This article seeks to recapture the sensory experiences of prehistoric hunter-gatherers in the Finnish Lake District by examining the acoustics of their rock art sites. The sites consist of vertical cliffs rising directly from the lakes, with painted images of humans, boats, and animals, sometimes also drummers (5000-1500 calBC). The acoustic impulse response measurements performed at 37 sites indicate that the painted cliffs, in their original state, reflected sound more strongly and accurately than the nearby lakeshore rocks. The psychoacoustic criterion and the auralizations created through artistic improvisations indicate that the reflections generated discrete single-repeat echoes, which endowed sounds produced in front of the cliffs with their auditory mirror images. As these reflections appeared to emanate from invisible sources behind the paintings, the auditory and visual images overlapped merging into one multisensory experience. Although the sounds and music of prehistoric people are beyond our reach, the study shows that the physical environment actively participated in their activities, co-vibrating and creating reciprocal tangible encounters between the human and more-than-human worlds. For the history of sound and music, the study provides an example of how significant a role sound reflections could have in past societies.

This chapter focuses on Tarkovsky’s sound design that underwent several transformations throughout his career. Whereas in his early features the director used to employ a regular music track composed by Viacheslav Ovchinnikov, in his later films made in in the 1970s he worked together with composer Eduard Artemiev who created original and highly experimental soundtracks. As the chapter demonstrates, Tarkovsky primarily strived for the realistic sound aesthetic, requesting a variety of noises and natural sounds, in conjunction with electronic arrangement. At the same time his sonic realism progressively tends towards irrealism in his later films when selected natural sounds manifest their otherworldly dimension. His preference for natural sounds sounding unnaturally is especially evident in his last film The Sacrifice (1986), when Tarkovsky decided to work with the sound mixer only, Owe Svensson, without a composer.

The archaeoacoustic team of the University of Helsinki has been studying how sacred sites in Northern Europe, used by shamanic cultures since prehistoric times, are home to remarkable acoustic properties. This chapter focuses on natural-site acoustics as a magic tool in ritual practices. Based on our acoustic measurements as well as experimental sound tests carried out during in situ studies of prehistoric and historic sacred sites in Finland, we discuss possible sound media (voice, instruments, noise), performing techniques and methods of sound production used at the sites. While the acoustic study of the sacred sites is at the core of our research, we also discuss the visual aspects and visual phenomena observed at the sites during our fieldwork. Our attempt to restore the sound culture of shamanism associated with the hosting sites and their sound potential profoundly rests on ethnographic research of the Finno-Ugric peoples, predominantly the Sámi and the Finns. The end result of this ethnographic and practical research study is our interpretation of the shamanic ritual practices as seen through the prism of the miraculous acoustic illusions and visual appearances created by the sacred sites.

Rejetant les pratiques habituelles de son temps, Andrei Tarkovski confia au compositeur Edouard Artemiev la tâche de creer un design sonore sans precedent pour ses films en lieu et place des bandes musicales conventionnellesN; voie qu’il poursuivit dans ses derniers films avec d’autres collaborateurs. Cet article analyse le role du design sonore dans les transitions du reel au magique dans plusieurs sequences audio-visuelles des films realises par le cineaste russe dans les annees 1970 et 1980N; et en particulier les apports d’une nouvelle technologie et du son electronique dans le processus de creation. Des synthetiseurs uniques en leur genre tels que l’ANS et le Synthi 100, avec lesquels E. Artemiev composa, devinrent les instruments decisifs d’un travail sonore original. Ils permirent de creer un espace sonore capable d’absorber des sources heterogenes telles que des sons naturels et ambiants, des bruits, des sons instrumentaux, et des citations musicales, et de les transformer afin de generer un son aux caracteristiques ambivalentes. Cette analyse s’attache a recreer la genese de la composition, de sa conception initiale a sa production finale a l’aide des commentaires effectues par Eduard Artemiev et Owe Svensson (mixeur suedois qui travailla avec A. Tarkovski a la creation de la bande sonore de son dernier film, Le Sacrifice).

A lo largo de los años y de sus siete películas, el destacado director de cine ruso Andrei Tarkovsky desarrolló una estrategia de rodaje llamada lógica poética. Este artículo se aproxima a las películas de Tarkovsky desde el punto de vista de la lógica poética en sus diferentes manifestaciones. Frecuentemente confundida con la metaforización, la lógica poética, aunque cercana, es un concepto mucho más amplio que tiene otros objetivos y centros de atención. Aparece en métodos y técnicas de trabajo como el naturalismo de imágenes y sonidos, el rechazo de la música fílmica y su reemplazo por otras formas sonoras, la observación o contemplación de un objeto, el establecimiento de lazos asociativos, y una de las más importantes, la cita de objetos visuales y sonoros que pertenecen a realidades artísticas extra-cinematográfcas: música preexistente, pintura histórica y obras verbales. Tarkovsky relaciona la lógica poética con los medios del cine realista. Estas herramientas estratégicas ayudan a dibujar la vida en una toma de la forma más cercana a la realidad. Al mismo tiempo, salva la difcultad de mostrar en la pantalla el mundo interior de un hombre y su vida mental representada en sus sueños, recuerdos, visiones e imaginación. La lógica poética deja abierta la cuestión del signifcado, sugiriendo el polisemantismo de las imágenes flmadas.

Over years and all his seven motion pictures the outstanding Russian flm-director Andrei Tarkovsky developed a strategy of flming called poetic logic. The article approaches Tarkovsky’s flms from the viewpoint of the poetic logic in its different applications. Often mistaken for metaphorisation, the poetic logic is, though a close, but quite a larger concept, which has other purposes and focuses. It appears in such methods and techniques of work as naturalism of images and sounds, rejection of flm music and its replacement for other sound forms, observing or contemplation of an object, building associative links, and one of the most important, quoting visual and audio objects belonging to non-cinematographic art-realities: pre-existed music, historical painting, and verbal works. Tarkovsky relates the poetic logic to the way of the realistic cinema. These strategic tools help to design life in a shot in the closest to reality form. At the same time, it bridges a diffculty of showing on screen the inner world of a man and his mental life represented in his dreams, memories, visions and imagination. The poetic logic leaves the question of meaning open, suggesting polysemanticism of the flmed images.

The article considers signification processes in Solaris by the legendary film-maker A. Tarkovsky. The narration of the film is codified with the musical and visual set of quotations: it includes texts, which belong to non-cinematic arts. The process of comprehension runs as a reflection of one image in another one or refraction of one image through another. By this accumulation of metaphors there comes the multidimensional vision of a subject and the narrative reality doubles and trebles. The quotations build up the fundamental cognitive textual channel of the film, which unfolds independently in parallel and through the main film narration. The investigation follows the crossing points of the diachronical musical and visual textual chains and synchronises the meaning of the musical and visual metaphors. On creating his masterpiece Solaris (1972), the legendary Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky coded the narration with the inter-circulation of texts, belonging to diverse non-cinematic art-realities: music and painting. These citations mark the most significant moments of the film. Tarkovsky's cinematic technique represents his ability to reflect the meaning with the help of metaphorisation and to set up a multidimensional vision of a subject. My proposal is to consider the signification processes in Solaris in musical-visual episodes. I shall point out the criss-cross of the diachronical musical and visual chains and shall try to synchronise them.