To Hear and be Heard: Listening, Embodiment, and Ceramics
by
Benjamin Oswald

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2021

© Benjamin Oswald, 2021

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Abstract
This thesis is a phenomenological investigation of sound as a form of touch and the effects of
close listening. A methodology for studio process is first proposed that relies on a background of
memories and embodied experiences that contribute to a narrative about sonic observations and
how one can materially visualize them through the creation of sculptural objects, instruments or
vessels. Science is employed as part of the theoretical framework and as a generative guide to
help map out a visual language, using clay as a conceptual medium, to express what it means to
hear and be heard. This thesis addresses the sonic experience and considers several associated
psychological meanings from it. Ultimately, the thinking and narratives discussed in this thesis
contribute to both the fields of ceramics and sound art in rendering a body of non-auditory
ceramic sculpture that considers how careful listening to sound acts as a form of resistance and
suggests further explorations.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................. ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................................................................. iii
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... iv
DEDICATION ............................................................................................................. v
1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1
1.1 Studio methodologies ................................................................................. 2
1.2 Embodied process and theoretical framework ........................................... 4
2 The Sounds Themselves ........................................................................................... 8
2.1 What does sound look like? ........................................................................9
2.2 Historical frameworks and ceramics in sound art ...................................... 11
3 Communication and Understanding ......................................................................... 14
3.1 Four works: perception, interpretation, relationship ................................... 15
3.2 In dialogue with the work ........................................................................... 20
4 Who is Listening?...................................................................................................... 21
4.1 Victorian inventions.................................................................................... 21
4.2 Deep Listening ........................................................................................... 24
4.3 Seen but not heard ...................................................................................... 26
5 What One Wants to Say, But Doesn’t ...................................................................... 28
5.1 What’s inside? ............................................................................................ 29
5.2 Searching one’s soul ................................................................................... 30
5.3 Our ‘hidden’ voices .................................................................................... 31
6 What Resonates? ...................................................................................................... 33
6.1 Body resonance: from surface to interior.................................................... 34
6.2 Epistemology............................................................................................... 37
7 What Does it Mean to be Heard? ............................................................................. 39
7.1 Conclusions................................................................................................. 39
7.2 Places to explore......................................................................................... 41
BIBLIOGRAPHY/ REFERENCES/WORKS CITED................................................. 42

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List of Figures
Fig. 1. 100, ceramic, 130” x 10” x 7”, 2019
Fig. 2. Reflection, ceramic, 16” x 9” x 8”, 2019
Fig. 3. Untitled, ceramic, 18” x 16” x 25”, 2019
Fig. 4. Sound Installation, ceramic, Largest ⌀ 350mm, Smallest ⌀160mm, 2021, image used with
permission of artist Chris Wight
Fig. 5. Sound Surface Series, processing coding format, 2016, image used with permission of
artist Jonathan Keep
Fig. 6. Malleus Incus Stapes, ceramic, 15” x 15” x 6”, 2020
Fig. 7. Malleus Incus Stapes - close up, ceramic, 2020
Fig. 8. Potty Mouth, ceramic, 18” x 8” x 13”, 2020
Fig. 9. How Precious the Lips, ceramic, 16” x 9” x 62”, 2020
Fig. 10. Words Like Honey, ceramic, 16” x 9” x 62”, 2020
Fig. 11. Punch, Volume 84, London, 1883
Fig. 12. Ear Trumpet Headset, ceramic, metal, plastic, 10” x 13” x 5”, 2020
Fig. 13. Political Ear Trumpet, ceramic, 5” x 5” x 57”, 2020
Fig. 14. Environmental Headset, ceramic, plastic, 16” x 16” x 9”, 2020
Fig. 15. Headset of Wisdom, ceramic, metal, 13”x 5” x 9”, 2020
Fig. 16. Seen, Not Heard, film still, ceramic, video projection (no audio), 16” x 6” x 16.5”, 2021
Fig. 17. Sound Sleep, ceramic, LED light, 24” x 24” x 7.5”, 2021
Fig. 18. Soul Searching Performance and inside text, film stills, porcelain, video (no audio),
2021
Fig. 19. Soul-Searching, ceramic, 16” x 10” x 6.5”, 2021
Fig. 20. Hidden Message, ceramic, 18” x 4” x 5”, 2021
Fig. 21. Hidden Message (in process) and close-up of side detail, ceramic, 2020
Fig. 22. Resonance Vessel (in process), ceramic, 3.5” x 10” x 3.5”, 2020
Fig. 23. Resonant Surface Vessel (in process), 2020
Fig. 24. Resonant Surface Vessels, ceramic, 20” x 9” x 9”, 2021
Fig. 25. Resonating Within, ceramic, epoxy, 23” x 11” x 24”, 2021
Fig. 26. Epistemology, ceramic, epoxy, 8” x 7” x 9.5”, 2020

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To my mother, who would wake me in the morning to Handel’s Water Music and to my
father, who encouraged me to wander magnificent art galleries.

1
Introduction
“All we hear is,
Radio ga ga
Radio goo goo”
- Queen
It begins with listening. Everything in the studio is a rhythm. My key to the studio door
has a certain metal grind against the keyhole as I insert it. As I push the door open it stutters as it
rubs against its jam. Walking into the space, the radiant heater switches on. I can hear the fan
whirl, relays click, and the igniter heats up and combusts the gas into flame. The heat flows
down a black metal tube and it vibrates low and resonant. Electromagnetic radiation is released
into the space. I feel the warmth. It's all a vibration. I ascend a wooden ladder as I move into the
wheel room. Each of my footsteps percussively contacts a wood step as I move upwards. In the
wheel room there are rows of shelves that are a home to plants in pots, pails of tools, and glass
jars containing oxide colourants and ceramic stains. The sequences of colours, shapes and forms
engage my senses. A wood drying rack on casters rests next to the wall and has rows of vessels
lined up in various stages of dryness. They make me think of running my fingers over dozens of
smooth fired porcelain surfaces. There is a basket that contains dozens of ceramics, art, and
sculpture magazines which are located next to a shelf of books that detail clay history, method,
and technique. These texts remind me of the rich historical narrative of clay and a contemporary
practice I replicate or invent with each repetitive visit to the studio. I press a button on a speaker
and music at low volume enters the room. The sounds evoke a vulnerability in me which cause
me to pause for a moment and listen.
This thesis is about sound as a form of physical touch. It is also about silence and
practicing deep listening as an act of resistance.1 Beginning in the studio I make a case for
1

The term resistance here refers to the agency of a listener to engage in or resist a sonic experience.

2
ceramics, as a conceptual medium, to explore and capture the sensory and embodied experiences
to make sense of sound. I also call upon my background in electroacoustics and physics to help
create a groundwork of art over three territories broadly categorized as objects, instruments, and
vessels (the human body being considered a vessel). As a result, this thesis postulates the
following. First, sculptural artworks about the phenomena of sound and its psychological
implications can be made even if the works themselves produce no sound. Second, artwork about
close listening to sound assists in evaluating the ways we encounter its touch and how our desires
to physically connect have an intimately physical and psychological presence in our lived
experiences. Ultimately, the propositions in this thesis investigate what it means to hear and be
heard.
The providence of my listening began decades ago with my background education and
teaching experiences in electroacoustics and physics. From the moment I began studying
diagrams of air particles covered with springs as visual representations I was fascinated with how
one brings visual imagery to unseen phenomena. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said,
“You cannot enter any world for which you do not have the language”. Like the physics
laboratory, my ceramics studio is a place to utilize and learn new languages, define terms, and
wrestle with incomplete ideas until they become visible. Artist William Kentridge taught at the
Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University that the studio is, “both event and
epistemology” (06:33). Kentridge has long asserted and described that his repetitive pacing of his
studio space, his actual physical moving forwards and backwards and circulating in and around
it, leads to important thoughts that help reveal “the relationship about the physical making and
the thinking” (University of Tel Aviv 00:57). Visual artist Liz Magor succinctly stated it this
way: “[the studio] is a place for physical philosophy” (02:36). Indeed, when I listen to Kentridge

3
and Magor describe their epistemological processes, it makes me wonder how I come to know
and realize work through my own process. In considering this, my first instincts are to reach out
to a material and begin working it with my hands to model out an idea or thought. In a lecture to
the ceramics students at Pennsylvania State University, ceramic artist Julian Stair emphasized a
ceramist’s engagement with material as being utterly haptic and that touch has the ability to
describe things beyond sight. He stated that “touch picks up the details that the eye doesn’t
appreciate” (Arts and Arch 12:58). The physical experiences that occur during the making of
work contribute to my thinking and I have begun a new kind of embodied listening in the studio
which helps initiate this investigation. In paying attention to the audio-rhythmic patterns of the
space, I hypothesize about the effects they might have or play in the creation of new ideas. These
sonic experiences, which have been tacit to my experiences over the years, have now made me
wonder what it means to really hear and how could that listening translate into material forms?
I remove my coat and put on one of the aprons hanging on the wall. As I put it on, my
hands feel the spots of clay and plaster from previous sessions of work. I take out my keys and
run them down smooth clear tape on a cardboard box housing the clay. I angle my fingers into
the box, grip the plastic bag and remove a heavy sack of porcelain. Grabbing the clay cutters, I
run my fingers down the wire and feel the friction grip the wire and remove the dried clay that
hangs on them after each cutting. The small bits of clay pop off the thin wire in rhythmic ticks. I
cut the clay and take a mass of porcelain and wedge it on a large plaster slab. I begin to knead it.
It's a familiar, comforting rhythm. I press down on the clay, it responds, I roll it back, it
responds, I press down again and repeat this over and over until I lose track of counting. I slice
the kneaded clay into a row of hand sized pieces and pat each ball into a slight conical shape and
take the pile of prepared pieces to the wheel. There is a familiar click as my finger catches the

4
wheel’s switch. The wheel head rings out in response to throwing a piece of clay on-centre on
top of a supporting bat. As I press down the pedal, the wheel starts spinning counter clockwise. I
simultaneously immerse both of my hands into a bowl of room temperature water and like a
religious sprinkling, I christen the spinning clay and securely grasp it. My right-hand fingers
press into the base and my left palm compresses the spinning mass. I move it up and down
several times to feel the clay particles become correctly oriented. I press into the clay and open
the form, noting the swirl as I pack and compress the base. There is a particular centric spinning
texture that ascends up the side of the form caused by my fingers that ride a compression wave
up the side as I pull it into a cylindrical form. The clay continues to spin. I again wet my hands
and compress and shape the form. Using an aluminum scraper, I erase the marks made by my
fingers on the exterior of the spinning form (but I can still see the traces of my hand captured
within the vessel). I stop the wheel, release the bat supporting the vessel, place the piece on the
drying rack and insert a new bat and begin again with a new lump of clay. Again and again,
vessel after vessel, whether I’m making multiples of forms on the pottery wheel or mold making
and slip casting multiple forms, the music that was on fades into the background, having yielded
to the flow of haptic experiences.
These haptic experiences with materials and their eventual realization into artworks have
their inception in a methodology best described by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
His 1962 descriptions of phenomenology outline an ‘Embodiment Theory’ which, in essence,
describes that thinking is sustained by a background of ideas and then is more fully realized by
our embodied communication with the world (xxiii). He states, “the process of expression brings
meaning into being or makes it effective” (213). Thus, the vital combinations of touch and
thought connect somewhere in the studio that truly fuel art making. In a review of embodiment

5
and creative practice, author John Haworth emphasized this theory by suggesting that images and
ideas “emerge in the process [of making] and [are] incorporated in the flow of vision to produce”
(88). If the enacted making process is unfolding moment by moment, what happens in the studio
that propels one to understand something at its very essence? Will the experiences with a
material alone yield ultimate conclusions?
After teaching physics for nearly two decades, science has become part of my natural
theoretical framework of thought, a language or literacy I can call upon. When I look at
materials, sometimes I look at them through a microscopic lens like the Greek philosopher
Democritus, who philosophically dissected material down to their “uncuttable” atom-like limits
(Berryman). What constitutes the un-cuttable building blocks for sculptural artwork? Ceramists
Edmund de Waal and Judit Varga compose works out of base units. For de Waal, the cylinder is
the primary object set in rhythmic configurations within vitrines and shelves. Varga’s works are
set with specific limits for her constructions based on referenced geometries such as circles,
squares, and knots (Lovelace 46). Indeed, realizing the essence in form was one of the major
objectives of the modernist language that I commonly employed in my previous work which was
rooted in design. Still, both my past and present work centres on minimalistic aesthetics using
industrial processes producing carefully profiled objects with the traces of the hand removed.
This homage to a more reductive and design-based process, I believe, speaks to my desire to
tease out the underlying structure of a thing through simplification of form and colour and then
see it multiplied and reworked in combinatory ways to produce vessels and sculpture. So,

6
considering Democritus’ approach, how does one begin to visualize the essence of something
unseen like sound?2
In his classic work Tractus Logico-Philosiphicus, Wittgenstein described how “the limits
of [our] language mean the limits of [our] world” (74). With my background in ceramic art and
science being considered as languages, I use them to investigate sound with all its physical
descriptions as well as its potential overlapping of meaning, metaphor, and psychology. Most
important of these physical descriptions is an understanding that sound is a physical force we
experience through listening, even when the source is at a distance. We don’t often think that just
by speaking someone’s name to them that we are touching them. However, we are. The energy
we send out does work on a fluid medium of particles carrying the energy without transmitting
matter and does work on the biological structures in the listener’s ears. Its a touch without hands.
In my view, understanding this connection assists in expanding my language base to make a
body of sculpture that considers important neurological, psychological, and emotional
experiences associated with listening to sounds. As I step back and circulate around these ideas
about philosophy and sonic phenomena in physical form, I wonder who is really listening?
Whether they are in their studio, through social interactions, or to their own voice, do they listen?
Listening researcher Ralph Nichols stated in an interview with the International Listening
Association that at our basic core, humans have the need to understand and be understood and
listening is the key to both.
In analyzing my own epistemology, I recognize that my methodology begins with a
combination of memories, embodied actions, thoughts, and feelings in a building of vessels or

2

Democritus, who correctly proposed atomic theory, also proposed that the unseen human soul was composed of
soul-atoms and set forward a descriptive visual imagery to describe them. His visualizations proposed that souls
were composed of spherical fire atoms as he associated the life force with heat (Berryman).

7
objects where a meaning can then be derived. Therefore, I listen to my memories and thoughts
with all their perceived vacancies and mysteries. I listen to the variety of simple harmonic
performances that occur within my studio. I listen while in the embodied moments of making
and remember the conversations and acoustics that engage my mind and stir my soul. I begin
making artworks to make visible those invisible acoustics of sound and speech and formulate
imagery about the psychological intentions behind them. I listen and imagine the essence of the
sounds themselves.

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The Sounds Themselves
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Data collection for this sonic investigation can begin anywhere. I begin with a nearby
thrift store and search it for objects that are reminiscent or symbolic of the sonic experience. I
begin to peruse the shelves of mass-produced goods, glassware, used clothes, and decades of
miscellaneous plastic children’s toys. I become fixated on the technology shelves. I find a
wireless battery-powered radio headset from the 1970s and put it in my basket. In the toy section
I find a clear plastic yellow recorder. In handling it, I can see that it would still produce sound. It
too goes in the basket. I walk to the decorative ornaments section aptly titled “Knick Knacks”
and become transfixed with sets of commemorative souvenir porcelain bells. To an artist who
works primarily with porcelain clay this seems to be an utter historical contradiction! Porcelain
was prized for its whiteness, translucency and fragility. To royalty, it was deemed ‘white gold,’
with an ancient Chinese recipe that took ages of painstaking work to discover in the West. I pick
one of the bells up and ring it. The clapper strikes the edge, and it rings out high and resonantly. I
put it back on the shelf and stare at them a little longer.
Why clay? Why specifically porcelain for that matter? I could use metal, plastic or stone.
What is it about clay as a material that invites the sonic experience? Perhaps artist Oliver Beer
best answers that question in his 2019 exhibition of “Vessel Orchestra” at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. His work featured a selection of vessels from the museum
collection from antiquity to modern contemporary that were fitted with tone generators and used
to harmonically amplify his sonic compositions. Physics describes that all objects have a natural

9
frequency with which they resonate. With ceramic vessels, the produced harmonics and
wavelengths are definitely alluring if not an essential aspect. From master potter Lucie Rie
tapping her vessels to test their soundness after kiln firing to Netherlands-based artist Jelle
Mastenbroek’s nickelodeon-like contraptions of plinking porcelain, there is a vital percussive
and auditory connection with the ceramic experience that, in my view, makes the expression of
sonic phenomena in clay (even if rendered as nonauditory) more complete.
What does sound look like? What would
Democritus or chemist John Dalton visually
conjure as imagery for sonic vibrations, atomic
frequencies, or wavelike disturbances? Indeed,
casting thousands of small billiard balls to set into
different ratios is tempting. However, I begin with

Fig. 1.
100, ceramic, 130” x 10” x 7”, 2019

volumes such as a cylinders, bent cones, and curved
ellipsoids as base units, taking
Edmund de Waal and Judit Varga as
inspiration. I repeat the shapes over
and over until I have produced dozens
of them, even hundreds. The
collection of cylinders becomes a
three-dimensional topography
Fig. 2.
Reflection, ceramic, 16” x 9” x 8”, 2019

reminiscent of a three-dimensional
digital audio graph (see fig. 1). The

10
cones comprise a stroboscopic-like motion captured in a
curving arc in one direction and then experience their own
echo-like reflection (see fig. 2). The curved ellipsoid
arrangements hang close together in clusters. One cluster
curving upwards sits directly below another cluster
suspended from above which spirals laterally as a kinetic
sculpture (see fig. 3). I view these frequencies or rhythms
like molecular renderings of waves propagating through
phases of matter. I see myself as a creator of rhythms
without a drum or echoey guitar. I accept the fact that
these objects don’t realistically illustrate actual air particles
Still, the constructed forms are assembled together and
become my first creative glimpses of structured objects in

Fig. 3.
Untitled, ceramic, 18” x 16” x 25”,
2019

motion. They become references to a disturbed medium where displacement from an equilibrium
position can result as a reflection or refraction. I imagine each unit that comprises them as wave
packet with volume, depth, curvature, and information. They are my first renderings of objects as
sculpture with reference to sonic vibration but they themselves produce no sound.
I continue to employ a minimalist aesthetic of pure form through repetition. While
porcelain has a preciousness and translucency to it, these surfaces lack texture or colour, and
there is an avoidance of glaze. These features, or lack of them, speak to my reaching for the
essence of the medium of clay and sound propagation. Still, what do those surface choices say
within a work and how will they be interpreted? Will these sonic-inspired renderings read as
sound? Philosopher Jacques Derrida stated in his critique of structuralism that “everything begins

11
with structure, [but] cannot have an absolute subject or an absolute centre” (7). Thus, it is
expected that the interpretations of these works will not only be varied but questioned. Therefore,
when reading a work, Derrida proposes that a reading would ultimately illicit a circling and
repositioning, inviting multiple meanings.
Indeed, the empirical looking and questioning is fruitful. It takes me on a historical
review of what symbolism gets used to describe sound and causes me to wonder if those symbols
could be incorporated into works as form, image, texture, or colour. Interestingly, author Matilde
Battistini wrote in her guide to Symbols and Allegories in Art about the five senses. Of sound,
she notes that some animals (such as the stag) are very sensitive to sound and are used in art to
portray the sense of hearing. In addition to animals, she notes that musical instruments such as
the lute, singing, or even Latin texts that describe the auditory organs all contribute to
symbolistic readings in artistic works (321). When I review this historical symbolism it makes
my data collection visits to the thrift store increasingly relevant. While there I am able to find
objects and instruments that in effect are used to produce sound as a means of touching another
through, noise, music or voice. It is there I begin to locate objects, like the headset, that are
specifically made for careful listening.
What is also fascinating is to historically investigate how we have come to envision the
sounds themselves. In Aristotle’s treatise on the senses, De Anima, he describes sound and the
act of hearing as “. . . something of external origin and is not native to the ear . . . we hear by
means of what is empty and resonant, because that by which we hear has air confined within it”
(Hicks 87). More contemporary philosophies and science exploring sound and hearing describe
specific effects on brain processing and emotions that make up a vital part of the human
experience (Altenmuller et al.). It’s no wonder that in discussions about what people hear, how

12
they hear, their perceptions and emotions while listening to each other, music, or other sonic
phenomena, the field of sound art was born and rapidly expanded.
Hampshire College philosophy professor Christoph Cox referred to sound art as a “stony
field to navigate” (Barnes Foundation 06:07). From Luigi Russolo’s futurist conceptions in the
early 1920s to Max Newhaus’ in the 1960s and 1970s, many prominent public works feature
magnificent constructions and engineering feats that harness our planet’s wind currents and
ocean tides to power resonant tubes, making eerie combinations of whistles or loud bursts of low
frequencies. Artists such as Swiss-born Zimoun or Netherlands-based artist Bob Bothof combine
elements of resonance, rhythm, and engineering to create marvelous immersive and sonic
environments as installation sculpture. Within the field of ceramics, there are several artists that
construct amazing new resonant instruments in clay
or combinations of ceramic and electronics. Other
ceramic artists such as Chris Wight and Céleste
Boursier-Mougeno utilize technologies to ensure
resonant vessels are tapped, struck, or collide to
create captivating
Fig. 4.
Sound Installation, ceramic, Largest ⌀ 350mm, Smallest
⌀160mm, 2021, image used with permission of artist
Chris Wight

soundscapes. Still,
others steer away

from instrument building, field recordings, minimalist
electronica, or the monitoring of acoustic ecologies to create
combinations of sound and image or sound and sculpture with
no audible sounds at all, an approach I employ for this thesis.
Among those are artists such as Steve Roden and Jonathan

Fig. 5.
Sound Surface Series, processing coding format,
2016, image used with permission of artist Jonathan
Keep

13
Keep who reach out to science and/or mathematics as a means of finding the essence of
phenomena and compose marvelous works using science to generate new conceptions, forms and
meanings.
From this preliminary research and historical description, I begin to conjure ways to
communicate about the sonic experiences we have through listening and vibrational touch. I
research the physical equations that describe acoustical wave propagation. I begin modeling
enlargements of the smallest bones in the human body that comprise the inner ear. The yellow
plastic recorder and 1970s radio headset that I purchased at the thrift store become potentially
symbolic forms as I make molds of them in plaster and cast multiples of them. In addition to
these, I listen to the sounds all around me: in the studio, in my home life, and on my walks in the
nearby river valley close to my home. I carefully make note of them, thinking of ways to bring
them to light.

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Communication and Understanding
Oh brother, I can’t, I can’t get through
I’ve been trying hard to reach you ‘cause I don’t know what to do
Oh brother, I can’t believe it’s true
I’m so scared about the future, and I wanna talk to you
Oh, I wanna talk to you
- Coldplay
I once heard a speech that was so engaging and moving that I was entirely persuaded to
the cause of the speaker. The words conveyed ideas and intentions that evoked an emotional
response that left me inspired and uplifted. Indeed, words can convince. They are used each day
to communicate facts, lies or love. In our daily communications, thinking signals vocal cords and
breathing. Our lips, mouths, and tongues shape the air from our diaphragm into frequencies of
waves that pass from us, through the air, and into the ears of listeners. In a recent series of
interviews featured at the contemporary craft fair Collect put on by the British Craft Council,
Edmund de Waal, while describing a recent installation of his, said, “The most basic human need
is to hear a voice and make a space where a vast number of objects (vessels) become a poem”
(Craft Council 31:44). In my view, experiential descriptions of sound and voice have a very
important place in art as they help us describe our desires and intentions. Sound and voice are
paramount in our ability to form and be a part of relationships. Philosopher Alain de Botton
explains, “[The desire to be heard] sounds desperately simple, and in a way it is. And yet how
little of this emotional nectar of acknowledgement we ever in fact receive or gift to one another”
(The School of Life Articles).

15
This thinking into the
vital importance of
communication and the
questioning of intentions and
perceptions of voice became a
catalyst for the creation of four
works. The first (see fig. 6),
features cast enlargements of the
Fig. 6.
Malleus Incus Stapes, ceramic, 15” x 15” x 6”, 2020

three bones of the inner ear
(mentioned previously). It is an
important starting point for me
as I imagine the wave bundles of
information (referenced in the
previous sculptural objects
figs.1-3) interacting with these
interception points of human
physiology. Because of the
enlarged scale of the bones, I
also imagine an enlarged

Fig. 7.
Malleus Incus Stapes - close up, ceramic, 2020

capacity for sound receptivity. It
makes me think of times I spent

in acoustical sound booths and anechoic chambers listening to low frequencies and feedback
loops through large speaker systems shaking back and forth. I install an on/off switch onto one

16
set of the bones and title the work Selective Hearing. My reasoning is that for every sound we
hear there is a physical stimulus that registers in our brain. This action reaction law for hearing
can’t be turned off, but rather only filtered by our consciousness (or lack of it). A second work,
titled Potty Mouth (see fig. 8), considers communication of taboo words and the psychological
effects they have on those listening. Sound is our primary sensory warning system as it provides
stimulus for information 360o around us as opposed to our visual sense which is limited to 180o
in front only. Sounds alert us to potential dangers. I recall a time while I was playing hide and
seek in the woods and a friend jumped out of a hiding spot screaming which truly scared me. I
also recall an overly aggressive colleague talking with me in his office using several expletives

Fig. 8.
Potty Mouth, ceramic, 18” x 8” x 13”, 2020

17
to communicate his frustration and anger. Because we can’t shut off our hearing (only filter it)
we make contact with noise, sounds, or language that we potentially may not want to experience.
Sound can be used as a form of abuse. Potty Mouth was inspired by these sonic interactions and
supported by a lecture given by psycho-linguist Stephen Pinker, who reviewed how humans
respond to taboo words while being monitored within an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging)
scanner. The lecture discussed how, upon hearing taboo words, the amygdala becomes
stimulated and registers the stimulus as a heightened level of aggression (RSA). This artwork
interprets the experience of aggressive taboo language. When sounds are a form of physical
touch the shapes of the sound waves (ultimately wavelengths and frequencies) are transformed
into meanings. Sounds plus meanings can pack a conceptual punch! My sculptural rendering
employs yellow glaze to taint the lips of the speaker and shows up in the explosive internal
structures of the listener. Pinker asserts that taboo words can be used for shock effect or
domination. Thus, how we listen to them can be a form of resistance and restraint. The third
work in this series (see fig. 9) was an investigation of the auditory experience of an apology.
Like most, I have said things I shouldn’t have. I have been irresponsible with my sound output
touching others in negative ways. I have hurt others and in turn have been hurt in the
quintessential war of words which I now also understand as a war of sounds. Can there be any
aural balm for the acoustical kickboxing we engage in? The work titled, How Precious the Lips,
is a sonic exploration of an apology. It is laden with symbolism associated with acoustical
physics and speech pathology, as well as some psychological perceptions around one’s desire to
receive an apology and the precious lips that offer it. Texts of the apology are inscribed on the
head and written in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) as a means of reducing the words

18
down to the essence of the
sounds that comprise them.
Mathematical equations placed
on the lips and ear represent the
action of delivery and
reception. The gold on the lips
imbues the delivery of
acoustical information with
preciousness. Gold is also an
excellent conductor of
electricity for signal thus
emphasizing the clarity of this
apology to heal the sound
bruised and sonically broken.
The fourth work titled Words
Like Honey (see fig. 10)
considers the words we use to
Fig. 9.
How Precious the Lips, ceramic, 16” x 9” x 62”, 2020

convince. It references several
wisdom adages from the Book
of Proverbs that deal with

listening to the words of others, some to seduce and others to exalt.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue (18:21). The lips of a strange woman drop
as an honeycomb (5:3). Lips of knowledge are a precious jewel (20:15). Meddle not with
him that flattereth with his lips (20:19). Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the

19
soul, health to the bones (16:24). A word fitly spoken is like . . . an earring of gold
(25:11-12).
What are the words we use to
speak to others and convince them (or
manipulate them)? What are the words
spoken to us and the intentions behind
them? In making this work I left the
traces of the mold that were used to
form the heads (a deliberate deviation
from past surface work) to provide
contrast in the materiality,
imperfectness and fragility. Gold is
used to bring the eye to the fluid words
that drip from the lips and fill the ear of
a listener. The eyes of the sculptures
are closed to exclude the suggestion of
other senses being active. Indeed, I
wanted the words to be the essence and
focal point of this piece. An important
moment in this piece was in working

Fig. 10.
Words Like Honey, ceramic, 16” x 9” x 62”, 2020

with the glaze. It was the first time I considered how a glaze could be used as a sculptural effect
rather than purely for surface design. I fired the heads to vitrification and then added a lower
temperature glaze (mostly frit) that oozed out of the pieces when it fired. To me, this is an

20
important place to be. In describing a sonic experience, a new material exploration immerged
providing potential places to further explore.
In making these works I found that I was consistently visiting and revisiting the pieces
from inception to completion. For some of the pieces, the meanings didn’t reveal themselves
until I had the opportunity to contextualize the objects and consider the spaces and their
relationships in them. Only then did the work become clearer of its intentions. Kenyan-born
ceramist Magdalene Odundo asserted in her lecture given at Collect 2021 in London, England
that when we make an artwork, we also enter into a dialogue with that artwork. She described
that as she creates her works, she is both in a “dance and dialogue with the piece” (Lowe
Foundation 26:40). These four discussed works have many pieces and parts that I positioned and
repositioned over and over. I felt that dance and dialogue as I circled around the meanings and
ideas until they materialized.

21

Who is Listening?
There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying
- Pink Floyd
There is a park in London called Hyde Park where one can take refuge from the busy
aural cacophony of a large modern city. In Hyde Park, there is a fascinating corner called
Speakers Corner where people have been allowed to speak on any subject deemed lawful to any
member of the visiting public interested in listening. It has a rich history of speakers including
missionaries, orators, and activists who, over the past two centuries, have used the corner as a
place to be heard. In the early 1800s for example, proselytizing missionaries would stand on
soapboxes and project their sermons. The soapbox, of course, helped change their elevation and
assisted in propagating their sound waves further out. This classic technology aided those early
Victorians (and likely many other 19th century speakers around the world) who had not yet
begun to envision microphones, radio systems, or fibre optics.
When I was visiting an antique bookstore in Edinburgh, Scotland, I picked up a collection
of Punch cartoons (Victorian political satire) and noticed that there were several images that

Fig. 11.
Punch, Volume 84, London, 1883

22
featured ear trumpets used as listening devices by the hearing impaired. I was mesmerized by the
devices used as early technological hearing aids. Essentially, the ear trumpets were inspired by
and fashioned after seashells that could be brought to the ear to amplify sound waves. The
Victorian designs incorporated horn and urn shaped vessels with small tubes that could better
connect the hearing impaired to a sound source. Fascinated by the evolution of the hearing aid, it
quickly becomes another symbol for close listening for a series of works. For one piece (see
fig.12), I cast two large vessel shapes and fashioned them with sprigged lace designs in porcelain
and attached them to a headset that could be worn. I kept imagining what it would be like to wear
the headset and how sounds would be amplified. I felt humor in the piece as I build it. Trying it
on a couple of times in the studio I felt like I was somewhere between a Nick Cave Soundsuit

Fig. 12.
Ear Trumpet Headset, ceramic, metal, plastic, 10” x 13” x 5”, 2020

23
and a Monty Python mockery of Queen Victoria. In this work and a few other headsets (see figs.
14-15) I deviated from using only ceramic materials incorporating the plastic and metal parts of
the disassembled headsets. I felt those nonceramic pieces needed to be incorporated for it to
function more like an instrument for close listening.
The Punch book of political satire also featured images of the elderly using ear horns, old
men in top hats whispering in each other's ears, and parliamentary antics where long ear trumpets
were being used by the house speakers to blast hearing impaired crown representatives. The
imagery made me think about what it means to be heard by politicians or those in positions of
power. Using the mold of the recorder, I cut and stitched several cast pieces together to create a
long five-foot political ear trumpet (see fig.13) worthy of abolitionist and suffragist William

Fig. 13.
Political Ear Trumpet, ceramic, 5” x 5” x 57”, 2020

24
Lloyd Garrison, who shouted to a prejudiced majority, “I am in earnest . . . and I will be heard!”
(The Liberator 1). This piece, however, is filled with holes! The sounds will never truly reach a
listener. The recorder pieces used in the construction look the part for what might be music to the
ears yet, disappointingly, sound dissipates as political hot air.
Encouraged by the ear trumpets symbolic way of presenting close listening (albeit futile
in that work), I began thinking of the environment and my own walks in nature. What was the
natural environment really saying if I listened? Inspired by a recent capture and relocation of an
unwanted squirrel that was inhabiting my attic, I cast a porcelain set of ear horns featuring
common squirrels running up and down them directly connected to a headset to deeply listen
(see fig. 14). The squirrel became the symbolic voice for the natural environment reaching out to

Fig. 14.
Environmental Headset, ceramic, plastic, 16” x 16” x 9”, 2020

25
sonically touch. Its presence in both my home and in nature seemed a close connection for it to
relay messages back and forth between the two seemingly separate spheres. Furthering this
discussion, I cast the 1970s radio headset in ceramic and placed an owl, an animal known for its
wisdom and listening, carefully perched on top (see fig. 15). So often we want to connect with
animals in the environment but assume that connection must be in the form of touching with our
physical hands. Sound Artist Pauline Oliveros, who pioneered the practice of deep listening,
declared that “Sounds carry intelligence. Ideas, feelings and memories are triggered by sounds. If
you are too narrow in your awareness of sounds, you are likely to be disconnected from your
environment” (4). Indeed, deep listening allows that contact of the natural world to occur as a

Fig. 15.
Headset of Wisdom, ceramic, metal, 13”x 5” x 9”, 2020

26
form of resistance to touch with physical hands allowing all the living signals and warning signs
to be audibly registered. Oliveros continued on to say that,
Animals are deep listeners. When you enter an environment where there are birds, insects
or animals, they are listening to you completely. You are received. Your presence may be
the difference between life and death for the creatures of the environment. Listening is
survival (4).
Whether it is a woodpecker tapping on a tree, a dog bark or a child’s cry, through conscious
listening we are touched and become more aware and connected with each other.
It has been said that “listening is a sign of unselfishness.” This quote with an unknown
origin was something my mother would say to me during my formative years. I believe she was
encouraging me to learn the simplicity of focus and concentration during conversation without
formulating or composing my own ideas and arguments. I also think she was teaching me that
there are more than my views alone and something can be learned from another speaking when
time is taken to give their words a place. Listening requires humility, a concept I still grapple
with putting into practice. Real conscious listening can be so intense that a conversation can
become part of you. It becomes an experience.
What happens then in a society where so many want to be heard and few are ready or
willing to listen? In my view, talk is cheap when we all speak at once and over top of each other
in an acoustical pillow fight. It becomes even cheaper when we filter into silence those whom we
assume have nothing to say. Who is willing to listen? Seen, Not Heard (see fig. 16) is a work
composed of two 20-inch curved slabs of ceramic. A silent video projection displays a pair of
lips speaking in a way that only a lip reader might be able to decipher. An ear is drawn on the
second slab using graphite and its simplistic curves bend around almost like a question mark
hanging in space. I can just hear my mother's words echo again as I reflect on being a listener,
but this time as a question: “Is my conscious listening a sign of unselfishness?”

27

Fig. 16.
Seen, Not Heard, film still, ceramic, video projection (no audio), 16” x 6” x 16.5”, 2021

28

What One Wants to Say but Doesn't
Hello darkness my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence
- Simon and Garfunkel
There are times my wife falls asleep before I do. I lay in bed motionless under the covers,
looking at the ceiling, listening to her deep breathing. If I wait long enough, she’ll enter into her
dream state and her breathing then changes and is coupled with other noises. These are soft
grunts usually, but sometimes there are other sounds that might be words muffled by the layers
of sleep. Listening to the sounds of her dream state makes me wonder about what’s really
happening in her mind (see fig. 17). What kinds of visions, combinations of fantasy and realities,
or emotions are being experienced? I’m listening but am rendered helpless to know what's going
on inside. I am keenly aware of being on the outside of another thinking being fully unable to
interpret the goings on of their inner psychology. What’s being spoken and to whom? What
thoughts and feelings go expressed but unrevealed by sound? I begin to search my own soul for

Fig. 17.
Sound Sleep, ceramic, LED light, 24” x 24” x 7.5”, 2021

29
things that I suppress. What messages do I long to speak or call out to God or the cosmos? I
imagine bottles and vessels with written texts of the soul cast into oceans, forever floating and
never voiced.
Magdalene Odundo said, “ceramics affords us to have a vessel, an inside and an outside”
(29:50). As part of her making practice she would pay specific attention to how the inside of the
vessel was made just in case it should ever break and someone could see inside it. She went on to
say that
the inside is the most important of the work. If the inside isn’t made well then neither is
the outside. The inside is the most important, it’s the womb for all my thoughts and
imagination. It’s the healer’s storage space . . . for feelings and emotions that inform the
outside (47:26).
Speaking of the vessel, Julian Stair said, “[it’s] a container of the mind or of the liquid” (Arts and
Arch 51:23). His work titled Quietus was a series of large-scale sarcophagi. In his discussion of
the work, he indicated that the vessel has so many references to the human body such as a foot,
belly, or neck, and found justification in asserting that the inside of the vessel could be
considered a place or container for the spirit or soul (1:06:20). The psalmist wrote, “put thou my
tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book” (Psalm 56:8)? This is another way of saying gather
the evidence of my sadnesses and remember them.
Indeed, the vessel can be seen as a place to put our feelings and emotions, even an
extension for one’s soul. I break my meditative routine of vase making by taking my vases and
then slicing them open with a scalpel and peering into the vacant interior, looking for something
that I can’t see. I record the performance and call it Soul Searching (see fig. 18). I soon begin to
craft strips of clay and inscribe messages onto them. I fold them up and drop them into the

30
vessels as I make them. Some vessels I cut open revealing the contained message. Others are
uncut, the messages unseen.

Fig. 18.
Soul Searching Performance and inside text, film stills, porcelain, video (no audio), 2021

Fig. 19.
Soul-Searching, ceramic, 16” x 10” x 6.5”, 2021

31
I feel determined to consider both the inside and the outside of forms for this exploration
of things I'd like to voice but never do. Much like my Soul-Searching exercises I consider what
voices are on the inside and how they are heard. So importantly, sound consultant Julian
Treasure remarked of our inner voice that “you are not your inner voice, you are the one who is
listening [to it]” (118). I cast several vases and then begin to combine them together into larger
forms. When secure, I use a scalpel and slice out sections revealing the interior of the
compositions. Long strips of porcelain that have inscribed texts and messages of thoughts and
emotions are twisted together and placed within the forms. During the firings, the exterior forms
slump and warp around the interior message strips like a body gripping onto the things inside

Fig. 20.
Hidden Message, ceramic, 18” x 4” x 5”, 2021

32
that it doesn’t want revealed. I picture myself throwing the sculptural vessels into the ocean,
knowing the internal messages will never be spoken or revealed.

Fig. 21.
Hidden Message (in process) and close-up side detail, ceramic, 2020

33
What Resonates? From Surface to Interior
Oh, how I long to be the man I used to be!
Fascinating rhythm
Oh, won’t you stop picking on me?
- George Gerswhin
My father and mother loved opera. As a child, I found it entirely difficult to see how.
Still, my mother, an amateur mezzo soprano, made several low-profile public performances with
her sister who was a soprano. Their duets would cause audiences to cheer and praise. To me, it
seemed very loud and the vibrato was truly perplexing. I recall one performance where I was
sitting with my cousin on the far right of a church stage, uncomfortably stuffed into a suit and tie,
and in full view of the audience. I seem to recall that it was in the middle of Delibes’ Flower
Duet when the audience suddenly erupted with laughter. I looked over at my cousin and found
him with both of his hands around his neck pretending to strangle himself. I clearly wasn't the
only one suffering.
Since then, my feelings about opera have become quite the opposite. During my
undergraduate university years, my father took me to opera performances featuring Kathleen
Battle and Kiri Te Kanawa. That changed everything. I recall sitting in a performance listening
to Kathleen Battle, who was dressed in an amazing yellow dress, and who sang with such clarity
and force that I literally felt my body resonate! It was tremendously moving. I have reflected on
this experience and wondered how I could render my vessels (metaphors for the human
experience) as resonators. This set of works began with scientific studies of resonance patterns of
closed and open columns. Often, the resonant vibrations of particles (essentially longitudinal
standing waves) are translated by science textbook authors into sine wave forms to express areas

34
of air compression and rarefaction within a form.
Fascinated with the actual particle vibration, I
cast a vessel (see fig. 22) with a white clay body
exterior and dark stained clay body interior.
Using a drill, I partially drilled into the surface to
exploit the contrast and reveal a dotted
resonance pattern following the fundamental
frequency patterns of nodes and antinodes in a
closed column vessel. In another series of
vessels, I examined air pressure patterns within
vessels and Chladni plate vibration patterns.
Fig. 22.
Resonance Vessel (in process), ceramic, 3.5” x
10” x 3.5”, 2020

Chladni plates are essentially flat plates
connected to tone generators. Fine sand is placed

on the plate to assist in locating where the medium of air reaches points of minimum and
maximum displacement in a beautiful display of
seeing the unseen medium of air through the forces
at play in sonic vibration. In order to take these
resonant patterns as a form of imagery and translate
them onto the surface of thin ceramic cylinders, I
had to invent a new technique (see fig. 23) to capture
the air particle behaviour through a pointillistic
surface approach using thin foam, a sharp needle
tool and a plaster mold of the foam. Techniques, like

Fig. 23.
Resonant Surface Vessel (in process), 2020

35
languages, are invented to speak the art and not vice versa3. Returning to the cylinder as a unit of
form was an important aesthetic choice as well. It amazes me how little of form it takes to
reference the human body with a vessel. By positioning each vessel relative to each other in
space and by varying the heights and widths of the vessels they become a small community with
their own unique conversations and resonant qualities (see fig. 24).

Fig. 24.
Resonant Surface Vessels, ceramic, 20” x 9” x 9”, 2021

3

In my work previous to my MFA I would search out and study ceramic techniques with an insatiable appetite
thinking that the technique alone might speak the art. My thesis work has shown this to be quite the opposite.

36
Percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie declared, “Hearing is a form of touch. You feel
[vibrations] through your body and sometimes it almost hits you in the face” (Treasure 183). The
resonance designs featured in fig. 24 capture the physicality of the standing wave vibrations on
the exterior of the vessel. However, in the opera performances my father took me to, my body
literally vibrated within, which was emotional and moving. If sound resonance can be featured as
an external surface design, what could an interior conception of resonance look like? Scaling up
my vessels using three-dimensional software, I created a large two-foot profile template and a
plaster slump mold to make vessel halves where an internal resonance (or propagation of sine

Fig. 25.
Resonating Within, ceramic, epoxy, 23” x 11” x 24”, 2021

37
waves) could be seen. I kept the halves separate, as if they had been cut open to reveal the
internal workings (see fig. 25).
Can words or sounds once heard be captured as a kind of mental resonance or vibration? I
often hear people speak regarding what resonates with them. Indeed, our language employs the
concepts of sound to articulate the ring of truth or emotion. After all (and to reiterate Ralph
Nichols), isn’t one of our deepest human desires is to be truly heard and understood? In thinking
about this, I decided I would excavate the human head much like I did while creating my vessel
halves or soul-searching vases. I cast a human head in clay and once done, I sliced it in half and
fashioned thin extrusions of black ceramic at connecting points between imagined brain
hemispheres displaying a kind of mental vibration or reflection. Gold leaf was used to bring our
eyes to points of contact or connection within the cranial hemispheres, my ultimate expression of
neural firings within our synapses. As I stood back and looked at the piece, I wondered, “could
this be epistemology”?

38

Fig. 26.
Epistemology, ceramic, epoxy, 8” x 7” x 9.5”, 2020

39

What Does it Mean to Be Heard?
When setting out to describe the human desire to be heard, what languages do we have to
visually describe those desires and what languages do we need to imagine or further develop?
Wittgenstein declared, “to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life”. To the potter, the
vessel is the imagined language for the human experience and through my haptic interactions
with clay material, I found paths of expressing those inner places of sound and thought through
embodied action. This thesis set out to investigate sound as a form of touch and in the process of
deep listening contemplate its affects using sculpture to communicate about it. Additionally, it
asked if artwork about the phenomena of sound could be made even if the artworks themselves
produced no sound. For this thesis I used clay to haptically map out an overlapping of the fields
of ceramics and sound art to conceptualize the spaces between them. The result of this was the
production of a series of rhythmic objects, instrumental listening devices and excavated vessels.
Each group of artworks revealed something vitally important as well as indicated places to
further explore.
For example, the series of objects (figs. 1-3) became an important bridge for me to move
from a background of making designed functional ceramics into more formalized sculptural
objects. This series shows how I enter into a work, not with a blank slate, but with a background
in physical science from which I can draw on for creating new art. Techniques such as throwing
and slip casting and mold making continued to serve as ways to create multiples of objects that
could be attached and arranged in space to illustrate the important design principle of rhythm.
Forms were organically arranged into patterns, waves and vibrations as I thought out and scaled
up objects inspired by microscopic physical interactions of air molecules. This series of work left

40
me with questions about scale and form. Indeed, I was scaling up imagined microscopic objects,
the smallest bones in the human body, and vessels to show structure. In what ways do I want to
further engage scale? Moreover, these objects are primarily about form and the meanings behind
them are only loosely associated making me question better ways to make meaning with
sculpture in this way.
The series of work featured as instruments (figs. 12-15) were the first works where I
found that I could employ symbolic meanings into artworks as well elements of humor. This was
critical in my research because it is the first point in my studies where I realized art as a
conceptual place to say something more than just a location for formalistic designs and
aesthetics. I found that I could make work that could say something about how sound affects us
in the environment, through political discourse, or personal agency in sonic experiences. In this
series, there were also some important experimental deviations from using purely ceramic
materials. Plastic headsets, metal antennae, and rubber tubing were used. Though I wasn’t
directly questioning the ability of ceramic material to be a conceptual medium, it was the first
time I felt that an entire piece did not have to be comprised of it.
In the series of vessels (figs. 18-25 and 8-10) I realized just how important the inside of
the vessel is as a place of expression and how vital an exploration of it is in my work.
Understanding the sonic experience helped me search inwards to better understand and
conceptualize psychological space. This resulted in my cutting open, searching, and excavating
vessels to haptically search out where emotions and feelings reside during or as a result of sonic
experiences. The cutting and slicing served as a way to search out things unseen and imagine
what they might say or look like. They became acts of revelation. Still, when the objects were

41
fired, the exterior parts warped around the inner pieces placed within and the sculptures became
imbued with a sense of mystery.
When I step back and look at these three series of works completed for this thesis, I see
how a study of what it means to hear and be heard has helped in imagining rhythms of scaled
objects, examining physiologies, and excavating exterior form to search for inner meaning.
Additionally, this thesis shows evidence of how languages, such as science, can further assist in a
generative way to conjure new expressions of forms and phenomena contributing to the fields of
both ceramics and sound art. Philosopher Jacques Derrida noted that “the centre [of classical
thought] is paradoxically, within the structure and outside it” (2). The organizing structures
investigated in this thesis serve as illustrations of how one listens (and desires to be understood)
and considers some of the ontological meanings behind the generation of sounds and how they
are physically and psychologically experienced. Our current cultural experiences can become so
saturated with noise creating a climate of displacement and disembodiment. Thus, careful
listening can resist this effect causing me to hypothesize about the primacy of the auditory
experience over a visual one.

42
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