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reflective writing + essays sound studies and aural cultures

SS&AC Concept and Production Plan

My audio paper has passively conceptualised itself to follow through a day in someones life as they live in London. I plan to track as they wake up, consume social media, take the tube, pass by construction and spend time in the park. My intention is to highlight our ‘audio diet’, what or aural environment consists of and the effects it has on us. 

I have spent countless hours throughout this project adjusting my ways of listening and have found myself in awe at the inspiration that can be drawn from the world, but also disheartened at the fact no-one really seems to pay attention to it. Since I have started listening in this new way I have also come to realise how oppressive the modern soundscape is. I believe there is a large portion of what we hear in the city to be considered ‘noise’ that our brains have to spend processing power to filter out, alongside the hundreds of social media posts and other short forms of content most of us consume everyday. As AI begins to filter into these platforms it isn’t hard to see why people have been calling these videos ‘brain rot’ for a reason.

Advertisements are something else I think plays a large part in this noise, we cannot seem to escape them, now with our wearable tech, phones and other smart devices, companies can beam product placement at us no matter where we are; where we look, especially as regular people become tools for advertisers through sponsorships deals. Everyone and everything is calling for us to over-consume.

This over-consumption and noise, in my opinion, are the main causes of isolation and disconnection between ourselves, our community and our environment. ‘Deep listening’(2005) has been a primary text in my reconnection with the environment as she writes, “One ought to be able to target a sound our sequence of sounds as a focus within the space/time continuum… Such expansion means that one is connected to the whole of the environment and beyond.” (Oliveros, 1989, xxiii)

I hope to highlight this theme of reconnection with recordings of various parks around the city, as I believe nature and its diverse soundscapes to be a crucial step towards building a better relationship with our surroundings. Daniel Scott Cummings ‘The Listening Artist’ (2017) is another text that has been helping me manoeuvre through these thoughts, he writes:

“Ways of listening are often prescriptive and offer strategies and techniques. They give us strategies of entry to new zones of understanding, to new ways of hearing that may otherwise be far away lands; they offer means to experience the other.”

I have been making recording with a H5 microphone as I travel the city, capturing any environments I find particularly abrasive or oppressive. In contrast to these recordings are scenes from Victoria park to highlight, what I believe to be, more positive aural environments. The H5 has been a great tool, allowing me to quickly capture and share my thoughts as I move through London and its various soundscapes. These thoughts are scattered throughout the piece and I have chosen to keep them as unedited as possible, as my way to resist the shortening of our collective attention spans.

I came into this project looking for ways to be more present in the ‘here and now’, but through the process of all my reading, thinking and meditation, I have arrived at a much broader; a much greater issue at hand, one which all of us are grappling with in one way or another. I do not believe it is possible to tackle all the thoughts I wish to discuss in this 10 minute time frame, especially given the abstract leaning form of my audio paper. But this topic is one I care about deeply, as our attention is being colonised by corporations that fundamentally do not have our best interest at heart and seek out only one goal, profit. So I’m sure that I will return to this discussion once again, if the opportunity does arise.

I do not think I have really come to a conclusion throughout the my time working on this project, and for a while, it was stopping me making progress as I was thinking I needed to have a grand point with a big narrative and a call to action to finish off the piece. But I have realised life is not always about drawing conclusions but, learning, building on what previous generations knew and sharing what we do know, now.

References

Oliveros, P. (2005) Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice. iUniverse.

Scott-Cumming, D. (2017) ‘The Listening Artist: On Listening As An Artistic Practice Beyond Sound Art’.

Bibliography

Blacking, J. (1995) Music, Culture And Experience

David Hester, J. (2024) The Way Of Effortless Books. Kingston Upon Tames: Well Books

Fell, M. (2021) Structure and synthesis. Falmouth: Urbanomic.

Higins, L. and Shehan Campbell, P. (no date) Free To be Musical.

Kim-Cohen, S. (2016) Against Ambience and Other Essays. New York, UNITED STATES: 

Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=4198059 (Accessed: 8 November 2024).

Koestler, A. (1978) Janus, A Summing Up.

Lydon, P.M. (2024) ‘Asking questions of nature: Art as a catalyst for ecological consciousness’, Nature-Based Solutions, 6, p. 100138. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbsj.2024.100138.

McGlaughlin, H.C.J. (2022) Music in Star Trek: Sound, Utopia, and the Future – ProQuest. Available at: https://www-proquest-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/docview/3094869116/fulltext/E2342713672F496FPQ/1?accountid=10342&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals (Accessed: 9 October 2024).

Michael Hamel, P. (1978) Through Music To The Self.

Mitchell, A. (2023) ‘Resilience, Reconnection, Recovery: The Healing Power of Music’, Problems in Music Pedagogy, 22(2), pp. 55–62. Available at: https://doi.org/10.59893/pmp.22(2).003.

Rubin, R. (2023) The Creative Act: A Way of Being: the Sunday Times Bestseller. Edinburgh, UNITED KINGDOM: Canongate Books. Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=7027464 (Accessed: 8 November 2024).

Sarath, E. (2013) Improvisation, creativity, and consciousness: jazz as integral template for music, education, and society. Albany: State University of New York Press (SUNY series in integral theory).

Scott-Cumming, D. (2017) ‘The Listening Artist: On Listening As An Artistic Practice Beyond Sound Art’.

Solis, G. and Nettl, B. (2009) Musical Improvisation.

The Sound Studies Reader (2012). Available at: https://web-p-ebscohost-com.arts.idm.oclc.org/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzUwNzAxNF9fQU41?sid=29b5666e-5e47-4fee-8143-0b85f9df8249@redis&vid=0&format=EB&lpid=lp_19&rid=0 (Accessed: 13 November 2024).

Tolle, E. (1997) The Power Of Now.

Whittaker, G.R., Peters, K. and Opzeeland, I. van (2024) ‘Oceans sing, are you listening? Sounding out potentials for artistic audio engagements with science through the Polar Sounds project’, Marine Policy, 169, p. 106347. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106347.

Categories
sound studies and aural cultures

Inescapable Traffic

“More often than not, urban living causes narrow focus and disconnection. Too much information is coming into the auditory cortex, or habit has caused narrowed listening to only what seems of value and concern to the listener. All else if tuned out or discarded as garbage.” ~Deep Listening – Pauline Oliveros

I have been taking field recordings as I make my way around the city to better understand and observe the aural environment, along side my meditation/deep listening practice. I have also been making use of the h5 as I travel to record my thoughts and the particular thought below seems relevant.

Categories
sound studies and aural cultures

Dynamic Range in Life

Over the past few months, I have been trying to spend time every day at home or in Victoria park meditating, or deeply listening to my surroundings in attempt to reconnect with my natural environment, which has stemmed from my work in the Specialising and Exhibiting unit. Overall, since beginning this practice, I feel an improved sense of awareness of my surroundings and a greater appreciation for the small quiet moments in life. As someone who is always looking for new sounds and sources of inspiration, I usually have music playing wherever I go, but I have found through my meditations a lessened need for constant aural stimulation. A celebration of the dynamic range in life, something I feel many cultures have lost.

I have found, with my new ways of listening, that I have become more receptive to the underlying inspiration that exists everywhere in the world. I feel the importance of polar forces; we cannot truly appreciate the light without darkness, warmth without the cold, a scream without the whisper, life without death.

“Ways of listening are often prescriptive and offer strategies ad techniques. They give us of entry to new zones of understanding, to new ways of hearing that may otherwise be far away lands; they offer means to experience the other.” ~The Listening Artist -Daniel Scott-Cumming

“Recognising the dynamic interplay of polar forces to enhance the richness of the work.” ~The Way Of Effortless Books – Joshua David Hester

“If you are too narrow in your awareness of sounds, you are likely to be disconnected from your environment.” ~Deep Listening -Pauline Oliveros

“What if, in our quest for solutions, we not only look to nature for inspiration but also invite nature to co-create and help guide our endeavours?” ~Asking Questions Of Nature – Patrick M. Lydon

Categories
sound studies and aural cultures

The Winding Road

The reading I have done so far for this project has been incredibly interesting and is helping me broaden my perspective on my relationship with music and environment. However, the more I read the more I feel I am straying away from a topic I can explore in its fullest with the time allowed for this hand in.

I have been wanting to explore what we are listening to and how our aural environments affect us, including things like short form content, advertising, noise pollution or listening to music in headphones for prolonged periods. How these things disconnect us from our natural environment is of interest and how these things, in my view, lead to a break down of community on top of the individualisation and alienation already caused by capitalism and the atomised lifestyle of the West. My reading has been pulling me more towards the relationships with oneself, their practices and the feedback between performers and audiences in an improvisational sense. It think going back through Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening will be useful.

“Music can communicate nothing to unprepared and unreceptive minds” -Music, Culture and Experience -John Blacking

“Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have exponential effect on performance” ~ The Creative Act -Rick Rubin

“As soon as the listener learns how to open himself totally to it. It carries him away to himself” ~Through Music To The Self -Peter Michael Hamel

“It is possible that playful participation can result in peak musical product, but the critical factor is that music is not held at a distance and objectified but instead lives as a process into which all members of the group enter, experience and enjoy” ~ Free To Be Musical -Lee Higgins, Patricia Shehan Cambell

Categories
sound studies and aural cultures

Audio Paper: more questions

As I read, think and have conversations with my peers more questions have risen. I feel the potential topics are starting to show, so I wanted to share some of these thoughts and quotes here as a sort of check point for my ideas.

How can we bring about change to a system that seeks to silence the oppressed?

In an age where most people have a voice thanks to social media, who or what are we listening to?

When does sound become music?

Don’t consume more than you create!

The transformative power of habits on practice/ The importance of discipline in a technological age?

Are we spending too much time listening to over compressed audio from small loud speakers? (appreciate silence)

“science is a search for truth that is somehow embedded ‘out there’, where art is a search for truth embedded within ones soul ‘in here'” -Structures and Synthesis ~ Mark Fell

“You and your instrument are one. It’s almost like there’s no separation. It’s like you’re at one with the universe” -Improvisation, Creativity and Consciousness ~ Ed Sarath

“It is through communing with nature that we move closer to our own nature” -The Creative Act ~ Rick Rubin

Categories
sound studies and aural cultures

Audio Paper: questions

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the form of audio papers in a more holistic sense: what is an audio paper? what does it mean to use an audio paper over any other format?

My intention by asking myself these questions and really mulling them over is to find a question that I can use as a stepping stone into research or as a base for my own audio paper. I think there are many possible routes that I can take so it will be interesting to see where my research will lead.

Looking beyond the personal, how can we make our work relate more universally?

The nature of communication/ How can you get your point across when the form impacts the work?

How can a format that has not fully formed concern the mainstream?

Is asking to make an audio paper is like asking someone in the 1800s to make a film?

What are we listening to?

People have been experimenting with recorded audio for many decades, what does it mean to experiment in an academic sense?

“When Practice becomes fixated on goals and end points, it distorts itself.”

Structures and Synthesis ~ Mark Fell

Categories
sound studies and aural cultures

Audio Paper: initial ideas

This is my first time hearing about an audio paper and I have lots of ideas and lots of questions (most of which I don’t think I will get answers to).

During class I was thinking about how sounds can be so emotive and affective, how we can use it as a tool to enhance other media with score or sound effects, or create worlds of our own.

Here are some more ideas/ questions that may be developed in the future?

How to make something sound alien? (cinema)

Using sound design to enhance points in ways that wouldn’t be possible with written text

How sound can be used to craft a world, immerse you in a place or character?

How can score be used to change the emotion, feeling or context of a scene? (affect)

Categories
reflective writing + essays

S&E E1 Reflective Writing

summer + initial ideas

This project began over the summer as one of my first explorations with Ableton. I had been starting small projects throughout the summer to keep myself active over the break, with no intention of them being taken any further, as Fell writes ‘When practice becomes focused on goals and end points, it distorts itself‘ (Fell, 2021 p.21). However, this piece felt like it could be taken further, I was also finding that arranging the track was a lot harder than the other pieces I had been working on, I knew this piece had to be explored more given the chance.

As we delved into spatialisation on the course, this piece kept resurfacing within mind. Almost as if I knew that the work would lend itself well to being played through a multichannel system. ‘The knower in you who dwells behind the thinker‘ (Tolle, 1997 p.5) With Tolle’s line of thinking in mind the journey of open exploration began.

experimentation + working with Joshua

I chose a close friend of mine, Joshua, to work on this project with me because of his interest in eastern philosophies like Wu Wei, his exploration of Taoism how we can apply it to our practices as a western audience and the way this ties in with his movement practice, which is inspired by moving meditations, yoga and capoeira. Taking a holonic approach to this project, I thought that with his perception of the world and style of movement, he would help bring life to the soundscape that I created in a physical form. ‘When parts of a system are integrated, a wholeness results that is greater than the sum of the parts, and which in fact feeds back to enhance the vitality of each of the parts, whose enhanced integration in turn further promotes the vitality and integrity of the overarching wholeness.‘ (Sarath, 2021 p.208)

Joshua and I had a session in 108 working on the movement and arrangement of the soundscape. I started the session by letting the soundscape play for around 10-15 minutes, giving us time to enter the right state of mind to get the best out of the work, each other and allowing Joshua time to warm up. We then spent a hour or so going through the individual tracks to thin out the piece, as we thought there were too many sounds overlaying each other to really appreciate the spatialisation. This tends to be an issue with my work overall, so I’m grateful to have been working with someone else for this project to bring attention to it this time round.

Focusing on the movement, we were inspired by tai chi, qigong, contemporary works from artists such as Blackhaine and, after seeing Joshuas initial response to the soundscape, the introductory scene for Sandman in Spiderman 3 (2007). The slow rising and falling, breaking and piecing back together felt very relevant to the themes of growth, decay and rebirth underlying the project, so we leaned into these types of movements. As a result arranging the soundscape happened naturally as we thought through how we wanted the movements to happen throughout the piece. A quote from Joshua’s dissertation comes to mind ‘In this creative dance, where nothings is pursued, nothing is lost, and everything gracefully falls into its rightful place – nothing remains‘ (David Hester, 2024 p.54).

meditation + growth and decay

The themes arose naturally as the explorations of the project continued. Loops have been a common element of my work for quite some time now, but I haven’t spent any time before this project exploring the reasons behind this way of working. Meditation has been a key part of the project, I will spend time in nature, solitarily listening to the environment that I find myself in. I will try to dissect the soundscape, hearing out for the faintest noise. Deeply listening to find my place within the environment, blurring the lines between the soundscape and the self, as echoed in The Creative Act ‘It is through communing with nature that we move closer to our own nature.‘ (Rubin, 2023 p.52). Through this Listening, I discovered that, through these loops, I was trying to encapsulate the cyclical nature of life and death, growth and decay with sweeping, organic LFOs that effect almost every parameter of every instrument. ‘Creativity means the formation of new patterns, exceeding the limitations and boundaries of old patterns, or using old patterns in new ways’ (Oliveros, 2005 p.xxv).

gallery scenario

If this piece were to be taken into a gallery space, I think a basic way would be to have the multichannel set up in the space and have Joshua performing the movements in front of an audience, however this would make it difficult for the audience to engage with the work in the way that I intend, by exploring the space and finding a place you find most comfortable. Perhaps this could be avoided by having projections of the movements on the floor and/or ceiling with comfortable blankets, bean bags or chairs in the space to invite the audience to relax and spend time with the piece however they wish.

Expanding on these ideas explored in this project, I think that it would be beautiful to install this work somewhere in the woods, where the speakers can be much further apart. Each speaker could be placed within the trees, encouraging even more exploration from the audience. I like the prospect of this idea as it ties directly to the themes of reconnecting with nature. I think it would serve the piece well if the speakers were left to be reclaimed by nature, completing the cycle of growth and decay.

References

David Hester, J. (2024) The Way Of Effortless Books. Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom: Well Books

Fell, M. (2021) Structure and synthesis. Falmouth: Urbanomic.

Oliveros, P. (2005) Deep Listening A Composers Sound Practice. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse

Rubin, R. (2023) The Creative Act: A Way of Being. Edinburgh, UNITED KINGDOM: Canongate Books.

Sarath, E. (2013) Improvisation, creativity, and consciousness: jazz as integral template for music, education, and society. Albany: State University of New York Press (SUNY series in integral theory).

Tolle, E (1997) The Power Of Now. United Kingdom: Hodder & Stoughton

Bibliography

Higins, L. and Shehan Campbell, P. (no date) Free To be Musical.

Kim-Cohen, S. (2016) Against Ambience and Other Essays. New York, UNITED STATES: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. Available at: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=4198059 (Accessed: 8 November 2024).

Lydon, P.M. (2024) ‘Asking questions of nature: Art as a catalyst for ecological consciousness’, Nature-Based Solutions, 6, p. 100138. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbsj.2024.100138.

Koestler, A. (no date) Janus, A Summing Up.

Blacking, J. (no date) Music, Culture And Experience.

Mitchell, A. (2023) ‘Resilience, Reconnection, Recovery: The Healing Power of Music’, Problems in Music Pedagogy, 22(2), pp. 55–62. Available at: https://doi.org/10.59893/pmp.22(2).003.

Solis, G. and Nettl, B. (no date) Musical Improvisation.

Whittaker, G.R., Peters, K. and Opzeeland, I. van (2024) ‘Oceans sing, are you listening? Sounding out potentials for artistic audio engagements with science through the Polar Sounds project’, Marine Policy, 169, p. 106347. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106347.

Scott-Cumming, D. (no date) ‘The Listening Artist: On Listening As An Artistic Practice Beyond Sound Art’.

Michael Hamel, P. (no date) Through Music To The Self.

Filmography

Blackhaine (2022) Barcelona. Available at: https://youtu.be/wTrDMjRAQzs?si=AejHLrkKRhS071Jd

TopMovieClips (2017) The Birth of Sandman Scene – Spider-Man 3 (2007) Movie CLIP HD. Available at: https://youtu.be/to29LvuColU?si=gebKCvxsUpwMzCWG

Categories
expanded studio practice

Dreambox + Cymatics + Spatialisation

Recently, I have been learning the building blocks of a synthesiser in PureData and Bela, implementing them into a tactile housing will be another challenge Im excited to tackle, whenever I get there. I have been inspired mainly by two pieces of equipment, the Lyra 8 and Jomox T-Resonator ll.

IMG_4330-1Download

The Lyra 8 is interesting to me because of its eight individually tuneable oscillators which can interact and modulate each other to create rich textures unlike anything I have encountered on any other piece of hardware. I would like to have this individual tuneability in what I am going to call the DreamBox, each oscillator should be useable as an LFO or tone generator and should have some sort of effect on multiple other parameters to create engulfing drones intuitively. If the DreamBox has multiple outputs, each oscillator can be sent to an individual speaker for the cymatic display. The messy lay out and sporadic placement of knobs is what I find interesting about the T-Resonator ll, I would like a machine that had no labels (apart from outputs), so that you have to figure out how to make sounds with it your own way. The machine shall have its own way and the player will have to discover their own way to get the most out of it.

As soon as the listener learns how to open himself totally to [the music]. It carries him away to himself. p.142

Through Music To The Self/ Peter Michael Hamel

IMG_4402Download

What if the speakers were all around the room/on the walls? Creating more interest by allowing space for people to walk in front of the laser to partially block the visual?

Lasers hitting multiple mirrors before after the speaker?

Categories
specialising and exhibiting

Movement + Growth

Continuing on from where I left off in the Expanding Ideas post:

Joshua and I have been in talks of collaboration for quite some time now, either through spoken word, written poetry, video or song. We are both talented individuals with a variety of skills, I think this project is a great opportunity for us to come together, my sound and his movement.

For my audio paper I have been looking into deep listening and how we can use it alongside meditation to connect with our inner selves, body and natural environment. I think that Joshuas style of movement, heavily inspired by Qi Jong, Tai Chi and Capoeira will complement the soundscape perfectly.

Movement should tie in the themes of Wu Wei, harmony between the mind and body and meditation as a means for growth. The soundscape will grow and morph between the speakers, hopefully pushing and pulling Joshua in and around the space. Together, we can find out how the movement of sound affect the movement of the body and guide each other.

When the components of a system are integrated, a wholeness results that is greater than the sum of the parts… p.208

Improvisation, creativity, and consciousness : jazz as integral template for music, education, and society / Edward W. Sarath.

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