Week 2

Feb 12

HEARING, LISTENING, NOISE, NATURE

Class 2

We discuss sound environments and acoustic ecology. How do we distinguish between hearing and listening? What are the socio-political implications of each practice? What do we really mean when we use terms like “noise” and “nature” to describe soundscapes?

FURNITURE MUSIC:

·       Chris Watson. Cima Verde. 2008.

LISTEN:

·       A Conversation with Acoustic Ecologist Gordon Hempton. TBOOK,Wisconson Public Radio. April, 2010.(class files)

·       Soundscape: R. Murray Schafer. Spinning on Air. WNYC. February, 2011.

READ:

·       R. Murray Schafer. “The Music of the Environment.” Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. 2004.(class files)

·       R. Murray Schafer. Excerpts from Five Village Soundscapes. 1977. (not found)

·       Pauline Oliveros, “Some Sound Observations.” Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. 2004. (class files)

·       Keizer Garret. "Sound & Fury." Harper's. March 2001. (class files)

·       Jake Tilson. “Noise Violation Kit” Site of Sound: of Architecture of the Ear. 1999. (personal library)

·       “The Ear,” “Physics & Psychophysics of Sound” &“Acoustics & Psychoacoustics of Sound.” (class files)

*   Schafer writes about schizophonia, a term he uses to describe the condition of encountering sound separated from its (visual) source due to technology. From the perspective of 1973, he observes that "precisely the time hi-fi was being engineered, the world soundscape was slipping into a lo-fi condition." What can the fidelity of our "gadgetry" today tell us about the fidelity of our soundscape? How has technology shaped how we navigate the current sound environment?
 

How do Schafer and Oliveros differ in how they think about listening to the "soundscape"? What does Oliveros mean when she says that "all the wax in my ears melts" and "human hearing is non-linear?"
 

Keizer broadly discusses the cultural and sociological politics of sound. Do you agree with him that "human noise is political from its inception? Is noise power? Is quiet/silence a basic human right or is it a privilege?  What are some of the power dynamics you have observed recently in your neighborhood?

  What does Hempton mean by "natural silence"? Can urban sound environments have such silence? Is "silence" even the right word for what we're describing?

SCHAFER

       
       Schafer’s perspective is echoed throughout all the readings this week (and Sterne’s, from last week). He proposes that a higher demand for hi-fi technology is directly linked to the fact that our world is populated with low-fi noise. The fact that we are surrounded by this noise drives us into an adversarial relationship with our environment, in which we defend ourselves with more technology. Technology is being used to “solve” the problems that technology has engendered, with little evidence that this will alter anything overall.

       
       While I agree with Schafer, there is much more to understand about how this relates to cultural and political conditions. Schafer has a love of the musical world and would like to protect it from humans, I come from a different perspective, probably more in line with Keizer, that human beings need to understand just how much their expectations are informed by a lack of basic human rights. The music or the silence of the world is a cultural value I could not hope to engender in others, but a respect for the environment and its use is a more easily identifiable common ground. 

       Can urban environments allow for this kind of soundscape to exist? Currently, they don’t. Yet urban environments possess the potential for more of this kind of silence, for short periods with even limited controls. In the United States, for example, most people would agree that there is more silence on Sunday mornings than on any other day. Cultural imperatives create a weekly space that allows more natural sound to exist. On a larger scale, the Japanese people have recently redistributed the way that the use the power from the power grids in an effort to shut down all nuclear reactors. Voluntary black outs carve out more space for the kind of silence that Hempton is describing.

OLIVEROS

       Oliveros’s essay reminded me of an interview I saw with John Cage, when he said he loved all sound, including the loud stream of sound from around his NYC apartment. I had a hard time believing him, because he also said his favorite sound was silence, but Oliveros truly seems to embrace a variety of ambient sound as open to musical interpretation. This is in stark contrast to Schafer, who speaks about farmers and natural sound, rather than bulldozers and industrially influenced music. I have the sense that Oliveros would view Russolo as an exciting evolution in sound composition, rather than as evidence that natural sound was being diminished, as Schafer does.

       When Oliveros says that human sound is non-linear, I assume that she means that since our hearing is selectively sensitive, that we cannot help but qualitatively sort sound as we hear it, which results in many sounds being left out of our consciousness in the moment. For example, while listening to a recording of music, we might slowly become aware that the clanging beneath the track is actually coming from outside. We absorb sound depending on a kind of relative permeability to that particular sound, which varies from individual to individual.

KEIZER

       The discussion of power in Keizer's article sheds light on some uncomfortable truths about noise, power, and control. I had to cringe at the phrase, "Your ear is my hole," and I think the author meant to shock. But thinking more deeply, Keizer elicits the question for me: is a resistance towards listening a way to avoid thinking about how out of control we really are?

        This got me thinking about a conversation I had with a friend who moved to Switzerland a few years back. At 9:15 pm on a weekday night the Swiss police showed up at her door with a complaint from a neighbor. Home alone with her new baby, who had been thankfully asleep for a few hours, what could be the problem?

       The policeman seemed disgusted with her ignorance. She had taken this moment of peace as an opportunity to throw in a load of laundry, and machine noise after 9 pm was verboten.

       There is a relationship between the amount of control we have over our environment and the level of our basic human rights. While the Swiss example may appear extreme, because it illustrates an unprecedented level of personal responsibility for noise, in the United States there are currently very few controls over industry’s right to emit noise and light pollution. These may be the last frontiers in the fight for environmental control, and class issues abound.

   

       In my own family, my grandfather went deaf from working on fishing boats and in lumber mills- something he took pride in rather than regretted. I can only guess that such blue collar work typically engenders toughness, resilience, and a survivalist mentality. Extreme physical and mental hardship are claimed as badges of honor, not complained about as an infringement upon one’s rights. In this way the economic interests of noisy industries and lower class values continue to justify each other’s existence.

HEMPTON

       Hempton advocates for space which is unpolluted by noise generated by machines and technology. In pushing for a no-fly zone over national parks, he is attempting to preserve the natural soundscape from being infringed upon by human activity. This approach demands a new level and degree of environmental awareness, one which is at odds with increasing jet travel and the preponderance of noisy technologies.

       Hempton defines silence as “not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.” Using the word silence in this context seems somewhat out of sync with the common use of the word, which, according to Wikipedia, is defined as, “the lack of audible sound or presence of sounds of very low intensity.” Hempton’s silence is the secondary kind, the presence of sounds of very low intensity that are commonly drowned out by higher decibel human sound.

 

  

       While valuing silence for its own sake seems unlikely, new attitudes towards energy use could definitely open up more space for Schafer and Hempton’s silence.