I’m Sebastián Nabón Hernández, from Uruguay. I have a master’s in semiotics and cultural theories from the University of Tartu, Estonia, and a master’s in Music Composition from the Postgraduate Program in Music at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. I’m also a composer and a musician and work as an assistant professor at the Department of Theory and Composition of the Institute of Music of the Faculty of Arts, University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay. My main fields of research are the semiotics of culture, musical semiotics, semiotics of silence, and the semiotics of listening.
My MA thesis explores the implications of silence as a cultural dynamic symbol, examining its existential conceptual shift from negation to affirmation from World War II until the end of the twentieth century. It focuses on its role in the realm of musical composition, from the conception of silence as a void to an expressive medium.
Different artists and scholars have focused on the phenomenon of silence. John Cage, for instance, has challenged the perception of silence as a complete absence of sound, advocating for a particular listening experience and meaning. Salome Voegelin has underscored the interplay between the environment, the body from a listening perspective, and the communicative contexts where the ephemeral experience asks to be transmitted. Other scholars, such as Dennis Kurzon and Bernard Dauenhauer, have stressed the indivisible union between silence, speech, and discourse. Thus, this study aims to amalgamate these perspectives, finding common features in the conception of silence as a listening modality and comprehending its application in Latin American Minimism as a way of resisting the dominant discourse on the power of silence power in the field of music.
Within the theoretical and methodological framework of Existential Semiotics and Semiotics of Resistance, as proposed by Eero Tarasti, the thesis condenses social and historical processes into musical situations, showing the transformation of silence conception into sound aesthetics. It undertakes the elucidation of silence as a dynamic cultural symbol and its multifaceted role in contemporary audible perception.
Regarding my research interest in my PhD project, the most general topic of this thesis is the semiotics of silence in audible perception, exploring the functions and roles that silence plays in constructing meaning. The approach in this thesis suggests a discussion of listening as a semiotic engagement with the outside world. Both the subject and the object of the analysis are modelled by the contingent and changeable bonds that are established in the context.
The most general aim of this thesis is to investigate silence as an existential sign and as an existential indicator, namely as a mental, thought, cognitive, and emotional sign. This project also analyses its role in meaning-making processes and explores the cultural and contextual variability in perception and valuation.
This research is relevant for expanding the understanding of auditory perception and communication by focusing on the hidden structures (Kukkonen 2008: 18), such as the different inter-semiotic translations of silence, namely, nothingness, emptiness, stillness, and other figures of silence that mediate subject and environment. It contributes to the broader field of semiotics by addressing a fundamental and existential phenomenon that shapes semiosis.
These are my three most important publications so far:
[2021] Chapter Book Publication
Francisco José de Caldas District University of the city of Bogotá
City: Bogotá | Country: Colombia
Formación y Creación en Tiempos de Crisis (Participation, 2021)
Una respuesta a la creatividad: la crisis
Publisher: Francisco José de Caldas District University of the city of Bogotá
ISBN: 978-958-787-619-2
e-ISBN: 978-958- 787-620-8
[2021] Chapter Book Publication
National University of Quilmes
City: Buenos Aires | Country: Argentina
Form and Sound. Fifteen years of sound art in Uruguay (Participation, 2021)
Publisher: National University of Quilmes
Organizers: Lukas Küne and Fabrice Lengronne
Chapter: “I am sitting in a room”, in “the Circle of Weapons” (159-164)
ISSN/ISBN: 978-987-558-718-23
[2023] Chapter Book Publication
University of Rosario
City: Bogotá | Country: Colombia
Las Artes del cuerpo como celebración de la vida y el encuentro (Compilation, 2023)
Chapter: Silencio, una manera de escuchar con el cuerpo.
Publisher: Universidad del Rosario, Colombia ISBN: 978-958-500-198-5
Photo credit: Marina Nikolova