Created during a 70-day artist-in-residence period at the Akiyoshidai International Arts Village, Ears Are Dazzled is a collective exploration of sonic experience. Inspired by research addressing the role of sound in everyday life and its applications for gaining a deeper understanding of human experience, the experimental documentary was made in collaboration with locals in Yamaguchi, Japan. I asked them to keep sound diaries in which they recorded sounds that were relevant to their daily experiences. We then recorded the sounds and images together, creating a shared sonic encounter.
Experimental documentary
All rights reserved, Amanda Belantara
[Bio c. 2012] Amanda Belantara is a documentary artist who researches ethnographies audio-visually, creating pieces that focus attention on the various images and sounds that emanate from people’s behavior. Her films Lifelibrary and Ears are Dazzled have been screened at festivals and academic conferences around the world. Amanda holds an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester and currently works as research assistant in acoustics at the University of Salford. She is also co-founder of the Manchester based sound and storytelling collective Kinokophone.
Audible observatories are points of sensory convergence. They are nodes where worlds perceived through the senses intersect and begin the labour of transforming independent events into knowable and meaningful claims. They speak and they are spoken to. Audible Observatories brings together works that draw attention to both the situation and the agency of the observer. The curators for Audible Observatories make a playful connection between research-based art and place-bound exhibition in order to animate a curatorial vision that foregrounds audio-centric art works within a broader rubric of site-specificity. We conceptualize the audible observatory as either a mobile or a stationary...