But What Does Death Sound Like? Saskia Moore’s “Dead Symphony”

Artist Saskia Moore.
(credit: The Melbourne Review)

We don’t know what to expect after death. So we speculate. We believe in one thing or another, or nothing at all. The closest we’ve gotten to understanding what the “big moment” feels like is via those who have had a NDE (Near-Death Experience). Melbourne artist Saskia Moore was curious to know what aspects of NDEs pervaded most people’s experiences, particularly regarding sound. “Sound is understood to be the last sense to leave the body in the dying process,” she told the Melbourne Review in 2013, “So what are those sounds? What are people hearing in the dying process?” These questions led her to create the art installation “Dead Symphony,” born from her meticulous notes on the nature of sound during a NDE – its fluctuations, its mounting rhythms – to create an ethereal sensory experience.

Credit: silly-luv

The process took two years. Moore was told by neurologists that no one had ever done an in-depth study of sound regarding NDEs. There are a good number of books on the experience (see our review of Proof of Heaven, a doctor’s personal account of a NDE). Visually, most NDE-ers pass through an initial moment of darkness – a kind of muddiness sweeps over their find, it’s as if they’ve become momentarily rooted in a murky quicksand. Then, the weight of this moment dissipates: they feel a sort of elevation, a lightness of being and (you guessed it) are greeted by the glow of a comforting but ambiguous presence.

“The process took two years. Moore was told by neurologists that no one had ever done an in-depth study of sound regarding NDEs.”

Credit: fyeahviola

Moore essentially created the soundtrack to this experience – communicating what is, in some ways, an even more powerful understanding of death than the written accounts of others. Words and images carry personalized connotations, meanings built from our lived experiences. One man’s description of a “glowing orb” could create a completely different perception for someone else. That’s not to say there isn’t some overlap in these notions, nor understanding – but sometimes, words can’t do an experience justice. That’s where very abstract drawing, then sound, came in to play for Moore.

“Moore essentially created the soundtrack to death.”

Those interviewed had a hard time describing what they had heard when they died, so they often took to drawing. “Some people described the music as a feeling,” she says, “They described how they almost became the music, the music was them and there was no separation between them. They would often talk about colour associations. They might say: ‘The only way I could describe it is that it sounded orange.’ They’d start drawing orange and I’d find the sound of orange. They were able to draw wave forms and so I would try and interpret those jumps or leaps and then orange would change to green and then we’d work on green.”

Saskia Moore.
(credit: theage)

Drawing colors, finding the best note to represent a part of a scribble – the process was taxing. But the resultant “Dead Symphony” has a remarkable sense of comfort and self-assuredness despite its very ethereal, enigmatic nature. It isn’t a Wagner off-the-wall experience (I’m thinking Der Ring des Nibelungen) but a gentle sound that somehow seems as if it’s alive and capable of empathy. “There were often similarities in the description of the music,” she explained, “Subjects talked about it as a sound that is just a continuum. They say it’s very beautiful and it oscillates and changes but it’s always harmonious. A few people hummed similar melody lines to me, really extraordinary.”

The piece was presented in Melbourne beside interactive lights, meant to recall “the fluttering of an eyelid during consciousness or unconsciousness.” To watch a video of the exposition, click here.

More SevenPonds articles:

• Before I Die: Communities in Conversation about Death
• Eye of the Storm: An Artist’s Fight Against a Cancerous Tumor
• Artist Julian Stair: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body