Just because you can’t hear something doesn’t mean you can’t see it… And just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean you can’t hear it…

The words above are a “paraphrase” of a thesis by the renowned philosopher George Berkeley. In his work A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) he stated that “Objects of the senses exist only when we perceive them; so the trees are in the garden only as long as there is someone there who notices them…” Decades later (1883), an unknown writer in The Chautauguan extended this thesis with a question and transferred it from a philosophical point of view into the scientific one: “If a tree falls on an island where no one lives, would the fall of the tree produce a sound?” He offered the answer: “Sound is a sensation triggered in the ear by the movement of air or another medium. “A year later, the scientific paper in the Scientific American expanded his answer: “Sound is a vibration that is transmitted to our senses through the ear mechanism and is recognized as sound only in our nerve centers. A fall of a tree or any other disturbance will cause air vibrations. If there are no ears to hear this sound, there will be no sound. ”

So, if we do not hear something, does this mean that it does not exist? The answer to this question depends on the definition of sound. Because sound does not exist without being heard, sound does not exist if we do not hear it. However, when the tree falls, the movement disturbs the air and emits airwaves. This physical phenomenon, which we can measure with instruments other than our ears, exists no matter how people perceive (see or hear) it. Although a tree that falls on an island emits airwaves, it does not emit sound if no human is within the distance where the airwaves are strong enough for a human to detect them. SOUNDeSCAPES – Lullaby for drones – questions whether something exists without us consciously perceiving it? For example, is our planet undergoing global warming? When a chunk of the glacier breaks off and collapses into the sea roaring, and no one hears or sees it – does this mean that the chunk of ice did not break off and crash deafeningly into the ocean? Are we not experiencing clime warming, is the ice not melting, and our planet isn’t changing?

Eva Petrič

Guided tour of the exhibition in Photon Gallery

SOUNDeSCAPES, 2020
30 cm x 22 cm x 12 cm – 120 cm x 90 cm
Various technics and editions
Price: 950 – 8.500 € (catalogue)

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