UBIQUITOUS
MUSIC, SOUND AND THE COMMERCIAL SOUNDSTAGE
Music
and sound in public and semi-private spaces.
- Report: Department of War Production, Division of Media and Radio. (excerpt.)(not available)
- Barry Salmon, “Soundstaging” Paper given at 1999 IASPM Conference, Nashville, TN.
- Jonathan Sterne, "Sounds Like the Mall of America: Programmed Music and the Architectonics of Commercial Space" Ethnomusicology 41:1 (Winter 1997): 22-50.(downloaded into class files)
- Excerpts from Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (MIT Press. 1998). (currently on reserve)
Links:
Muzak: the corporate website
DUE April22
Assignment 5: Project Proposal
Write
a one-page (500 words) proposal for your final project. It should include a
hypothesis, a detailed description of who or what you plan to document and an
explanation of your stylistic objective. Also, include an additional
one-paragraph artist statement.
UBIQUITOUS MUSIC
While it was not intentional on my part (I mixed material from different sound studies courses around the world together without being entirely sure how that would work) reading about soundstaging in modern America right after learning about how monkeys and humans perceive sound in a lab created some interesting juxtapositions.
Sterne, Reynolds, and Zizek are of course concerned with states of awareness in human beings, but because they are all informed by a Marxist point of view, sometimes the way that they examine corporate sound's effect on humans resembles the way that scientists study how sound effects animals; behavioral science is no doubt responsible for testing and shaping the content of Muzak for shoppers on the mall.When scientists attempt to study sound preferences in animals and humans, often the issue of consciousness is at stake.
UBIQUITOUS MUSIC
While it was not intentional on my part (I mixed material from different sound studies courses around the world together without being entirely sure how that would work) reading about soundstaging in modern America right after learning about how monkeys and humans perceive sound in a lab created some interesting juxtapositions.
Sterne, Reynolds, and Zizek are of course concerned with states of awareness in human beings, but because they are all informed by a Marxist point of view, sometimes the way that they examine corporate sound's effect on humans resembles the way that scientists study how sound effects animals; behavioral science is no doubt responsible for testing and shaping the content of Muzak for shoppers on the mall.When scientists attempt to study sound preferences in animals and humans, often the issue of consciousness is at stake.
One of the most interesting things about studying media is
examining how we travel from conscious to unconscious states of
awareness through the senses. Sterne is especially good at definitions, and I appreciated how he
established "the necessity for understanding "listener" as an ambiguous
term that shuttles between activity and passivity" in his essay. As far as the application of his ideas, the topic of media saturation, in the form of Muzak, leads me to thinking
about choices and limits in installation spaces, since I have an
upcoming installation.
My questions for this week are: in any given circumstance, should the experience of a work of media art resemble osmosis, as easy as taking an elevator, or should it sometimes entail hiking up flights of stairs?
How you establish motive and consent matters, of course. In the case of Muzak, Sterne cites the fact that most Americans prefer to be surrounded with music, whether or not they listen to it. The consent is there. Is the consent there because personal awareness, when it comes to these kinds of sound, is easily manipulated because we can easily travel from being passive to active listeners when it comes to this kind of sound.
If sound art was piped into the mall, it wouldn't be so easy to ignore, I imagine, and consent would not be readily given. To think about it another way, the more innocuous the sounds, the less important consent will be. The harder to ignore the sounds are (abrasive, loud, recalling something disturbing-the shrieking of monkeys rather than the sounds of eating, to borrow from last week's readings on monkey experimentation) the more consent is needed. Reynold's comparison of ambient and punk rock seems fitting here.
Would an installation that uses whispers, or pleasant music be able to take more risks visually? In a wireless installation where listeners have volume control through personal receivers, can you take more risks with abrasive sounds?
While these questions might seem obvious, it is easier for me personally to focus on content than context, and this week's readings make clear that sound staging is a familiar and yet underused way of thinking about space, art, and awareness.
My questions for this week are: in any given circumstance, should the experience of a work of media art resemble osmosis, as easy as taking an elevator, or should it sometimes entail hiking up flights of stairs?
How you establish motive and consent matters, of course. In the case of Muzak, Sterne cites the fact that most Americans prefer to be surrounded with music, whether or not they listen to it. The consent is there. Is the consent there because personal awareness, when it comes to these kinds of sound, is easily manipulated because we can easily travel from being passive to active listeners when it comes to this kind of sound.
If sound art was piped into the mall, it wouldn't be so easy to ignore, I imagine, and consent would not be readily given. To think about it another way, the more innocuous the sounds, the less important consent will be. The harder to ignore the sounds are (abrasive, loud, recalling something disturbing-the shrieking of monkeys rather than the sounds of eating, to borrow from last week's readings on monkey experimentation) the more consent is needed. Reynold's comparison of ambient and punk rock seems fitting here.
Would an installation that uses whispers, or pleasant music be able to take more risks visually? In a wireless installation where listeners have volume control through personal receivers, can you take more risks with abrasive sounds?
While these questions might seem obvious, it is easier for me personally to focus on content than context, and this week's readings make clear that sound staging is a familiar and yet underused way of thinking about space, art, and awareness.
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