3. Forms of audiovisual representation

We shall now take a brief look at the various forms which the link between sound object and representation can take in The Ring and Pneuma. In the third emotional crescendo in the first scene of The Ring (2’ 52” - 4’ 17”) we referred to above, the telephone rings in a call Kate and Becca fear may bring news of Kate’s death; they delay picking up the receiver, and as Becca passes the call to Kate, she pretends that it is the call they are dreading (the tension is released when it turns out to be Kate’s mother). The telephone is the only ‘diegetic’ sound which is spatialised on the five channels in the first scene. This is not because it can be interpreted as an environmental sound, since it is perfectly visible on the screen, indeed it is right in the foreground. In fact the editor has adopted an immersive technique, placing the viewers inside the telephone in order to compress them psychologically and raise the tension to a peak. In this way, rather than a diegetic-mimetic-representative function, the ringing fulfils an immersive, experiential function, involving not so much the art of representation as the material construction of the sensorial experience. The reproduction of the object takes place in an emotional space and belongs to an illusory and virtual reality in which is it dematerialised and artificially rematerialised, acting on a pre-rational dimension; however, what is affected is no longer the physical object but one that has been invented, constructed by the artist with the aim of disturbing or stimulating the viewer both psychologically and physically. Thus, following Baudrillard (2005), one can speak of a hyper-real dimension and a dematerialisation of experience (Vi­rilio 1992 [1980]). The object, transformed into a simulacrum (Baudrillard 1981; 2006), is detached from reality and becomes a false reality, a sign with (only) itself as referent, in the interests of sensorial manipulation. From being an observing subject, the viewer becomes an object that is unconsciously manipulated by the action of the simulacrum.

The film manipulates the viewer’s relationship with objects which, rather than representing themselves, construct the viewer’s emotional trajectory. Used in a non-mediated manner, the artificial objects within the work take on an emotional dimension of their own which affects the ways in which reality is perceived: they possess a quantity of additional information, a definition which is at once material and emotional. The artist constructs a world map full of supplementary information which for the viewers takes the place of reality. Rather than reflecting on the reality, or on the work, they submit to it passively: the emotional dimension of the objects, perceived as a donnée of nature, affects their way of interpreting reality. Thus immersion is not only an experiential form but also a cognitive one, and involves a way of knowing and experiencing the world.

In the few passages of Pneuma in which an allusion to a source can be clearly identified, the sound objects are treated in such a way as to evoke the idea of the event/object rather than the object itself (see also Hamker 2003). For example, from 3’ 02” to 4’ 11” we hear first children’s voices and then whispers, which correspond to the face that can be recognised now and then on the lefthand video. The messages uttered by the voices are incomprehensible: all that remains is the pragmatic dimension, an archetype of human expression. The children’s voices do not represent a specific situation but allude to memories of childhood. The whispers, which are not actively listened to, generate a sense of intimacy and human proximity between work and viewer. The meaning they presumably convey remains concealed, and a psychological mechanism of the projection of the subconscious is activated: they are the voices of loved ones, the voices of memory. In Viola’s poetics the object does not represent itself, but nor does it manipulate the emotional dimension of the viewer by means of psycho-acoustic devices; instead it alludes to the idea of the object, to its archetype, to the possible memories it is able to solicit: this is why its boundaries are not well defined and it cannot be clearly recognised. Moreover, this is why the sound object is not perfectly synchronised with the image. Viola conjures up the unknowable, confronts viewers with questions, causing them to search in the most recondite recesses of their minds, in ancestral memories, in an information blackout.

Thus if a mechanism of substitution of reality is activated in The Ring by means of a simulacrum, in Pneuma memories and the reality of the inner person stand revealed in a psychological process. The audiovisual objects of The Ring are charged with information, life-size maps of reality in which the data is altered and intensified, constituting hyper-real maps; whereas Viola withholds information from the audiovisual object so as to force the viewer to actively intervene. If in the first case the audiovisual matrix evokes the figure of the simulacrum, in the second one can speak of an archetype, an ancestral memory stored in the depths of human existence, which is revealed as a result of an introspective examination activated by the work. Thus Viola sublimates immersion, adopting it as a means to free the mind of the viewer rather than to imprison or manipulate it. He leads the viewer towards self-discovery and introspection. The viewing experience involves progress towards a strenuous ritual sacrifice on the part of a celebrant who, during the ‘rite’, recognises and rediscovers himself in the victim, in the abysses of the work.