Reconsidering silence: an investigation into silence as visual phenomenon

This practice-led research project examines the concept of silence. More specifically, within the contextual framework of the visual arts, it aims to extend the notion of silence by opening up the possibility of its perception through the visual. Silence as abstract concept cannot define itself. Only in its interrelationship with ‘sound’ can silence be perceived. In order to identify and explore its legibility my research positions silence at a specific point of intersection across diverse fields of study: it draws on an examination of the sound-silence relationship identified within the fields of linguistics, music and poetics, and notes the capacity of repetition to strengthen a response of silence. Significant analogies between aural and visual modalities of perception are foregrounded. In addition, Zen Buddhist philosophical thought is discussed. Of particular note is Zen’s crucial influence on minimalist aesthetics. My practice-based research, read alongside these theoretical concepts, is grounded in ongoing experimentation. It explores the idea that specific formal and technical elements of an artwork manifest as visual correlatives of the sound-silence relationship: an alliance to minimalist aesthetics and a spareness of form, a considered sense of spatiality revealed through the interplay of form and space, a reduced and subtle palette, a close tonal range, an interest in ambiguous boundaries, and the use of repetition and the repeated motif. My practice examines the possibility that it is in the integration of select combinations of these elements, and the subtlety of their relation, that connections emerge which tend towards an affective capacity for silence. Towards this end, I created a series of small experimental works on paper that led my practice towards the increased expressive potential of three dimensional space and the completion of a final minimalist installation. My research suggests that silence unfolds as a transmission of suggestiveness between viewer and artwork, arising from the dialogue between subtle relations of colour and tone, space and non-space, absence and presence, and movement and stillness. Never a communication of defining fact, silence as visual response is nevertheless a material relationship