Audio describing silence. Lost for words

With the introduction of sound in movies, the use of silence has become an interesting topic for analysis in many areas, from Film Studies to Philosophy or Sound Design. According to O’Rowe (2006: 395), sound and silence are complementary and mutually inclusive: ‘[silence] is never absolute and achieves significance in relation to what it denies, displaces, or disavows. It is impossible to think, speak or write about silence without invoking sound’. This argument was later supported by Kenny (2011: 114), who claims that ‘the arrival of sound provided opportunities for the creative inclusion of silences within and around a narrative. The necessary silence of earlier film was overtaken by the threatening or communicative silence of later works’. Silence has been rediscovered, reinvented and elevated to the role of a protagonist rather than that of a mere pause in the dialogue. It has even become the title of some movies like Ingmar Bergman’s (1963), James Wan’s (2007), Baran bo Odar’s (2010) and Martin Scorsese’s (2015), among others.