Echolocation

Wassily Kandinsky, Several Circles (1926)


-This is an update to my previous studio exploration post-

Thinking further about the idea of place, and how sound contributes to it, I'm looking more into echolocation. Echolocation, as used by bats, reconstructs the closest objects first and foremost in the bats' navigation. As of now, scientists can't show that bats actually form a visual image of some sort in their mind from the auditory data they collect. In that case, it could be called a "cross-modal transfer". The information crosses from the auditory mode to the visual mode.

Seeing in the dark

In,"Darkness sheds light on neural computations"scientists describe experiments to show how we might navigate in the dark. Bats on the other hand do this by projecting sounds out and depending on how fast those sounds are received are able to determine how far away objects are. It's called sonar, and it's how bats develop a sense of place. In thinking about our sense of place and how we determine it, it occured to me that we also use our hearing (although to a much lesser extent than bats). For instance, navigating in the dark or perhaps through the woods where we can only see so far. Many also use 'background' music to help them focus in their work and to even motivate students in the classroom.