In much of traditional music and contemporary sonic practices, sound is treated as a message, a carrier of meaning, emotion or cultural reference. A siren, a horror film soundtrack, or words conveying meaning all point beyond themselves. This work challenges that model by creating objects without sonic precedent, where sound does not represent, but emerges through sonic exploration.
By introducing unfamiliar sonic practices into public space, it reclaims listening as an act of cultural and social agency. Rather than refine, repeat, or remix familiar sonic material, this work embraces emergent sound arising through unpredictable interaction, not shaped by social codes, but by material, space, and the act of listening itself.
From algorithmic playlists to protest chants, to the sonic warfare of city noise, sound is often something done to us rather than experienced with us. The works presented refuse sonic nostalgia, interrupts sonic branding, sidesteps institutional legibility, gently disorients and gives sound back to the listener. It is a response to how we listen, to how we form meaning from experience when there is no guide, no precedent, no script.
These sculptures offer unmediated sound, where the object doesn’t signal what sound it will produce. The audience has no reference point. They must engage, listen and interpret. In an age of hyper-explanation and attention capture, the work proposes sound as a question, not an answer thus returning the act of meaning-making to the listener, a radical reversal of mediation.
By inviting the public to experience these works, Joseph James Francis allows embodied sonic knowledge to emerge. Without the crutch of pre-composed pieces, the sculptures become spaces for exploration where sound, space, and action converge. This ontological approach draws on thinkers like Salomé Voegelin and Brandon LaBelle, whose work explores the relational nature of sound and space.
Introducing these sculptures into public spaces, locations with a constant soundscape, interrupts the sonic habituation of place. Challenging the pre-scripted sonic identity of public infrastructure, the audience forms a temporary aural public. Through this shared interruption there begins to manifest a feeling of connectedness, one that is temporary, informal and unrepeatable.
These interventions approach sound not as a fixed object, but as a living event that emerges from the coming together of space, interaction, and presence. The sculptures are not passive containers for musical notes but shape and produce sound through their own material logic.
The objects have no tradition, no acoustic lineage, no cultural script. They resist the demand for legibility, categorisation, and historical anchoring. In this way, the work refuses origin. There is nothing to authenticate them against. They are pre-authentic: originless by design. They ask the listener to confront sound itself, not as symbol or language, but as something unfolding in the present. What if sound doesn’t represent anything? What if it’s not meant to be understood, but simply encountered?
In Sonic Unknowing, Joseph James Francis proposes that when we hear unfamiliar sounds and respond emotionally, culturally and physically, that moment shapes our ‘relational sonic self’ and makes space for unknowing. Embodying the idea that we are not passive listeners, that sound does not simply pass through us but it leaves its mark, forming us, even if only briefly. The sculptures allow the player and listener to discover a version of themselves through sound. A self that only exists in that moment, in that space, with that object.
“To listen is to give time to what we do not yet understand.” — Listening to Noise and Silence, Salomé Voegelin