after all, he has no lapel) and positions it by a tattooed mouth on his arm. He continues screaming, but we understand the scream to come from the tattoo. Despite moving the mic to the ‘source’ of the scream, the scream becomes muted, since the mic is no longer near the young man’s mouth. And yet, by a curious effect - of projection or internalisation or recalibration - the audience hears it louder.

Quiet, and yet very noisy.

The full, annotated index to our Advanced Amateury module now has its own dedicated webpage. What better way could you, the conscientious student, use this holiday than studying these pages and then sharing the index with a number of colleagues? - GC

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