‘ … enlargement is not really concerned with simply clarifying what we glimpse ‘anyway’ but rather brings out wholly new structural formations in matter … ‘
– Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
I went to the Wellcome Collection last week to see Aura Satz’s Sound Seam. The work was made during a residency at the UCL Ear Institute and explores aspects of memory, sound and hearing. Recordings made within the inner ear, gramophone needles grating over coronal bone, echoing voices and more combine in an elaborate, multi-layered soundtrack.
For me though, the visuals were more compelling – microscopic photographs of the cochlea created strange, organic spirals; close-ups of gramophones and record grooves made pulsing abstract patterns. The images were textural, suggestive, unexpected. They seemed to be images or perspectives I hadn’t encountered before, which was exciting.
I’ve since discovered some of Samantha Rebello’s short films online, including Outer Castings of a Few Small Creatures, a rich, tactile film of close-ups of natural armours: a snail’s shell, a crab, cracked eggs. Through her camera, Rebello renders these animals/objects strange, unfamiliar, almost new.
