Sound, Trace and Interference

Abstract

Neuro-psychological assumptions on the dynamics of remembering and the persistence of memory traces that have been silenced or remained unremembered are discussed in relation to cultural and transcultural models of memory. The chapter considers the memory trace as sound (an inherent component of the moving image) through the artistic practice of sound artist Bill Fontana. By translocating and broadcasting environmental atmospherics across different places Fontana’s sound-sculptures generate memory-scapes where spatiality and temporality are articulated through a mediatized trace that share the quasi-simultaneity, obsolescence and duration of new digital technologies thus foregrounding some the issues that denote the uses of the past in our time. The chapter examines the interference but also potential for rememoration that the traces of what is unremembered or silenced can generate.