One of the main criteria in Pierre Schaeffer´s definition of the "sound objects" was that, through the process of "reduced listening", one should hear sound material purely as sound, divorced from any associations with its physical origins ­ in other words, what is significant about a recorded violin sound (for example) is that particular sound, its unique identity, and not its "violin-ness". Despite this ideal, a rich repertoire of music has been created since the 1950s which plays precisely on the ambiguities evoked when recognition and contextualisation of sound matieral rub shoulders with more abstracted (and abstract) musical structures. But as these structures themselves grow organically out of the peculiarities of the individual sound objects within them, the ambiguity is compounded: interconnections and multiple levels of meaning proliferate. The known becomes strange and the unknown familiar in a continuum of reality, unreality and surreality, where boundaries shift and continually renewed definitions are the only constant ...

In "Unsound Objects", the sounds used are all from the "real world" ­ recordings of actual sonic events which have undergone varying degrees of computer modification. The work operates on three levels. The first addresses what Denis Smalley has called "spectro-morphology" ­ a notion very close to the Shaefferian ideals mentioned above and which is the closest to what wie understand in the west as "music". The second is related to "soundscape" ­ recognisable, everyday sound environments which we have all experi-enced. The third level of the discourse is precisely the points of interconnection (collision, friction, impact, interpenetration?) of these two apparently contradictory worlds; it is concerned with the recontextualisation of recognisable sounds and the "meanings" released by this process ­ in particular, the shock of recognition caused by the familiar turning up unexpectedly or, conversely, by a strange intruder in an otherwise well known sonic space. If the material in "Unsound Objects" is ­ literally ­ elemental, then this only serves to heighten the impact of sounds as universally recognisable as water (river, sea, rain), wood, fire, birds, wind, children, thunder and the human presence implied by footsteps.

This last example is a good illustration of the enormous potential of the sonic arts for blurring the distinctions between reality, unreality and surreality ­ only in sound can we believe in the simultaneous presence of footsteps on the different surfaces of snow, gravel and dry bracken (as occurs at ca. 5'40 of "Unsound Objects"). Because we can recognise each situation specifically, we can believe what we know to be physically impossible, even at the actual moment of hearing it.