Better Than Reality

Notes on “The matter of numbers” by José Cláudio Siqueira Castanheira.

Digitized sound is an inaccurate representation of reality as it pushes it through a mechanical grid. Biological listening neither has the capabilities to get a “whole” perspective of reality. Perhaps the defects in digital listening is in the activity of production and listening; sounds have no origin in space and time; the maker is lost. However realistic and accurate a virtual reality is, it extends the body out of time and space. The complexity of this infinite potentiality is overwhelming. We become lost.

Is it possible that technology will not save us?

The tools within us?

Technology and Landscape

I am interested in researching how technologies affect our relationship to place, space and landscape. If we understand all developments of human behaviours as new technologies, we can see that “progress” includes a cycle of technologies finding solutions to the problems created by technologies. Social alienation is dampened by instantaneous connection. Noise pollution is blocked by noise cancellation technology. I am interested in these issues of social alienation and disconnection with the environment around us.

How can we study the affects of technologies such as the internet and mobile listening devices when we live within their functions? How can we remember what is forgotten?

My sense of urgency has been amplified by what I am learning in this year’s modules: multichannel and the digital sound design of environments are two examples of how we aim to create immersivity. To immerse in an art piece is to connect. The tools and levels of immersivity in art and entertainment develop as we live in the cusp of metaverse experience, or augmented and virtual realities becoming more integrated into daily experience. My urgency is a rejection of this development, so how can I express these feelings through the mediums we are learning in this course, when those mediums themselves go against my feelings? I use feelings to identify my practice as primarily an artistic one.

I think I would like to pursue the point that the environment is the most high fidelity and immersive medium of spatialisation we can find. I will build on my long walks around the city as a research practice and wellbeing practice, as I believe we can express and encourage wellbeing through art when it comes from a state of wellbeing.

Some points of research: noise cancellation, audiophilia, technology and memory loss, psycho geography.

Auditory Scaffolding

Notes on “Pump Up The Bass: Rhythm, Cars and Auditory Scaffolding” by social theorist and sound person Brandon LaBelle.

LaBelle defines auditory scaffolding as the utilisation of music and sound to extend the self to the environment. In this sense, music from a loudspeaker or phone in public space is a mark of one’s culture and territory. For many marginalised groups sound is a function to reclaim power, to “reclaim the right to the street.” LaBelle 2015. LaBelle focuses on Mexican American culture in Los Angeles, and how the car with it’s sound capabilties became a medium “for the transformation of impoverishment and ostracisation into an emancipatory aesthetics.” Playing hip hop and bass music through the car speakers is a personalisation of the space of marginalised people, and an expression of that personalisation to the public. I feel encouraged by LaBelle’s research of a marginalised and non-western culture as a transformer in sonic behaviours and cultures. It can be a signifier of Sound Arts moving beyond a eurocentric canon. The discussion of noise as power for both the oppressed and the oppressors and beyond is a step past Murray Schaeffer’s yearning towards “quiet” and “natural” sounds in the soundscape. Who are we to request quiet?

Rhythm is a form of auditory latching. How do rhythms or energy patterns in urban space reveal power relations? “The surface of the world takes on significance when aligned with notions of drumming and auditory latching and the forces of cultures on the move, for one may understand the textures, objects, features and architectures of surrounding space as intrinsically meaningful according to how they are appropriated, put to use and utilised not only by their assigned function but also by their elasticity, malleability and resonance; or according to how they come to resist such appropriation: the world is a materiality in which locating the self is defined by a rhythmic potentiality.” LaBelle 2015. Suddenly architecture becomes not only the buildings themselves, but as the life between buildings.

Peronalised listening is a way for the self to manage everyday life. Personal listening devices like headphones are “private structures to latch on to, setting the pace to one’s daily actions, and giving personalised structure to the rhythms imposed by existing architectures and social spaces.”

Speech is also a form of auditory scaffolding. Not only does meaning exist in the words being communicated. Speech can be seen as “vibratory connection”. Speech is fleshy. The body gives itself meaning through vocalisation.

Spatialised?

I am here to explore my relationship to “spatialisation”. I have some questions to explore. How is sound spatialised? How can we observe sound in space? We listen with our bodies, we observe with technology. Reflection, absorbtion, refraction. Movement and being.

How do I design space with digital softwares? I use reverb plugins to create rooms and location; I use panning and amplitude to create movement. Sound design is beyond the object itself, it includes how these objects move and interact with an environment. We are designing environments, we are architects. What is the distinction between an environment and the objects it contains?

I like my melodies to fly about and have life to them. By listening and observing my environment I can learn how things move and sound through the material world. Listening is part of the practice. The world is spatialised. Do I listen to the mechanical sounds around me and recreate them with digital technologies? For what purpose? Can I experience the natural world as an inspiration too?

I am interested in exploring quiet in spatialisation practices. The spaces between. In the sound arts community in London I experience many overwhelming performances. The body is blasted with sound from all directions. Movement that defies physics. What does it mean when we design movement and spaces that don’t exist in the material world? Many of the multichannel compositions I have heard are overwhelming in the movement of sound objects. Artists want to show the limits of these new technologies. It is spectacular. It’s called technological listening. Human’s commitment to the spectacle is now expressed through immersive art pieces. Where will we go from here? Sometimes immersivity with new technologies feels like disembodiement. I am disappointed by the 8 channel spectacular compositions. We accelerate into oblivion. I’m eager to explore technological listening and the ethical debates around it.

I’m scared. I believe we need embodiement to access our empathy and love for eachother, for the environments that sustain us and the non-humans we share life with. Life is such a gift!

I imagine spatialised sound composition as a social experience. Humans gather together and listen to sound. I will share a drawing of an event I was running in the summer with friends. Humans bring different sound devices and participate in the sound system.

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I feel urgency. I want my practice to tackle issues such as social alienation and disconnection with our environment. For now I am not interested in working with multi channel equipment as I don’t think it is accessible to most people.

Perhaps I will focus on expanding the radio setup. Maybe we can build a software that makes local broadcasting easy with little equipment.

Perhaps I will learn more about group vocalisation practices. The body is surely the best place to start!

Before making such big statements I have a lot to learn.

Quantum Listening

Notes on “Quantum Listening”; a recently published book containing a speech by Pauline Oliveros from 1999.

I could recite the whole text as a list of important quotes. I feel Deep Resonance with Oliveros’ philosophy.

Quantum listening is about listening in multiple ways, as many ways, to existence, being, surrounding, soundscape. To Oliveros, the multiplicity of listening is essential. Listening is not the ear as an objective reciever getting closer to an external reality. It is an observation of the cascading reactions to the external, internal and imagined sounds of being. Through observation the sounds themselves change. Like in quantum physics, Oliveros claims that observation changes reality.

“Quantum Listening is listening in as many ways as possible simultaneously – changing and being changed by the listening.”

“One focuses on a point and changes that point by listening.”

Pauline is fascinated by the potentials of new technologies. To her, new biotech such as ingested nanotechnology could assist in our hearing abilities. “What would you want to hear if you had a bionic ear that could let you listen to anything, anywhere, any time?” She is imagining a technology that gives us live access to microsopic sounds, like the sound of a cell dividing in our body, or macroscopic sounds, like the gasses in deep space. Someone deeply imbedded in the somatic practices of Qi Gong and Tai Chi, and the awareness practices in Buddhist cultures, who carried out most of her retreats in natural environments, is excited about the hybridization of human and machine. What would Oliveros say today?

TikTok is like our bionic ear. We have access to the larger world in rapid time. A global culture connected through sound and moving image. Here is a lovely quote from Adam Greenfield: ““In our time, even the most seemingly transgressive visions of technology in everyday life invariably fall back to the familiar furniture of capital investment, surplus extraction and exploitation. We don’t even speak of progress any longer, but rather of ‘innovation.’”

Is Pauline excited or rather, aware of the inevitable. “Soon we will be faced with an unprecedented, exponential acceleration in technology.” And here we are. My deep admiration for Oliveros is her fascination with the new worlds and the future, as someone who embodies ancestral knowledge. It takes courage to carry both. It takes wisdom to understand nuance and complexity. For her we must recognize the implications and potentialities of new technologies. The human-machine epoch has already begun.

I am imagining how to implement the digital into my compositional work. How does the digital dimension overlay our perception? My recent compositional work and that for my final project discusses perception, and music as perception. I wonder how music can respresent states of being and also attract one to the materiality around them. The entity that calling out to us is also within. This is a reaction to the common function of popular music today, as a seperation from the world. What is the world, if it does not include the audio from our earbuds? More accurate language is necessary.

This project I am currently involved in, of music as perception, melodies above field recordings, music that exists within a space, outdoor music: what ideologies are present in these respresentations? Perhaps it began as a purism, of the’natural’ world as something to return to. Throughout the course and after reading Seth Kim Cohen’s book, ‘In The Blink of an Ear’, I imagine this purism as an essentialism. A nostalgia for better times, that we never experienced. Today, new technologies are imbedded in our perception. How can these be incorporated into the composition. In my new composition, I represent the digital (or the elsewhere-ness of the digital) as a sine wave, slightly irritated and distorted, but able to navigate with the environment. For now. It doesn’t consume the heart melody.

Performance

The next assignment went over my head as I have been busy in other activities. I often have the feeling that I am not studying enough while also learning much outside of the coursework. I want to allocate more time for study and research to gain more from the course.

I thought I would discuss some other elements of my practice. Recently I have been performing regularly and have had some interesting realisations around my work. I play live electronic music, often in dance settings, with music that could be described as euphoric, wholesome and hyperfolk-ish. Other buzzy words are oaty jigs, celtic hardcore and cute music. I’ve felt by describing my music in terms that stand out and perplex people is effective in giving homage to my unique sound and vision. It also makes people curious and wanting to come to an event. Until recently I would give more open terms like electronic or ambient, which do not tend to excite people. Being humble is attractive but is it a powerful agent of our times? I like more the idea of creating excitement and positivity around the work. I would even claim that fake humility is prevelant in some electronic music genres that are male dominated. So my agenda is to do homage to my work by imagining that others could benefit from listening. There is clearly ego here, bubbling away, as I run around meeting people, but I believe that is neccessary for carving out the space and platform that I want for my music. It is a tender juggling process to not get consumed in an individualist mindset.

Buzzy buzzy. After performing I have feelings of emptyness and sadness. I wonder what really happened, did I say what I wanted to say?

The pace is so fast that I have little time to prepare a set. I only use a launchpad and my laptop so there is a reduced space for expression. I realised I want to step back from performing and implement more tools of expression to make the performance more live. Also, after a recent set the sound was so distorted, and my vision was not shared with the audience. I have a lot of work to do in sound design and mixing to handle bigger sound systems.

A few days ago I played in Iklectik in the garden space. I really ejoyed playing outside.

Now with some friends we are planning outdoor events. With a portable stereo system and radio system, we have a center output of sound with different outputs dotted around, from radios and bluetooth speakers with recievers. All will be connected to a pirate radio frequency. We will set up in public spaces, with a battery since the set up is small, and invite performers and DJs to play. In our utopian vision, members of the public will dance together outside in an unexpected sound and movement experience. Performers will have an opportunity to express themselves without the restrictions of club spaces. Little money will be needed to set this up. I am thinking of the tem sonic flocking. Body body body! Sound arts needs to prioritize embodiement to harness the healing nature of sound and movement experience.

To continue the revolution folx will dismantle their phones into garden robotics to assist the new food growing communites.

My most recent performance:

Natural Soundscapes

I’m reading The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer.

A soundscape is a combination of sounds that lead to the immersive sonic environment. A soundscape is the accumulation of sounds that exist in space. The sonic features of an area of land. Or ‘the acoustic environment as percieved by humans, in context.’ (Wiki)

The relatively new term soundscape was popularised by R. Murray Schafer in 1977. It rolls off my tongue. The term has been criticized first for it’s vagueness and also it’s relation to the historical description of ‘landscape’: as an object percieved externally (where subject is detatched from object). Schafer wanted to protect the object of ‘soundscape’ from the excess noise of modern life/industrial civilization/mechanical noise. He describes the object as a dexterous fusion of natural sounds and human sounds, or biosphere and technosphere (Oliveros), which comes out of balance as civilization expands. The word ‘natural’ is prevelant in his writings.

It’s fascinating to read a book on the affect of new technologies, that was written in 1977. This era is pre-digital and pre-internet. Some criticisms that Schafer makes seem so imbedded into our lifestyle today that to be without them would require an impossible shift of human activity. Or, more accurately, to imagine their absence seems impossible. What is possible to imagine is that placing value on the high-fidelity of the acoustic world would be irrelevant to future urban populations. They may be reliant on noise-cancellation for navigation and communicative purposes. Schafer’s utopia of a human society politely and quietly blending with larger non-human ecosystems seems further away.

What is Schafer’s utopia? In claiming some noise as noise-pollution, does Schafer construct categories of natural and unnatural? Through the lens of critical theory we can begin to question his positionality and ability to claim a common utopia.

The book is heavily reliant on literature and the arts for the human experiences of the soundscape before the 20th century, which is a narrow representation of experience. The book contains uncomfortable quotes from old intellectuals like Tobias Smollett: “…I go to bed after midnight, jaded and restless from the dissipating of the day-I start every hour from my sleep, at the horrid noise of the watchmen bawling the hour through every street, and thundering at every door; a set of useless fellows, who serve no other purpose but that of disturbing the repose of the inhabitants.”

A painting is printed in the book, depicting an upper-class musician wearing full victorian attire, glaring with rage outside of his window at the hoard of children, women and beggars who seem to be making a racket. Schafer doesn’t comment. Unfortunately Schafer’s vision of a more peaceful world has reflections of countryside bourgeouisie aesthetics that were only possible due to surplus leisure time and luxuries. This bed of material wealth cannot exist in a more equal society.

I don’t disagree with Schafer’s urgency around noise-pollution. It is hard to untangle it from the classism of his sources, when class struggle is rarely mentioned in the book. Schafer does not ignore social issues but their exploration is premature. He is too quick to define what is natural.

Oblique Strategies

Spontanaeity as a way to inspire new creative practice. A set of cards that guide the experiencer to think and act that may lead to new creative practices.

“The Oblique Strategies constitute a set of over 100 cards, each of which is a suggestion of a course of action or thinking to assist in creative situations. These famous cards have been used by many artists and creative people all over the world since their initial publication.” By Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt.

The famous cards cost £50. My access to these cards is limited by my financial situation, even though they aim to support creative practice. Brian Eno’s net worth is estimated to 60 million (therichest.com). Who’s creative practice is being supported? And do the cards support creative practice or do they appear to support creative practice? They appear cool. Being cool gets in the way, stop!!!

As materials these cards are cheap to make. Perhaps as an art piece they become more valuable than their material cost. Does Eno have freedom to decide the price of the products enscribed with his name? He is possibly restriced; net worth doesn’t equate to control.