How does a caress sound like? Can we make an embrace audible? In this hug between me and my colleague and friend, the videographic scholar Daniel Pope, we two experienced intimate and intense contact I then tried to convey also to the viewer, in particular through acoustical means. I first tried to place contact microphones on the clothes and bodies of me and Daniel but was not satisfied with the result. It was quite by accident that I when playing around with the audio equipment I produced a sound of contact – the electromagnetic sound of my body and the audio cable when connected via a stone.

We can indeed be touched not only each other but also by technical objects, by cables, stones. Made as part of the ‘Embodying the Video Essay’ workshop, Bowdoin College, July 2023. Based on the following prompt designed by Dayna McLeod:

The un-voiceover: using audio recording equipment of your choice (contact mic, smart phone, Zoom recorder, etc.) record original sound made with a body (yours or a willing subject) to replace or augment an excerpt from your media object. Further, map this sound to a specific object, character, environment, etc. within the frame in relation to the scene.

For research purposes only.