Invisible to My Ear by DJ Puddle

Michel Chion describes the Acousmetre as a kind of voice-character specific to cinema that derives mysterious powers from being heard and not seen. The disembodied voice seems to come from everywhere and therefore to have no clearly defined limits to its power.

The effect of Acousmetre functions by delaying the fusion of sound and image, supplying a sound while withholding its visual source until the end of a film. Only then, when the audience has used its imagination to the fullest, as in a radio play, is the real identity of the source revealed, almost always with an accompanying loss of imagined power.

Invisible to My Ear is a radio work by DJ Puddle about moments of cinematic silence. How does silence function as a dramaturgical element when stripped of visual context? Using citations from films ranging from The Wizard of Oz (1939), Psycho (1960), and The Conversation(1974), the piece investigates silence as a character and what can bring to sonic storytelling.

Invisible to My Ear was produced for Cashmere Radio during July 2019 in Kiev, Ukraine and Berlin, Germany.

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This work was produced and presented as part of the “Experimental Radio Practice” seminar of the UdK Master’s program Sound Studies and Sonic Arts, which took place under the supervision of Lukas Grundmann at Cashmere Radio in summer 2019.