Tactile Piece for Human Ears by Aviva Endean creates an intimate listening experience, capturing sounds through binaural microphones which are designed to replicate the acoustic properties of human hearing. Working with sounds which are on the edge of human perception- wind currents, pipe tone and vibrations heard through bone conduction, Aviva builds acoustic landscapes shaped in real time to feel like they’re happening just for you – immersive, strange and quietly communal.
Presented by Chamber Made, Now or Never Festival and Melbourne Recital Centre | Friday 22 August – Saturday 23 August 2025
Tactile Piece for Human Ears is a strangely intimate listening work, using multiple instruments and technologies designed specifically for the shape and acoustic properties of human hearing.
A binaural dummy head “listens” to sounds created through bespoke ‘Hear Muffs’- which filter, extend and transform the acoustic properties of our hearing, before the resulting sounds are funnelled out to each audience member’s ears via bluetooth headphones.
But are we all experiencing the same thing? How do the anatomical differences in our own makeup, and our unique set of desires, memories and associations filter our experience of the sound?
Throughout the performance, I weave together small and intimate sounds, almost tangible in their immediacy. The gestures become layered and disassociated from their original performance, playing with our sense of proximity and spatial awareness, as well as toying with our sense of reality, our intimacy with technology, and the perceived “truthfulness” of binaural recording technology.
This new piece emerges out of several pre-existing works. Since 2013, I have been performing ‘Intimate Sound Immersions’, a form of solo performance for one blindfolded audience member at a time. I use the fragile sounds of everyday objects alongside the extremely quiet possibilities of the bass clarinet played in extreme close proximity to the listeners ears. The Intimate Sound Immersion occupies a space between experimental performance and sound therapy, the intensity of the one-on one experience transporting listeners into the depths of their own imaginations, and often eliciting an experience described as at once challenging, soothing and intensely intimate. Tactile Piece for Human Ears builds on this form and queries the potential for intimacy when mediated through technology.
The ‘Hear Muff’ instruments used in this work have come out of many years of play and experimentation, including the development of ‘Sonic Labyrinth’ created with Justin Marshall and children at Art Play (which is reimagined as an installation work for Now or Never). In Sonic Labyrinth, children used various sets of Hear Muffs to listen to the push of pull on underwater gurgling, to hear the sounds beneath their feet as they walk blindfolded and barefoot along a pathway of various surface textures, and to lie down and be played a a bone-conduction lullaby. The Hear Muffs designs were later developed with designer Tahl Swieca for participatory installations at M Pavilion Parkville, and Music Meeting (The Netherlands), with new iterations of the Hear Muffs developed especially for Tactile Piece for Human Ears.
CREDITS
Hear Muff concept and design: Aviva Endean
Hear Muff design and fabrication: Tahl Swieca
Sound engineer: Patrick Telfer