It is in human beings’ nature to elude moments of nothingness. Silence makes people uncomfortable, and people will use any form of distraction to dismiss this experience from their mind, but what makes us so committed to abstain moments of silence? John Cage stated after visiting an Anechoic Chamber at Harvard University in 1951 “There is no such thing as silence”. After experiencing this sonically non-reflective environment, he found there were still perceivable sounds that remained, which he claimed derived from the nervous system and the circulation of his blood.
We experience ephemeral moments of silence everyday, in between the talking of words, or the pause between scenes in a film, but with these moments of stillness, comes an apprehension that this tension of silence will quickly be dismissed by the introduction of newer sounds. But what happens when a drone of silence has passed the comfortable amount of listening time, how then does this change the atmosphere around us? Is it the silence that depicts the mood of a conglomerate of people, or is it the people themselves? Does silence have its own characteristics? Is a silent empty room in any way sonically different to a silent full room? Does the mood of silence evolve once new life is introduced into the space?
“I’ve always noticed a sonic intensity while listening to silence within a room full of people, but I’ve never been able to pinpoint where the disruption comes from, whether it’s the external noise happening within the room or just the disorder of my internal dialog running wild. I find everything much more interesting when nothing is happening, when no one is saying anything at all.”
"Silent Running" is an interactive video and sound documentation that will encourage the audience to confront silence. Using Cagean silence as a conceptual entrance point to dissect aspects of the final documentation, this projects outcome hopes to provide evidence to whether the evolution of the room’s ambience and intensity can be noticed through the analysis of the room’s sonic environment.