Jane Grant

Between Us was originally an augmented reality work made for Magic Leap and Sennheiser AMBEO 3D audio. In this version it becomes a binaural soundscape and narrative soundwork about desire, solar physics and the impossibility of touch. Immersed in 3D sound, the listener is addressed directly by a disembodied voice that circles them, passing from behind the ear to the back of the neck, so that the narration grows unsettling in its desire. Grant pays close attention to the involuntary raising of the tiny hairs on our skin when we are cold, aroused or whispered to. The work takes as its subject the ionosphere, ‘where the sun and the earth first touch,’ a layer of our atmosphere that, like skin, reacts constantly to what surrounds it. Drawing on Karen Barad’s writing on touch and on Hélène Cixous’s idea of a ‘Third Body’ born from the desire between two lovers, Grant imagines the ionosphere as a third body created by the earth and the sun. The work premiered at ISEA 2019 in Korea, with sound design by Jay Auborn.