Exploring the material qualities of sound and memory is a perpetual theme in the work of Aura Satz.

While artist-in-residence at University College London's Ear Institute, 2009-2010, Satz was particularly drawn to the anatomy of hearing along with past and present technological devices designed to enhance hearing through the amplification or reproduction of sound. Here she encountered recordings of otoacoustic emissions (sounds which are generated from within the inner ear), and began to document microscopic imagery of the ear drum, cochlea and inner ear hair cells.

'Sound Seam' was produced during this residency and is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s text 'Primal Sound', which considers the possibility of playing the coronal suture of a human skull using a phonograph needle.

Creating an ethereal resonance between sound and vision, 'Sound Seam' begins by enticing the viewer through the mouth of a series of gramophone horns, like a portal into another place and time. The film invokes the idea that every surface, in particular parts of our anatomy, is potentially inscribed with an unheard sound or echo of voices from the past. The process of exposing these hidden sounds is mirrored by the various processes associated with record cutting, record playing, overwriting and erasing technologies, as the seemingly infinite grooves are seen spinning and distorting at high magnification, with a dizzyingly hypnotic effect.

The film's soundtrack combines musical composition interlaced with two voices that each reveal an opposing perspective of the same mournful love story, involving a series of unsuccessful attempts to decode an elusive and inaudible secret. The music is derived from recordings of a gramophone needle tracing the sound of the meandering furrow that joins the two parts of the skull, interspersed with recordings of otoacoustic sounds emitted by the ear. Over 100 of these recordings have been individually cut onto a wax cylinder or disc record, some even over-written in order to create multiple layers and unexpected surface noises, scratches, glitches, loops and echoes.

Credits
Written, directed, filmed and edited by Aura Satz
Music and sound recordings onto wax cylinder and acetate discs made by Aleks Kolkowski
Voiceovers by Aura Satz and Aleks Kolkowski
Soundtrack co-edited by Aura Satz and Aleks Kolkowski
Otoacoustic emission recordings provided by Prof. David Kemp and recorded onto wax cylinder
Dubbing mix by Gernot Fuhrmann

'Sound Seam' was funded by the Wellcome Trust Arts Awards grant scheme.