Interpreting the auditory arts is not a nascent pursuit; it has often been invoked as part of installations, video and film, or larger exhibitionary reviews. However, to understand the audio without its intended visual components, requires a delicate consideration of the nature in which we exist with relation to sound. It informs our environment, our understanding of volume, proximity, and depth of the space around us, or the presence of people or animals; we can form a cognitive blueprint of a place based on its audio alone.

With the challenges presented by COVID-19 during this past year and the limitations it enforced on our commute-ability, the experience of the audio works in the commute shifted. To travel by bus or by train, now, was at the whim of the listener from the comfort - or necessity - of their home. A complex consequence; the project we had intended to use to bring us together in a shared journey, became one that resonated with a pandemic-ly infused moment in time. And so, in asking writer Brynn McNab to construct a piece of writing in response to these works, it was with the knowledge that her, and our, experience of the sounds, narratives, and evocations of the works by Helena Krobath, jaye simpson and S F Ho would be irrevocably altered for our ears with a footnote of the year’s current events.

It is with great pleasure that we present this thoughtful and philosophical writing by McNab in response to the three 2020 audio works of the commute.

To download as a PDF >> Earrings, Noodles, and Recurrence

Brynn McNab is a writer, curator, programmer on the unceded territories of the Squamish (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw), Tsleil-Waututh (səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ) and Musqueam (xʷməθkʷəy̓əm) Nations. She is a PhD candidate at Concordia University, in between the Mathematics and Philosophy departments. Her research is centred around recursive forms in mathematics and philosophy, and their material conflicts. McNab holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School.