Szymon Nożyński

Acousmaticity of Film Sound Effects: Media Mystification of Foley in the Context of Sound Design

The text is about the foley profession, an important specialty performed as part of film sound design, at the post-production stage. What’s important here is both, the foley artist’s body, which becomes an instrument, and the ontology of created sounds, which are inserted into the finished film and synchronized with the picture. The author wonders if there is still a place for foley artists in the digital reality and common computerization of work. But the most important issue concerns the nature of sounds themselves, in the context of their production, acousmatics and the ubiquitous sound design.

What is the sound implemented into the picture, does the picture give credence to the sound, even though the sound is “substituted” because it is produced in the studio? The situation is debatable, in the context of acousmatic listening (i.e. without the context of the source), because the picture provides a substitute context for the sound, and the viewer (listener) accepts this audio-visual relationship without reservation (as long as the sound is prepared well). Especially since by going to the cinema, the viewer agrees to a form of manipulation in the name of entertainment. Usually he or she is not aware of the mystification in the field of sound, which - within the oculocentric perception ‒ for him or her is only a complement to the picture, although, in fact, it plays a fundamental role in understanding what is happening on the screen. Other topics discussed in the text concern the communicativeness of sound and the historical background of the foley profession. Also important are the interrelations between foley and sound design and other areas of sound activity, as part of the preparation of all the audio layers of a film.

In the article the authors try to build a research refl ection by means of a logical description of the result of self and technology – sound carriers/media, up to the extreme form, that is their disappearance, or distance from the listener/user. The authors show the infl uence of media on the organization of musical expression in the fi eld of semiotics, technology and aesthetics. 

The starting point of the article is a refl ection on a fragment of the lyrics, which suggests a return of music to the air. The authors reconstruct the evolutionary path of sound carriers and reach the place where the air was the primary carrier. At the same time they analyze the contemporary face of technologically entangled air (as a carrier), which is no longer the air from the pre-industrial era, but rather a symbolic place where one can fi nd wireless communication, the Internet or Bluetooth.

The article has a philosophical and technological character and serves primarily to consider the role of carriers in the current media reality in which, on the one hand, retro resentment is revived and, on the other hand, the form of streaming services takes over the market of music distribution. The contemporary listener, producer-consumer and remixer, modifi es his behaviours, rituals and habitus of listening – the perception of sound.