INK(ED - Ihoon Kaiverrettua: Thoughts, Deeds, Vibrations multi-lingual experimental radio feature (duration: 50')

This YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) funded and commissioned experimental radio production is a post-acousmatic collaboration of equal contribution with Finnish sound artist Dr Taina Riikonen (Sibelius Academy; Nordic Zen). The programme was originally broadcast on 4.10.2013 on YLE 1.

In the field of humanistic and cultural research, tattoos are widely studied as an intimate form of self-expression. The issues on social and political contamination and stigmatization, and the diverse registers of aesthetic, artistic, psychological, historical and medical influences of ink inscription have inspired scholars in their investigation. However, the analytical focus has rarely been on actual needle-touch interaction or on the idea of treating the tattooing moment as a sonic-tactile flow-episode. This research fills that lacuna by investigating tattoo(ing) as a tactile and fluid praxis of sound ‘making’ and intimate pragmatics.

The work draws from a range of tattoo recordings (incl. improvised tattoo-sound-making), interviews and conversations with tattoo artists and their clients, gathered in New York, London, Cornwall, Helsinki, Paris, Artic Circle, and beyond. The captured sonic events - the epidermal resonances and micro-practices of tattoo making - are then extended and excavated via tactile-listening based, research/production methods, thus elaborating on the existing methodological ‘discussions’ on signifying (performative) bodies, through listening-as-sensing and sensing-as-listening. These themes are epistemologically intertwined within the wider discussion on the relations between sensory experiences and technologies, and the socio-material roles of inscription (recording).

The work embodies the new post-acousmatic ‘sensibility’ presented by the authors in: (i) the multimedia performance-paper Listening to the Recorded Touch: Towards Visceral Methodologies of Mixed Media Sound Making at the peer reviewed 2011 EMS/EMF conference (and proceedings) in NYC, USA; and (ii) the published texts ÄÄNEN KOSKETUS: kypervärähtelevä manifesti, Nuori Voima 1/2011, Helsinki, Finland, and Listening to the Replayed Touch: A Strata Aural Manifesto, BST Body Space & Technology journal vol 10/01).