Soundwave(r)s traversing challenger deep: how sonic objects celebrated uncertainty mourned potentials, lost to unwritten rules and bypassed users' resistance to frameworks of reflection on their relationally

In this paper we (an educator and a psychotherapist) track our journey so far as we investigate, together and with input from other participants, the potentials of using sonic objects in a creative action method (e.g. Chesner & Zografou, 2014) for exploring relational experience in real time. Our differing conceptual frames rub up against each other, exposing sensitivities and blind spots, inviting us eventually to language what has been uncovered through a feeling process, an ongoing action of evoking and provoking in a shared sonic space. The first time we channelled our voices through guitar and synth pedals we were lost (and found) in the moment, mindful, animated spirits (Hu, Yokota & Horvath, 2020). As time progressed, a feeling-knowing-understanding emerged, sounding out (of) peripheries, meaningful aspects of our relation, encountered ‘in the field’. Far out in the ocean, Challenger Deep tugged, longingly: a willing-ness to risk going further, an intuition that there’s more, down on the ocean floor… and simultaneous resistance to the pull, a matching tension. How to meet that need for mutual reflection in darkness absolute? Sonar sensing shaped surface representations. We listened closely, precisely, yet dreamily from a distance as the sound diffused. Sound-scapes (e)merged beings.

Reflecting later the theme of loss emerged next to unspoken-ness, and perhaps being lost, and ambivalence, and space that is perceptible, and accessible through experience, yet elusive, refusing definition. In the vicinity of these words, feelings resonated. The sonar sensor emitted a low base tone. The words returned us to something we were trying to understand. Ettinger (1995), Irigaray (2017) and Stern (1985) questioned our differentiation. Movement, transitions, Relationscapes (Manning 2012)… through layers of past experience, glimpses of potential frames of reference (be)came together and separated out again as we moved between forms that fitted the needs of the experience(r)s.