Processing Auditory Processing: Video-Poems by Luca M. Damiani
Hearing Health magazine Winter 2020 cover subject Luca M. Damiani lives with the auditory disorders hyperacusis, tinnitus, and persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, all the result of a workplace accident.
Trained in computer science, coding, and technology, Damiani uses art to respond to, interpret, and find a measure of relief from these conditions. His new book, “The Upcycled Healing Brain: An Cco-Therapy Diary in 80 Buried Spoons,” is an illustrated poetic memoir detailing a journey from brain trauma to acceptance and healing, and will be published in the spring of 2024.
He created the following video-poems for HHF. Learn more at Damiani's website.
Getting to Know Hyperacusis
Getting to know hyperacusis
Acoustic disorder in my neurological system
Shaping sounds into painful background triggers.
A decreased tolerance
A higher sensorial sensitivity
A hacked auditory sense.
Clouding the day-by-day flow
Invisible in its quiet hidden action
Visible in its loud found disruption.
In parallel, the filtering and ringing tinnitus
Bilateral in its cutting and humming
Faulty in its neuro-signaling.
As a whole, it is like a pattern of mathematical 2D functions
Creating the wrong flat computational results
And returning parameters of overloaded graphic limbo.
Here, I start to process it.
Here, I try to recode it.
Here, I aim to reframe it.
Hyper Sensorial Neuro Response
An almost invisible cause.
Static moving.
Patterns of sounds… invisibly visual.
When it comes hyperacusis hacks.
The flow gets in the rhythm of acoustic disruption.
Then it needs a rebalance of mind and body.
Unbalanced neural auditory system.
Recalling stability.
Recalling a sense of being here or there.
Lost.
Looking in dizziness.
Settled in status of wonder.
On the spectrum channel… it builds up.
Builds up. Builds up.
Until it overflows.
Divergent neuro response.
Altering concepts.
Altering sound and reshaping light.
Experiencing insight.
Investigating the enhanced sense.
Narrow down. Analyze. Rationalize.
Ups and downs, touching the deep pain of sound.
Processing in vertigo.
Slow slow the mental flow.
Zoning out.
Breathe.
Repeat.
Breathe.
Repeat.
Empathic acceptance.
Swimming in hybrid fluid.
Invisibly debilitating direction.
Once more with feelings.
Reload
Energy in bites,
the wind on my face,
the sun on my neck.
Oh sea, please take me away.
Oh sea, give me some current.
Oh sea, I'll promise to stay afloat.
Reloading the mind.
Reloading the soul.
Reloading the now.
Day-to-day steps
recalling the need of stability.
Recalling life.
Blocked in Sound Sensitivity
In between noise and sound
spectrum of neurological heartbeats
heavy in the light invisible moving
networking between body and mind.
Processing tension,
bubbling around with anxiety
circulating uncoded emotion.
Anticipating the broken glass
interpreting those fragments of being
cutting as a sharp flick knife.
Stuck in artificial emotion.
Blocked in sound sensitivity.
In movement with vestibular attack
losing grip… slowly in limbo.
Unclear in the cloudy direction of shining reflective lights.
Striving to find a way out.
A dive into cold water.
Revisiting
Patterns of straight lines
cut in circles
multiplied in three dimensions.
Divergent processing of hacked clouds.
Wind interrupting the signal
reflecting neurological communication.
I recall the normal functioning filters.
I miss them in my every-day
in my every-minute, in my every-second.
Reframing my reality.
Looking into analyzing it.
Looking into finding some answers...
...or maybe just finding some questions.
Stepping into positivity.
Diving into possibility.
Closing my eyes for seeing the new ability.
In June 2020, Damiani released the album “Hyper Hack-usis” about his sensory disability, reflecting upon the conditions he experiences in various ways. Under the name Aqua-Recoded, a collaboration with musician Riz Maslen, the album features Damiani’s lyrics and voice.
“I am a visual/digital artist so it is really my first work with music and sound. I wanted to create a piece that reflected the conditions, explaining them for awareness, as well as connecting to my digital art and video work too, and within a medical narrative.”
“I cannot even listen to most of the album due to my condition, “ Damiani says, “but it was a way to reinterpret the effect of sound in the disorder.”