In 1913 the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo famously wrote in his Art of Noise manifesto:
“Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibilities of men.”
The Red Desert [1964] dir. Michelangelo Antonioni
The history of film sound is set to the industrial symphonic soundscape. To witness human activity is to encounter the incessant noise of war, mechanised extraction and global commerce. Thrown into the machine age modern man is violently forced into a radical ontological reorientation.
More than anywhere else this is located in the emerging urbanised cauldrons of the metropolis, where the intensification of stimulation is at its most demanding. Here the acceleration and compression of commercial, social and political activity bear down on the individual, threatening “the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society” (G. Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life, 1903). Jacque Tati succeeds in examining the amusing confusion and alienation of this modern landscape with trademark wit and humour in his 1967 feature film Playtime.
If 20th century film is a story set admist the cacophony of the modern city, how might the soundtrack of the industrial symphony change, if at all, in a digitally connected, disembodied age? Combustion engines replaced horse-drawn carts, and in doing so radically altered the urban soundscape. Will muted electric cars and server farms housing cloud services located in far flung places similarly transform the sights and sounds of the 21st century city?
Film Selection:
Broken Spectre [2022] dir. Richard Mosse
Good Luck [2017] dir. Ben Russell
Leviathan [2013] dir. Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Eraserheard [1977] dir. David Lynch
Playtime [1967] dir. Jacques Tati
The Red Desert [1964] dir. Michelangelo Antonioni
Snow [1963] dir. Geoffrey Jones
The Junction [1961] dir. Kazimierz Karabasz
Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbass [1930] dir. Dziga Vertov