Heavy weather: Michelangelo Antonioni, Tsai Ming-liang, and the poetics of environmental sound

While recent scholarship has done much to address the long-standing visual bias of film studies, there is perhaps one aspect of the film soundtrack that has remained relatively neglected by critical enquiry: namely, the use of sound effects, and in particular ambient or “atmos” sound. My aim in this article is to explore the cinesonic deployment of envi- ronmental sound through a comparative study of the work of Michelangelo Antonioni and Tsai Ming-liang—two directors who, I will argue, make significant use of this particular resource in articulating a shared concern with the conditions of modernity. In considering the ways in which environmental sound plays through the films of these particular direc- tors, my concern is not only to situate this aspect of the soundtrack in relation to matters of authorship, but also to frame the cinesonic use of environmental sound within a discussion of the poetics of noise. Thus I argue that, when auditioned within the context offered by politico-aesthetic formulations of noise, the environmental sounds of Antonioni and Tsai’s films communicate significant differences in the world-views of two directors whose work is often thought to share many similarities.