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Abstract
Chanting occurs in the religious rituals of many cultures. In Buddhism it is primarily used as a mnemonic device to aid devotees in remembering teachings. However, chanting also has the power to affect us emotionally and psychologically. When a sound such as this acquires cultural and personal significance for the listener, it has the potential to transform a space into a place.
This body of research set out to explore through an installation of abstract drawings, the possible role sound plays in the creation of a spiritual place. I examined the way chanting and sound is used in religious practices to establish a spiritual place distinct from that of the secular. The motivation for this project came partly from a desire to find my own cultural and spiritual roots. I explored whether the notion of spiritual attachment to a place of origin, although vital to a sense of identity in traditional cultures, relates to us now in a contemporary context of rapid social change and global movement.
By using the highly responsive medium of traditional ink and brush on paper to visually interpret the unique qualities of Buddhist chanting, I expressed a personal, intuitive reaction to the sound and its movement through time and space. In a sense, the drawings were visual metaphors representing Buddhist chants. The written component of this project detailed the various developments in my search for drawn marks which could give visual form to the intangible nature of sound and chant; from electronic sound waves, to marks inspired by twentieth century graphic notation and Tibetan Buddhist chant notation.
'Drawing Breath', the title of the corresponding exhibition of studio work, described the essence of the subject matter. The expiratory nature of ink became a metaphor for the human breath, the very source of chanting, which gives shape and sound to the breath while expressing spiritual meaning. By borrowing conceptual and compositional elements from Chinese classical gardens in the curatorial layout, I intended that the exhibition as a whole become an installation which shaped the gallery site into a place evoking a sense of spirituality. The installation of these drawings was therefore, an exercise in the creation of a spiritual place.