"...a great noise started up in my ears, a noise that was triple or rather quadruple, compounded of a low and muffled humming, a softer murmuring as though of running water, a piercing whistle...This internal noise was so loud that it robbed me of the keen ear I had previously enjoyed and made me, not completely deaf, but hard of hearing... in spite of the throbbing in my arteries and the humming in my ears, which since that time, some thirty years ago now, have never left me for a moment...The noise was irksome, but it caused me no suffering: it was not accompanied by any chronic affliction, apart from insomnia at night..." 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Confessions" (1780) P. 222, Oxford World's Classics paperback edition, Oxford University Press, 2000

descriptions of sounds 

ringing, hissing, shussshing, static, crickets, screeching, sirens, whooshing, roaring, pulsating, waves, beating, buzzing, clicking, clicking, flufffing, pinging.....

the challenge of describing in words the noises I hear

During the last year I was asked to participate in a project by a colleague of mine called Cally Trench. I was asked to make small drawings over a week, which would contribute to work of many artists and placed together to create a massive show of the work of 51 guest artists, who each made a drawing a day for a week over a period of a year. 

My drawings were about how I hear the sounds of Tinnitus, they were an attempt to draw and verbalise what I hear.  

Sounds I hear in words   

tinnitus, from the Latin word tinnitus meaning ringing, tinnire to ring

tintinnabulation, a ringing or tinkling sound - "don't you just love this word"

Arvo Part - Fur Alina 

How the project began 

I discovered I had Tinnitus some years ago, I remember initially thinking the noise was coming from outside my body, perhaps some interference from some telegraph wires or the fridge or someone had left the radio on.

Since then I have had hearing tests and found nothing was wrong with my hearing, so I have begun to realise that I need to find a way of living with these sounds. and this is where Fluctuations in Sound began to develop.

I am an artist who works with performance installation and