Composing perception: Hildegard Westerkamp meets Gus Van Sant (a video essay)

Abstract

This video essay explores the relationship between the soundscape compositions of Hildegard Westerkamp, the films of Gus Van Sant, and the writing of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson. The piece presents Westerkamp’s composition “Doors of Perception” in its entirety with accompanying sequences from the Van Sant films that have used her work as part of their sound design, along with other of his films that do not. The sequences from Elephant and Last Days are positioned according to the timing of the excerpts used in the films, only now it is the films that are integrated into the soundscape composition rather than the other way around. For the rest of the composition, I speculate on what it might have been like to hear “Doors of Perception” in other films by Van Sant, excerpting a few sequences from across his filmography loosely synchronised around a few key points that suggest correlation between sound and image in similar ways to how Van Sant mapped the composition into Elephant and Last Days. These thematic connections support Danijela Kulezic-Wilson’s arguments about the new perceptual engagements opened up under Van Sant’s influence by soundwalking and music concrète within his filmmaking practice.