Noise: Unwanted Sound

Just 0.2 seconds after a sound wave reaches the cochlea, the brain interprets the vibrations as a sound with unique qualities of distance, direction and speed. The emotions and meanings we attach to each sound are subjective. Hyejin Jung realized this when she started hearing a constant buzzing in her right ear. Her doctor's explanation was that her ear was becoming a machine. While at the hospital she met Somchai, a construction worker with the same complaint, and they started to compare the ways their bodies sound on the inside. In this fusion of medical reporting, societal reflection, soundscape, and personal poetic self-examination Jung reveals through image and sound just how thin the dividing line is between sound and noise. Going beyond her own, individual experience—which ranges from mind-blowing to claustrophobic—she argues that the powers that be regard the voices of marginalized people (who often perform work that causes hearing damage) as noise, and combat it as such.