The sound of silence (was: Kim Cascone - Parasites)

[Janne Mårtensgård <janne.martensgard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>expecting to hear silence but heard sounds
>emanating from his own body, proving that the condition of silence can
>never exist.

Are there any archives for this list? I distinctly remember there were
discussions about whether complete silence can exist or not on this list
aeons ago, but those mails have been erased forever from my hard drive.
I suppose total silence CAN exist - for totally deaf people. When the nerves
connecting the hearing organs to the brain are severed or irreparably
damaged.
An interesting question is this: can totally deaf people experience
something that hearing people would classify as sound? This would have to be
completely brain-manufactured, i e  hallucinated hearing ... The only way to
know this would have to be to ask someone who once could hear but now is
completely deaf, since people who has been deaf since birth wouldn't be able
to tell if these "hallucinations" were of the auditory kind or not (no
frames of reference etc).

And what would these "hallucinations" sound like?

//janne