Sonogram 3
Sonograms use sound waves to show an image of the body’s internal worlds, but the possibilities don’t end there. The envelope, the trashcan, the glass jar – these too are bodies, if a body refers to a container of worlds. What then can serve as their sonogram, their mechanism for translating, displaying, opening up those worlds to us (or to themselves, assuming they had the desire)? Sound is neither stagnant nor singular by nature. It happens as a chain of events, from a source, which emits a vibration, to its propagation through solid, liquid or gas, to its reception by our ears and then our brains. For sound to happen, many things must happen; ears alone are not enough. For us to see beyond what is there, many things must happen; eyes alone are not enough. Yet we, and everything around us, produce the invisible, inaudible layered understandings we seek. Birth is legible: It is what it is. Sonograms, meanwhile, elude us: It is what it could be. Tiffany Mi is an emerging image-maker whose work has appeared in Split Lip Magazine and Chitro Magazine. She tweets @mi_tiff.
