Gail Priest
SonoLexic

SonoLexic is a sound driven installation that explores how we process, communicate and generate the listening experience through language. Proposing a new variant of synaesthesia, or ‘ideathesia’, SonoLexic considers the intimate cross-modal association of sound and words.

In a darkened room, a soundscape plays through standard speakers. At the same time a voiceover, meditating on the act of listening, is delivered via an ultrasonic hyper-directional speaker, which allows it to hover in a defined space. In the distance a glowing plasma tube – a proto hologram – displays liquid images of sonic visualisations and text. Sounds are seen at the same time as they are heard, the physical yet invisible nature of the aural realm captured in this ghostly image. SonoLexic seeks a language of listening, exploring how we speak to ourselves and to others about what we hear. It also questions the extent to which a description of sounds can stimulate sonic imagining.