Professional Documents
Culture Documents
28 March 2011
Abstract
This thesis presents a body of practical and theoretical work, which interprets
sound art as a means of encouraging aural awareness in an everyday context.
Through a methodological feedback loop of artistic practice and theoretical reection, strategies for the aestheticisation of everyday aural experience have
been developed and situated within a wider context of contemporary aural culture. The current state of this culture is critically examined. The widespread
claim that we live in a deeply visualised culture is questioned. It is argued
that contemporary Western society can also be characterised in terms of an
increasing interest in auditory perception, which the development of sound art
as an artistic discipline is one symptom of. The technological mediation of
listening is discussed and characterised in terms of a mobilisation and individuation of aural experience. An overview of dierent listening modes informs a
discussion of six dierent perspectives on sound as a physical and perceptual
phenomenon. Various listening practices, which have been proposed in the eld
of sound art, are presented. It is argued that the development of sound art as
an artistic discipline can be characterised in terms of an interest in the everyday
as a source of sound material on one, and as an environment for aestheticised
listening on the other hand. Sound art is proposed as a means of auralising
the rhythms inherent to everyday life, and subtlety is identied as an aesthetic
category for doing so. It is investigated how technological mediation can be
applied to the aestheticisation of mobile and social listening experiences. The
above issues have been addressed by means of artistic practice. The results
of this process are presented as a portfolio of eight artworks, including sound
installations, public interventions, site-specic electroacoustic pieces, graphical
scores and mobile hardware projects.
Keywords: Aural culture, technologically mediated listening, modes of listening, mobile listening, social listening, acoustic ecology, aestheticised listening,
aural awareness, the everyday, sound art.
Fr Florentina Anjali, Dipali Alina, Jivan Simon, Miriam Shanti und Laura Dayita.
Acknowledgements
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
License
Declaration
Some ideas which are discussed in this thesis have already appeared in the
authors following publications:
Hollerweger, Florian (2008): Three Strategies for the Design of Social
Listening Experiences. In: Proceedings of the UK Institute of Acoustics,
volume 30, part 2, pp. 60914.
Hollerweger, Florian (2008): Ohrenli(e)der: Compositions for Listener.
In: Proceedings of the UK Institute of Acoustics, volume 30, part 2, pp.
6317.
Rebelo, Pedro, Matt Green & Florian Hollerweger (2008): A Typology
for Listening in Place. In: Proceedings of the Mobile Music Workshop,
Vienna University of Applied Arts, pp. 1518.
Hollerweger, Florian (2010): Music for Lovers: Shared Binaurality in a
Mobile Sound Installation. Performance Research, 15(3):1114.
Contents
Abstract
Acknowledgements
License
Declaration
Contents
Everyday
16
0 Introduction
0.1 Aestheticised Listening, Aural Awareness and the
0.2 A Guide to this Research Project . . . . . . . . .
0.2.1 Artistic Practise (Portfolio of Artworks) .
0.2.2 Theoretical Reection (Thesis) . . . . . .
0.3 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 Aural Culture
1.1 Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.1.1 Mechanisation and Electrication .
1.1.2 Lack of Awareness . . . . . . . . .
1.1.3 Commercialisation of Public Space
1.1.4 The Sounds of Health and Safety .
1.1.5 Private Property . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Addressing the Challenges . . . . . . . . .
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1.2.1 The Noise Pollution Debate . . .
1.2.2 Acoustic Design of Public Space
1.2.3 Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3 A Visual Culture? . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.3.1 Language and Truth . . . . . . .
1.3.2 The Audiovisual Litany . . . . .
1.3.3 The Audiovisual Competition . .
1.3.4 Perceptual Coherence . . . . . . .
1.4 The Revolution is Hear! . . . . . . . . .
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2 Technology
2.1 Theories of Technological Development . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.1 Deterministic Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.2 Constructivist Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1.3 The Importance of Metaphors . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Technologically Mediated Listening . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.1 The Tympanic Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.2 The Electroacoustic Principle . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2.3 The Digital Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 The Mobilisation and Individuation of Aural Experience
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3 Aural Awareness
3.1 Listening as Attention . . . . . .
3.2 Listening as Interpretation . . . .
3.3 Listening as Such . . . . . . . . .
3.4 The Listener-Sound Relationship
3.5 The Multimodality of Listening .
4 Six
4.1
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Perspectives on Sound
Sound as Source . . . . . . . . . . .
Sound as Signal . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sound as Object . . . . . . . . . . .
4.3.1 Object vs. Source and Signal
4.3.2 Describing the Sound Object
4.3.3 Critique . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.4 Sound as Event . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.5 Sound as Eect . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS
4.6
Sound as Space . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.6.1 Beyond Localisation . . . . .
4.6.2 Auditory Spatial Awareness .
4.6.3 Spatial Eects . . . . . . . . .
4.6.4 Spatiomorphology . . . . . . .
4.7 Sound: a Multifaceted Phenomenon
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5 Listening Practices
5.1 Before Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2 Directed Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.1 Referring to the External Sound Environment . . .
5.2.2 Referring to Listening Itself . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.3 Changing the Conditions of Listening . . . . . . .
5.2.4 Sound Creation by the Listener . . . . . . . . . . .
5.2.5 Sound Creation by the Designer . . . . . . . . . .
5.3 Soundwalking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.1 Mobile Listening Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.2 Soundwalking Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.3 Historic Context of Soundwalking . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.4 Soundwalk Artists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.3.5 Critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.4 Field Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.5 Annotated Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.5.1 Oral Annotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.5.2 Written Annotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.6 Spatial Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5.7 The Relation between Modes, Perspectives and Practices of
Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Art
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CONTENTS
6.3.3 The City as a Canvas for Sound Art
6.3.4 Straenmusik and EaRdverts . . . .
6.4 The Auralisation of Everyday Rhythm . . .
6.4.1 Everyday Rhythm and Sound . . . .
6.4.2 Everyday Rhythm and Sound Art .
6.4.3 9/2/5 and 24/7 . . . . . . . . . . .
6.5 An Argument for Subtlety . . . . . . . . . .
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7 Mobile Listening
7.1 Mobile Music Players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.1.1 The Mobile Music Player: a Personalised Device . . . . .
7.1.2 Headphone Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2 Audio Walks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2.1 Location and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2.2 Situating Listening through Narrative . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2.3 Situating Listening through Sounds from the Environment
7.2.4 Auralising the Inaudible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.2.5 Transforming the Audible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3 Design Considerations for Audio Walks with Microphone Input .
7.3.1 The Microphone-Headphone Chain . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7.3.2 Sound Processing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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8 Social Listening
8.1 The Acoustic Community . . . . . . . . . .
8.2 Social Listening and Technological Mediacy
8.3 Design Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.3.1 Sharing Sound . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.3.2 Sharing Place . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.3.3 Sharing Choice . . . . . . . . . . . .
8.3.4 Sharing Soundmaking . . . . . . . .
8.4 Music for Lovers and 24/7 . . . . . . . . .
8.4.1 Music for Lovers . . . . . . . . . . .
8.4.2 24/7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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9 Conclusion
9.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.2 Implications for Artistic Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.3 Directions for Future Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9.3.1 Extensions to the Work Presented in this Thesis .
9.3.2 Soundmaking: The Other Half of Aural Awareness
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CONTENTS
13
Appendix
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A Ohrenli(e)der
A.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.2 Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
A.3 Public Presentation . . . . . . . . .
A.4 Performance Materials on DVD . .
A.5 Documentation Materials on DVD
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B Straenmusik
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B.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
B.2 Public Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
B.3 Documentation Materials on DVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
C EaRdverts
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C.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
C.2 Public Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
C.3 Documentation Materials on DVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
D Alexanderplatz
D.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
D.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
D.2.1 Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
D.2.2 Editing Concept . . . . . . . . . . .
D.2.3 Sound Spatialisation Concept . . . .
D.2.4 Automation and Binaural Mixdown .
D.3 Public Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
D.4 Performance Materials on DVD . . . . . . .
D.5 Documentation Materials on DVD . . . . .
E Interroutes
E.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . . . .
E.2 Public Presentation . . . . . . . . .
E.3 Performance Materials on DVD . .
E.4 Documentation Materials on DVD
F Music for Lovers
F.1 Description . . . . . . . . . . .
F.2 Implementation . . . . . . . . .
F.3 Public Presentation . . . . . . .
F.4 Performance Materials on DVD
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CONTENTS
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Part I
Everyday
16
[E]veryday life features as a philosophical, political, and aesthetical imperative throughout the modern period [...].
Brandon LaBelle (2007:42)
0
Introduction
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
18
and art galleries. Sound arts very development is closely associated with the
acceptance of everyday sounds as aesthetic material and of everyday life as a
context for aestheticised listening. If there is indeed a revolution in listening
taking place, then sound art is an essential part of it.
0.1
I have already introduced three termsaestheticised listening, aural awareness and the everydaywhich will be used throughout this thesis and are
essential for an understanding of its core concept. They therefore deserve some
prior elaboration. When I speak of aestheticised listening, I am pointing towards a Cageian experience of sound. John Cages oeuvre is widely associated
with the idea that any sound, whether it is part of a music performance or not,
can be heard musically:
Everything can musically enter an ear open to all sounds! Not only
the music we consider beautiful but also the music that is life itself.
(Cage 1981:61)
Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it,
it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we nd it fascinating. (Cage
1991:54)
Aestheticised listening refers to this appreciation of sounds for their own beauty.
Such an appreciation can occur in a multitude of situations, including concert
hall performances or exhibitions of sound art in a gallery, but also ordinary
listening experiences in the context of everyday activities. Aestheticised listening describes the pleasure which can be derived from attending to sounds, no
matter whether or not that was the actual intention behind their creation.
[Cage] concluded that not only were any and all sounds music,
but [that] unintentional music is indeed with usavailable to the ear
that wishes to perceive itin all spaces and at all times. (Kostelanetz 1991:195)
Kostelanetz phrase of the ear that wishes to perceive highlights the fact
that aestheticised listening is generally induced by choice of the listener herself
rather than created by an author. Nevertheless, aestheticised listening can
be facilitated by works of art. In my opinion the realisation of this circumstance constitutes a key aspect of the development of sound art as an artistic
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
19
genre. Since Cages pioneering work, which has been described extensively by
himself (1976, 1981, 1987), Kostelanetz (1991, 2003), Revill (1992) and others,
several generations of artists have explored strategies for aestheticising aural
experience. The objective of my research project was to identify such strategies, both existing and new, in order to extend and consolidate their discussion.
The aestheticisation of aural experience through works of sound art is often
performed with the intention of increasing the audiences aural awareness; a
term which I would like to dene simply as a conscious perception of the sound
environment.1 At the same time, many of these artworks demand such an enhanced awareness already as the listener confronts them; similar to the manner
in which a concert hall visitor is expected to be all ears before the performance has even started. This demonstrates that aural awareness represents
both a prerequisite and a result of aestheticised listening, with the two concepts complementing each other in a mutual relationship. Many of the works
of sound art presented in this thesis deliberately operate beyond (or reinterpret) environments traditionally associated with aestheticised listening, such as
concert halls. Through the aestheticisation of sounds which were not originally
created for this purpose, sound art illustrates that aesthetic aural experience
is neither restricted to sounds created by musical instruments nor to dedicated
performance spaces, but that it extends towards everyday sounds and environments.2
This is why the everyday constitutes another core concept of this thesis. It is a
concept which is particularly dicult to grasp, as Henri Lefebvre has pointed
out:
How can everyday life be dened? It surrounds us, it besieges us,
on all sides and from all directions. We are inside it and outside it.
No so-called elevated activity can be reduced to it, nor can it be
separated from it. (Lefebvre 2008a:41)
Despite the diculties of dening the everyday (or maybe because of them?),
its metaphor has provided an important source of inspiration for Western thinking in recent decades. Lefebvre (2008b:47) argues that everyday activities have
The many dierent ways in which such a conscious perception of sound can be achieved
will be discussed in chapter 3.
2
In this respect, aestheticised listening is clearly distinct from Smalls (1998) concept
of musicking. Both encourage an engaged, performative attitude towards aural experience.
But while musicking is exclusively concerned with music performance, aestheticised listening
extends towards sounds which were not originally created for the sake of aesthetic experience.
1
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
20
recently gained signicant weight across several disciplines after a previous period of alienation. The practice of everyday life (de Certeau 1988) has been
rehabilitated as a eld of aesthetic action and reection. Philosophy, which once
established a deliberate distance from everyday life and considered it unworthy of thought (Lefebvre 2008c:3), has rediscovered the quotidian. Likewise,
the social sciences have found in the everyday the concreteness, the reality
they were pursuing (Lefebvre 2008c:4). In the arts, the new quest towards the
everyday has been described by Berleant (1991:26), Bourriaud (2002), Kaprow
(2003), Lefebvre (2008b) and others. It manifests itself in an abandonment
of the artwork as an object, away from representations encoded in symbolic
systems towards the everyday as lived action (LaBelle 2007:42f).
Lefebvre argues that the question of how people live is simultaneously dicult
and obvious, trivial and profound (2008a:47). He does, however, attempt a definition of everyday life by arguing that it can be regarded as a totality related
to all activities and at the same time as residualas what is left over after
all distinct, superior, specialized, structured activities have been singled out by
analysis (2008b:97). This seems to contradict the concept of aestheticised listening, which constitutes such a distinct, specialised and structured activity by
denition. The contradiction is, however, easily resolved. In the context of our
discussion, the everyday primarily signies a context which was not originally
intended as a background for aestheticised listening, but is reinterpreted in such
a manner by an artist. What this thesis hopes to illustrate is how works of
sound art appropriate everyday situations as environments for aesthetic experience. If these environments no longer deserve the attribute everyday after
such an intervention, that might well be in accordance with the artists intentions. I would argue that it is precisely the metamorphosis of the mundane
into something worth listening to which many sound artists are concerned with,
even if this transformation is achieved by merely assuring the listener that the
mundane is, in fact, worth listening to. One could argue that the everyday is
of interest to sound art only in terms of its transcendence. This is a goal which
artists have striven for for centuries: to create awareness where previously there
was none; in our case aural awareness.
Another central issue of the thesis is the role of technology in this process.
Among the techniques which sound artists frequently use to aestheticise listening is its mediation3 by sound technology. By providing an electroacoustically
I have adopted Sternes (2003:100) terminology of mediated vs. immediate listening in this
thesis to signify the dierence between listening with and without the help of technology.
3
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
21
transformed variation of an otherwise familiar listening experience, it is possible to restore the listeners awareness towards that experience. The concept
of technologically mediated listening will concern us throughout the rest of this
thesis, in particular in chapters 2, 7 and 8.
0.2
This thesis and portfolio of artworks (cf. appendix) represent the outcome of
nearly four years of practice-based artistic research. This process started with
the formulation of research questions which addressed the nature of aestheticised listening in an age where aural experience is often mediated by technology.
These questions enquired the ability of pervasive technologies to encourage a
proactive engagement with our sonic and social environment. They were concerned with everyday environments as a context for an aesthetic experience of
sound. It was decided to address these issues by means of artistic practice.
Through a methodological feedback loop between theoretical reection and
artistic practice, this thesis and portfolio were derived as two entities which
complement each other. Numerous references to the artworks in the portfolio
will be made throughout the thesis in order to illustrate the issues which it
discusses.
0.2.1
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
22
0.2.2
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
23
CHAPTER 0. INTRODUCTION
0.3
24
Contributions
1
Aural Culture
25
1.1
26
Challenges
Conicts in our aural culture are always reected in the public debate which
surrounds them. The UK Noise Association has recently stated that British
cities are now 10 times noisier than only a decade earlier (Saner 2007). This
statement expresses the increasing experience of sound as a disturbance in urban
environments. But at the same time, it symbolises a common misconception in
the noise pollution debate: the equalisation of noise and loudness. Ten times
noisier sounds dramaticbut what does it mean? Attributes such as noisy
are notoriously dicult to quantify,2 yet the public discourse on sound is often
dominated by such simplied descriptions. But noise is a semantic problem
(Fontana n.d.b).
In this section I will identify some of the problems with regards to the state
of our aural culture from a qualitative point of view. Most of these have
already been discussed in the context of acoustic ecology, a discipline which
was pioneered by R. Murray Schafer in the early 1970s and is concerned with
the study of sounds in relationship to life and society (Schafer 1994:205).3 I
will reiterate many concerns which have been raised in the context of acoustic
ecology from a viewpoint of personal experience, reecting the fact that the
sound environment is always a simultaneously public and private matter.
1.1.1
27
1.1.2
Lack of Awareness
Many conicts in the everyday soundscape can be ascribed to a lack of awareness with regards to the sounds which we produce. I would like to illustrate
this point using two examples from my personal everyday environment in recent years. For instance, one loudspeaker in the main hall of Queens University
Belfasts Physical Education Centre transforms public announcementsand the
Muzak which it sometimes playsto a distorted and incomprehensible sound
mass. And a loudspeaker for screen 2 of the Queens Film Theatre in Belfast
heavily distorts even medium-ranged output signals, such as unaccompanied
dialogues. Both problems have persisted for the entire duration of this research project without having been addressedand probably without having
been noted by most people among the target audience.
A lack of aural awareness also manifests itself in design aws of everyday products. Electronic devices can often not be congured in a manner which prevents
beeping on their behalf in any situation, including the boot process. Examples
include my current digital camera and most of the mobile phones which I have
owned. The default conguration of most desktop computer operating systems,
and the software which they run, wants to comment most events (closing windows, incoming chat messages, etc.) with acoustic feedback. Many websites
play sound by default, entirely ignoring the unpredictable nature of the sound
systems which are attached to the visitors browsers. Cash dispensers in the
UK frequently remind customers of removing their cash card from the machine
with a three-time beep suciently loud to be heard a block away.
1.1.3
But it is not always a lack of awareness which is at the heart of bad sound
design. Quite contrary, the emotional power of sound is often deliberately
exploited. The Muzak corporation has become synonymous with music enforced upon its listeners, which today is a ubiquitous phenomenon (Westerkamp
1988:36, 1999a:19; Schafer 1994:96; DeNora 2000:129; Truax 2001:214;
Neuhaus 2006:8; LaBelle 2007:10f; Sedmak & Androsch 2009:59,65). Again,
I have experienced many examples rst-hand during the process of writing
28
this thesis. The management of St. Georges Market in Belfast competes with
the Centra chain of convenience stores in terms of background music obnoxiousness.4 In the Austrian city of Graz, the Stiefelknig shoe shop in the
Herrengasse, a pedestrian zone and popular shopping mile, blasts music out
into public space long after the shop closes at night. Its strategy has recently
been imitated by the local tourist board in the same street, which displays
audiovisual information also at night, when the street is rather quiet. Background music can now be found in many public spaces which do not serve a
commercial function. In Belfast, this includes the HM Revenues & Customs
building in the Beaufort House. Various counter-initiatives to muzak have been
formed, such as Pipe Down and No Muzak (cf. Sedmak & Androsch 2009:36f)
and the No Music Day (Drummond n.d.).
Not always, however, does advertising bother to dress up as music. Vending
machines at the Europa Bus Centre in Belfast attract the attention of bystanders with short bursts of sound. Speaking billboards on Belfast bus stops
use the glass front behind which they are displayed as a membrane for an
electroacoustic transducer. The resulting sound quality is as bad as one would
expect from a loudspeaker built from glass. The John Hewitt, a well-known
pub in Belfasts Cathedral Quarter, features acoustic adverts in its restrooms.
During this research project, I have had the dubious pleasure of learning the
in-ight acoustic advertisements of many low-fare airlines by heart; a process
which does not take long due to the insistence with which these are being
repeated. And even before take-o, airports are a great environment for observing the commercialisation of a soundscape which can hardly be referred to
as public any longer.
1.1.4
29
redesign of the police car siren, which he unsuccessfully proposed to the New
York City Police Department, on the same argument:
We dont dress policemen as monsters. Why then do we think they
should sound like them? (Neuhaus 1993:8)
In the same spirit, he criticised the automobile backup alarm, years before it
became as ubiquitous as it is today:
Every time I hear a truck back up I have [...] an image of an
idiot trying to kill ies with a hammer. With only a little thought
and experimentation [the inventor of the truck backup alarm] could
have found a solution that would stand out of trac noise and be
conned to an area only where it is useful. (Neuhaus 1994e:5)
The one single experience which has probably shaped my own listening most
profoundly was the faulty re alarm in my Belfast at, which kept going o
during the entire night from 14 to 15 March 2009. Never have I experienced
sound more physically than on this occasion. Two days later, I could still feel
my heart beat rise whenever my ear mistook a jack hammer in the distance or
the ringtone of my mobile phone for a trace of that horrendous bell. I have
since heard similar stories from friends who conrmed that these alarmsquite
counter-productivelycause signicant disorientation; probably because while
they are on, one cannot think, as one of them put it. On the day before
writing these lines, a re alarm drill at my universitys library again made me
wonder whether the volume of an alarm bears any relation to the eciency of
peoples reactions to it.
Another mis-design concerns the frequent repetitiveness of acoustic announcements. The airport of Graz does certainly not distinguish itself by the number
of passengers which it serves, but its small size makes for a much more relaxed
travel experience than most other airports I know. Nevertheless, its management found it necessary to introduce taped instructions at its security check,
whichjust like at the big airports in London or Frankfurt!advise travellers
to take o their coats, remove laptops from their case, etc. Needless to say that
these announcements have failed to noticeably speed up the security checks
which there never was a need for anyway: the longest cue which I have ever
observed there was about ve people long. What has changed, however, is the
quality of the acoustic ambience at the airport. The main hall is now entirely
dominated by the sounds from the security area, which are repeated at short
intervals. The people who are certainly most aected by this are the security
30
1.1.5
Private Property
31
issues which are at the root of this problem are largely ignored. Considering
the rapid disappearance of public space in urban environments for the sake of
total commercialisation, it is not particularly surprising that teenagers gather
around commercial areas. It is unlikely that this lack of public space can be
successfully addressed by further enforcing private space.
1.2
It is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss solutions to the outlined issues
from a viewpoint of technical acoustics, noise prevention or urban planning.
However, I would like to discuss some of the issues which I regard as relevant
for the public debate on aural culture.
1.2.1
32
1.2.2
Although a cross-cultural, qualitative approach to soundscape research is becoming more widely acknowledged, such an approach is not immune to drawing
simplistic conclusions. A research project involving over 10,000 interviews with
inhabitants of nineteen cities in ve European countries and China resulted
in the following recommendation with regards to the acoustic design of public
spaces:
For example, if an urban open public space is mainly designed
for older people, more natural sounds like bird songs should be
introduced, whereas if the users are mainly young people, more
articial sounds could be introduced or created. (Kang 2008:17)
This conclusion fails at several levels. Kang does not explain why the acoustic
design of public space should necessitate the introduction of any kind of sound.
Neither does he specify how exactly this should be done; despite the dierent
results which the planting of trees (to attract birds) would probably yield compared to the installation of a loudspeaker system (to play bird song recordings).
The latter approach would likely yield sounds more articial than the ones
which Kang mentions without further specifying. I would also like to question
the idea that public space ought to be designed for specic demographic groups
rather than for use by old and young alike. We must not derive from the
cultural specics of aural experience an excuse to further separate age groups
whose alienation from each other already presents a signicant problem for the
cohesion of our society.
1.2.3
Architecture
33
1.3
A Visual Culture?
34
1.3.1
Some authors have argued that the dominance of vision in our culture is reected or even rooted in our language (e.g. Bull 2001:180).
Looking makes the object of vision discrete and identiable [...].
This becomes expressed as a name. The names we have are developed out of functional visual experiences [...]. Language has been
the line of demarcation. (Fontana n.d.b)
The ubiquity of explicit references to vision in our language is often pointed
out. After all, how can we develop a better informed view on listening if we do
not even have an aural equivalent for that word? The predominance of visual
metaphors in philosophical and everyday language has variably been dated back
to the Enlightenment (Sterne 2003:3), the Renaissance (McLuhan 1962) or to
the fourth century B.C. (cf. Schricker 2001:61). It has been interpreted as a
symbol of a general ocularcentrism of our culture. Schafer (2004:35) laments
that [i]t is almost as if the great achievements of Western philosophy and
science were produced in a huge anechoic chamber. Counterexamples from foreign or past cultural contexts are frequently cited. Carothers (1959:310, quoted
in McLuhan 1962:19) notes that for rural Africans reality seems to reside [...]
7
Their arguments were somewhat conrmed through a personal experience which I had
during the design of a sound installation in a Belfast gallery in 2008. Aiming at a reduction of
the reverberation in the exhibition space, two dierent companies were asked for quotes with
regards to the installation of an acoustic ceiling. A representative of one of the companies
supplied us with samples of the ceiling panelsin dierent colours, but much too small
to estimate their acoustic impact. Neither company was prepared to temporarily install at
least one of the actual panels in order to estimate their eect. Both oered estimations
of the reverberation time before and after ceiling installation based on Sabines formula,
but explicitly stated that they would not guarantee their equipment to comply with their
estimates. At the same time, neither company oered to conduct actual measurements in
the space, and they also rejected our oer of conducting such measurements ourselves and
providing them with the results. Although it has to be noted that the acoustic results turned
out very satisfactory in this case, it seems awkward that even those making a living from
acoustics do not seem to be prepared to stand up for the acoustic impact of their products.
35
in what is heard and what is said. McLuhan (1962:27) himself has referred to
the Chinese as a people of the ear. The recent rediscovery of oral (and thus
aural) cultures (Ong 2002:16) expresses a desire for regaining this lost way
of viewingno: hearing!the world. McLuhan (1962:26) has famously located
electronic media at the root of a cultural shift back from a visual to an auditory orientation. Bull (2001:192f) has suggested that studies of technologies
such as the mobile phone or the Walkman can benet from an application of
aural rather than visual epistemologies.
However, the relationship between language and the construction of reality
might not be as simple as the above arguments suggest:
[T]he philosophical privilege of sight is not the same thing as its
privilege in practice. [There is] a disjuncture between the aurality
of a practice and the ocularcentric language used to describe it.
(Sterne 2003:105)
Sterne argues that aural practices evolved precisely because of languages inadequacy to formally describe sound (2003:94). Nevertheless, it is certainly correct
that [h]earing has its own relation to truth: [...] to accepting things that are
promised, even if they cannot be shown (Tonkiss 2004:307). The nature of
this relation has been investigated in recent philosophy:
[S]houldnt truth itself [...] be listened to rather than seen? [...]
What secret is at stake when one truly listens, that is, when one
tries to capture or surprise the sonority rather than the message?
(Nancy 2007:4f)
Nancy concludes that [t]o be listening is to be inclined toward the opening of
meaning (2007:27). Fiumara is also concerned with listening as a philosophical
method:
A philosophy of listening can be envisaged as an attempt to recover
the neglected and perhaps deeper roots of what we call thinking, an
activity which in some way gathers and synthesizes human endeavours. (Fiumara 1990:13)
1.3.2
Eorts towards a better understanding of the aural domain are often attempted
in terms of distinguishing it from that of vision. Ironically, this does not always
36
serve our insight into either of the two. An often cited example is the absence
of an aural equivalent to the eyelids (Schafer 1994:11; Tonkiss 2004:304; Nancy
2007:14).8 The fact that [w]e are condemned to listen (Schafer 2004:25) and
at [the] mercy (Straus 1966:16) of the acoustic has supported an understanding of the ear as an organ incapable of defending itself (e.g. Schricker 2001:63).
By contrast, Max Neuhauswho claims to have probably encountered every
misconception about sound known to man (1994e:3)points out that the body
does have means of protecting itself against sound (1974). While mechanisms
such as temporary threshold rising do indeed provide some degree of protection, I do not wish to suggest that the ear is capable of defending itself against
any sound, independently of level or exposure time. However, the myth of the
indefensible ear parallels the victimisation of listeners in the noise pollution
debate (Schwartz 2004). It needs to be questioned whether a picture of defenceless listeners equipped with defenceless ears will contribute much to a sense of
responsibility in our aural culture.
It is beyond the scope of this thesis to investigate the validity of all popular
contrasts between aural and visual perception. This is particularly unfortunate
in the case of some arguments whose apparent captivating logic might not withstand closer investigation. An example is the simplied interpretation of vision
as active and hearing as passive (Schnhammer 1989). The frequent claim that
seeing implies directional focus, whereas listening is immersive and omnidirectional (Truax 2001:17; Tonkiss 2004:304; Fontana n.d.b) might tell us less about
perception than about our misunderstanding of it. Problematic generalisations
might also be at the root of descriptions of listening as an intimate sense
expressing proximity (Bull 2004a:103); in contrast to vision, which allegedly
distances an object from the subject (Schricker 2001:63). The ephemeral
nature of sound as opposed to visual scenes is often noted (Schnhammer
1989; Schricker 2001:63; Nancy 2007:2). So is the archaic nature of listening,
which of course allows us to identify threats (Licht 2007:15) for the sake of
survival (Oliveros 2005:xxv), or to evoke memories (Tonkiss 2004:307; Toop
2007:114) and emotions (Kleilein & Kockelkorn 2008:103). Straus (1963:377)
has referred to seeing as an analytical and hearing as a synthesising sense,
which allegedly explains why visualization and quantication are near twins
(McLuhan 1962:159). Similarly, Ong (2002:38f) argues that visual cultures are
analytical, whereas oral cultures are aggregative. However, most audio engineers and acousticians will agree that hearing can in fact be employed in a
The concept of earlids is reected in my Ohrenli(e)der series of directed listening scores
(cf. appendix A).
8
37
very analytical manner, and many painters would make a case for the synthesising qualities of vision. Hearing supposedly operates inwards; vision outwards
(Schricker 2001:62). Nevertheless, vision is frequently related to individuality
and hearing to sociality (Schnhammer 1989; Schricker 2001:63).
Due to the redundancy of the above arguments and their usual presentation in
form of a list, Sterne has referred to them as the audiovisual litany (2003:15),
which he portrays as a powerful ideological frame for the history of the senses,
but [...] not an accurate description of that history (2003:127). One reason why
such contrasts of the aural and visual domain are not always useful is a lack of
precision with regards to what they compare. Do they contrast sound and light
as physical phenomena; seeing and hearing as perceptual processes; looking and
listening as manifestations of perceptual attention? Ingold (2007:11) notes that
sound is regularly compared to vision, whereas more properly it ought to be
compared to light.
1.3.3
Comparisons of the visual and the aural domain unfortunately tend to concern themselves with demonstrating the superiority of one over the other, as
in the following example from a popular textbook on perception: Test subjects
equipped with a pseudophone, a mechanical device consisting of two tubes which
leads sound from the left side of the listener to her right ear and vice versa,
are still able to correctly judge directions of sound sources when they have
their eyes open. According to the authors, this is the most convincing proof
of visions dominance (Blake & Sekuler 2002:481) over the auditory system.
But in this experiment, vision is established as the undisturbed reference frame
which an articially modied listening experience needs to hold up against.9
The test variable in the above experimentthe direction of a sound sourceis
in itself inherently visual. Ong (2002:129) argues that it was originally the
technology of print which encouraged us to organise our mind in spatial terms.
Vision might therefore well provide the ultimate reference for three-dimensional
spatial thinking itself. In the experiment above, it is not aural perception, but
a culturally specic way of understanding space which is dominated by vision.
I cannot blame any pedestrian navigating downtown trac with a pseudophone on top
of her head who iseven if unconsciously somore willing to trust her eyes more than her
ears. One can easily think of counterexamples proving the dominance of hearing: If test
subjects were shown a video of a woman speaking, with her lips synchronised to a male voice
emerging from behind the screen, I think it is unlikely that they would judge the real person
(obviously the one behind the screen) to be female.
9
38
Licht (2007:14f) claims that it may be true that [...] we are more responsive
to visual than aural stimuli, as light is faster than sound. But the physical
speed of sound does in no way resemble the speed of its perceptual processing.
Quite contrary, we tend to let vision conrm what hearing presupposes (Connor
2004:154). Scheich (2008:66) claims that [v]isual scenes and their transformation into pictures or pictograms contain much more information than a sound,
but without addressing the quantication of information (besides a brief reference to Shannon) to support his claim. Neuhaus has pinpointed the inherent
problem of these superiority debates:
[...] I often nd myself in discussions with people who insist that
the eye is superior to the ear. I am always tempted to smile during
these discussions because, as my interlocutor derides hearing and I
defend it, he doesnt realize that without his ear he would not even
be able to make his argument. (Neuhaus 1994e:1)
Vice versa, it has also been attempted to demonstrate the ears superiority
over they eye as a sensory instrument (McLuhan 1962:27; Sedmak & Androsch
2009:15) or the higher complexity of sound compared to light as a physical
phenomenon (Blesser & Salter 2006:215f). However,
[o]utside of language, the question of one [eye or ear] being superior
to the other is a false one. (Neuhaus 1994e:1)
Competitive comparisons of the visual and the aural domain do not tend to
contribute much to our understanding neither of the physics nor of the perception of sound and light.
1.3.4
Perceptual Coherence
Sterne (2003:58) points out that the separation of the senses in the nineteenth century, whose origins McLuhan (1962:42f) dates back to the invention
of the alphabet, was necessary for modern listening to develop to its present
form. Nevertheless, aural and visual perception are in fact virtually inseparable (Ingold 2007:11). Neuhaus (1994e:1) notes how well ear and eye complement each other, and both Licht (2007:15) and Connor (2004:154) remark how
we constantly apply them as a single entity. Chion (2006:56f) and Schricker
(2001:149) argue that the perception of sound is trans-sensorial; i.e. it is signicantly inuenced by senses other than hearing, such as smell and touch. George
Pennington (quoted in Ablinger 2009:34; translation by the author) states that
[w]hat we call reality essentially relies on coherence in our sensory perception.
39
1.4
Modern aural culture is regularly portrayed as being in an impoverished condition due to an alleged dominance of vision. The aural seems to be in constant
need of defence in a culture which has chosen the gaze as its primary means
of constructing reality. But is ours really a society of the spectacle (Debord
1967)? Other authors oer a dierent interpretation:
[E]ven if sight is in some way the privileged sense in European
philosophical discourse since the Enlightenment, it is fallacious to
think that sight alone [...] explains modernity. (Sterne 2003:3)
40
41
collect the luggage trolleys emit soft bursts of coloured noise. As opposed to
the usual obnoxious beep, this signal attracts the attention of only those people
in the immediate proximity who it needs to concern. The new aural awareness
has also started to infuse actual policy making. The city council of Berlin
has recently acknowledged that it is fundamentally and socially tolerable for
children to make noise as part of their play (BBC 2010). In 2009, the city
council of Linz, Austria has adopted the Linzer Charta, which explicitly states
the right of all inhabitants to contribute to the design of their acoustic environment (Sedmak & Androsch 2009). Initiatives such as the Positive Soundscapes
Project (Davies et al. 2007) move the public discourse away from the noise
pollution debate towards a pro-active understanding of everyday soundscapes.
Sound art can and does contribute to this new aural culture in many ways.
Its ability to express artistic concerns and ideas through aesthetic experience
represents an important alternative to the moralisation which often accompanies discussions on everyday aural awareness. In this thesis I hope to show
the manifold artistic strategies through which such alternative expressions are
realised.
2
Technology
Technologically mediated listening has become the dominant mode of aestheticised aural perception. Bull (2007:7) notes that in our culture, [t]he consumption of technologically mediated sound [...] represents a signicant mode
of being-in-the-world . An understanding of everyday aural awareness therefore necessitates an understanding of its relationship to technology. This has
been the concern of previous research, most notably in the context of acoustic
ecology. Although its proponents have propagated an overall positive vision of
sound technology (cf. Truax 2001:217), Schafers characterisation of electroacoustic media as schizophonic (1994:90) does not exactly facilitate an understanding of sound technology as an integral part of everyday aural experience.
While schizophonia describes an essential aspect of sound reproduction, the
term has in my opinion also nurtured idealisations of a natural soundscape,
where technology is primarily seen as a disturbance. Such romanticised views
ignore the fact that negative eects on the sound environment generally result
from a certain use of technology rather than being inherent to technology itself.
On the other hand, there is no reason to contend oneself with the wild technofuturistic optimism which is often expressed with regards to new technologies.
In the words of Truax (2001:115), neither a total preoccupation with technology nor a total ignorance of it can be defended. Heidegger (1954:13,35f) has
argued that both, demonisation and exaggerated enthusiasm, are inappropriate
42
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
43
2.1
To understand technologys relationship to everyday aural awareness is to understand its relationship to the culture which created it. The underlying dynamics are arguably too complex to be adequately described in a few pages.
At the danger of being somewhat simplistic, this section aims at clarifying the
relation between technological and cultural development by contrasting dierent
viewpoints.
2.1.1
Deterministic Views
Technological and cultural evolutions are often discussed in terms of a unidirectional cause-eect relationship by describing the eect which a new technology
has on a society. Marshall McLuhan has argued that such an eect can be observed from the demand generated by the sheer presence of a technology:
Nobody wants a motorcar till there are motorcars, and nobody is
interested in TV until there are TV programs. (McLuhan 1964:67)
Such interpretations of technological development as the source of cultural
change are sometimes summarised under the term technological determinism.
Sterne (2003:84) has criticised this view for promoting an understanding of
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
44
2.1.2
Constructivist Views
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
45
how certain technologies are selected and introduced into society, but not how
these choices later aect a society in return. He argues that this view turns
a blind eye towards the often-painful ironies (1993:371) which technological
development tends to bring with it, such as the unintended erosion of communities as a byproduct of modern transportation. Winner has accused social
constructivism of moral and political indierence and of a consequent lack of
vision towards a better society.
2.1.3
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
46
Ricoeur (1991:80) argues that metaphors provide us with the ability [t]o see
sameness in the dierence. Johnson (1987:169) has even hailed them as a
fundamental basis of creativity. At the very least, metaphors provide a means
of getting to terms with new and existing technologies. However, their usefulness has its limits. Kuhn (1970) has shown that in the history of science,
some paradigm shifts have been too signicant in order to be accommodated by
means of cumulative interpretation. Naughton (1999:112) argues that Kuhns
concept also applies to technological development. Dijkstra (1988:1) points out
that in the face of radical scientic or technological change, the method of
reasoning by analogy is as tempting and widespread as it is counterproductive
and dangerous. He argues that as science and technology have proven to be
capable of imposing radical novelties on us, we need to learn how to intellectually accommodate these by other means.
Art fulls an essential function in this respect, because of its potential to break
the metaphoric loop of technological development. It can provide alternative views on technology through its creative use and misuse. For example,
many listeners are initially confused with regards to the technology used in the
portable sound installation Music for Lovers (cf. appendix F). In this work,
two listeners are connected through the cables of their headphones. The sound
heard on each listeners headphones comes from a pair of microphones, which
are mounted on the earcups of the other persons headphones. The audiences
attitude towards this setup is challenged by its use of telecommunication technology in a situation where two people can hear each other perfectly well.
Before they can appreciate Music for Lovers as a means of hearing the world
through somebody elses ears, they have to unlearn their use of a medium.
When they succeed in doing so, they are rewarded with an experience which
they could never have had by using the same technology according to its user
manual.2 I have observed the same phenomenon in my installation 24/7 (cf.
appendix G), in which sound is continuously being recorded in a gallery, subjected to dierent delays (ranging from a few seconds to an entire week) and
eventually replayed on various headphones in the gallery. Some listeners are
initially disappointed when they encounter the same sounds as those which
occur in the gallery on a daily basis. Again, they have to rid themselves of
expectations which they have come to associate with the use of headphones
(such as instant reward with music) in order to experience the installation as
an auralisation of everyday rhythm in a social listening environment.3
2
3
Some expressions of such experiences by actual listeners can be found in section 8.4.1.
These aspects of 24/7 will be discussed in sections 6.4.3 and 8.4.2, respectively.
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
47
2.2
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
2.2.1
48
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
49
2.2.2
At the heart of the tympanic principle is the concept of translating acoustic vibrations to another medium. The nature of the target medium itself is exible.
While the xation of sound initially succeeded with the translation of acoustic to mechanic oscillations, the transmission of sound over long distances was
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
50
2.2.3
Digital representations of sound add another layer of conversion to the technological mediation of listening. Digitally encoded sounds are represented as
sequences of numbers, which cannot be recorded or played back as sound before being converted from or to an analog signal as generated by a tympanic
(and in practice virtually always electroacoustic) transducer. The digital principle therefore enhances its tympanic and electroacoustic counterparts, but it
does not supersede either of them. Its cultural implications have primarily
amplied those associated with tympanic and electroacoustic technologies. Digitally encoded sound can be copied without any loss of quality, thereby adding
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
51
CHAPTER 2. TECHNOLOGY
52
2.3
In this chapter I have argued that technological and cultural development are
too closely intertwined to be explained merely in terms of an eect of the former on the latter. Technology serves both as a means of reecting on our aural
culture and as a propellant for its development. Two developments have turned
out to be of particular signicance in this context: the increasing mobilisation
and individuation of aural experience. All three principles of technologically
mediated listening that I have discussed in this chapter have contributed to
this process. They thereby echo a general evolution of modern society, which
Williams (1974:26) has in fact characterised in terms of a mobile privatisation.
Through technological mediation, aestheticised listening has become an increasingly mobile and individual experience. Bull (2004c:179) traces this deliberate
individuation of aural experience by means of technology back to the myth
of Odysseus, who stued wax into his ears in order to avoid the song of the
sirens. Hosokawa (1984) sees a historical evolution from living together (in
the immediate sound environment) and making music together to listening to
music together (through sound technology) and eventually listening to music
alone with the birth of the portable music player. In a sense, the cultural
circumstances of aestheticised listening have reversed themselves with (but not
necessarily as a result of) the development of sound technology. Less than two
centuries ago, listeners needed to participate in a social experience in order to
listen to music; at least if they did not play an instrument themselves. By
contrast, the experience of music through a portable music player requires a
previous detachment from ones social environment (Tonkiss 2004:305). Bull
(2007:21) concludes that [t]he price of technologically mediated empowerment
is privatisation. Sterne (2003:155) has shown that even when sound technology is used to mediate a social listening experience (e.g. phone conversations,
or the family gathering around the radio), this collectivisation follows a prior
individuation of listening.
The mobilisation of aesthetic aural experience will be investigated in chapter 7
(Mobile Listening). The individuation of technologically mediated listening will
be the subject of chapter 8 (Social Listening).
Part II
Sound
53
3
Aural Awareness
The complexity of aural experience is reected in the impossibility of describing it through a single coherent theory (Handel 1993:181f). Blesser & Salter
(2006:302) argue that the diculty in dening such a theory is grounded in
the problem of how to quantify a perceptual experience whose cognitive interpretation is largely controlled by the listener herself. They argue that a
perceptual uncertainty principle represents the natural limit for the ability of
formal science to describe human experience. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss human hearing as a scientically quantiable phenomenon. There
are plenty of excellent publications on this subject. Handel (1993) provides
an overview of the physiological foundations of hearing. Bregman (1990) has
established the functional model of auditory scene analysis to describe how the
human auditory system segregates dierent sound sources from the mixture of
sound waves arriving at the ears.1 The perception of music is discussed from a
psychological viewpoint in (Deutsch 1999). Blauert (1997) and other researchers
have investigated the localisation of sound sources in three-dimensional space.
By contrast, this chapter focuses on qualitative descriptions of listening as a
reective perceptual process. It is concerned with the listeners awareness towards the sound environment and the listening process itself. Blesser & Salter
Bregman (1990:5f) likens the complexity of this cognitive synthesis to being able to tell
the number, positions and sizes of boats on a lake only from looking at the superposition of
the resulting waves at a single location on the lakes shore.
1
54
55
(2006:14) have coined the term auditory awareness,2 which they vaguely dene
as some neurological reaction to [...] acoustics, including both conscious and
unconscious changes to the listeners body state. They have proposed a threestage functional model of auditory awareness, in which sensation refers to the
initial detection of a sound, followed by its recognition through perception and
eventually emotional aect. Unfortunately, they do not develop this model in
further depth. While they acknowledge the limited role of scientic quantication, their model does not contribute much to the qualitative description of
aural experience either. In this chapter I will discuss various such qualitative
descriptions by various authors to portray listening as a multifaceted experience.
One goal of this discussion is to add some coherence to the existing terminology.
Aural awareness has been described through a plurality of terms associated with
listening, such as listening intentions (Thoresen & Hedman 2007), functions
(Schaeer 1966), modes (Chion 1983, 1994; Huron 2002; Tuuri et al. 2007),
strategies (Farnell 2008; Huron 2002; Tuuri et al. 2007; Blesser & Salter 2006),
behaviours (Delalande 1998), attention (Truax 2001), mechanisms (Young 2004)
and even listening styles (Huron 2002). Moreover, this list merely covers terms
coined by English speaking authors and translators. The term which I will
adopt in this thesis is listening mode, which Huron denes as
[...] a distinctive attitude or approach that can be brought to bear
on a listening experience. (Huron 2002)
Tuuri et al. (2007:13) note that modes of listening have received relatively little
attention in the literature so far. This chapter aims at making an according
contribution.
3.1
Listening as Attention
The primary distinction whichat least the Englishlanguage has to oer with
regards to aural experience is the one between hearing and listening. However,
there is a plurality of interpretations as to what distinguishes the former from
the latter. Sterne notes that while the popular distinction of hearing as passive
and listening as active can be dated back to the early nineteenth century
(2003:100), it is not necessarily always adequate (2003:96). A more rened
denition states that listening, by contrast to hearing, requires attention:
Blesser & Salter specically refer to auditory spatial awareness (cf. section 4.6.2), but I
think it is fair to generalise their point. I use the term auditory awareness to explicitly refer
to the model by Blesser & Salter, and aural awareness for my own discussion in this thesis.
Both terms are however concerned with similar aspects of aural experience.
2
56
To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give attention to what is perceived both acoustically and
psychologically. (Oliveros 2005:xxii)
In contrast to hearing, listening is an active process that provides
a means to pick out information for our needs from the auditory
environment. It is usually associated with voluntary attention and
focusing on something. (Tuuri et al. 2007:13)
Many descriptors of listening are concerned with the level of attention which the
listener bears on the aural experience. Schafer (1994:117) contrasts concentrated
listening with peripheral hearing. Augoyard & Torgue (2006:127) distinguish between intentional and everyday listening. The latter term is also used by Gaver
(1989), who contrasts it with musical listening, although Tuuri et al. (2007:14)
correctly note that music is not necessarily listened to at a higher level of attention than everyday sounds. Increased attention with regards to the listening
process is also expressed by the terms attentive (Blesser & Salter 2006:15) and
intent listening (Augoyard & Torgue 2006:124). A lack of attention, on the
other hand, has been described as non-listening (Delalande 1998) or as tangential or metaphysical listening (Huron 2002). The most rened model has been
provided by Truax (2001:21), who distinguishes three levels of aural attention:
Listening in search is the most active listening mode and involves an active
search for auditory cues in the environment. As an example, Truax refers
to echo whistling; a technique which boat captains use for navigating
through a channel in bad visibility conditions and without radar. Similar
to the navigational techniques employed by bats, they use short whistles
to judge the distance to each shore by comparing the delays of the respective echoes. In this listening mode, soundmaking becomes an active
part of listening itselfa means of interrogating the sonic environment
for specic information.
Listening in readiness is described by Truax (2001:22) as a listening mode
in which the attention is in readiness to receive signicant information,
but where the focus of ones attention is probably directed elsewhere.
As an example, he points out the tendency of a mother to be woken by
the cry of her child, but not by potentially much louder sounds such as
trac noise. The successful use of this listening mode depends on learnt
associations and on the quality of the acoustic environment.
Background listening occurs when the listener is neither actively nor passively searching the environment for any particular sound. An example
57
58
3.2
Listening as Interpretation
Not in all situations does attention constitute the sole criterion which distinguishes listening from hearing:
Listening [...] might well be indiscriminate and automatic, as for
example with telegraph and telephone operators, and hearing might
well be specic and voluntary, as with hypnotic commands, only
some of which would be heard and acted upon [...]. (Schwartz
2004:488)
For Truax (2001:18), it is not only attention to, but also the interpretation of
sound which denes listening. Similarly, Nancy (2007:6) argues that listening
requires an interpretative eort which is not present in hearing.4 How we
attend to everyday sound largely depends on our interpretation of it. Schaeer
(1966:112) has distinguished four modes5 of listening which account for this
fact:6
Our represents the most elementary level of perception. It refers to the
passive, raw mode of listeningprior to any attempt of understanding or
interpreting the sound arriving at our ear.
Entendre also avoids the interpretation of sound, but as opposed to our, it
demonstrates an active intention to listen. Attention is focused on specic
features of a sound in order to build a mental description of it.
couter interprets sound as an index of its source, which is either a person,
animal or object. This mode of listening is concerned with the identication of a sounds cause.
Comprendre aims at deciphering the meaning of sound as a sign in a code
or language.
It should be noted that the distinction between the terms hearing and listening is in
this case a by-product of the publications English translation. The original text is in French.
5
In the French original, Schaeer speaks of fonctions de lcoute. The translation to
listening modes is also used in (Chion 1983).
6
To prevent confusion, Schaeers four listening modes are presented here in their original
French form. The English translations used in (Chion 1983) are: perceiving (our), hearing
(entendre), listening (couter) and comprehending (comprendre). Because I have used the
terms hearing and listening with dierent connotations earlier in this chapter, I have
avoided the use of these English translations in the present context.
4
59
As shown in table 3.1, Schaeer classied his modes along the parameter pairs
objective/subjective and abstract/concrete.7 Like Truax listening modes, entendre and our refer to the level of attention towards the listening process.
Comprendre and couter, on the other hand, are concerned with the interpretation of sound as either an index or a sign.
objective
subjective
abstract
comprendre
entendre
concrete
couter
our
3.3
Listening as Such
60
3.4
61
62
Mode
listening
listening
listening
listening
listening
listening
listening
listening
Tuuri et al. (2007:15) argue that [p]revious accounts of listening modes have
been incoherent and limited in their scope. However, while their scheme extends previous work in a coherent manner, it suers from the same limited
scopesimply because any model of aural awareness does. While theirs is a
valuable contribution, the variety of aural perception with regards to dierent
individuals, demographic groups and cultures seems to resist simple categorisations.
3.5
63
section
section
section
section
section
section
4.1
4.6
4.4
4.2
4.3
4.5
4
Six Perspectives on Sound
The dierent modes of listening discussed in the last chapter are emblematic
for our understanding of sound as a physical and perceptual phenomenon. In
this chapter, I will discuss six dierent perspectives on sound which reect on
this understanding in more detail. These perspectives describe the relationship
between sound, the listener and the listening environment and will provide a
basis for the discussion in the rest of this thesis. In particular, they will inform
a selection of listening practices, which I am going to present in the following
chapter. The aim of this chapter is to further develop a concept of sound as a
multifaceted phenomenon.
4.1
Sound as Source
Prior to the invention of sound reproduction, all external1 sound experience was
directly coupled to its source, i.e. the agent which can be associated with the
creation of the sound. Smalley (1997:110) uses the term source bonding for our
natural tendency to relate sounds to supposed sources and causes. This eect
has also been noted by Connor (2004:157f) and is present in Schaeers listening
mode couter and Chions causal listening, which were discussed in sections 3.2
I refer to sounds generated outside our own bodies and minds as external sound experience; as opposed to internal sound experience, such as imagined sounds. The latter will
particularly interest us in sections 4.3.3, 4.5 and 4.6.2.
1
64
65
and 3.4. Schaeer (1966:557f; translations from Chion 1983:179) argues that
sound indicates the nature of its source directly through its sonority. For
example, sounds of a regular pulse are generally of mechanical origin, whereas
a supple periodicity signies a living agent, contrasting the unpredictable
irregularity of natural phenomena. Similar source-based references to sound
can frequently be found across the literature (Chion 1983:32, 1994:27; Schafer
1994:137; Augoyard & Torgue 2006:5,126) and usually take approximately the
following form:
Sounds of life are created by humans or animals through their own body or
through an instrument (musical or otherwise). Such sounds might be
created intentionally for the sake of communication (Chion 1983:28) or as
a mere by-product of other actions.
Sounds of nature occur without the interference of a living agent and as such
are free of intention (Chion 1983:27). Examples are the sound of wind in
the leaves of a tree or of ice crackling due to thermal expansion.
Mechanical sounds are those created by machines, where the sound is primarily associated with the machine itself rather than with its human
operator or inventor. The constant hum of a ventilator or the impersonal
drone from a distant highway are examples of this. Mechanical sounds
operate at the edge of intentionality. The machines creating them have
always been built with some sort of human intention (if only to build the
machine), but they might continue to sound long after.
The above categorisation leaves much room for debate. Many people would
consider bird song to be a sound of nature as much as a sound of life. Two
res might sound exactly the same, but one might be of natural origin whereas
the other one could have been started by humans as a means of preparing food
or shaping a piece of metal. Furthermore, the three categories above imply a
conceptual separation of living creatures from the background of nature; an
ecological conception which becomes more and more problematic as we begin
to understand our own impact on the ecosystem of this planet (Truax 2001:65).2
But while the above categories are uid and ambiguous, they still represent an
essential aspect of everyday auditory experience. To understand what creates
a sounda living being, a natural phenomenon or a machinecan be of vital
importance in an evolutionary context. Such an understanding of sound in
terms of its source is immediately accessible to any human being, regardless
2
The cultural roots of this separation have been described by Elias (1984:58).
66
of musical skills. But the archaic nature of source-based listening should not
distract from the fact that it also represents the most skillful technique (Augoyard & Torgue 2006:126), which can be practised and improved.
However, there are inherent limitations to the description of sound in terms of
the source which produces it. Truax (2001:xviii) notes that a sound means
something partly because of what produces it, but mainly because of the circumstances under which it is heard. Sound functions not only as an index of it source, but also as a sign, whose meaning depends on the context
(Chion 1983:89; Proy 2002). Source-based explanations of sound also fail to explain internal aural experience such as phonomnesis, which Augoyard & Torgue
(2006:85f) dene as the act of imagining a sound (cf. section 4.5). Moreover,
the notion of sound as source reduces our understanding of an acoustic space
to the sum of all sound-producing elements which it contains, ignoring any
acoustic qualities of the space itself.
4.2
Sound as Signal
67
(2003:206) notes that this possibility has primarily been facilitated by the
electroacoustic principle (cf. section 2.2.2), which allows for the long-range
transmission of sound. Thompson (2004:235) argues that electroacoustic
sound reproduction not only resembles a separation, but eectively an
annihilation of acoustic space.
Separation of energy is another implication of the electroacoustic principle
and refers to the relation between the energy fed into and the energy
emitted by an acoustic system. Contrary to conventional musical instruments, there is no apparent proportional relation between the two in an
electroacoustic system (Truax 2001:124). For example, one does not need
to push the play button of a CD player harder in order to increase the
playback volume. Separation of energy relies of course on the illusion of
unlimited energy supply through the wall socket.
It has been argued that the signal interpretation has eectively removed sound
from the ux of causality (Kane 2007:18) and turned it from a temporal
into an objectied, spatial medium (Truax 2001:131). The concept of sound as
signal has in many ways become the primary view on sound for many artists
and researchers in the eld of acoustics and music. The visual waveform representation shown in gure 4.1, which is used in virtually all audio editing
software packages, has become so common that one is tempted to mistake it
for the actual sound. But while this representation is useful for navigating,
analysing and editing sound, it does not always refer to our auditory perception. It does not account for the inner ear, which experiences sound in the
absence of a physical signal. As I will show in section 4.4, electroacoustic
storage and transmission also de-contextualises sound and thereby redenes its
meaning for the listener. Moreover, sound recordings sample a sound eld only
at the microphone locations and thereby alter the spatial quality of acoustic
experience.4
An attempt to solve this problem is to capture the spatiality of a sound eld in its entity
by means of a multi-capsule microphone array. However, there are real-world constraints
which limit the spatial resolution and the frequency band within which spatial characteristics
are faithfully recorded by means of such arrays (Plessas 2009).
4
68
4.3
Sound as Object
Sound is always in danger of being apprehended
as something other than itself [...].
Brian Kane (2007:18)
4.3.1
The distinction of the sound object from the two perspectives on sound discussed so far (source and signal) is programmatic (Chion 2006:240).
The sound object must not be confused with the sounding body
by which it is produced. (Schaeer, quoted in Schafer 1994:130)
The distinction between object and source is so important for Schaeer that he
devised the practice of reduced listening (cf. section 3.3) as a means of bypassing the ears natural tendency to associate sound with its source. Through a
conscious eort to listen to sound only as sound, the sound object reveals itself
to the listener (Chion 1983:32f). Although the concept of the sound object was
derived by Schaeer from early electroacoustic experiments,5 it also diers from
an understanding of sound as signal. While the signal refers to a quantiable
and thus measurable physical entity, the sound object represents a phenomenological6 unit, which arises from the listeners perception (Chion 1983:15f). The
signal is what is measured, whereas the sound object represents what is being listened to (Schaeer 1966:269). Schaeer regarded human perception as
the ultimate authority in the study of sound and therefore determined the
relationship between signal and object as follows:
In the closed groove experiment, Schaeer created sound loops by means of vinyl records
with a single (closed) groove. The cut bell experiment refers to the process of cutting o a
sounds attack, such as listening to only the decay of a bell sound after the clapper has hit
it. The latter experiment led to the discovery that the attack of a sound plays an essential
role in the correct identication of its source.
6
Kane (2007) has shown that Schaeers ideas are rmly grounded in phenomenological
thinking, and that poch, the process of phenomenological reduction, is at the heart of
reduced listening.
5
69
4.3.2
Although some authors (Schafer 1994:136,138; Thoresen & Hedman 2007) have
proposed graphical representations of sound objects, Schaeer himself (1966:492)
criticised the use of notational symbols. Instead he aimed at a verbal description of sound objects and suggested seven criteria for their classication, which
are summarised in table 4.1.
Criterion
Description
Mass
generalisation of [...] pitch (Chion 1983:162)
Harmonic timbre diuse halo (Schaeer 1966:516; translation from
Chion 1983:168)
Grain
gives texture (Schafer 1994:135)
Allure
generalisation of vibrato (Chion 1983:178)
Dynamic
temporal development of intensity (Chion 1983:174)
Melodic prole
temporal development of mass (Chion 1983:183)
Mass prole
internal variation of mass (Chion 1983:185)
Table 4.1: Seven morphological criteria according to Schaeer (1966:584).
4.3.3
70
Critique
71
4.4
Sound as Event
While the perspectives on sound as signal and object provide us with useful
tools for the artistic production as well as the aestheticised perception of sound,
they both rely on an almost clinical separation of sound from its original source
and context. It is for this reason that R. Murray Schafer (1994:131) refers to
Pierre Schaeers sound objects as laboratory specimens. The function and
meaning which a sound has for a listener depends partly on its source, but
for the most part on its social and environmental context (Schafer 1994:150;
Truax 2001:27). However, the temporal and spatial separations which are inherent to electroacoustic reproduction (cf. section 4.2) separate sound not only
from its source, but also from its context. Schafer (1994:88) refers to this
de-contextualisation of sound as schizophonia. Truax (2001:12) points out the
novelty of this situation and argues that electroacoustic delity is merely concerned with an appropriate restoration of the signal, ignoring the fact that
there can be no delity in context between the original and the reproduced
sound. Schafer (1994:131) has therefore proposed the sound event as a contextaware counterpart to Schaeers sound object. It can be dened as
72
73
Figure 4.2: The mediating function of sound in the relationship between listener
and environment, according to Truax (2001:12).
4.5
Sound as Effect
74
takes into consideration the context in which a sound occurs, but in addition to
describing the function of a sound with regards to community life, it also refers
to the personal experience of an individual listener. The sonic eect describes
the
[...] interaction between the physical sound environment, the sound
milieu of a socio-cultural community, and the internal soundscape
of every individual. (Augoyard & Torgue 2006:9)
The sonic eect is analogous to the sound eect (as it appears in lm sound
design, rock guitar playing, etc.) in so far as it is guided by functional motivations; i.e. it is concerned with the eect which a sound has on a listener rather
than with the exact reproduction of a reference signal.
[S]ound has always been a privileged tool to create an eect,
to astonish [...]. As soon as it is perceived contextually, sound is
inseparable from an eect [...]. (Augoyard & Torgue 2006:11).
The sonic eect has been designed as an interdisciplinary tool for the analysis
and representation of complex sound environments (2006:11), and as such has
been used in the social sciences, urban planning and applied acoustics (2006:7).
Augoyard & Torgue have presented a non-exhaustive list of 82 eects, which
they have grouped into six categories and divided into 16 major and 66 minor
eects (cf. table 4.2).11 They discuss them with regards to six reference domains: physical and applied acoustics; architecture and urbanism; psychology
and physiology of perception; sociology and everyday culture; musical and electroacoustic aesthetics; textual and media expressions. The asyndeton and synecdoche eects form the perceptual basis of any aural interpretation (2006:124).
Synecdoche is described as the ability to valorize one specic element [from the
acoustic environment] through selection (2006:123), whereas asyndeton refers
to the complementary ability of omitting sounds from perception or memory
(2006:126). By removing irrelevant sounds from our consciousness through
asyndeton, selection of relevant sounds through synecdoche becomes possible.
On this basis, Augoyard & Torgue describe a wide variety of other eects.
These include the drone, electroacoustic eects such as anger and noise gate,
generalisations of musical terms (e.g. decrescendo, accelerando), eects reecting
the emotional response to a sound (attraction, repulsion), psychoacoustic eects
There are some inconsistencies between the eects as they are listed in the thematic and
alphabetical lists vs. the actual text by Augoyard & Torgue. Table 4.2 is an attempt at
restoring the thematic list such that it matches the information in the text.
11
75
Elementary eects
Compositional eects
Mnemo-perceptive eects
Colouring
Delay
Distortion
Dullness
Echo
Filtration
Flutter Echo
Haas
Resonance
Reverberation
Accelerando
Blurring
Coupling
Crescendo
Crossfade
Cut Out
Decrescendo
Digression
Doppler
Drone
Emergence
Mask
Mixing
Rallentando
Release
Reprise
Tartini
Wave
Anamnesis
Anticipation
Asyndeton
Cocktail
Delocalization
Erasure
Hyperlocalization
Immersion
Metamorphosis
Phonomnesis
Remanence
Synecdoche
Ubiquity
Wall
Semantic eects
Psychomotor eects
Electroacoustic eects
Decontextualization
Dilation
Envelopment
Imitation
Narrowing
Perdition
Quotation
Repetition
Sharawadji
Suspension
Attraction
Chain
Deburau
Desynchronization
Incursion
Intrusion
Lombard
Niche
Phonotonie
Repulsion
Synchronization
Chorus
Compression
Expansion
Fade
Feedback
Flange
Fuzz
Harmonization
Larsen
Limitation
Noise Gate
Phase
Print-through
Rumble
Tremolo
Vibrato
Wha Wha
Wobble
Wow
Table 4.2: Sonic eects according to Augoyard & Torgue (2006:viif), including
corrections of inconsistencies between their version of this table and the publications
actual text. Major eects are printed in bold type.
76
(Haas, cocktail party, masking), physical eects (e.g. Doppler, utter echo), spatial eects (cut out, ubiquity) and neurological eects such as anamnesisan
evocation of the past through a sound in the present. Maybe most importantly,
many eects refer to internal aural experience, including anticipation (hearing
a sound before it actually occurs), phonomnesis (imagining a sound, such as
remembering one from the past) and remanence (imagined continuation of a
sound no longer sounding).
The concept of the sonic eect is sometimes ambiguous. Augoyard & Torgue
try to establish the sonic eect as a concept more generic than the sound eect
known, for example, from lm sound. At the same time, however, they try to
apply their concept to prefabricated electroacoustic eects (chorus, noise-gate,
etc.) and complex psychoacoustic phenomena alike. The benets of this broad
approach are not always clear, which might be the reason why the category
of electroacoustic eects has been omitted in a later retrospective of the sonic
eect (Amphoux & Chelko 2008). The main merit of the sonic eect is its
contribution to an interdisciplinary andthanks to the available English and
Italian translations of the original French publicationinterlingual vocabulary
for the description of aural experience. By developing a common language
based on a systematic observation of personal listening experiences, Augoyard
& Torgue allow for the description of auditory phenomena which despite their
ubiquity have received little attention in acoustic research. This is particularly
true of the eects referring to internal sound experience. By literally christening aural experiences such as anamnesis, phonomnesis and remanence, these
become available to the discourse on sound and listening. By contrast, the
concept of the sound object also accounts for internal listening but has contributed little to an according terminology. The same is true for the sound
event; despite Schafers (1994:144) concern with mythological sounds and the
sounds of dreams and hallucinations. Having been developed through everyday
practices, the sonic eect lends itself naturally to a discussion of everyday aural
experience.
4.6
Sound as Space
The attachment of sound to its context, which I have discussed in the last
two sections, is not merely metaphorical. In fact, it forms an integral part of
sounds very nature:
In a sense, the sound wave arriving at the ears is the analogue of
77
4.6.1
Beyond Localisation
78
the concept of the point source by emphasising the spatial extent of sound
sources as given through their width, depth and height. He also discusses
the dierent artistic meanings of the axes surrounding the listeners body (leftright, front-back, up-down). Kendall & Ardila (2008) propose the idea of
auditory spatial schemata; patterns through which the listener understands the
spatial behaviour of sound, such as the concept of containment. Rumsey (2002)
discusses spatial attributes of aural experience such as spaciousness, presence
and envelopment. Emmerson (1998:153) provides a discussion of musical space
in terms of the metaphors event, stage, arena, and landscape. In the context
of sound art, Campesato (2009) distinguishes between acoustical, architectural
and representational space. Stankievech (2009) has investigated the sound-space
relationship in a curated series of sonic artworks.
We can no longer draw an absolute distinction between space and
the things which occupy it, nor indeed between the pure idea of
space and the concrete spectacle it presents to our senses. (MerleauPonty 2004:39)
Although Merleau-Ponty is referring to the visual arts in the above quote, this
does not change the validity of his statement with regards to sonic experience.
An understanding of sound as space rather than merely in space could represent
one of the ultimate contributions of the sonic arts.
4.6.2
79
guish the allocentric view (where objects are positioned in relation to a xed
external framework) from the egocentric view (where objects are arranged in
relation to the perceiver). The choice between the two informs all our spatial
experiences, including the construction of cognitive maps. Blesser & Salter
point out that cognitive maps represent a fusion of aural, visual, tactile, and
olfactory inputs; just as spatial experience in general can be understood as a
synthesis of dierent sensory impressions (Schricker 2001:78; Kendall & Ardila
2008).
According to Blesser & Salter (2006:11), auditory spatial awareness manifests
itself in at least four dierent ways:
Inuence on social behavior
Orientation and navigation
Aesthetic sense of space
An enhanced experience of music and voice
They note that these manifestations are uid. For example, a concert hall is
usually experienced as a musical space, but when the lights in the hall fail,
our spatial experience immediately refocuses towards navigation (2006:64). The
above four realms of auditory spatial awareness link physical, acoustic and social
space and establish the aural perception of space as an aesthetic experience in
an everyday context.
4.6.3
Spatial Effects
Several of the sonic eects by Augoyard & Torgue (2006), which I have discussed in section 4.5, can be regarded as spatial eects, as they are concerned
with the inherent spatiality of sound. In table 4.3, I have collected descriptions
of eighteen eects which refer directly to sounds physical propagation or to
the spatial experience of a listener. This non-exhaustive list provides useful
terminology for a discussion of the relationship between sound and space.
With regards to everyday sound experience, the cut out and ubiquity eects
are maybe the most relevant. Cut out describes the acoustic transition from
one space to another, which we regularly experience in an everyday context,
for example when entering a small shop from a busy street, or when closing
the window to a public square. Such abrupt changes in our spatial acoustic experience temporarily bring aural awareness to the foreground of our perception
Eect
Cut out
Description
punctuates movement from one ambience to another (Augoyard & Torgue 2006:29)
Decontextualization for example, sounds from the private domain
heard in a public space(2006:37)
Delocalization
recognition of an error in localizing a sound
source (2006:38)
Dilation
refers to the feeling of the emitter concerning
the space of propagation (2006:39)
Doppler
A change in pitch of sound sources moving relative to the listener.
Echo
a reection in the space of diusion (2006:47)
Envelopment
The feeling of being surrounded by a body of
sound (2006:47)
Filtration
Implicitly occurs through the propagation of
sound through its environment.
Flutter echo
A special avour of echo.
Haas
Describes a relation between intensity, time of
arrival and perceived direction of a sound wave.
Hyperlocalization
irresistibly focalizes the listeners attention on
the location of emission (2006:59)
Immersion
The dominance of a sonic micromilieu that takes
precedence over a distant or secondary perceptive
eld (2006:64)
Narrowing
a sensation that the space is shrinking
(2006:78)
Resonance
Can be an implication of a rooms acoustics.
Reverberation
A propagation eect in which a sound continues
after the cessation of its emission (2006:111)
Ubiquity
diculty or impossibility of locating a sound
source (2006:130)
Wall
a continuous high intensity sound creating an
impression of sound materialized in the shape of
a wall (2006:145)
Wave
The second of two types of this eect is linked
to the conditions of a sounds propagation.
(2006:146)
Table 4.3: Some spatial eects according to Augoyard & Torgue (2006).
80
81
(Augoyard & Torgue 2006:34). In their description of the ubiquity eect, Augoyard & Torgue (2006:132f) distinguish between the two situations of a listener
being situated outside the acoustic space she perceives vs. being located within
this space. These two archetypal relationships between listener and perceived
acoustic space are going to interest us with regards to the spatial analysis of a
soundscape, which will be discussed in section 5.6.
4.6.4
Spatiomorphology
Smalley (1997, 2007) is also concerned with the spatiality of sound. His spatiomorphology attempts a much more general discussion of the relation between
sound and space than merely dening a grammar of localisation (1997:122),
as he claims himself. While many of his ideas are restricted to the analysis of
electroacoustic music, his distinction of the following spatial styles (1997:124)
is of interest also in an everyday context:
Single spatial setting
Multiple spatial settings
Spatial simultaneity
Implied spatial simultaneity
Spatial passage
Spatial equilibrium
The above distinction can be directly applied to everyday listening: How many
acoustic spaces are present (spatial simultaneity) and have been present since
I started listening (single vs. multiple spatial settings)? What is the balance
between them (spatial equilibrium)? Am I still aware of spaces which are already absent (implied spatial simultaneity)? What are the transitions between
spaces like (spatial passage, which resembles the cut out eect discussed in the
last section)? These questions will be further developed in section 5.6, which
is concerned with the practice of spatial listening.
While Smalley is primarily concerned with electroacoustic music production,
he partly discusses his concepts in the context of a listening experience in
the French countryside (2007), which demonstrates that these ideas are also
applicable to everyday environments.
82
4.7
Listening Practices
This chapter is devoted to various listening practices which have been applied
in an artistic context as well as to research in the elds of soundscape analysis
and acoustic design and for educational purposes. Their purpose is to train
ones aural perception towards an increased ability to interpret and appreciate the everyday sound environment. The title of this chapter points towards
listening as a skill, which canin every sense of the wordbe practised. For
example, Schaeer (1966; translations from Chion 1983) distinguishes between
ordinary vs. specialist listening, natural vs. cultural listening, musical and musicianly listening. Thoresen & Hedman (2007:129) identify the ability to switch
between dierent listening modes (cf. chapter 3) as an indicator for virtuoso
listening. Oliveros (2005:xxii) argues that the process of learning to listen continues throughout ones entire life. To become aware of and accelerate this
process, she recommends the following:
When a sight, sound, movement, or place attracts your attention
during your daily life, consider that moment an art experience.
(Oliveros 2005:46)
The listening practices presented in this chapter aim at facilitating such aesthetic experiences.
83
5.1
84
Before Listening
Oliveros (2005:15) notes that [r]eadiness to listen is always present while already engaged in listening. Getting ready to listen, however, requires time and
preparation. Various artists have proposed exercises to facilitate this process.
Listening unites body and mind in a complex interplay. Since the same is true
for many meditation practices, it is not surprising that many preparative listening exercises demonstrate a meditative quality. Schafer (1994:208), for example,
suggests to refrain from talking for an entire day as an exercise to develop a
sensibility and respect for silence. He uses various ear cleaning 1 exercises for
relaxation and concentration in his teaching and claims that it can take an
hour or longer to prepare properly for listening. Schafer (1976:268) notes that
he sometimes never gets beyond these elementary sensitising exercises in his
classes.
Pauline Oliveros has provided the most complete collection of preparative listening exercises. Under the term Deep Listening, she has summarised several
decades of personal aural experience. Although Oliveros argues that the question of what constitutes Deep Listening is answered in the process of practicing
listening (2005:xxi), she nevertheless attempts to dene it as
[...] a practice that is intended to heighten and expand consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional
dynamics as humanly possible. (2005:xxiii)
Oliveros approach to aural perception is a holistic one. It is concerned with
the role of the entire body (as opposed to merely the ears) in aural perception
(2005:14f).2 It also covers the entire process of aural perception, including
time for preparing to listen and a reection on the experience in its aftermath.
The preparative exercises include bodywork exercises from Qi Gong, Tai Chi,
Yoga and kinetic awareness practices (2005:5) as well as breathing exercises
(2005:10f). Several of Oliveros prose listening instructions are concerned with
increasing ones bodily awareness in order to get ready to listen:
Can you imagine sensing the subtlest vibrations of the ground or
oor that is supporting you? (Oliveros 2005:32)
Schafer (1976:49) speaks of ear cleaning as a rst step towards ear training, but unfortunately does not further specify the relation between the two. Whereas Pierre Schaeers
solfge des objets musicaux (1966) aims at a phenomenological foundation for a new form of
ear training itself, Schafer seems to be primarily concerned with hygiene: Before we train
a surgeon to perform delicate operations we rst ask him to get into the habit of washing
his hands, Schafer (1976:49) argues in favour of ear cleaning. But with regards to auditory
perception, who is supposed to be the patient being operated?
2
The whole body is an ear, Doug Muir is quoted by Schafer (1976:268).
1
85
5.2
Directed Listening
Many listening practices are based on the concept of directed listening, which
I would like to dene as any auditory experience initiated by an instruction
or situation explicitly designed to encourage aural attention. Directed listening
is not only a way of practising, but also of communicating listening. It often
restricts itself to those sounds which are already present in the environment,
without introducing any more of them. My material is not sound. My material is audibility, composer Peter Ablinger (2008a) remarks with regards to his
work, which will be discussed in this section. But as I will show, soundmaking
is not generally tabooed in directed listening; neither on behalf of the artist
nor on behalf of the audience.
A challenge in the composition of a directed listening situation is the indeterminacy of the everyday sound environment. As opposed to the conventional
composer, an artist who is creating a directed listening experience cannot simply
point towards predetermined sounds but instead works with the probabilities
and long-term developments of everyday rhythms. But how does one communicate an experience based on sounds whose occurrence is uncertain and whose
perception by the audience is deeply individual? In this section, I will discuss
ve dierent strategies which address this problem.
5.2.1
Listening can be directed towards active or passive features of the sound environment. Active features create sound by themselves and are frequently ref-
86
erenced in an everyday discourse (Did you hear this ___?). This form of
directed listening invites an understanding of sound as source (cf. section 4.1).
Passive features, on the other hand, shape their acoustic environment without
sounding themselves. An example would be a characteristic mountain echo,
which is in fact capable of directing aural attention without any artistic intervention. Passive acoustic features invite an understanding of sound as eect
(cf. section 4.5) or as space (cf. section 4.6). Often more subtle than active
features, they are much less frequently referenced in everyday language. For
example, the passive acoustic features of urban environments are probably not
consciously perceived by the majority of their inhabitants.
Directing auditory attention to features of the sound environment typically results in an experience which is specic to a certain location. Many artworks
embrace this site-specicity as an integral part of their design. In my piece
Straenmusik (cf. appendix B), an in situ listening score is created, which
guides the listener along a white trail of chalk featuring listening (and sometimes also soundmaking) instructions specic to the environment. Noah Vawter
used ocial-looking tags in his project Sonic Authority to mark tonal components in noisy spaces (2006:28), which he had identied through analyses
of eld recordings. Chris Murphy attached plaques to various listening points
along Donegall Street in Belfast as part of the Street Archaeology project in
2005. The plaque attached to Pauls Cafe read:
A 60 pence large black coee buys more than a caeine x at
Pauls Cafe. The sound of the radio is supplemented by the sharp
sizzle of sausage, eggs and bacon, freshly fried. The persistent hiss
of the frying pan is only interrupted by the conversation from a
steady stream of regulars stopping in for their morning fry to set
them up for the day. (Murphy 2009)
Peter Ablinger also marks acoustic environments of interest. In a 2002 version of
his piece Weiss/weisslich 35, Schilderungen (designations), some of the plaques
distributed around the Karlsplatz in Vienna read:
The reels of the skateboarders sound brighter on stone than on
asphalt or tar.
The timbre of the lime tree is created by the breaking of the wind
in the leaves; the darker sound of the ivy, on the other hand, is due
to its leaves grazing each other.
87
The unlubricated swing and the sparrows are located in the same
pitch range. (Ablinger 2006d; translation by the author)
Similar references to site-specic acoustic phenomena can be found in Ablingers
Places series (2006c). The four pieces forming his work Weiss/weisslich 10,
however, take site-specicity to the extreme. These pieces, which Ablinger
started to work on in 1994, consist of nothing but their titles, each of which
describes a certain location without explicitly stating what the acoustic feature
of interest is:
10a:
10b:
10c:
10d:
According to Ablinger (2008b), pieces like these can either be experienced in the
indicated location, or they can simply be imagined. If we read free-way tunnel
in the context of directed listening, we can hear the tunnels acoustics, no
matter whether we are actually there or not. This demonstrates that directed
listening can also trigger internal aural experiences such as phonomnesis, which
Augoyard & Torgue (2006:85f) dene as the imagination of a sound (cf. section
4.5).
5.2.2
88
89
Figure 5.2: The third part of Peter Ablingers Listening Piece in Four Parts (2001).
Photograph by Maria Tran and by courtesy of Peter Ablinger.
5.2.3
90
all day and purify his hearing by listening to the reected sounds of nature
(Anonymous n.d.b). Suzuki did exactly that for a period of twelve hours, only
to discover that only when he stopped consciously listening could he really
listen to every minute sound (Licht 2007:269f).
5.2.4
Oliveros (2005:34) has written a directed listening piece of the same title in 1998.
91
5.2.5
In other directed listening pieces it is the artist who adds sound to an environment. Peter Ablingers piece Weiss/weisslich 15 plays noise at barely
perceivable levels in ve dierent rooms. The noise in each room is coloured
according to the formant of a dierent vowel and is played at such soft levels
that the listener experiences it as a change in the quality of the space rather
than as actual sound (Ablinger 2002d, 2008c:84). In the Place Pieces by Max
Neuhaus, the introduced sound is so integrated [into the environment] that it
shift[s] and pull[s] people into hearing the existing sounds in a dierent way
(Neuhaus 1994c). This includes installations like the one at New York Citys
Times Square from 1977, which was made up of a eld of very soft click- or
tick-like sound zones (1994b).5 In Neuhaus Time Pieces, on the other hand,
auditory attention is directed by removing sound from an environment. In the
2003 piece installed in Graz, Austria, for example, a drone is gradually introduced into the city centre environment. Its volume increases over a period of
several minutes until it is simultaneously loud enough to be noticed and soft
enough to be missed. The drone is designed to enter the listeners consciousness
only after it is then abruptly turned o.6 This strategy can be interpreted as
a deliberate exploitation of the cut out eects (Augoyard & Torgue 2006:29)
ability to attract aural attention (cf. section 4.6.3).
The sounds in Times Square are generated by sixteen underground loudspeakers (Neuhaus
1994b). After having been dismantled in 1992, the work was restored in 2002 and is still on
display on the pedestrian island that runs between 45th and 46th Street where Broadway
and 7th Avenue intersect (Stein n.d.). I visited the installation in 2011, but it sounded very
dierent from the above description.
6
I refer to this technique as the Neuhaus fade. Neuhaus original inspiration was his
observation that one tends not to register the moment when somebody turns on the coeegrinding machine in a caf, but that there is clear moment of silence when the machine is
turned o again (Neuhaus 1994d).
5
92
The sound sculptures of Bill Fontana bring sounds to the listeners awareness by relocating them into a dierent context, thereby creating an acoustic
paradox (Fontana 2008:156). In 1983, he recorded the sounds of cars driving over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and transmitted them live
to the World Trade Center (2008:155f). In the work Entfernte Zge (distant
trains) from 1984, Fontana played sounds from the Cologne train station, the
busiest in Europe, at the ruins of the former Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, using buried loudspeakers to convincingly create the impression of a vivid train
station (2008:156f). In Metropolis Kln from 1985, he collected eighteen live
streams from around the city of Cologne and replayed them at a central square
next to the citys cathedral (2008:157f). In Sound Island from 1994, sounds
from Normandy were relocated to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (Fontana
n.d.b). Live transmissions were also used in the Cologne San Francisco Sound
Bridge from 1987 and Landscape Soundings from 1990 (Fontana n.d.a).
Directing listening through sound has the advantage that the sense being addressed (hearing) matches the medium employed for doing so (sound). By
contrast, Ablingers architectural interventions or pieces like Straenmusik (cf.
appendix B) initially attract their audiences attention by visual means. The
audience might misinterpret these works as an invitation to look rather than to
listen. In EaRdverts (cf. appendix C), matters are further complicated by the
pieces competition with commercial advertising. The interventions coloured
arrows, which point at ears visible on advertising billboards, try to convey a
message about listening by adding to a stimulus which aims at attracting peoples visual attention. How does one avoid that this message is misinterpreted
or simply lost? I encountered the problem of referring to aural perception by
visual means also with the Ohrenli(e)der (cf. appendix A): Many people seemed
to enjoy the scores primarily from a visual point of view, often without actually
performing them. On the other hand, some of these people reported much later
that the pieces had initiated some kind of listening experience in them; often
in quite a dierent manner than the pieces themselves suggest.
5.3
Soundwalking
Wherever we go we will give our ears priority.
Hildegard Westerkamp (2007:49)
In the last four decades, soundwalking has become a popular practice at the periphery of experimental music, architecture, cultural geography, sociology, natural history, urban design and other disciplines (Drever 2009:166f). It emerged
93
from the everyday concept of going for a walk (Westerkamp 2007:51).7 In the
broadest sense of the term,
[a] soundwalk is any excursion whose main purpose is listening to
the environment. (Westerkamp 2007:49)
A soundwalk provides the circumstances for an extended period of directed
listening. Westerkamp (2007:49) argues that its purpose is to rediscover and
reactivate our sense of hearing. Ferrington (2007) regards it as a technique
for practising what he calls purposeful listening. Fenner (2003b) notes that
soundwalking encourages to ask questions about the environment and ones
own relation to it. Far from being an esoteric activity, soundwalking has also
become accepted as a research method in urban design (Venot & Smidor 2006;
Adams & Bruce 2008; Adams 2009).
5.3.1
94
Field recording is concerned with capturing the sound of everyday environments, often as part of a soundwalk. Although its focus shifts from the
immediate listening experience towards collecting sound material for later
use, eld recording can be regarded as a listening practice in its own
right. It will be discussed in section 5.4.
Mobile music players extend the mobile listening experience by means of
playing rather than recording soundtypically through headphones. They
can serve the aestheticisation of everyday life by providing it with a
soundtrack (Williams 2007:20). However, the sounds created by a mobile music player bear no inherent relation to the acoustic environment in
which they are being listened to. Mobile music players will be discussed
in section 7.1.
Audio walks create a technologically mediated listening experience similar to
mobile music players, but the sounds which they create relate in some
way to the listeners environment. In section 7.2 I will discuss various
artistic strategies for the design of audio walks, ranging from site-specic
walks to works which aim at transforming the listeners aural experience
in real-time.
In the above list, the use of technology increases with every item, and so does
the potential detachment of the listener from her actual acoustic environment.
While eld recording can increase the listeners connectedness to an everyday
sound environment, mobile music players and audio walks are concerned with
technology as a means of enhancing or extending aural perception. Their discussion will therefore be postponed to chapter 7, where the relation between
listening, mobility and technology will be investigated in detail.
The term soundwalk has also been applied to formats which do not qualify
as mobile listening experiences at all. Vicarious soundwalks (Drever 2009:191)
aim at a virtual reconstruction of a recorded soundwalk. Examples are A
Soundmap of the Hudson River by Annea Lockwood (1989) or the Kits Beach
Soundwalk by Hildegard Westerkamp (Kolber 2002). In these cases, it is only
the compositional process which involves a mobile listening experience. The
audience, on the other hand, can enjoy them without even having to get out of
their chairs. This arguably results in a very dierent listening experience than
going for a soundwalk oneself. Works of sound art which aim at a reconstruction
of an everyday soundscape on an array of loudspeakers are also sometimes
referred to as soundwalks. But while movement and spatial exploration on the
95
audiences behalf might form an integral part of such works, I think it is more
appropriate to refer to them as sound installations.
5.3.2
Soundwalking Techniques
The variations on the simple theme of soundwalking are manifold and have instigated a diverse methodology (Fenner 2003b; Drever 2009:163). Westerkamp
(2007:49) and Ferrington (2007) have noted that soundwalks can be done alone,
with a friend or as a group. In the latter case they are often led by someone
with prior experience, using methods which are largely a matter of personal
style. Darren Copeland, for example, assigns specic listening tasks to each
member of a soundwalking group (Fenner 2003b).
As for the length of a soundwalk, Ferrington (2007) recommends 30 to 60
minutes. The soundwalks led by Phil Morton (2008) last between 60 and 90
minutes with intermediate breaks for group discussion. From my own experience, and from feedback I received from participants in a soundwalk which I
led in Belfasts Belvoir Forest in March 2009, I nd that it can take signicant
time to get into the mood of the walk. Extended walks can often turn out
very rewarding, as they can sharpen ones sensitivity to astonishing degrees. In
2008, I participated in a group soundwalk through inner Manchester, led by
Phil Morton. On this rainy day, our shoes left tiny bubbles of air on the wet
street, whichin the centre of Manchester!I could hear burst.
Schafer (1994:211) notes that the ear is always much more alert [...] in unfamiliar environments and therefore proposes sonic tourism as a form of soundwalking which deliberately focuses on environments foreign to the listener. In
order to familiarise oneself with an acoustic environment, on the other hand,
Ferrington (2007) suggests to repeat the same walk at dierent times of the day
or under dierent weather conditions. The location of a soundwalk is sometimes chosen with regards to specic sounds which can be expected en route.
For this it is useful to have a guide who knows the area. During the Manchester soundwalk mentioned above, Phil Morton took us to the Power Hall of
the Museum of Science and Industry, which displays a variety of engines from
the early days of the Industrial Revolution in actionan amazing sonic experience. Soundwalks can cover large areas or focus on a single location in a static
soundwalk (Morton 2009). Westerkamp (2007:49) recommends that beginning
soundwalkers limit the geographical scope of their rst walk. Ferrington (2007)
suggests that beginners start with a diverse acoustic environment and gradually
96
97
5.3.3
5.3.4
98
Soundwalk Artists
99
they had actually heard, and a comparison of the two lists served as the basis
for a discussion. One participant, who spends some time in that forest every
day, remarked how he had never noticed the dominance of sounds alien to the
forests, such as trac noise from the near A55 road and sounds from a nearby
rugby eld. While I do not want to demonise those sounds in any way, I nd
this a remarkable example of how soundwalking can literally transform our
aural perspective on everyday life.
5.3.5
Critique
The enhanced state of aural perception in a soundwalk is somewhat incompatible with everyday life; a concern which is relevant to all sound art operating
in an everyday context:
On one level [soundwalking] demands the reverence of concert hall
listening, yet we nd ourselves physically placed and passing through
the everyday: a state that naturally prompts everyday behaviour,
which is at odds with the contingencies of concert hall listening.
(Drever 2009:164)
Nevertheless, soundwalking constitutes a worthwhile everyday listening practice.
McCartney (2000) notes that [l]ike many simple experiences, soundwalking is
often profound as well. Ferrington (2007) promises that [e]ach listening walk
[...] will provide you with new experiences, and Westerkamp (2007:52) argues
that [w]hen attentive listening becomes a daily practice, requesting sound
quality becomes a natural activity. Soundwalking clearly has an educating
function with regards to an appreciation and aestheticisation of our acoustic
environment. Fenner (2003a) claims [a]fter you have learned to soundwalk you
will probably nd that [...] at all times and places you will be conscious of the
sounds that surround you, whether good or bad [...]. A chance to obtain this
level of aural awareness, beyond any moralisation of what constitutes good
or bad sounds, is the main contribution which soundwalking has to oer.
Moreover, soundwalks are not limited to the sense of hearing; they can initiate
multi-sensory experiences. Listeners frequently report that their sense of vision
and smell improves during a soundwalk.
It is not necessary to follow Westerkamps (2007) inated optimism when
she states that [p]erhaps soundwalking can be a step towards enhancing our
chances of survival [as a species], nor her somewhat banal observation that
soundwalking can simply be fun. In between these two statements, there is
100
5.4
Field Recording
Both soundwalking and eld recording are mobile listening practices concerned
with an aural investigation of everyday environments. In the latter case, however, the environment is concurrently being recorded. Possible motivations can
include the collection of sound trophies, a soundscape analysis, or the realisation of an audio walk (cf. section 7.2) or a soundscape composition (cf. section
6.2.1). Field recording has become increasingly popular in recent years with
the advent of aordable semi-professional recording devices. As with any documenting practice (e.g. photography), its focus shifts from being in a moment
to capturing that moment. However, eld recording can be regarded as a listening practice in itself. Both Oliveros (2005:28) and Schafer (1994:208f) have
noted that it can increase ones aural awareness. It can serve as an excuse
for extended periods of directed listening, as it implicitly makes the recordist
comply with the rules of listening, including silence on ones own behalf and a
respect towards the sounding environment.
With increasing experience, it becomes easier for the eld recorder to keep the
focus on both, ones immediate presence in an environment (listening) and the
capturing of it for later use (recording). This balance is also inuenced by the
use of the recording equipment. It makes a dierence, for example, whether or
not the recording is being monitored on headphones. Oliveros (2005:28) notes
that the use of headphones allows the recordist to focus her attention on sounds
which she otherwise would not notice. But listening to an environment through
headphones also changes ones relation to that environment. Restricting oneself
to visually monitoring the input signal through VU metres allows one to retain
a listening experience which is closer to that of a soundwalk.10 In my own
experience, the dierence between what one hears and what is being recorded
can be compensated by familiarity with ones equipment; similarly to mixing
engineers being able to extrapolate from the sound of their high-end studio
monitors to the average car stereo system.
An absence of headphones also minimises the amount of equipment one needs to
carry around. This allows one to take along the equipment on a regular basis
Oliveros (2005:28) recommends to listen to an environment both with and without headphones before recording it.
10
101
including trips not primarily serving the purpose of eld recordingand to start
recording more spontaneously. To minimise equipment also means to minimise
its visibility, which represents another advantage, as [o]ne of the recordists
biggest problems is to devise ways of recording social settings without interrupting them (Schafer 1994:210). Wearing microphones in ones earseectively
turning ones own head into a dummy head for a binaural11 recordingis
a particularly suitable technique in this respect. Peter Plessas has noted in
a private conversation that passers-by tend to mistake in-ear microphones for
earphones, thinking that one is playing back rather than recording sound.12
Recording with little and small equipment might not always yield the bestpossible delity, but its exibility and non-intrusiveness allows one to capture
sounds which would otherwise never be recorded at all. Ultimately, however,
the choice of equipment is determined by the purpose of the recording, and its
use a matter of personal style. Andra McCartney (2000) compares the work
of a eld recording artist to a jazz improviser, using perspective, motion, and
proximity rather than melodic and rhythmic lines and harmonic progressions.
The best-known eld recordists have gone a long way for their work; arguably
not simply for the sake of capturing extraordinary sound material, but also
for having a unique listening experience. Francisco Lpez (2009) conducts the
Mamori Sound Project, an annual two-week eld recording workshop at Lake
Mamori in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Chris Watson (n.d.) has recorded
natural environments of various African countries, the Galapagos Islands, the
rainforests of Costa Rica and Islandic glaciers. Other eld recording artists
include Aaron Ximm (n.d.), Jon Drummond (2008) and Toshiya Tsunoda (Demers 2009). Bernie Krause (2002) specialises in wildlife recordings. Patrick
McGinley (2010) has established a eld recording radio broadcast.
5.5
Annotated Listening
Although the description of perception through language is problematic, it nevertheless represents one of the most powerful means we have for communicating
personal listening experiences. Schafer (1994:8) notes that ear witness reports
Binaural recordings are based on the concept of placing two microphones as close as
possible to the eardrums of a real or model human head. Recordings conducted in this
manner convey a high degree of spatial realism when listened to on stereo headphones. This
advantage is exploited by various artworks which will be discussed in chapter 7 and elsewhere,
including some of my own works (cf. appendix F, G, H).
12
The ethical implications of recording people without their knowledge should of course be
pointed out. It is the responsibility of the sound artist or researcher to treat the recorded
material in a responsible manner.
11
102
5.5.1
Oral Annotation
Thibaud (2001) has proposed the method of the parcour comment as a research method for understanding a persons experience of the urban environment: As inhabitants walk through the area which they live in, they verbally
describe their sensory impressions. Schnhammer (1989) used a similar technique to let Walkman users describe their experience, but claims that the
task of permanent verbalization is not adequate to the nature of the stream of
consciousness . I have made contrary experiences during the realisation of the
piece Alexanderplatz (cf. appendix D), when I started to use commented eld
recordings as a method for reecting on and thereby getting to know an acoustic environment. This practice allowed me to develop a personal language for
describing aural experience and ultimately led to the concept of spatial listening
(cf. section 5.6). I usually record continuous ve-minute chunks of audio, often
in dierent locations of an area which I want to get to know, and include a
verbal description of my aural impressions at the end of the recording. When
I listen to these recordings later, the annotations re-contextualise the sounds,
which allows me to remember the recording situation in much greater detail.
But more importantly, the process of verbalising the listening experience intensies it, so that even without listening to the annotations, I usually have a
better memory of the recording situation.
The technique of contextualising sound through a verbal description of the environment has also been applied in Westerkamps Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989).
Oral annotations of listening have also been presented as an artwork itself in
Peter Ablingers speech performance Weiss/weisslich 11d from 2005 (Ablinger
2007a). The subtitle of this piece, Sitzen und sagen was ich hre (sitting and
saying what I hear), describes the work in its entity.
5.5.2
103
Written Annotation
104
5.6
Spatial Listening
In the last section of this chapter, I would like to discuss a practice which I
refer to as spatial listening; a form of directed listening with a focus on sound
as space (cf. section 4.6). The inherent spatiality of sound represents a natural
means by which to describe aural experience. Spatial listening should, however,
not be confused with spatial hearing; a term which has been used in the
context of a formal scientic investigation regarding the perception of acoustic
space and the localisation of sound sources by the auditory system (Blauert
1997). Spatial listening, by contrast, investigates acoustic space in a qualitative
manner, without relying on a formal denition of spatial acoustic qualities
or being concerned with a quantication of aural experience. The practice
has originally been developed through annotated eld recordings during the
realisation of the piece Alexanderplatz (cf. appendix D). I use spatial listening
as a means of getting to know an acoustic scene and developing a personal
language for describing it. What follows is a set of questions inspired by
Smalleys concept of spatial styles, which I have discussed in section 4.6.4.
These questions can serve as a starting point for practising spatial listening.
How many acoustic spaces can be identified? Spatial listening starts with
a simple identication of acoustic spaces in ones environment. For example, as I am writing these lines, the sound of a washing machine to my
left identies the room next door, including quite minute detail regarding
its size and overall acoustics. Sounds carry their space with them, as
Smalley (2007:37) argues. The sound of cars to my right comes from the
street in front of my house. It unambiguously identies that remote space,
which I cannot see or otherwise perceive, as an urban outdoor environment. Until ve minutes ago, the sound of rain from the open balcony
105
106
5.7
This chapter concludes the second part of this thesis, which was concerned with
auditory perception as a multifaceted phenomenon. The modes of listening discussed in chapter 3 demonstrate the complexity of aural awareness. They also
bear witness to the diversity of the listener-sound relationship, which has been
investigated in detail in chapter 4. In the present chapter, I have discussed a
variety of listening practices which are concerned with aural awareness in an
everyday context.
The modes of listening, perspectives on sound and listening practices discussed
in these chapters can all be regarded as interrelated. For example, reduced
107
Part III
Art
108
6
Sound Art and the Everyday
This thesis is concerned with sound art as a means of addressing aural awareness in an everyday context. In this chapter I hope to contribute something
to the still very vivid discussion of what it is precisely that the term sound
art denotes. I will oer a reading of sound arts development in terms of its
increasing concern with the everyday. This concern has originally manifested
itself in an interest in everyday sound material, but has gradually been extended towards everyday life as a general context for aestheticised auditory
perception. I will argue that sound art lends itself to an auralisation of everyday rhythms and conclude the chapter by discussing some of the aesthetic
implications brought forward by sound art operating in an everyday context.
6.1
Both Campesato (2009:27) and Licht (2009:3) point out that the term sound
art emerged much later than the rst examples of artworks in this eld.1 The
term itself dates back to William Hellermanns Sound Art Foundation, which
was established in the late 1970s and produced the Sound/Art exhibition at
the Sculpture Center in New York in 1983 (Licht 2009:3). Sound art was popLicht suggests that this distinguishes sound art from other art forms, but I do not agree.
We do not know how long music, for example, had been practised before it was rst named
as such.
1
109
110
111
time-based arts, and Engstrm & Stjerna (2009) have noted that the German
equivalent term Klangkunst (de la Motte-Haber et al. 2006) is often dened
along these lines.
Some authors have argued that as opposed to music, sound art demonstrates
an understanding of sound-in-itself (Cox 2003); a concrete, almost material conception (Campesato 2009:27) of sound, which contrasts the codied
grammars of Western art music. However, this too represents a general artistic development of the twentieth century, which can also be observed in the
contemporary music discourse, including, for example, Pierre Schaeers (1966)
concepts of reduced listening (cf. section 3.3) and the sound object (cf. section
4.3). Campesato (2009:27) proposes an absence of narrative as a characteristic
of sound art, but this argument seems somewhat awed if one considers works
such as Janet Cardis audio walks (cf. section 7.2.2). Another frequently cited
aspect of sound art is its site-specicity (cf. section 6.3.2), but this too can
hardly be interpreted as a distinguishing characteristic of all sound art (Demers 2009:39). While the above distinctions clarify many facets of sound art,
counterexamples for all of them can be found in the personal practices of various artists (Kahn 2006:3).
But although sound art seems to elude a clear denition, I think the term is still
useful. I do, however, believe that we should not satisfy ourselves with a view
on sound as one of several artistic parameters (Engstrm & Stjerna 2009:14)
or an extension of the artists particular aesthetic, generally expressed in other
media (Licht 2007:17). As Khazam (2007:66) has noted, sound is more than
just a new material. At the same time, it is not necessary to mystify sound
art as addressing an auditory unconscious, a transcendental or virtual domain
of sound (Cox 2009:19). Sound art can open our ears to the very real world
by addressing it in terms of sound. Since the radicalness of this approach lies
within the perception of the listener rather than the artworks themselves, aural
awareness should be situated at the centre of the sound art debate.
The contribution which this chapter hopes to make towards a better understanding of sound art is not based on a contrast with other art forms. Instead
I will oer a reading of sound art in terms of a general cultural process, which
can also be observed in music and other artistic genres. I will argue that the
very development of sound art can be interpreted as a manifestation of an increasing artistic concern with the everyday over the twentieth and twenty-rst
centuries. Campesato (2009:27) contrasts two approaches to sound art: a mu-
112
6.2
After Western musics ve-century long retreat from the sounds of everyday
life (Drever 2009:165), the development of sound art is closely associated with
the emancipation of everyday sound material in twentieth century art practices.
What Bill Fontana formulates as a personal artistic challenge can also be read
as a general programme of the contemporary sonic arts:
How can I make art out of ambient sounds? (Fontana 2008:154)
Luigi Russolos famous futurist manifesto LArte dei Rumori (The Art of
Noises) from 1913 pioneered a consideration of the musicality of everyday
sounds:
Let us cross a large modern capital with our ears more sensitive
than our eyes. We will delight in distinguishing the eddying of water,
of air or gas in metal pipes, the muttering of motors that breathe
and pulse with an indisputable animality, the throbbing of valves,
the bustle of pistons, the shrieks of mechanical saws, the starting of
trams on the tracks, the cracking of whips, the apping of awnings
and ags. We will amuse ourselves by orchestrating together in our
imagination the din of rolling shop shutters, the varied hubbub of
train stations, iron works, thread mills, printing presses, electrical
plants, and subways. (Russolo 2004:12)
Russolos manifesto essentially provides a recipe for aestheticised listening in an
everyday context. What is often ignored in discussions of his vision is that it
was by no means limited to the mechanical sounds of industrialisation:
To be convinced of the surprising variety of noises, one need only
think of the rumbling of thunder, the whistling of the wind, the
roaring of a waterfall, the gurgling of a brook[,] the rustling of
leaves, the trotting of a horse into the distance, the rattling jolt of
3
Kahn (2006:7) himself attributes the origins of this idea to Dan Lander.
113
a cart on the road, and of the full, solemn, and white breath of a
city at night. Think of all the noises made by wild and domestic
animals, and of all those that a man can make, without either
speaking or singing. (Russolo 2004:12)
However, Russolos artistic strategy for an aesthetic consideration of everyday
soundsthe famous intonarumori (noise instruments)still acknowledged the
concert hall as the site of aestheticised listening. There was clearly a belief
that the beauty of everyday sounds lay within the sounds themselves rather
than in the circumstances of listening. Following such a logic, it was sucient
to create machines which allowed the reproduction of these sounds within the
concert hall. But although Russolo had the foresight to remark that a mere
imitation of everyday sounds would not be sucient, his conviction that the
new orchestra will obtain the most complex and novel emotions (2004:14) did
eventually not full its promises.
Later attempts at revealing the musicality of everyday sounds were conducted
in musique concrte. Even just the title of Pierre Schaeers tudes de Bruits
from 1948 expresses his intention of making sounds which had hitherto been
considered noise (bruits) available for musical consideration (tude). Schaeer
applied electroacoustic techniques like cutting, reverse playback, lters, etc.
with the aim of turning ordinary sounds into something more musical. However,
other experimental music practicesmost famously John Cages 433 from
1952revealed that an aesthetic consideration of everyday sounds depends not
merely on the sound material, but also on the listening context. In other
words, aestheticised listening benets not only from an understanding of sound
as object in the sense of Pierre Schaeer (cf. section 4.3), but also as event in
the sense of R. Murray Schafer (cf. section 4.4).
6.2.1
Gluck (1999) provides a good overview of artists associated with soundscape composition.
114
Westerkamp (2002:51) admits that soundscape composition represents a somewhat vague term and explicitly refrains from a clear denition herself.5 Nevertheless she tries to clarify the term by arguing that soundscape composition is
about more than a musical application of everyday sound material. According
to her, the genre extends towards the artistic, sonic transmission of meanings
about place, time, environment and listening perception (2002:52). Other composers have made similar claims and have portrayed soundscape composition as
a context-embedded, meaning-conveying alternative to the allegedly abstract
methods which musique concrte, acousmatic and computer music apply to everyday sound material (Schryer 1998; Gluck 1999; Westerkamp 1999b; Truax
2001, 2000, 2008).
Whereas the use of concrte [sound] sources leaves the environment
the same and merely extracts its elements, the successful soundscape composition has the eect of changing the listeners awareness
and attitudes towards the soundscape, and thereby changing the
listeners relationship to it. (Truax 2001:237)
What strikes me as problematic about this denition is that, whereas it characterises musique concrte in terms of artistic technique, it denes soundscape composition in terms of its eect on the listener. Truax declares it a
principlenot merely a goalof soundscape composition that it enhances
our understanding of the world (2001:240). Gluck echoes this promise, but
not without briey questioning its actual fullment:
Soundscape[ composition]s oer artistic promise, meaningful interaction, and a [sic] important cautionary tale about art and technology. But does the practice fulll this promise? The results are no
doubt mixed, as is the case in all forms of art. (Gluck 1999:40)
However, other art forms have not chosen to dene themselves in the very
terms of their artistic success. It is not my intention to question soundscape
composition as a worthwhile artistic practice. But I criticise the tendency
of some of its proponents to dene the genre in terms of its eect on the
listener, which in my opinion makes it particularly vulnerable to criticism and
ultimately artistic failure. What disguises itself as a promise to the audience
can at best be an intention on behalf of the composer. Westerkamp notes that
in a soundscape composition, the listening experience during the recording is as
Elsewhere (1999b), Westerkamp refers to soundscape compositions explicitly as tape
pieces that are created with recorded environmental sounds and excludes sound installations
and site-specic works from this denition.
5
115
6.2.2
Alexanderplatz
The example of soundscape composition demonstrates the problem of encouraging aural awareness by means of sound material alone. However, that is not
116
to say that the genres methods are not useful as such. Soundscape composition has plenty to oer beyond the inated artistic promises through which
it has attempted to dene itself. Drever (2002:26) has proposed soundscape
composition as a method of ethnographic study, but acknowledges that such
an approach needs to maintain a balance between musical and representational
concerns. This is what I have attempted in my work Alexanderplatz (cf. appendix D).
Alexanderplatz represents a mixture of electroacoustic composition and soundscape study. The project was conducted as part of a eld recording workshop
in Berlin. From an afternoon worth of recordings, I derived two four-channel
pieces which were presented in an installation concluding the workshop. The
pieces follow the concept of phonography, i.e. they comply more with a found
soundscape approach than trying to create an abstracted soundscape (Truax
2008:106). The artistic challenge was to recreate the multifaceted acoustic environment of a huge public square on a four-channel loudspeaker array. Many
methods of soundscape composition were applied in the process, but I would
not claim that the nal result enhances aural awareness per se. The pieces
themselves represent artistic artefacts which as such are open to interpretation
by the audience. The value of Alexanderplatz does not exclusively lie in these
compositions, but also in the development of aural practices which accompanied their creation. The oral annotation of aural experiences (cf. section 5.5.1)
and the practice of spatial listening (cf. section 5.6) were both developed in the
course of this study and have informed the discussion in this thesis. The documentation of Alexanderplatz (cf. appendix D) therefore emphasises the process
through which the nal pieces were created. The portfolio includes the original
annotated eld recordings, the score (a shell script and a Gnu Octave script)
through which they were assembled into the nal compositions and additional
material documenting the underlying artistic decisions.
6.3
117
6.3.1
Over the course of the twentieth century, the concert hall was increasingly
questioned as the primary site for aestheticised listening:
Concert hall and applause are parts of a ritual which is no longer
consciously perceived. But was [the concert hall] not originally all
about perception? (Ablinger 1997; translation by the author),
The concert hall had been established as a substitute for a rural outdoor life
on the verge of being lost. Its sound environment remained controllable; as
opposed to the increasingly urban and industrialised environment which surrounded it (Schafer 1994:104f). However, the sonic arts have eventually looked
beyond the concert hall and towards everyday environments as a context for
aestheticised listening. Erik Saties Vexations (ca. 1893) and Wagners Ring
cycle from 184874 represent early challenges to conventional time frames of
music listening (Ablinger 1997). Russolos (2004:12) reference to concert halls
as hospitals for anemic sounds can be read as a provocative opening to a discussion which has already lasted for almost a century. John Cages silent piece
433 from 1952 challenged the concert hall through its perfect conation of
musical frameworks with the everyday eld of ordinary environments (LaBelle
2007:14). The gradual move away from the concert hall was also characterised
by an interest in unique performance spaces, such as in Schafers Music for
Wilderness Lake from 1979 and Stockhausens 1969 concert in the Grotto of
Jeita in Lebanon (Blesser & Salter 2006:175).
The very development of sound art is inseparably linked to a quest for alternative listening environments. Max Neuhaus and Christina Kubisch both performed as instrumentalists before literally abandoning the concert hall in order
This echoes the concept of sound as a context-dependent event, which I have discussed
in section 4.4).
6
118
to pursue their sound installations (Licht 2009:5). Francisco Lpez (2004) has
written [a]gainst the stage and blindfolds the audience during his concerts,
encouraging them to aurally transcend the performance space. Peter Ablinger
(2008c:87) argues that the concert hall does not accommodate a critical reection of the conditions of music making which it creates. Sound installations and
sculptures became increasingly popular means of expression among artists, and
the art gallery was established as an alternative site for the artistic presentation
of sound. But while the gallery provided sound artists with the possibility to
develop new perspectives on musical space and timeand the audience with a
more active, sometimes even co-curating function (Kato 2003)it also imposed
its own rules on the presentation of sound:
[I]f the concert hall enforces its own ritual and traditions, the
gallery also provides a new type of space with its own conventions.
Like the concert hall, the gallerys walls and rooms also impose a
clear demarcation of what is inside and what is outside. (Campesato 2009:28)
Sound art ultimately did not satisfy itself with the gallery as a substitute for the
concert hall and continued to push into everyday environments. Later versions
of 433 took to the streets of Manhattan and Boston (Drever 2009:179). Cages
ideas were further developed by the Fluxus movement, whose conceptual and
performance art blurred the borders between artistic performance and everyday
life (LaBelle 2007:58). Tittel (2009:58) notes that it is no coincidence that
what she refers to as the rst sound installation, Max Neuhaus Drive In Music
from 1967,7 had been installed in a public environment.8 Neuhaus (1994b)
himself has expressed his desire of being able to enter into peoples daily
lives through his works. Concannon (1987) has diagnosed a general trend in
American sound sculpture towards public space, which manifests itself in the
works of artists such as Douglas Hollis, Liz Phillips, Peter Richards and George
Gonzales, Bruce Odland, and Bill and Mary Buchen. According to Tittel
(2009:58), the lack of institutional acceptance of early sound art contributed
much to its quest for the everyday. She has provided an extensive overview of
works of sound art from recent decades which were conceived in environments
not generally intended for artistic presentation. More recent examples and
artistic strategies with regards to sound art in public space have been discussed
by Bandt (2005), Bircheld et al. (2006) and Klein (2009).
Licht (2009:5), on the other hand, has referred to Edgard Varses Pome lectronique and
Iannis Xenakis Concret PH at the Philips Pavillon of the Expo 58 as the rst signicant
sound installations.
8
The work could be listened to by tuning ones car radio to a certain frequency along a
stretch of roadway in Bualo, New York (Neuhaus 1980).
7
6.3.2
119
By questioning not only the concert hall but dedicated performance spaces in
general, sound art investigates the relationship between sound and place at
a substantial level. Bill Fontana (2008:154) observed that ambient sounds
are sculptural in the way they belong to a particular place. Several authors
have identied site-specicity as a characteristic of many works of sound art
(Davis 2003; Roden 2005; LaBelle 2007; Licht 2007; Ouzounian 2008; Campesato 2009). Licht (2007:271) credits Maryanne Amacher with perhaps being the
rst composer whose work was specic to particular locations. Max Neuhaus
(1994c:6) has used sound to manifest a place rather than an event. Place and
sound become almost indistinguishable in the Places series by Peter Ablinger
(2006c). Sam Auinger (2008) and Helmut Lemke (2008) have also been concerned with the sound-place relationship for many years. More examples of
site-specic sound art have already been provided in section 5.2.1. Soundwalking (cf. section 5.3) also represents an inherently place-bound practice.
Numerous soundscape studies have investigated the connection between sound,
a place and its inhabitants, such as the research of the World Soundscape
Project (Schafer 1977), John Levack Drevers Topophonophilia (2007b), Peter
Cusacks Your Favourite London Sounds (Cusack 1998) and Sound from Dangerous Places (Cusack 2007), the Positive Soundscapes Project (Davies et al.
2007) and studies by Jrviluoma et al. (2007), Kyt et al. (2007) and the
Oce of Global Atmospheric Protection (2007). ODwyer (2009:12) has investigated the relation of mobile sound technologies and contemporary concepts of
place, and several art projects in this area will be discussed in section 7.2. The
connection between sound and place has also been the main theme of various
projects which are concerned with listening as a social experience (cf. section
8.3.2).
6.3.3
Although sound arts move into everyday environments was not restricted to the
cities (cf. Concannon 1987), sound art nevertheless represents a primarily urban
practice. With the urbanisation of Western society, the city was discovered as
an environment for sensory experience:
The city in all its dimensions, architectural-spatial, socio-economic,
technical and particularly acoustical, enter [sic] man via his senses.
(Barthelmes 2002:99)
120
6.3.4
One aspect which requires investigation with regards to sound art in public
environments is how to communicate its experience to the audience. I would
like to discuss my own works Straenmusik (cf. appendix B) and EaRdverts (cf.
appendix C) in this respect. Straenmusik is an unguided soundwalk consist-
121
ing of directed listening instructions which are drawn on the street with chalk.
EaRdverts tries to direct the aural attention of passers-by by marking any ears
visible on advertising billboards with big arrows. The biggest challenge with
regards to these works was to catch the potential audiences attention at all.
In the case of Straenmusik, I had to consider it a success if pedestrians briey
turned their heads because of the unfamiliar drawings on the road. The average
attention span of those people who noticed the piece at all seemed to be less
than three seconds. In the case of EaRdverts, such observations of the audience were virtually impossible due to the cumulative nature of the work. One
likely does not even notice the rst ear-pointing arrow which one encounters
and might only consciously notice their presence after seeing several of them.
And even then, it is still a long way for the listener to realise that the piece
is somehow concerned with aural perception, let alone to actually start listening.
Max Neuhaus (1994b:3) has pointed out that whereas one can observe whether
someone is looking at a visual artwork, there is no way of seeing whether
someone listens.9 Of course I could have observed people to nd out whether
they noticed my interventions and interviewed them to evaluate whether that
initiated a listening experience in them. But even then it would have been
impossible for me to conclude that their everyday aural awareness has been
increased beyond this immediate encounter. Neuhaus questions the value of
observing the audience of his unmarked, often anonymous sound installations:
Yes, I could go and observe people. But I know what [my] work is,
I know what it can do, otherwise I wouldnt be a very good artist.
(Neuhaus 1994c:3)
It is unlikely that the aural awareness of many listeners was increased during
their encounter of Straenmusik or EaRdverts.10 But does that make them less
worthy as works of art? In my opinion, trying to measure the success of art
merely in terms of its immediate eect is a clear sign of an underestimation
of what art can achieve. How does one measure the impact of a continuous
presence of pieces like Straenmusik or EaRdverts over a year? In fact, how
does one measure the aesthetic impact of the Mona Lisa on the eye of a viewer?
Certainly not by observing whether the viewer actually looks at the painting.
Only by adopting a long-term perspective can we appreciate arts ability to
Strictly speaking, I think one cannot even do the former. Through observation, one can
see whether somebody directs visual attention in a certain direction. One can see someone
gaze; thats about it. But gazing is as dierent from looking as hearing is from listening.
10
An exception to this were people who I personally invited to try Straenmusik, but of
course they had prior information which random listeners could not rely on.
9
122
change peoples perspective on the world. For art to achieve this potential we
need to encourage its presence in everyday life. If instead we choose to measure
art against its short-term eects, then short-term eects is what we are going
to get from art.
6.4
The short attention spans which listeners demonstrated towards the pieces
Straenmusik and EaRdverts are not particularly surprising if one considers
the constantly switching focus which characterises everyday life. Abowd et al.
(2002:53) notes that everyday activities tend to not have a clear beginning or
end, are prone to interruption, and that several of them can occur concurrently.
These idiosyncrasies of everyday practices seem to challenge the suitability of
everyday environments as a context for the presentation of art. But could it
be that there are artistic strategies which lend themselves to these idiosyncrasies just as well as the symphony lends itself to a concert hall performance?
The remainder of this chapter is devoted to the identication of such strategies.
There is a profound relationship between the everyday and aural experience
which extends far beyond the seemingly trivial observation that [e]very manifestation of life is accompanied by noise (Russolo 2004:13). Everyday life and
sound share an inherent rhythmicity. Just as sound is essentially a phenomenon
of vibration, our lives are structured by the oscillations between night and day,
periods of work and periods of rest, summer and winter, life and death. Oliveros
(2005:27) observed that natural and urban environments are full of pulses and
patterns, and according to Lefebvre (2004:66), even musical rhythm merely
illustrates everyday life. Everyday rhythms are a social phenomenon:
Each and every day we make ritual gestures, we move to the
rhythm of external and personal cadences, we cultivate our memories, we plan for the future. And everyone else does likewise.
(Melucci 1996:1)
The rhythmed organisation of everyday time is [...] simultaneously
internal and social. In one day in the modern world, everybody does
more or less the same thing at more or less the same times [...].
(Lefebvre 2004:75)
123
6.4.1
Intentionally or as a by-product, the rhythms of everyday life manifest themselves primarily through sound, whether their cycles are within the range of
human hearing or not. Tonkiss (2004:306) notes how in Sydney, the rst aeroplane from Singapore woke him every day, sound telling time again, more
reliable than a cheap alarm clock. My former Belfast atmate made a similar comment about the daily 7 a.m. machine from London. At my current
accommodation, a moped driver passes the street in front of the house reliably
at 7:50 a.m. each morningan anonymous sonorhythmic element in my daily
routine.
From a ticking clock to a factory siren, an angelus bell, a train
whistling at regular hours, or bird songs heard every morning and
eveningan indenite variety of sounds constantly dene time.
(Augoyard & Torgue 2006:93)
According to Meier-Dallach & Meier (1992:416, quoted in Barthelmes 2002:103),
[t]he sound of a city contains images of the social space and its rhythms.
Truax argues that the cyclic patterns of a communitys daily activities are reected in the soundscape (2001:76), and that nothing is more revealing to
the soundscape analyst (2001:73) than these long-term rhythms, which usually
escape the observer. Chelko (1991:45; translation by the author) distinguishes
between three temporal structures of soundscapes: continuous (not changing
much over time), regularised (repetitive rhythms) and aleatoric. Repetition,
124
Suprabiological rhythms
Ultrasound
>20 kHz
Sound
ca. 20 Hz to 20 kHz
Rhythms on a human scale
Bodily rhythms
heart, breath, feet, hands, nervous system
Tides
ca. 12.5 hours
Circadian rhythms
24-hour interval; work vs. rest periods
Weekly rhythms
workdays vs. weekends
Monthly rhythms
phases of the moon
Seasonal rhythms
spring, summer, autumn, winter
Life cycle of a human being
childhood, youth, adulthood, seniority
Infrabiological rhythms
Life cycle of a society
Life cycle of a species
Geological rhythms
tectonic plates shifting; climate periods
Rhythms of the stars
orbits
Rhythms of the universe
contracting, expanding
Table 6.1: Rhythms with decreasing frequency, informed by Schafer (1994:226)
and Truax (1999, 2001:73).
125
6.4.2
Ezra Pound (1951:198) refers to rhythm as form cut into time. Nancy
(2007:17) calls it the vibration of time itself. The rhythms of everyday life are
accessible to aesthetic perception and have in fact been reected on in various
artistic genres. The lms of Jacques Tati, for example, are essentially celebrations of everyday rhythm. This is particularly evident in the sound design of his
lm Playtime (1967), which satirically reects on the modern urban soundscape
and its recurring elements. The rhythmicity of the everyday oers an aesthetic
perspective on time which extends beyond constructed narratives. Form does
not need to be constructed by a composer; it is already present in everyday
life wherever we lookor listen. This reinterpretation of form as something
which is primarily experienced by the listener rather than constructed by an
author perhaps distinguishes sound art from music (Campesato 2009:33). The
resulting musicalisation of everyday sound (Kahn 1999, 2006) largely relies
on the listeners willingness to perceive.11
Several sound artists have addressed the aesthetic perception of everyday rhythm
in their work. Pauline Oliveros (2005:55) Listening Questions ask the audience
to track a rhythmic pattern in their own life and write about it. Her project
Deep Listening through the Millennium from 1998 is concerned with becoming
aware of how ones listening changes over a three-year period (2005:33). Her
textual score Rhythms from 1996 addresses the listeners awareness of bodily
rhythms:
Although this is arguably the case in music as well, the strong social conventions by
which at least live performances of music are governed tend to shift the focus from the
listeners perception towards the social event. Sound art, as a relatively young artistic genre,
has the advantage of not (yet?) having developed such a strong set of social codes with
regards to its reception.
11
126
6.4.3
To conclude this section, I would like to discuss two examples from my own
artistic practice which are concerned with an auralisation of everyday rhythms.
As the title of my portable sound installation 9/2/5 (cf. appendix H) already
suggests, this work extends over the course of an entire day. Sound recorded by
binaural microphones is being processed by a portable computer and replayed
on headphones in real-time, thereby transforming the aural experience of a mobile listener. The processing algorithm reacts to certain features extracted from
the recorded sound (amplitude, peak, pitch, etc.) and adopts itself according
to the current time of day. This awareness of the installation with regards to
127
time and the sound environment is used to reinforce the rhythmicity of a workday. As an example, one sound processing strategy which I have used in 9/2/5
somewhat resembles a church bell: The rst peak detected in the recorded
sound at the rst quarter of every hour triggers a decaying reverberation tail.
At the half hour, the rst two detected peaks are reverberated, and the rst
three peaks at three quarters of an hour. At the full hour, the number of
reverberated peaks corresponds to the current hour of the day; e.g. seven peaks
at 7 oclock. The listener can create additional long-term rhythms: By tapping
the binaural microphones according to a certain pattern, a sound recording is
started, and at the same time the playback of this recording scheduled at the
current minute of every hour for the rest of the day.
My sound installation 24/7 (cf. appendix G), which was installed in a Belfast
gallery in 2009, was also concerned with everyday rhythm. By continuously
recording sound in the gallery and then playing it back at various delays (1.9
seconds; 3 minutes; 2 hours; 3 days and 7 hours; 1 week) on dierent headphones in the same room, the dierences between day and night, weekdays
and weekends, closing and opening hours were made audible. The short-term
delay of 1.9 seconds was used by the audience to perform sound for themselves
or their friends. Some visitors of the installations opening returned a week
later to listen to their previous visit. Another visitor of the opening told me
that she only got the whole picture of her visit when, after two hours, she
heard (on the headphones) some of her friends discuss her whereabouts just
before she arrived at the gallery. Yet another visitor of the opening returned
some days later to recite poetry for later audiences. One evening in the empty
gallery, I accompanied my former self on the violin in the manner of Chinese
Whispers: First I tried to replay what I had been playing 1.9 seconds earlier,
then I attempted to replay that three minutes later, etc. I also recited dialogues which had occurred in the gallery between myself and others a week
earlier. Based on notes which I had taken, I could make predictions about
who would enter the gallery in the next minute of the recording (cf. portfolio,
24/7, documentation materials, audio documentation, track 2, Recited Visit).
During the setup phase of the installation, I once arrived at the gallery in the
morning and found a note by the curator. As I read it, I listened to a pair
of headphones where I could hear him arrive at the gallery two hours earlier
and write the very note which I was now reading. I remember the three weeks
of this installation as a period of enhanced personal awareness with regards to
the passing of time.
6.5
128
In this chapter, I have argued that the development of sound art is intimately
linked to its concern with the everyday. This concern has originally manifested
itself in an interest in everyday sound material, but was later extended towards
a quest for everyday environments as a background for artistic production and
presentation. With the uncontrollable nature of the everyday soundscape comes
an artistic tendency to let everyday sounds speak for themselves rather than
enforce the will of a composer onto them. One can observe a tendency towards
a seamless, unexcited integration of sound art into the everyday lives of its
audiences. It is precisely by focusing on the aesthetic perception of sounds
which are already present in our everyday lives that sound art can stand out.
Peter Ablinger recommends an approach to sound art which is inspired by
architecture:
Most music performed in concert halls emphasises exclusively its
facade. It says: Look what I can do! Look how I am. It says:
Look! Good architecture, by contrast, says: Be! Ablinger (2004;
translation by the author)
Brian Eno (quoted in Licht 2009:6) argues that ambient music must be as
ignorable as it is interesting. Max Neuhaus deliberately designs his pieces
at the threshold of perception, allowing people to nd them (1994c:2) while
they should be able to be ignored (2006:9). The possibility of his work being
missed by its potential audience becomes an explicit part of his aesthetic, such
as in the untitled installation at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art:
A beautiful thing about the piece [...] is that, although its sounds
are huge and loud, because of the plausibility of these sounds, many
people still after fourteen years deny it exists. (Neuhaus 1994d:2)
In Neuhaus artistic practice, both the work and its author retreat in favour
of letting the listener discover an experience for herself. His 1977 installation
Times Square in New York City was conceived anonymously, and his Drive In
Music from 1967 was merely announced in a newspaper (Neuhaus 1994b). He
points out some pragmatic advantages of his non-intrusive approach:
[My] pieces dont stimulate a negative reaction. There arent people
who are outraged by them. Those who would be [...] never notice
them. (Neuhaus 1994b:4)
129
7
Mobile Listening
In this thesis I have discussed two recent developments in our aural culture: In
the last chapter I have shown how sound art interprets everyday environments
in terms of an aestheticisation of aural perception. In section 2.3, I have argued that aestheticised listening is increasingly technologically mediated and I
have identied the mobilisation and individuation of aural experience as two
key aspects of this development. It is worthwhile to investigate the role of
mobility and sociality with regards to the technological mediation of everyday
aural experience in detail. This is the purpose of the following two chapters.
The present chapter will focus on mobility, whereas chapter 8 will be concerned
with the sociality of aestheticised listening.
Five years after the introduction of the Walkman, Hosokawa dened musica
mobilis as
[...] music whose source voluntarily or involuntarily moves from one
point to another, coordinated by the corporal transportation of the
source owner(s). (Hosokawa 1984:166)
The busker, the marching band and the minstrel serve as ancient examples of
mobile musicians. But the true era of mobile music started with the personal
music player, rst introduced in form of the Sony Walkman, which aligned the
movement of music and its audience and encapsulated mobile listening into
130
131
7.1
The history of mobile music players does not actually start with the Sony
Walkman. The introduction of jukeboxes at the turn of the twentieth century rst allowed listeners to enjoy music on the go (Bull 2007:91). Later,
portable crystal radios became the rst personal mobile listening devices. By
1941, thirty percent of US cars were equipped with a radio (Butsch 2000:206),
and the car became an increasingly popular listening environment (cf. Bull
2004b, 2007:87). With the invention of the transistor in 1947, the mobilisation of technologically mediated listening accelerated, and concurrently sound
redened public space (Douglas 2004:221). This manifested itself in the development of portable radios and sound systems like the ghetto blaster or the
boom box (ODwyer 2009:63). The golden age of mobile listening, however,
started when the mobile music player became a device which was not only
portable, but also personalised.
7.1.1
132
In 1972, Andreas Pavel assembled his stereobelt, which is generally acknowledged as the rst prototype of a headphone-based mobile tape player. Levy
(2006:203) provides an excellent account of the stereobelts history and of
Pavels initial reaction to the enhanced aural experience which it aorded him.
Although Pavel patented his idea in 1977 (du Gay et al. 1997:42) and tried to
license it to various companies (Levy 2006:204), the stereobelt never became a
commercial success. The personal mobile music player was instead popularised
by the Sony Walkman. The complexity of myths surrounding the Walkmans
invention is somewhat untangled by du Gay et al. (1997:42,51). They portray
the product as the common creation of several individuals within the Sony
corporation rather than as a single stroke of genius, such as in the legend of
Sonys founder Akio Morita inventing the device while walking the streets of
New York (Chambers 1994:49). The original Sony Walkman, the model TPSL2, was released in Japan in 1979 (du Gay et al. 1997:8).1 The follow-up
model, the WM-2 introduced in February 1981, was smaller, lighter, required
fewer parts and became the classic Walkman, with more than 2.5 million units
sold worldwide (du Gay et al. 1997:64). The lawsuit which Andreas Pavel later
initiated against Sony (du Gay et al. 1997:42; Levy 2006:204f) could not hinder
the Walkmans global success. Together with the portable computer, the mobile
phone and the credit card, it became an indispensable part of contemporary
nomadism (Chambers 1994:50).
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw only minor adaptations to the original
Walkman concept. The range of storage media was extended from analog tape
to optical digital media (CD and MiniDisc). It was the introduction of digital
players based on ash memory in the late 1990s which further mobilised and
personalised music listening. Oering ever-increasing storage capacities, these
new devices eliminated the need to carry around external storage media. Bull
notes that their owners therefore do not tend to switch them o due to a
lack of suitable music (2007:127f), something which was still common among
Walkman listeners (2001:185f). While the Walkman was typically played during
transition periods, while moving from one location to another, recent mobile
music players are being used continuously throughout the day (2007:128). Another recent development is the merging of the portable music player and the
mobile phone2 into a new class of device.
Other sources (Hosokawa 1984; Chambers 1994) date the Japan launch of the Walkman
to the spring of 1980.
2
An in-depth discussion of the mobile phone as a mobile (and social) listening technology
1
133
Compared to earlier technologies, the personal mobile music player has further privatised both listening (through headphones rather than loudspeakers)
as well as what is being listened to (personal music collections rather than
public broadcasts). It has enabled new modes of urban experience (Thibaud
2004:330) and has become an integral part of everyday aural perception. It
is certainly no coincidence that all four individuals shown on the front page of
DeNoras book Music in Everyday Life (2000) are wearing earphones, which are
presumably all connected to portable music players. The personal mobile music
player represents the provisional peak in the mobilisation and individuation of
technologically mediated listening which I have described in section 2.3.
7.1.2
Headphone Listening
It can be argued that headphones have contributed more to the individuation of mediated aural perception than any other single factor. The fact that
the Walkman succeeded in spite of being a technologically simpler object than
the portable stereo (Hosokawa 1984:168) is arguably due to the popularisation
of headphone listening which it initiated. Considering that the vast majority
of mobile music listening experiences is today being mediated through headphones, it is surprising how little attention has been attributed to the fact
that headphone listening creates a unique acoustic experience [...], unlike anything else in the history of listening (Stankievech 2007:55f). Even in sound
art, the role of headphones is often reduced to that of a cheap alternative to
multichannel loudspeaker systems or to a means of providing privacy and noise
control (Stankievech 2007:57).3 But headphones provide a distinct quality of
aural experience.4 They reveal previously unnoticed details in pieces of music
familiar from loudspeaker playback. Audio engineers deliberately monitor sound
through headphones for tasks which require detection of minute details. Sounds
which are listened to on headphones often seem to originate from within the
listeners head rather than from the outside world. Maybe this is the reason
why headphone listeners often liken their experience to a concert in their own
head (Schnhammer 1989) and feel that they can almost become one with
the music (Rudman 2006:2).5 Kato (2003) argues that headphone listening
goes beyond the scope of this thesis. Attempts in this direction have been made by Plant
(2001) and Bassett (2004).
3
By contrast, Stankievech (2007) discusses some works of sound art which are explicitly
designed for headphones, like Ryoji Ikedas C7::Continuum and Bernhard Leitners Kopfrume
(headscapes).
4
Wightman & Kistler (1989a,b) describe some characteristics of headphone listening from
a viewpoint of hearing science.
5
For situations where such an in-head localisation is not desirable, Hartmann & Wittenberg (1996) have evaluated psychoacoustic criteria for a successful externalisation of sound
134
7.2
Audio Walks
Schtzlein (2001; translation by the author) refers to the Walkman as a perception machine, and Chambers (1994:49) argues that its meaning lies in the
extension of perceptive potential. But do mobile music players as we know
them fully exploit this potential? Owners of personal mobile music players
sometimes wonder whether they are missing out on the real world around
images presented on headphones.
6
The rst electroacoustic loudspeaker dates back to around 1921, whereas headsets
were already used earlier (Thompson 2004:239). The invention of stereo headphones in their
modern form is usually attributed to John C. Koss and Martin Lange, Jr., who demonstrated
the SP-3 Stereophone in 1958 (Stankievech 2007:57).
135
them (Bull 2007:29). Various sound artists have addressed this desire to reconnect technologically mediated listening to the environment within which it
occurs. In their works, mobility becomes an integral part of the listening experience rather than a mere by-product of a hectic lifestyle. The term audio
walk (Cardi et al. 2006) adequately describes the listening experience created
by these works. As opposed to a soundwalk, an audio walk relies on technology
as a mediator (cf. section 5.3.1). In this section I will discuss dierent artistic
strategies for the creation of audio walks.
7.2.1
136
listener by throwing yet more technology at the problem. One of the earliest,
most widely published and best reected projects is Sonic City (Gaye et al.
2003; Lern 2003; Maz & Gaye 2003; Maz & Jacobs 2003; Gaye & Holmquist
2004a,b, 2006), in which a microphone, a light intensity sensor, a metal detector, a linear proximity IR-sensor, a press-button, and an accelerometer collect
data to create a personalised soundtrack in real-time. Tanaka (2004a,b) developed Malleable Mobile Music, a server-client application in which the handling
of the mobile phone itself shapes the generated media, using data from forcesensing resistors and accelerometers to measure grip pressure and 3D motion.
The relevance of these projects is not always easy to evaluate, especially if
there is no possibility of experiencing them rst-hand. The publications in
which they are presented often limit themselves to technological discussions,
without much critical reection in terms of perceptual or aesthetic impact.
In my opinion, the mapping of sensor datano matter whether it is of a
geospatial or other natureto sound processing parameters does not guarantee
a transparent relation between the listening experience and the environment
within which it occurs. The integration of site and sound cannot be achieved
through technology itself; it is an artistic rather than a technical problem.
7.2.2
One artistic strategy for situating a technologically mediated listening experience is to inform the listener about the environment by means of sound.
Since the invention of the audio guide in 1957 (Fisher 2004:50), many museums
and galleries have adopted handheld devices as a means of educating the visitor
about their exhibits, and several artists have reinterpreted the format in a more
poetic manner. Through the creation of site-specic narratives, audio walks can
tell the invisible stories of places and address their collective memory. The
project 34n 118w (Hight 2003) tells a story about the listeners location which
is derived from a mixture of preproduced content and environmental data retrieved online in real-time. In Location33 (Carter 2005; Carter & Liu 2005),
three imaginary characters create a narrative about a specic area in Culver
City, California. The audio walk Peninsula Voices (plan b 2006) is based on the
spoken memories and associations of people regarding the site in London where
it was shown. Craving (Garnicnig & Haider 2007) resembles a site-specic radio
drama. David Drury (2008) documented the interface area between protestant
the acoustic environment as an indicator for both social and physical context. Want et al.
(1992), Dey & Abowd (1999) and Schmidt (2002) list examples of context-aware computing
environments.
137
7.2.3
In other works it is the everyday soundscape itself which provides a personalised context for the integration of listening and location. By its very nature,
sound oers itself for this purpose. Angus Leech (2006) points out analogies
between getting to know a place and getting to know a soundboth eectively
listening processes which require time and engagement. In Janet Cardis audio walks, studio-recordings of narrating voices are overlaid with binaural eld
recordings from the respective location, thereby contrast[ing] the dierence
between in-head acoustic imaging and exterior [...] soundelds (Stankievech
2007:58). Presumably to achieve the same eect, Teri Rueb (1999) lets the audience listen to her audio walk Trace at low volumes through open headphones,
by which she minimises the acoustic insulation to the outside world.
My own Interroutes series of site-specic electroacoustic miniatures (cf. appendix E) works in a similar fashion: Short recordings from the target environment are played between extended periods of silence, during which the
everyday soundscape can be heard almost undisturbedly through the earphones
138
7.2.4
Another strategy for embedding a mobile listening experience into its context
by means of technology is to translate an otherwise inaudible phenomenon to
sound. Again, sensors are being used to extract information from the environment, but this time with the purpose of making this data audible as such. In
Toshio Iwais Sound Lens from 2001 (Anonymous 2006; Vawter 2006:54) and
Morgan Barnards Connect from 2004 (Barnard 2005) portable devices pick
up light from the environment and convert the resulting voltages to sound,
which is listened to through headphones. A similar approach was taken in the
project ask02 by Yui Miki, Felix Hahn and Ralf Schreiber from 2000, except
that in their case the sound was played through loudspeakers integrated into a
wearable interface (Kato 2003).
An auralisation not of light, but of electromagnetic waves beyond the visible spectrum has been conducted by Usman Haque in his project Sky Ear
(Behrendt 2005). Christina Kubisch has also become well-known for auralising electromagnetic phenomena (Cox & Kubisch 2006; Kubisch 2007). Since
the 1970s, she has produced both indoor and outdoor installations in which
listeners equipped with custom-built headphones extended by magnetic coils
can listen to electromagnetic elds by means of induction. In her earlier works,
Kubisch created these elds herself by feeding sound signals through long wires.
However, the increasing ubiquity of electrical devices in the 1980s and 1990s
meant that the electromagnetic elds which they invariably generate started
to interfere with Kubischs sound material. After a period of trying to suppress the sounds induced by these devices, Kubisch turned them into the actual
139
sound material of her Electrical Walks in 2003 (Cox & Kubisch 2006). Their
musicality is often striking (cf. Kubisch 2006).
The beauty of Kubischs walks lies in the fact that the phenomenon which they
auralise is not only inaudible but also invisible. While the translation of light
to sound merely creates a subtext to our visual perception, the Electrical Walks
provide a window into a world which is otherwise completely inaccessible to us.8
They truly connect the listener with the environment in a way that can not be
easily achieved without technology. This represents an example of self-education
through art as a creative act, where the artist provides a tool for the audience
to educate themselves, by which the audience then completes the creative act
(Kato 2003). Conceptually, this represents a clear step beyond the synthesis
of a soundtrack some parameters of which are controlled by environmental or
geospatial data.
7.2.5
140
in consecutive order. In the rst preset, sound recorded from the microphones
was increasingly delayed before being played back on the headphones. In the
second preset, the recorded sound was cut up and the slices remixed in a nonchronological order. In the third preset, recorded junks of sound were gradually
piled on top of each other.
For safety reasons, listeners trying the system were escorted by a guide. One
listener reported a thin sense of reality, like being a participant of a game in
virtual reality space (Kato 2003). This listener also described an impression
of body and ears having separated. One of the guides described how many
listeners turned inwards and did very strange acts because they were absorbed
in their sound world (Kato 2003). Other participants were more externally
oriented and displayed playful behaviour, such as actively seeking sound sources
to hear what the interface would do to them, or creating sounds themselves by
singing or clapping.
Florian Muellers and Matthew Karaus Transparent Hearing
As part of an interaction design study at MIT Media Lab Europe, Mueller
& Karau (2002) built a system consisting of a pair of binaural microphones
mounted on top of a pair of headphones, a microphone amplier and various
sensors. Noise-cancellation headphones were used to minimise the bleeding of
external sounds through the earcups. A laptop computer was responsible for
the sound processing (Mueller 2009). This rendered the setup not very mobile,
but the project was primarily intended as a design study rather than for use in
an everyday context.
Mueller & Karau (2002) used their prototype to propose and test several scenarios with regards to the real-time transformation of everyday listening. In
the rst setup, people in the listeners proximity were detected by a distance
sensor mounted on top of the headphones.9 On detection of a person, the
device switched from music playback to the sound from the microphone input,
allowing the user to hear the other person speak. A green and a red LED
on top of the headphones signied to bystanders whether or not the listener
was currently available for conversation. Mueller & Karau also used their device as a pseudophone, which allowed the listener to hear on the left ear those
sounds which normally arrive at the right ear and vice versa. This technique
will be discussed in more detail in section 7.3.2. In another application, two
The authors do not comment on the problem of how to distinguish people from other
objects by means of a distance sensor.
9
141
sets of the device were used and their microphones and headphones connected
in a crosswise fashion, so that each of the two listeners received the sound
from the other listeners microphones. They coupled this setup with wireless
infrared transceivers in order to evaluate when the listeners were looking into
each others directions. The authors proposed the use of such a setup in situations where two people want to lead a conversation across a crowded, noisy
room.
Peter Ablingers Weiss/weisslich 36
Mueller & Karau (2002:730) claim that in transparent mode, i.e. when the
sound from the microphones is merely amplied but not otherwise processed,
the auditory impression of their system is as if you are not wearing headphones
at all. While this claim might hold conceptually for engineering purposes, it is
certainly not correct from a phenomenological viewpoint. An aural experience
mediated through even a neutral microphone-headphone chain is very dierent
from immediate everyday listening. This dierence constitutes Peter Ablingers
piece Weiss/weisslich 36 from 1999. Of all the works presented in this section, this is the conceptually simplest, but perhaps also the artistically most
profound. Its setup consists again of a pair of headphones with a microphone
attached to each of its two earcups.10 In Ablingers piece, however, no portable
computer additionally transforms the recorded sound. As the listener explores
the environment, the sound recorded by the microphones is immediately played
back by the headphones. All processing is limited to the amplication of the
microphone signals, whose level the listener can adjust with a volume knob.
Although in this piece we are just listening to what we would otherwise hear
as well, there is an audible dierence, which itself is the piece (Ablinger
2008c:71).
Everything is wrong [when listening through the microphone-headphone
chain of Ablingers piece]: the scraping of ones own shoes, hitherto
unnoticed, becomes unbearably loud; and what that interesting person over there is saying just now is utterly incomprehensible because
dozens of voices suddenly have approximately the same volume.
(Scheib 2008:110)
This blurred distinction between auditory foreground and background can even
be observed when listening to sound recordings after the fact:
The latest version of the hardware for Weiss/weisslich 36 was designed by Winfried
Ritsch and built by Reinhold Schinwald at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics
in Graz, Austria.
10
142
143
question remains whether this engagement would persist beyond the thirty
minutes which the subjects in his study were granted with the device. With
regards to social aspects it would also be interesting to evaluate the experience
from the viewpoint of bystanders.
Duncan Speakmans Sounds from Above the Ground
For his project Sounds from Above the Ground from 2006/07, Duncan Speakman
designed a series of audio walks which he describes as follows:
In the performance the audience are given stereo wireless receivers
and follow me through the city streets. I have a microphone on my
chest and my backpack contains a laptop computer and stereo UHF
audio transmitter. As we walk the audience listens through my ears
as I speak memories and place marks in the city, while the laptop
processes and remixes the surrounding ambience. (Speakman 2007)
The audio processing software was originally implemented in Max/MSP (Cycling 74 2009) and controlled through Bluetooth over a mobile phone. In a
more recent version of the system, the laptop computer was replaced by a design
based on a gumstix developing board (Gumstix 2010), and the audio processing
software was written in Pure Data (Puckette 1996). The audio transmitter was
powered by a motorcycle battery, and the audience wore their receivers on a
beltpack (Speakman 2009). Sounds from Above the Ground is of artistic interest
in so far as it combines real-time transformations of environmental sounds with
narrative elements such as those known from Janet Cardis work. The theatrical character of Speakmans narration, which he performs live, distinguishes
his approach from those of other artists.
The RjDj Application
RjDj represents the rst commercial project which makes music out of the
world around us (RjDj 2008f). At the time of writing, it is available as a software application for two popular mobile devices by Apple Inc. Ports to other
hardware platforms are planned. RjDj represents not a specic artwork but
a generic platform for the creation of audio walks. Using a specially adapted
version of the Pure Data programming language, artists from around the world
contribute new scenes, in which data recorded from the devices built-in sensors (e.g. microphone, accelerometer) can be used to synthesise a real-time
soundtrack. These scenes are distributed to the audience through various channels. An online library, which only registered users have access to, provides
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a selection of them free of charge. Some scenes are also sold as standalone
software applications through Apples online software store. Audio recordings
of specic scenes in action are also made accessible as teasers on the RjDj
website.
RjDj is, however, neither limited to the real-time processing of recorded sound
nor to the concept of the audio walk itself. Roman Haefelis amenshake scene
(RjDj 2008b) uses only data from the phones built-in accelerometer. Georg
Holzmanns Pingpong (RjDj 2008e) is an auditory computer game. In Frank
Barknechts Gridwalker (RjDj 2008d), a synthesised soundtracks activity varies
with the sound level of the environment. Scenes that are concerned with
recording, transforming and replaying the live input from a microphone are Roman Haefelis WorldQuantizer (RjDj 2008g), Damian Stewarts Eargasm (RjDj
2008c) and Drowning Streets by Kids on DSP (RjDj 2009a).
RjDjs creators Michael Breidenbrcker and Stefan Glnzer propose their platform as the rst exponent of a new genre which they term reactive music
(RjDj 2008f). They claim that their application has had 280,000 users as of
November 2009 and creates a new market in the music business (RjDj 2009b).
No matter whether this will actually turn out to be the case, RjDj indicates
that audio walks are turning from a niche genre of sound art into a format
which enjoys a wider popularity.
Music for Lovers
In my wearable sound installation Music for Lovers (cf. appendix F), two sets
of binaural microphones are attached to the earcups of two pairs of headphones.
The microphones and headphones are connected in a cross-wise fashion, allowing
the rst listener to hear the world from the second listeners aural perspective
and vice versa (cf. gure 7.1). This setup resembles one which Mueller & Karau
have used in their Transparent Hearing project, which I have discussed earlier.
But whereas they envisioned their system as a device for communicating in
situations where this might otherwise be impossible or aggravated, Music for
Lovers interprets sound technology as a means of transcending the personal
aural perspective experienced through ones own body. As in Peter Ablingers
Weiss/weisslich 36, which I also have discussed earlier, no sound processing
occurs besides an amplication of the microphone signals. But as opposed to
Ablingers piece, Music for Lovers is not primarily concerned with the dierence between immediate and mediated listening. It merely needs to accept the
peculiarities of technologically mediated listening in order to achieve its goal of
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not to enable verbal communication (although this can and usually is part of
the experience) but to adopt another persons view on the world. Listeners
who tried the installation discovered the eects of abruptly turning their heads,
immersing themselves in a dierent acoustic environment than their partner
(e.g. indoors vs. outdoors), covering their ears (and hence microphones) with
their hands, etc. The social interactions which the installation initiated as part
of this process are described in section 8.4.1.
9/2/5
As opposed to Music for Lovers, my audio walk 9/2/5 (cf. appendix H) is
designed for a solo listener whose aural experience is extensively transformed
by means of digital sound processing techniquessimilar to Noah Vawters
Ambient Addition. As in that project, the technical setup consists of a pair of
binaural microphones mounted on the earcups of a pair of headphones and a
portable computer which processes the recorded sound in real-time (cf. portfolio,
Music for Lovers, performance materials, technical diagram). The processing
techniques include delays, echoes, the recording and later playback of sounds,
reverb, lters and operations on the stereo balance of the binaural input signal.
The sound processing algorithm is not static and adopts itself according to four
dierent factors:
The input signal is analysed in order to extract features from the acoustic
environment. Besides a simple envelope follower, a peak and a pitch
detector, the overall busyness of the sound environment is determined
by observing short-term level changes. Transitions from one acoustic
environment to anothera situation which Augoyard & Torgue (2006:29)
refer to as a cut out (cf. section 4.5)are discovered by tracking the
average sound pressure level over longer periods of time. This indicates
occasions such as when the listener walks from a quiet room onto a busy
street. All features detected in the input signal are then used to control
its transformation. The detection of a peak, for example, might trigger
a series of echoes, or a dominant pitch in the environment might control
the centre frequency of a lter.
The current daytime is retrieved from the computers system clock. As the
title of 9/2/5 suggests, the work extends over the course of an entire
day, i.e. its sound processing algorithm changes according to twenty-fourhour cycles. This distinguishes the piece from all other projects discussed
in this section. A scheduler determines periods during which certain
sound processing units become active. For example, the reverberation
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Another important aspect of 9/2/5 s development was that the works extended
time frame required a dierent approach to interaction design than a twentyminute piece presented in the context of an exhibition. It had to be possible
to hand out the device to novice users for an entire day without burdening
them with too many details regarding its handling. Automated startup and
shutdown procedures as well as detection of low battery levels and other constraints specic to portable hardware represented the major challenges in this
respect. The pieces extended timeframe also demanded the application of distinct compositional strategies, such as the auralisation of everyday rhythms (cf.
section 6.4.3), in order to ll the large empty canvas of a twenty-four hour day.
7.3
As I have shown in the last section, my own artistic practice in the eld of
audio walks has focused on the transformation of everyday aural experience
by processing a microphone signal in real-time. My research in this direction
started with numerous informal experiments and was later intensied through
the development of Music for Lovers and 9/2/5. In this concluding section,
I would like to present some insights from these investigations, which concern
both the technical setup of microphone-based audio walks and the perceptual
impact of sound processing techniques applied to everyday aural experience.
7.3.1
I have noted in section 7.1.2 that the peculiarities of headphone listening are
still insuciently understood. This is even more true for situations where headphones mediate aural experience in real-time, i.e. where they play back sound
recorded by a microphone. As Peter Ablinger has shown (cf. section 7.2.5), even
a neutral microphone-headphone chain, i.e. one where the recorded sound is
just amplied but not otherwise processed before being played back, creates
an experience which is substantially dierent from immediate listening. Sound
technology as we know it represents a great tool for transforming sound, but
it does a much worse job at not transforming sound. During the development
of Music for Lovers, I realised how dicult it is even to just set the playback volume of a microphone-headphone chain to a level which convincingly
resembles the loudness of the environment. The correct value seems to heavily
depend on the respective environment and also varies from listener to listener.
An aural experience mediated through microphones and headphones requires
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an increased eort on behalf of the listener and is sometimes described as having a tiring eect. This is partly due to artefacts which can be explained in
technological terms:
Background noise is created by transducers, ampliers and converters and
represents a problem particularly in the case of mobile hardware, which
typically features lower-quality (and thus noisier) parts. Although listeners tend to get used to a constant noise oor, it can still be disturbing
especially in quiet environments. By design, audio technology requires a
signal to operate on. It is much less successful at recreating the silences
which constitute an important aspect of everyday aural experience.
Latency is introduced by the block-wise audio processing of software and
drivers, which results in a small delay between the input signal from the
microphones and the output signal to the headphones. The challenge of
achieving latencies suciently low to be considered acceptable is further
complicated by constraints regarding the CPU power of portable hardware. Latency is usually discussed in a context of music performance. It
might, however, be even more critical for real-time processing of everyday
sound environments, due to the habituation of the listener to everyday
perception and the immediacy of the experience. Participants in an informal user study conducted during the development of 9/2/5 were easily
able to detect latencies on the order of twenty milliseconds.
Binaural artefacts Many of the projects discussed in this section make use
of binaural recording techniques, which provide an excellent means of
maintaining the spatiality of auditory experience on a standard pair of
stereo headphones. However, the concurrent presence of headphones and
binaural microphones always translates to a tradeo with regards to the
microphone positions. Ideally, a binaural stereo microphone should be embedded inside the ears of a real or articial head. Its membranes should
be located close to the two eardrums, which they resemble. Mounting
the capsules on the earcups of bulky headphones results in major distortions of the spatial hearing cues which we use to judge the location
of a sound source. Interaural time and level dierences, which we use
to localise sound on a left-right axis (Blauert 1997), are exaggerated by
the greater distance between the membranes and their increased exposure. The ltering eects of the pinna, which provide an important cue
for front-back discrimination, are lost as well. Silicon ear models, which
are in fact used for binaural recordings with articial heads, could be
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7.3.2
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small. In 9/2/5, I was most successful with sharply tuned bandpass lters.
Contrary to my expectations, coupling their centre frequency directly to a
pitch detector did not yield signicant reactions. It seems that an amplication
of dominant pitches in the environment provides the ear with redundant information. The perceptual impact was much greater when the detected pitch was
rst multiplied by an oset factor, so that the lters centre frequency deviates
from pitches in the environment by a constant interval.
Reverb and Echoes
The function of reverbs and echoes applied to everyday aural perception does
not dier signicantly from classic applications of these eects in electroacoustically produced music. The articial reverberation of the listeners everyday
environment proves particularly eective, as it transforms the spatiality of auditory experience in a very immediate manner (cf. portfolio, 9/2/5, documentation materials, audio documentation, track 2, Hide and Seek). Series of echoes
triggered by peak detectors can initiate performative behaviour on behalf of the
listener (cf. track 9, Kicked It?).
8
Social Listening
In chapter 2, I have argued that technologically mediated listening can be characterised in terms of an increasing mobilisation and individuation. After having
discussed mobile listening in the previous chapter, this chapter is devoted to
the social aspect of aestheticised aural experience which is mediated through
technology. The inherent sociality of auditory perception is frequently noted.
According to Chelko (1991:36), the sound environment produces public space.
Schnhammer (1989) and other authors have pointed out that the deaf tend
to feel socially more isolated than the blind. The role of listening in human
communication has been illuminated by Truax (2001). Barthelmes (2002:103)
has referred to the soundscape as a social and cultural organism mediated
by sound. DeNora (2000:121) has shown that music is used as a resource
of social agency; a means of fostering or also undermining social relationships.
She speaks of listeners as actors [who] produce the aesthetic textures of social
occasions (2000:111) by means of music, which she refers to as a resource for
producing social life (2000:129).
However, DeNoras discussion is entirely centred around music in the sense of
consumable media artefacts. An aestheticisation of the everyday sound environment as such is not her concern, but has been actively proposed in the eld
of acoustic ecology. The acoustic-ecological concept of the acoustic community
will serve us as a basis for the discussion in this chapter on how technological
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8.1
The term acoustic community was originally coined by Schafer (1994:215) and
further rened by Truax, who denes it as
[...] any soundscape in which acoustic information plays a pervasive
role in the lives of the inhabitants [...]. In short, [...] any system
within which acoustic information is exchanged. (Truax 2001:66)
The acoustic community has frequently been described in spatial terms. Schafer
(1994:33) points out that a community used to be dened as those people
who lived within the audible range of the local church bell. Blesser & Salter
(2006:26) refer to the acoustic community as the social consequence of an
acoustic arena, i.e. the area within which a sound can be heard. They distinguish between natural, public and private acoustic arenas (2006:25). Chelko
(1991) has further investigated the relationship between acoustic and social
space and denes three forms of sonic distance.
But although these viewpoints emphasise the fact that spatiality and sociality
constitute two key aspects of aural experience (LaBelle 2007:x), a denition
of the acoustic community in spatial terms does not necessarily accommodate
the peculiarities of technologically mediated listening. Truax, who explicitly
includes electroacoustic systems into his denition of the acoustic community
(2001:66), has pointed out that the acoustic prole of an electroacoustically
transmitted sound is essentially boundless. The dening criterion of acoustic
communality today is therefore given by access to equipment rather than by
physical proximity (2001:205f). The aim of this chapter is to investigate the
role of technological mediation with regards to listening as a social experience.
8.2
In section 7.1.1, I have argued that the personal mobile music player represents
the provisional peak not only of the mobilisation, but also of the individuation
of technologically mediated listening. The relationship between electroacoustic
technology and the acoustic community can therefore be particularly well studied at its example.
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The Walkmans ambiguous position [...] between autism and autonomy (Chambers 1994:51) initiated an intense public reaction. A potential breach of social
codes was already recognised before the commercial introduction of personal
mobile music players. The very rst Sony Walkman, the TPS-L2, featured
two headphone jacks and a so-called hot-line feature. By pressing an orange button, the two listeners could communicate over a built-in microphone
(Levy 2006:209). The second headphone jack was allegedly added after Morita,
Sonys founder, noted that his wife got annoyed when he listened to a Walkman prototype at home (Williams 2007:56). However, Sony soon went back
to a single-headphone design after discovering that people got very attached
to their devices as personal items (du Gay et al. 1997:59). But even the two
headphone jacks could probably not have avoided the moral panic (du Gay
et al. 1997:116) which the Walkman eventually initiated. Sound leaking from
the headphones of Walkman listeners into the outside world forced bystanders
to listen to the garbage of someone elses private acoustic world (Schnhammer 1989) and became the subject of a London Underground poster campaign
as well as a UK court case (du Gay et al. 1997:117). But leakage alone can
hardly justify the extent to which the publicand several academicscame to
see Walkman listening as an anti-social practice.
Chambers (1994:51), Bull (2001:181) and du Gay et al. (1997:113) realised
that this irritation originated in the public display of headphone listening,
which was hitherto considered a private experience. The Walkman thereby confused traditional boundaries between the public and private spheres.1 Hosokawa
(1984:177), Chambers (1994:51) and Chow (1997:140) argue that it is the publicly displayed secret of what the mobile music players owner is listening to,
which irritates bystanders.
The autism of the Walkman listener irritates onlookers precisely
because the onlookers nd themselves reduced to the activity of
looking alone. For once, voyeurism yields no secrets: one can look
all one wants and still nothing is to be seen. (Chow 1997:140)
Others have put it more drastically:
Play your Walkman and you might as well shout Everybody just
piss o! (Jackson 1997:144)
Williams (2007:109) speculates that mobile phones were initially criticised for the same
reason, i.e. because telephone conversations had originally been considered a private aair.
1
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8.3
Design Strategies
Several artists and designers have attempted to reinterpret technologically mediated listening as a shared activity, opposing the traditional image of the
isolated Walkman listener. By using sound as a vehicle for social interaction,
and network technologies as a means of connecting individual listeners, several
projects have aimed at re-socialising mediated aural experience. In this section
I will critically evaluate several strategies which have been developed in this
direction.
8.3.1
Sharing Sound
Some designs and artworks are concerned with the sharing of music; either
as an artefact (e.g. a soundle) or simply as a reection of individual choice.
While the aural experience created by these projects is still an individualised
one, they build on the observation that social interaction in music consumption
extends beyond the process of listening itself (Voida et al. 2006). A number
of designs are concerned with the sharing of sound among nearby mobile listeners through wireless networks. The Sotto Voce project (Aoki et al. 2002)
allowed pairs of museum visitors equipped with audio guides to eavesdrop on
each others audio. Since all visitors had local copies of the same content, no
audio data needed to be exchanged. Later projects focused on the possibility of sharing asymmetrical content. This is done by means of le sharing in
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Push!Music (Hkansson et al. 2005; Jacobsson et al. 2005), whereas in FolkMusic (Wiberg 2004), Bubble (Bach et al. 2003), tunA (Bassoli et al. 2003,
2004a,b; Moore 2004) and SoundPryer (Axelsson & stergren 2002; stergren
2003, 2004; stergren & Juhlin 2004) pedestrian or car-driving listeners are connected through real-time audio streams. The authors of the BluetunA project
(Bassoli & Baumann 2006; Baumann et al. 2007), on the other hand, suggested
to exchange metadata about music rather than audio data itself. Bassoli et al.
(2006, 2008) also envisioned the undersound project, which aimed at letting
listeners share music through publicly accessible servers in the stations of the
London Underground.
While the authors of the above projects emphasise the possibilities which their
prototypes allegedly oer for connecting strangers which otherwise would not
engage in social interaction, they are far less concerned with situations where
this might be undesirable. Scenarios of systematic misuse, such as eavesdropping or surveillance by governments, large corporations or criminal organisations and individuals, are not even mentioned. The only exception is Moore
(2004:86), who mentions the possibility of abuse by advanced users. The
option of enhanced privacy through encrypted data transfer is not addressed
either. Although the authors of tunA explicitly mention that testers of their
system were concerned about revealing personal data, they seem to assume
that their musical choice simply represents suciently anonymous data (Bassoli et al. 2004a; Moore 2004:84). Wibergs (2004) system at least provides
dierent anonymity modes for users to choose from. stergren & Juhlin
(2004) satisfy themselves with the statement that their system does not seem
to invade privacy, based on the claim that test subjects did not seem to be
concerned about revealing personal data. However, Solove (2007) has demonstrated that this widespread argument is based on a misconception of privacys
social values.
Many authors (stergren 2003; Hkansson et al. 2005; Jacobsson et al. 2005;
OHara et al. 2006) limit critical reection of their projects to issues of copyright infringement. Discussions on the sharing of music in recent years have
focused on le sharing through peer-to-peer networks (e.g. Brown & Sellen
2006; ODwyer 2009:96; Sedmak & Androsch 2009:89). Unfortunately these
discussions restricts themselves to a view of the listener as a consumer and of
music as a commodity. By sharing their music, however, listeners share not
only something they own but also part of their musical identity (DeNora 2000).
The social dimension of music sharing is too complex to be understood merely
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8.3.2
Sharing Place
Another strategy for emphasising the social dimension of technologically mediated listening is given through the relationship between sound and place.
Several projects allow contributors to collectively annotate geospatial locations
with sounds (and sometimes also other media). This information is then made
available in situ to all listeners who have access to the required mobile hardware. Examples are the projects Hear&There (Rozier et al. 2000), Tactical
Sound Garden (Shepard 2006, n.d.), Urban Tapestries (Lane et al. 2006), FolkMusic (Wiberg 2004) and Surface Patterns (Southern 2004).
In other projects, which are based on a web interface, the collectively generated
geospatial data is not necessarily accessed directly on site. This includes the
Montral Soundmap (CESSA 2010) or its New York equivalent Soundseeker
(NYSAE 2007). With the Sound Database (Cusack 2009) listeners can create
geospatial mixes of their own and other peoples recordings. The SoundTransit
website (Holzer et al. n.d.) resembles an airlines online booking system and
allows its visitors to book a transit (essentially a crossfade) between eld
recordings from dierent locations, which have been contributed by various
artists. The LocusSonus project (Sinclair 2007) provides its contributors with
standardised hardware to collect live audio streams from around the world.
8.3.3
Sharing Choice
In all the projects discussed in this section so far, both the acts of selecting
and of listening to sound still represent individual processes, which are not
necessarily experienced together. Their social dimension is restricted to the
process of sharing itself. Several projects have aimed at a more immediate
sharing of aural experience by letting listeners collectively choose the sounds to
be played back in a public environment. They eectively resemble the concept
of the jukebox, which dates back to rst two decades of the twentieth century
Gideon DArcangelo has used the same strategy in his radio documentary series Walkman
Busting, where he breaks down the barrier between beholders and spectators by spontaneously
asking portable music listeners whether they would let him listen to their music (Kirisits et al.
2008:113).
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(Sterne 2003:201), but replace the jukeboxes linear sequence of personal selections with a more immediate process of collective musical choice. The Jukola
system allows the visitors of a bar to assemble a playlist by nominating and
voting for certain songs (OHara et al. 2006). A similar strategy was applied
in a preliminary experiment for the Undersound project (Bassoli et al. 2008).
In the Silver Sounds exhibition, which I co-designed with Chris Murphy at
the Naughton Gallery (2008) of Queens University Belfast, gallery visitors can
control the playback of ten electroacoustic compositions, each of which was
commissioned to reect on a particular exhibit from a collection of silverware.
These compositions are triggered through the user interfaces of several handheld computers and appear through loudspeakers integrated into the exhibition
cabinets; each from the direction of the corresponding exhibit. Visitors can
simultaneously play multiple of these pieces and thereby create a collective mix
in the gallery, for which we adopted the following design strategy: By choosing
to play a piece, the listener adopts that piece, which means that no other
person can control its playback until it is stopped by its owner or simply
ends by itself. The displays of the handheld computers show which pieces are
currently playing and which are still available.
8.3.4
Sharing Soundmaking
In the above projects, it is arguably not only the process of choosing, but also
of making sound which is being shared, albeit in a highly mediated manner.
OHara et al. (2006) have noted that while listeners feeding a jukebox or making requests to a DJ are not engaged in the immediate physical action of sound
production, they eectively become co-performers of that music. The shared
performance of sound is another strategy which has been used to interpret technologically mediated listening as a social experience. In MobiLenin (Scheible &
Ojala 2005), Simpletext (Brucker-Cohen et al. 2003), Intelligent Streets (Lrstad
et al. 2004) and Sequencer404 (Jimison & Thatcher 2006; Thatcher et al. 2006),
the audience can control purely sound-based or audiovisual scenes displayed in
a public environment. Malleable Mobile Music (Tanaka 2004a) allows a number
of mobile, physically separated players to collectively control a sound synthesis
algorithm on a remote server, which then streams the sonic result back to its
clients. In Net_Drive (Tanaka 2006; Tanaka & Gemeinboeck 2006), the site
of the remote server becomes a performance space in itself. The same principle is applied in the IMPROVe project (Widerberg & Hasan 2006), which
additionally allows listeners to contribute sounds recorded with their phones
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8.4
8.4.1
The scenario of two people listening together arguably represents the most basic
form of social listening, and the idea behind the portable sound installation
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Music for Lovers (cf. appendix F) was to investigate this situation in depth.
The piece allows two people to swap ears, i.e. to exchange their acoustic perspective in real-time. This is done by means of two pairs of headphones which
are extended by binaural microphones on their earcups, with microphones and
headphones connected crosswise among the two listeners.
When Music for Lovers was exhibited at the launch night of the Ad Hoc artists
initiative in Belfast, various gallery visitors spontaneously incorporated the mobile installation into their experience of the other artworks in this group show.3
Two male visitors spent about twenty minutes walking around the gallery, discussing the various works on display as they were wearing Music for Lovers.
After a while, they seemed to integrate the somewhat prosthetic technology
of the piece quite naturally into their experience. A female pair of listeners spontaneously positioned themselves back-to-back and verbally described
to each other the artworks in their respective viewing angles. Another visitor
suggested that it would be interesting to wear the device for an entire day. As
can be seen in the picture gallery included with the portfolio, many visitors
displayed performative behaviour during their experience of Music for Lovers.
One couplean instance of actual loversstarted to stroke each others microphones, resulting in an instant acoustic reward on their own respective pair of
headphones. Two children also investigated the eects of touching each others
microphones. Moreover, they discovered how to produce beats for each other
by rhythmically tapping their own microphones with their ngertips.
The listening couples seemed to share an intimate space, which I could observe
from a distance but was clearly not a part of. All of them conducted their conversations at rather quiet levels. This was surprising, since many people tend
to raise their voice when they address bystanders while wearing headphones. In
Music for Lovers, however, the instant reassurance of being understood by ones
partner seemed to make it clear that there was no need to speak louder than
usual; despite hearing ones own voice from a distance. Many listeners clearly
enjoyed the mutual secrecy of their conversation. Some made explicit references
to the sociality of their experience. As a female pair of listeners were playing
hide-and-seek, with a brick pillar between them serving as a visual barrier, one
of them joked to the other that [s]ometimes talking to you is like talking to
The piece gained some popularity during the well-attended event and was passed on
among friends, which helped visitors to overcome the instinctive resistance to taking a piece
of art from a gallerys wall. I initially had to encourage visitors to actually try the piece,
which they would otherwise most likely have appreciated exclusively as a visual work of art;
particularly as it was the only interactive exhibit in the show.
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a brick wall. Another listener described his experience as private and public
at the same time. However, not all visitors were able to enjoy the intimacy of
the situation. Some who did not happen to know their listening partner very
well appeared to be uncomfortable. Others refused to try the work altogether;
according to themselves because they were worried that the out-of-the-norm
sensory experience created by the installation might cause them discomfort.
Several visitors provided detailed descriptions of their aural experience. By
making sound in the proximity of the microphones, one listener discovered that
the acoustic impressions of two people facing each other are exactly mirrored.
For some listeners, the aural impression of the installation seemed to outlast the
actual experience. Five minutes after putting o the headphones, one listener
remarked:
I still feel like my hearing has been altered.
Another visitor suggested that he was still more aware of his acoustic environment ten minutes after trying the piece. This corresponds to Truax (1996:61)
observation that technologically mediated listening can inuence perception
later under more normal circumstances. Yet another listener described similar
eects:
[When I was trying the piece,] I had the impression that I [was] in
[my listening partners] head, and now[, some minutes after removing
the headphones,] I have the same feeling; like Im in my head.
This listener could imagine himself being in his own head after wearing the
headphonesjust like he seemed to be in his listening partners head while
wearing them. This suggests that his experience of Music for Lovers somewhat
relativised his personal aural perspective; as if he was now able to perceive his
auditory perception itself. A similar eect was observed by listeners hearing
their own voice delayed by a couple of seconds in 9/2/5 (cf. section 7.3.2 and
appendix H), which one listener described in terms of a social experience:
Is this an anti-loneliness device?
Another listener literally referred to the same situation as an out-of-body
experience. The reaction of one Music for Lovers listener also addresses this
seeming separation of body and auditory perception:
It sort of puts you out of space.
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For another listener, the bodily connement of her own perspective was so
strong that she perceptually reversed the experience of listening to the world
through somebody elses ears in Music for Lovers. She addressed her listening
partner:
Its like youre in my head!
While she also refers to the intimacy of hearing her partners voice from a close
distance, she did not understand this as a shift of her own perspective, but as
somebody else hijacking hers.
8.4.2
24/7
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and make sounds or leave messages for later audiences. An actual instance of
such behaviour occurred when one listener, who had visited the opening of the
exhibition, returned some days later to recite some poetry.
The next pair of headphones played sound recorded three days and seven hours
earlier. To support the increased eort required on behalf of the listener to
relate to these sounds, the comfort of the seating arrangement has again increased. This pair of headphones always features sounds from outside the
gallerys opening hours. Any voices heard are likely to be those of strangers
(e.g. those of gallery sta and myself) rather than ones own or those of other
visitors. The gallery might also have been entirely abandoned at the time of
recording, which means that sounds from the street outside receive greater signicance. The PS2 gallery features a large window front, which is acoustically
quite transparent. Sounds from the passing street become an essential part of
the acoustic experience, especially since road construction work was conducted
outside the gallery during the exhibition.
The next pair of headphones could be enjoyed by the listener on a sofa; the
most comfortable seating facility in the gallery. Although the sound material is
temporally the most distant (1 week ago), it is semantically closer than that of
the previous headphones. The current time of day matches that of the recording. This might be the listeners second visit, encouraged by the possibility of
listening to her rst visit a week earlier. Some visitors from the opening night
actually took the opportunity to return to the gallery one week later to revisit
the experience.
Before exiting the gallery, the last pair of headphones confronts the visitor with
a delay of three minutes. As with the rst pair of headphones, one is standing
while listening. Hopefully, the visitor will have spent the last three minutes in
the gallery and is therefore again faced with an acoustic mirror, but this time
one which cannot immediately be addressed through performative action. The
people currently present in the gallery become again the social reference point
of ones aural experience.
24/7 employs several of the strategies which I have discussed earlier in this
chapter with regards to social listening by means of technological mediation. A
relationship between sound and place is established as the basis for a shared
sonic experience. Soundmaking on behalf of the listener represents an essential
part of the installation. While this is obvious when listening to the headphones
168
with the 1.9 seconds delay, the installation also turns its audience into performers for later audiences. In fact, Peter Mutschler, the curator of the PS2
gallery, suggested to set up a small stage in front of the dummy head for visitors to perform on. While I was setting up the installation (and sound was
already being recorded in the gallery), I noticed how I turned into a performer
myself and started to address potential future audiences (cf. portfolio, 24/7,
documentation materials, audio documentation, tracks 2, 4 and 7). At the
same time, 24/7 touches on the same privacy issues which any technological
mediation of social experience ought to be concerned with. This starts with
privacy from oneself: Many people react very strongly to hearing their own
recorded voice. More severely, the fact that gallery visitors are being continuously recorded implicitly thematises the (mis)use of technology for the purpose
of public surveillance. I myself became very self-aware during this three-week
period, knowing that every word of mine might later be heard by others. Even
though visitors were being informed that they were being recorded, they had
obvious diculties to remain aware of the impact which their experience would
have beyond their actual visit. It is an interesting problem in itself how to tell
people that they are being recorded immediately after they enter an exhibition
in which they ought to be active participants.
With regards to privacy issues, it is however important to note that 24/7
was designed as a self-contained, out-of-the-ordinary art experience and not
as a prototype for future ubiquitous technologies, like many of the projects
discussed in section 8.3. The installation aimed at providing its audience with
an opportunity to critically reect on the technological mediation of listening
as a social experience.
9
Conclusion
The revolution is hear! Or is it? In this thesis, I have critically evaluated different views on the state of aural awareness in our culture. I have argued that
an increasing interest in everyday aural experience can indeed be observed, but
that this constitutes a long-term development without much revolutionary tendencies. I have suggested that the very development of sound art as an artistic
discipline can be regarded as a symptom of this interest. I have investigated
artistic strategies for the aestheticisation of everyday aural experience through
a methodological feedback loop of artistic practice, which is documented in the
portfolio (cf. appendix), and theoretical reection. In this concluding chapter
I will summarise the issues which I have discussed in this thesis in a nonchronological manner and show how these are reected in my own practice. I
will then provide some concluding thoughts on the creation of sound art within
a context of everyday aural awareness and suggest further points of study.
9.1
Summary
The Everyday and Aural Awareness: In this thesis, I have argued that
an increasing interest in the everyday can be observed across various artistic
and scientic disciplines (cf. chapter 0). With regards to sound art, this interest manifests itself in terms of a musicalisation of everyday sounds as artistic
source material on the one hand, and in terms of an interpretation of everyday
169
CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION
170
CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION
171
the basis for this discussion (cf. chapter 2). I have proposed an understanding
of technologically mediated listening as an integral part of rather than a threat
to everyday aural awareness and suggested that sound art can provide valuable
alternative views on sound technology. In chapters 7 and 8 I have presented
various artistic approaches to the technological mediation of aural experience.
Mobility and Sociality: I have identied a continuous mobilisation and
individuation as two characteristics of technologically mediated listening (cf.
section 2.3). These two themes have been developed in depth throughout this
thesis. In section 5.3.1, I have categorised dierent mobile listening experiences,
and in chapter 7, I have focused on the mediation of mobile listening experiences
through sound technology. In particular, I have proposed design strategies for
the realisation of real-time audio walks with microphone input, based on the
experience from the development of my works Music for Lovers and 9/2/5 (cf.
section 7.3). The sociality of everyday aural experience has been discussed in
chapter 8. Various artistic strategies for interpreting technologically mediated
listening as a social experience have been discussed, including my own artistic
contributions, which are represented by the works Music for Lovers and 24/7
(cf. section 8.4).
9.2
CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION
172
9.3
CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION
9.3.1
173
The artistic goal of my research was to propose a variety of strategies for encouraging aural awareness in an everyday context. The developed concepts could
however only be addressed in limited detail, and each of them deserves further
study. The form of public interventions which I have developed in Straenmusik
and EaRdverts could nd many more variations on its theme, as could soundscape studies such as Alexanderplatz. However, further research might especially
be required to identify the idiosyncrasies of technologically mediated listening
in more detail. This concerns primarily aural experience mediated through a
microphone-headphone chain, such as in the real-time audio walks presented in
section 7.2.5. Possible improvements on a technical level include optimisations
with regards to background noise, audio latency, choice of headphone types,
microphone positioning, and hardware miniaturisation. Feature extraction and
sound processing algorithms could be added and technically improved, but their
evaluation in perceptual terms is even more important. I have noted in section
7.3.2 that sound processing techniques known from a concert hall and studio
context can acquire very dierent perceptual meanings when applied to everyday aural experience. These processing techniques should therefore be much
more thoroughly tested in an everyday context, and their successful combination in composed structures be put at the forefront of further artistic research.
The deliberate confusion of immediate and technologically mediated listening,
as exemplied in the work Interroutes, represents another interesting area for
further investigation. This principle might be applicable to real-time audio
walks in a much more convincing manner than has been achieved so far.
My investigation of social listening environments (cf. chapter 8) could only
scratch the surface of understanding technologically mediated listening as a
shared aesthetic experience. Many applications of technology which go artistically deeper than the sharing of playlists can be imagined in this area. The
study of sound art as a means of auralising everyday rhythm also deserves further attention. Installations in the spirit of 24/7 could be permanently installed
in gallery or outdoor spaces for much longer periods of time (months or years).
Besides the interesting technical problems which this would bring with itfor
example, the design of reliable, self-sucient and remotely maintainable sound
serverssuch works could further extend presentation forms for the aesthetic
reception of sound.
CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION
174
Figure 9.1: The duality of listening and soundmaking according to Truax (1998).
9.3.2
CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION
175
Appendix
176
This appendix provides an overview of the eight artworks which constitute the
portfolio submitted on DVD as part of this PhD. The eight artworks in this
portfolio are presented here in the chronological order of their creation. The
nature of these pieces is manifold, ranging from graphical scores, site-specic
electroacoustic pieces and public interventions to sound installations and mobile
hardware projects. As varied as their presentation formats are the means by
which these works have been documented. For each work, there is a short
descriptive text and a list of links to additional documentation on the DVD,
which includes photographs, videos, technical diagrams, yers, gallery diaries,
maps, audio documentation and other media. A unique documentation strategy
has been adopted for each piece.
A
Ohrenli(e)der
Directed listening scores (2007)
A.1
Description
The title of the Ohrenli(e)der series of directed listening scores can either be
read as Ohrenlider (earlids) or Ohrenlieder (ear songs). The pieces are realised in postcard format, with a graphical score on the front and textual
instructions on the back page. The notation instructs the performer, who is
identical with the audience, to open and close her left and right ears by
the means of her ngers, hands or any other suitable instrument, following the
notated temporal structure. This creates a two-part counterpoint of ltering
eects between the two extremes of silenceor, to be more precise, the sounds
which we hear with stued earsand the undisturbed soundscape. No additional sounds are created during the performance. The pieces can be performed
in everyday situations like on the train, while waiting for the dentist, etc.
Their intention is to oer an engaging way of increasing ones own awareness
and appreciation towards the acoustic environment.
178
APPENDIX A. OHRENLI(E)DER
179
A.2
Notation
The scores are read from top to bottom. The left/right symbols suggest some
sort of stereo experience at rst sight. The triangle symbols dene what is silence (white) and what is sound (black). The listener may freely determine the
speed at which to step through the piece. Some of the scores aim at a literal
interpretation (e.g. songs 1, 4, 9), while others suggest a certain quality
of the gestures to be performed (e.g. song 5). Others again refer to familiar
experiences, such as Ohrenli(e)d 10, which most of us have performed for
themselves at some stage as a child. This makes it easier for listeners to relate
to the scores; especially for those who are not trained in reading or performing
music.
The postcard format encourages the performance of the pieces in dierent
acoustic environments. The scores are small enough to be carried on ones
own body, and postcards travel to dierent places by denition. Mailing them
to friends makes it possible to share the pieces despite the almost autistic
listening experience which they help to create. Postcards are also frequently
handed out in public places (e.g. bars, venues) or placed there for people to
pick them up. The visual appeal of the scores might generate enough curiosity
in the viewers to support such an interpretation of the postcards as yers.
The Ohrenli(e)der nd themselves in the tradition of the postcard version of
Max Neuhaus piece Listen (1978) and of Fluxus event scores such as George
APPENDIX A. OHRENLI(E)DER
180
A.3
Public Presentation
A.4
Score gallery
Scores in PDF format
A.5
B
Straenmusik
Unguided soundwalks in chalk (2008)
B.1
Description
Straenmusik can literally be translated as street music, but it is also the German term for busking and the title of a series of silent sound interventions. At
two occasions, an in situ score for an unguided soundwalk was created around
buildings in South Belfast. A trail of white chalk invited random passers-by
to follow a path through an area of their everyday environment which they
were likely to be unfamiliar with. Along the way, acoustic features characteristic to the respective environment were marked and described. The audience
would also encounter textual instructions, such as to wait in front of a ventilation system until it comes on, to slowly turn around ten times, or more
metaphorical references such as Hearing the grass grow. The pieces aim at
encouraging pedestrians to rediscover the uninteresting sites of their everyday
lives, which do not usually make it to the foreground of their acoustic attention.
After the completion of these interventions, I noted some interesting parallels to other artworks, such as Walter De Marias Two Parallel Lines (1968),
which featured two mile-long lines of chalk in the Nevada Desert and La Monte
Youngs Composition 1960 #10 to Bob Morris, whose score reads Draw a
straight line and follow it. Olafur Eliasson also uses white lines of chalk to at181
APPENDIX B. STRAENMUSIK
182
tract the attention of passers-by to his public interventions. I also learnt about
a German-Austrian tradition called Maistrich, where a line of lime is drawn
between the houses of two lovers by considerate neighbours on the night before
1 May. Several cafes and a cinema in South Belfast started advertising in chalk
on public pavements a couple of months after I had realised my intervention,
but I do not think that there is a relation to my work.
B.2
Public Presentation
B.3
Video from the walk around the Sir William Whitla Hall in Belfast
Photographs from the walk around the Sir William Whitla Hall in Belfast
Photographs from the walk around the Sonic Arts Research Centre in
Belfast
APPENDIX B. STRAENMUSIK
183
C
EaRdverts
Public listening interventions (2008)
C.1
Description
184
APPENDIX C. EARDVERTS
C.2
185
Public Presentation
C.3
D
Alexanderplatz
Two electroacoustic installation pieces (2008)
D.1
Description
D.2
D.2.1
Implementation
Recording
Twelve binaural recordings, each between one and ve minutes long, were made
in dierent locations on Alexanderplatz between 2:45 and 4:45 p.m. on 3 July
186
APPENDIX D. ALEXANDERPLATZ
187
2008. (I later heard that Berlin was apparently the hottest place in the Europe
that day, and Alexanderplatzwith its vast amounts of concretewas probably
the hottest place in Berlin.) In the course of these recordings, I developed a
practice of orally annotated recordings, including a verbal description of the
scenery at the beginning and an analysis at the end of most recordings. In
these (German) comments, I aimed at a description of the squares acoustics
in terms of the contrasting and often overlaying acoustic spaces (Klangorte)
which it accommodates. The beginning of this process can be pinned down to
recording 10, 538.
Figure D.1: Recording and loudspeaker positions for the sound installation Alexanderplatz. Recordings not used in the nal pieces are greyed out.
D.2.2
Editing Concept
The artistic goal of the piece was to recreate the acoustic imagery of Alexanderplatz on the four-channel speaker layout which was available for the public
presentation concluding the workshop. The main challenge was to transpose a
large, heterogeneous space onto a much smaller and acoustically homogeneous
one. This was achieved by overlaying recordings from contrasting acoustic
spaces within the square. I analysed all twelve recordings and extracted continuous parts from seven of them for further use. I divided these into two groups,
one corresponding to the north and the other to the south part of the square
(cf. gure D.1). From each group, I created a short four-channel piece. In
each piece, all sound snippets which appear in it start concurrently, and the
APPENDIX D. ALEXANDERPLATZ
188
piece ends when the longest one of them has nished. The shorter snippets
break away earlier in the piece, and these transition points allow the listener
to distinguish the elements from which the acoustic scene has been composed.
D.2.3
D.2.4
After the performance, I wrote a shell script and a Gnu Octave script to automate the creation of the two pieces from the original recordings and thereby
document the creative and technical process in detail. In addition, these scripts
generate a binaural mixdown of both pieces, which can be listened to in situations where no four-channel loudspeaker setup is available. These binaural
mixdowns implement a virtual loudspeaker layout by means of a set of headrelated impulse responses made available by Bill Gardner and Keith Martin at
the MIT Media Lab website. Each loudspeaker signal is convolved with the
impulse responses for the direction of the respective loudspeaker, resulting in
a signal whichwhen listened to through headphonesappears as if it was
coming from that direction.
D.3
Public Presentation
D.4
189
APPENDIX D. ALEXANDERPLATZ
D.5
To be
Shell script for generating the four-channel and binaural mixdowns from
the eld recordings
Gnu Octave script called by the above shell script
Photograph from the workshop with Chris Watson; by courtesy of Kim
Laugs
Photograph of the performance space in Berlin; by courtesy of Pablo Sanz
E
Interroutes
Site-specic electroacoustic miniatures (2008)
E.1
Description
190
APPENDIX E. INTERROUTES
191
E.2
Public Presentation
ICMC 2008: The pieces were published online and advertised during the
International Computer Music Conference at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in
Belfast in August 2008. They remain available for download at http://flo.
mur.at/interroutes/.
E.3
These are the actual pieces, which are to be listened to in the locations indicated by their title, using a portable digital music player with standard earphones. Where this is not possible, I recommend to listen to the pieces through
headphones nevertheless, since all sound material in them has been binaurally
recorded.
From SARC to the Peter Froggatt Centre
5 Minutes in the Black & White Hall
Botanic Gardens
APPENDIX E. INTERROUTES
E.4
192
F
Music for Lovers
Mobile sound installation (2009)
F.1
Description
The mobile sound installation Music for Lovers touches on the listening experience shared by two people who are closeeither in the emotional or in the
spatial sense of the word, or both. This experience is personal but not exclusive, private but shared, intimate but not solitary. To love is to put oneself in
somebody elses shoes. Or ears. Music for Lovers facilitates this process by
allowing two people to exchange what they are hearing. It lets them exchange
their everyday auditory impressions in real-time.
The installations setup consists of two pairs of headphones, each extended by
a pair of binaural microphones mounted on their earcups. The headphones and
microphones are connected in a cross-wise fashion, so that each listener hears
the world through the other persons ears. The pieces original inspiration
was an anecdote by Dave Drury, who recounted an experience he and Una
Monaghan had had while they were conducting binaural eld recordings: Dave
was wearing a pair of in-ear microphones, whose signal Una was concurrently
monitoring on headphones. He remembered her astonishment at listening to
the resulting shift of her own acoustic perspective. The vigorousness of her
reaction demanded a more detailed artistic investigation.
193
194
Figure F.1: Left: Music for Lovers (detail). Right: Two young listeners during the
exhibition of Music or Lovers at Ad Hoc Belfast.
F.2
Implementation
Of all pieces in this portfolio, the available development time for Music or
Lovers was by far the shortest, which is why it was based on o-the-shelf
hardware. The nal design consisted of two pairs of Sennheiser HD 25-SP II
headphones, each extended by a pair of Soundman OKM II Klassik binaural
microphones. Some additional audio electronics were required to provide the
electret condenser microphones with a voltage supply and to amplify the microphone signal before playback. For the former purpose, two Soundman A3
adaptors were used; for the latter two battery-powered Fiio E5 headphone ampliers. The sound pressure levels created by this chain turned out to provide
195
an adequate playback volume. These parts are placed inside two transparent
heart-shaped boxes, one of which each listener wears around the neck. The
headphone cables connect the two heart-shaped boxesand thereby the listeners, in accordance with the installations title. At three metres, the wire is just
short enough to not become an obstacle. Music for Lovers was deliberately designed not to be wireless, after experiments with a wireless prototype revealed
that people tended to use it much like a mobile phone.
F.3
Public Presentation
ISEA 2009: Exhibition at the Broadcast Gallery, Dublin Institute of Technology at the Symposium of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA),
28 to 31 August 2009.
Irish Culture Night 2009: Launch night of the Ad Hoc artists initiative in
Belfast, 18 Kent Street, 25 September 2009.
F.4
Technical diagram
Gallery sta instruction sheet
F.5
G
24/7
Sound installation (2009)
G.1
Description
The sound installation 24/7 was created during a three-week residency at the
PS2 gallery in Belfast in October 2009. For the duration of the residency,
sound was continuously recorded in the gallery, processed with delays of different lengths and played back through ve pairs of headphones. On each of
these, the audience could listen to a dierent moment in the gallerys acoustic
past: 1.9 seconds ago; 2 hours ago; 3 days and 7 hours ago; 1 week ago; 3
196
APPENDIX G. 24/7
197
minutes ago. A white trail on the gallery oor guided the audience through
the exhibition in the above order. The headphone cables were arranged such as
to form a timeline on the gallery wall, with the delay time for each headphone
clearly labelled. The dierent delays were also reected in the spatial layout of
the exhibition. Both the distance of a pair of headphones to the dummy head
and the comfort of the available seating increased with the delay time. This
setup corresponded to the more performative nature of the shorter delays
which visitors would often use to play with their own echoes in the dummy
heads immediate proximityas well as to the increased reection times demanded by the long-term delays.
24/7 echoes the polyrhythms of everyday life as they manifest themselves in the
sound environment. The absence of any preproduced sounds in the installation
challenges its audience to adopt not only a perceiving but also a performing attitude. At the same time, the work addresses issues of privacy and surveillance.
In a way 24/7 resembles an acoustic equivalent of Dan Grahams Opposing
Mirrors (1974).
G.2
Implementation
The sound in the gallery was recorded by a Neumann KU 100 dummy head.
The use of a binaural recording technique in combination with headphone playback created a spatial acoustic experience which was often convincing enough
for listeners to confuse the headphone signals with the real sound environment.
The recorded signals were captured by a sound server running Pure Data. The
short-term delays (1.9 seconds; 3 minutes) were implemented through RAMbased delay lines, whereas the longer delays were achieved by continuously
writing and reading soundles to and from disk. This necessitated a synchronisation of the sound servers system and sample clocks, which was achieved by
splitting the recording into one-hour junks and letting the system clock trigger
the playback of each junk. To avoid gaps or discontinuities at the transition
points, the recorded les overlapped by several seconds and were crossfaded
during playback. The sound servers system time was kept accurate by synchronising it over the internet using the Network Time Protocol (NTP).
G.3
Public Presentation
PS2 gallery, Belfast: Development and exhibition during a three-week residency, 5 to 24 October 2009.
APPENDIX G. 24/7
G.4
G.5
198
H
9/2/5
Audio walk (200810)
H.1
Description
9/2/5 is an audio walk during which a solo listener wears a pair of headphones,
whose earcups are extended by a pair of binaural microphones. Both microphones and headphones are connected to a portable computer, which transforms
the recorded sound in real-time. Dierent electroacoustic processing techniques
are applied, such as echoes, delays, reverb, panning, etc. What distinguishes
9/2/5 from similar projects is that the processing algorithm adopts itself according to the current daytime and reacts not only to features extracted from
the recorded signal (peaks, pitch, volume, etc.) but also to commands from
the listener, who can tap the microphones according to certain patterns (e.g.
left-right-left) in order to change the playback volume, record sounds for later
playback or play preprogrammed scenes. As the installations title suggests,
9/2/5 aims at its integration into an everyday listening context and addresses
the theme of everyday rhythmicity. The installation extends over the course of
an entire day, with the listener being able to tune in and out of the piece at
will.
199
APPENDIX H. 9/2/5
200
H.2
Implementation
APPENDIX H. 9/2/5
201
H.3
Public Presentation
Banff New Media Institute: Open Studio Day, 27 November 2008. This
event concluded the residency during which the rst prototype of the installation was developed. Members of the public were invited to try the ten-minute
piece created during the residency.
Private distribution: The nal version of 9/2/5 was presented to a number
of selected listeners in April 2010, each of whom was invited to keep the device
for an entire day and try it at dierent occasions. The results were documented
by recording both the unprocessed microphone signal as well as the processed
headphone signal. These recordings form the basis for the audio documentation
on the portfolio DVD.
H.4
H.5
Audio documentation Two Days with Robyn and Dionysis (to be listened
to through headphones):
Liner notes
Track 1: Robyns breakfast
APPENDIX H. 9/2/5
Track 2: Hide and seek
Track 3: Robyn at Tescos
Track 4: Lunch
Track 5: At Starbucks
Track 6: Walking home
Track 7: Dinner
Track 8: A beautiful day
Track 9: Kicked it?
Photographs of hardware and listeners
202
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