When director Steven Eastwood (Island / Buried Land) first spoke to Brain Audio composer Thomas Haines and sound designer Steve Bond about the sound and music for the Stimming Pool he asked this tantalising question.

The film, co-created by the Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown-Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker) and Steven Eastwood, and shot on 16mm by Gregory Oke (Aftersun), is built around the concept of an autistic camera. This question, and others like it, were instrumental in the process of making the music and sound for this film.

AN AUTISTIC MICROPHONE?

Is there a problem with this question? Surely a microphone is a machine, and cannot be autistic. So why ask this question? Well, as we were to discover, the question is rather a good way of shifting neurotypical expectations of making a film soundtrack. Let’s think for a second about the microphone. What if, for example, it’s a machine designed for re-producing neurotypical sounds in neurotypical cinema? Autistic ears fixed to the eye apparatus of the autistic camera? Do we even hear what we see through an autistic microphone in this film? Is it even part of the ear/eye apparatus of the camera in this context? This type of questioning informed the development of the soundtrack as we worked with the collective.


THE AUTISTIC MICROPHONE IN THE STIMMING POOL

The sound and music in this film drifts in and out of what we might expect as an audience — raw documentary feature sound, repetitive (stimming?) musical motifs, diegetic point of view experience of characters in the film, idiomatic B-movie zombie flick music. Brain Audio was guided by the collective, whilst simultaneously invigorated by the chance to interrogate the neurotypical artistic choices we make on a daily basis.

And by the way, the microphone we used for this film, is indeed, autistic.



SOUND DEPARTMENT

Sound Design // Carlos San Juan 
Score // Thomas Haines


-----


All score, sound design, Foley and 7.1 mix took place at Brain Audio Studios, which is available to hire. Get in touch with us for more information.