32 Sounds

32 Sounds

Why only thirty-two? (For example, an inventive documentary such as this one has got more than that number of sounds.) That is because Sam Green was influenced by the 1993 hybrid film titled “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould” made by François Girard who had also taken inspiration from Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” a Goldberg variation is a musical composition for pianist Gould which comprise exactly 32 songs when it is played in whole.

It’s all about sound and how we perceive it, what touches us, and different ways people may hear it. In the show I attended, it came mainly through headphones they provided. While multi-channel sound distributed around a cinema with Dolby Atmos or other distribution systems might be really “cool beans” under certain conditions, the fact remains that humans do not really experience sound like that. After all, we possess only two ears.

This kind of binaural recording places microphones in the ears of a statue of human head to get some real world directionality into the mix. And if you listen to them through headphones in a demonstration using nothing but a box of matches held by an audiologist rocket scientist, this seems pretty cool.

With the exception of one short part where he asks viewers to take off their earbuds definitely becoming more participatory theater there and there we have the movie’s sound track. It shocked me when there was no mention of Lou Reed anywhere in this work he was perhaps its biggest advocate during the seventies for this method of binaural recording. He used these methods on one his most important albums Street Hassle among others too. One thing I took away from watching this movie was my determination to listen to that album again with headphones no effect on room speakers at all!

However, I shouldn’t be surprised that rock’s apparent Prince of Darkness isn’t invoked here because the movie is largely a story of pure wonder with hints of sorrow. It starts with pink light and a soft heart beat, the sound of the womb, captured by Aggie Murch who is actually an obstetrician and wife to Walter Murch famed audio designer for films.

From there it goes to historical narration mode about Charles Babbage (an early nineteenth century mathematician) whose theories indicated that no sound ever dies and all we need is a special decoder machine to get sounds back in history. Then comes the invention of Thomas A. Edison’s phonograph and the wild enthusiasm this engendered; while some claimed that “the machine could stop death.”

Green has a fitting partner in JD Samson who was responsible for overseeing the musical score and sometimes appeared on screen. Also interviewed are avant-garde composers or sound artists as well, such as Annea Lockwood (still alive), Pauline Oliveros (dead), John Cage (dead) and Lockwood’s partner Ruth Anderson (dead). These deaths make for sad subjects included among other topics addressed herein just as Green recalls his deceased relatives whom he can resurrect by way of audio tape as “ghosts”. Is their revival going to enable him overcome these spirits?

It’s not always heavy stuff here though. In the middle part of the film they change the theater into something like a disco where Green accompanied by JD Samson does bass-heavy mixes on songs by Donna Summer and Cerrone amongst others. Although at times Green’s delivery style can be somewhat too cloying for my tastes as an old grumpy man (“gee whillikers”); however, most often it fit perfectly into my personal preferences on music and motion picture (“32 Sounds”).

Watch 32 Sounds For Free On Gomovies.