Michel Chion writes:

"concrete music, in its conscious refusal of the visual, carries with it visions that are more beautiful than images could ever be."

In 1928 German cinematographer and filmmaker Walter Ruttmann was commissioned by the Berlin Radio Hour to produce an innovative collage of recorded voices and ambient sounds depicting the activity of Berlin life over one weekend.

*Weekend* [1930'] dir. Walter Ruttmann - score extract

Recorded and edited using the Tri-Ergon sound-on-film optical film sound technology, Ruttmann described the 12-minute radiophonic work as:

“a study in sound montage. I used the film strip to record the sound exclusively, yielding what amounts to a blind film.”

In both its conceptual artistry and technical achievement, Weekend would become an important landmark work in the rapidly developing field of radiophonic art and later musique concrète tape composition. Walter Ruttmann was an important abstract filmmaker who in the early 1920s worked alongside Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger in producing a number of innovative animation films. In 1927 he directed what became his most well-known work, the city symphony feature film Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. He went on to direct the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (1935), before later being replaced by Leni Riefenstahl. He died in 1941.

Since Ruttmann’s time a number of moving image artists and filmmakers have explored the possibilities of an image-less film. During the 1960s, several artists affiliated with the interdisciplinary art community Fluxus produced films that explored perceptual change over time. These suggested something close to a sound film ‘absent’ of image. Perhaps of note from this period is the short Entrance to Exit (1965) by George Brecht as well as the Cagian film work Zen for Film (1964) by Nam June Paik.

The pioneering flicker films of Peter Kubelka (Arnulf Rainer, 1960) and Tony Conrad (The Flicker, 1965) offer a structuralist exploration of the film medium itself. These works demonstrate a granular inter-cutting technique, combining black and white frames of image and light, sound and silence, to a produce an intensely rhythmic audiovisual sensory experience. Paul Sharits’ own 1968 flicker film T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G, further expanded these ideas, exploring what Sharits believed was the medium’s unique ability to reorientate perception in ways classical narrative film could not achieve.

In the UK artist Derek Jarman’s final film Blue (1993) was a radical experiment in light and sound. At the time Jarman was suffering from partial blindness due to AIDs-related complications; apparently only able to see shades of blue. Visually, the 80-minute film consists of a single, static shot of saturated blue. In contrast the soundtrack is made up of a complex tapestry of composed music, borrowed score and sound effects. These elements weave around a reflective narration performed by Jarman himself together with a number of his longtime collaborators. In addition to its theatrical release, the film was presented as a simultaneous collaboration between BBC Radio 3 (broadcasting a stereo version of the soundtrack) and UK Television’s Channel 4 (broadcasting the static blue image).

Examples of sound used in the offscreen sound space of narrative filmmaking offers another perspective on sound and the absent image. Following Robert Bresson’s suggestion that “the ear goes more towards the within”, Michael Haneke in his 1992 film Benny’s Video deploys offscreen sound to activate the imagination and implicate the spectator in the act of violence. Commenting on this strategy, Haneke remarks:

“with sound, just like words, you incite the imagination. And that’s why for me it's always more efficient, if I want to touch someone emotionally, to use sound rather than image.”

More recently, Ernst Karel and Veronika Kusumaryati have explored a unique sonic ethnography in their feature film Expedition Content (2020). Comprised almost entirely of audio recordings made by Michael Rockefeller and sourced from the 1961 Harvard Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea, the film explores encounters with the local Hubula people and reflects on the field practices of ethnography in the context of anthropological studies and post-colonialism.

In the context of film, absent, distorted or reimagined imagery undoubtedly opens up new sonic terrain, renewed auditory possibilities for both filmmakers and audiences.

Film Selection

Answering the Sun [2022] dir. Rainer Kohlberger
Expedition Content [2020] dir. Ernst Karel, Veronika Kusumaryati
Blue [1993] - Derek Jarman
Benny’s Video [1992] dir. Michale Haneke
Entrance to Exit [1965] dir. George Brecht
Report [1963-67] dir. Bruce Conner
Arnulf Rainer [1960] dir. Peter Kubelka
Weekend [1929] dir. Walter Ruttmann

The quiet can be unsettling, disorientating. The absence of sound can suggest social isolation, remoteness.

Such spaces can reveal the sonic activity already present within them; a naked cough is exposed in the hush of the library, a shuffling of feet suddenly violates the quiet.

*Carnival of Souls* [1962] dir. Herk Harvey

Sudden unexpected changes to a sensory input arouse attention. These can manifest as feelings of discomfort and fear. In the 1962 horror film Carnival of Souls, organist Mary Henry emerges from a department store changing room only to discover that the world has suddenly fallen silent. She no longer can hear anything from the environment around her. All is mute. The only sounds she can hear are her own voice and footsteps. Later she reports to the doctor:

"It was more than just not being able to hear anything. Or make contact with anyone. It was though...as though for a time I didn't exist. As though I had no place in the world. No part of the life around me.”

Derealisation is described as an alteration in one's perception of the world. Depersonalisation is an alteration in one’s perception of self, often observing the body and mind from outside at a distance. Such dissociative disorders are ways for the mind to cope with stress and trauma. Manipulation of mental dissociative states through targeted sound design (e.g. changing sound levels, use of silence) is commonly used to heighten subjective states in many genres of narrative filmmaking.

In Ikiru [1952], director Akira Kurosawa allows the dreaded news of the protagonist’s health to hang in the air in silence. Lost in thought Watanabe leaves the hospital, slowly exiting out on to a city street devoid of all sound. A large truck suddenly passes by, awakening him from his introspection. The cacophony of the city violently returns.

For Alfred Hitchcock, the artificial silencing of a victim at a particular moment operates at the most provocative level - the spectator is affected not by what is seen or heard, but what is imagined. In a famous scene from Frenzy [1972], Hitchcock abruptly cuts the sound of the outside world after Barbara "Babs" Milligan enters the murderer’s flat. As the door closes, the camera smoothly and silently tracks back down the stairs before slowly returning to the bustling city life outside. In this sequence the use of silence over the continuous tracking shot heightens the grim, inevitable fate that awaits Babs. She is alone and helpless. No one outside is aware of what is about to happen. No one, that is, except the spectator, who plays out the scene in their own mind.

Discussing the unique role sound performs in his own equally violent film Benny’s Video [1992], Austrian director Michael Haneke elaborates on this Hitchcock approach:

“With an image, you cut the imagination short. With an image, you see what you see and its 'reality'. With sound, just like words, you incite the imagination. And that’s why for me it's always more efficient, if I want to touch someone emotionally, to use sound rather than image.”