Listening without hearing - 'Below 160', Friday in Sharjah

How would you describe the sound of a marching drum to a person who will never be able to hear it? What does a bass riff look like? Does sound have a shape?

All these questions have been at the heart of a workshop taking place over the last week at the Al Amal School for the Deaf in Sharjah. Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui has guided students through a course that asks them to interpret different frequencies of sound  subjectively and using senses other than hearing.

The low frequencies - below 160 hertz - meant that the non-hearing students are able to feel the vibrations and changes as Atoui played each sound.

Tarek Atoui, showing students from the Al Amal School for the Deaf in Sharjah how liquids respond to different frequencies and create geometric shapes. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation

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On Friday, Atoui will present the fruits of this collaboration in the Heart of Sharjah district, incorporating instruments created by the students during the workshop and weaving it all together into a bass-driven composition. The programme is an initiative of the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Atoui is one of the region's key sound experimenters. In March, he performed his accumulated enquiries into the history of Arab music in the heritage district of Sharjah. But this latest project really questions the very nature of sound and the power it has to make us move.

How did you start working with deaf students on this project?

The idea came out of a performance I did in Salzburg last summer that used frequencies below 160 hertz (bass) - to create tactile sounds. I always had an audience of non-hearing people in mind when I performed this piece because they often develop a greater sensitivity to these frequencies.

Sound artist Tarek Atoui (left) using a sign language translator to discuss the way frequencies change. Image courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation

You performed the piece in Sharjah on April 23, prior to starting the workshop. How was the response?

There were more non-hearing than hearing people, and so I was performing for them in a sense, and they totally appropriated the space of the performance. Instead of just passively watching, they were walking around, sitting on the speakers and feeling the sound as they moved.

How did the workshop work?

We spent a lot of time getting the non-hearing students to describe the vibrations and frequencies  in terms of adjectives, feelings and impression. From this, they came to an interesting observation - that sound, without necessarily being music, can still transmit a feeling. From this they started to realise that these sounds have a potential use for them to communicate their feelings to the outside world.

So they become sound artists in themselves?

Right, exactly.

What sort of descriptions did they offer for the sounds you were creating?

Amazing, in terms of accuracy without having the right technical music vocabulary. If a sound would ramp up through frequencies, for instance, they would describe it like a violinist moving their bow up the instrument - which is a description of glissando, a complex music terms that is correct. They were also describing the bass sounds, in terms of objects that it reminds them of - aeroplane, generators.

Could these sounds have a therapeutic application as well?

Bass sounds are known to address the unconscious of people because they remind us of the sounds we felt as foetus - our first connections to the outside world.

Tarek Atoui, in collaboration with students from the Al Amal School of the Deaf in Sharjah, perform on April 27 from 7pm in Beit Al Shamsi, Heart of Sharjah district. For more info, see www.sharjahart.org

Curious about how sound looks and feels like? Check out this incredible video that show how a metal table vibrating at different frequencies creates geometric shapes in sand.