In 1927, the first feature film with full sound was released. Now, almost 90 years later, music composer and performer Bruno Ruviaro is advancing a different idea: movies without video.
Ruviaro, who is on the faculty at Santa Clara University, played his piece “Cinema for the Ears” at Stanford on May 8. The piece incorporates the audio from a feature-length French film — including dialogue and natural sound, like cars driving by and water splashing — with music and spoken audio clips. Ruviaro used three-dimensional sound techniques to make each noise sound like it was coming from a different part of the room: cars drove from left to right, and boats faded off into the distance.
The podcast above explores what inspired Ruviaro to reimagine what movies look — or sound — like and where he sees cinema for the ears going in the future.
(Headphones photo courtesy of Kevin Shine on Flickr via Creative Commons.)
