Sonic Thinking

by Bernd Herzogenrath

  In 1967, before the term soundscape became popular, McLuhan stated clearly, “The ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships” (McLuhan and Fiore 1967: 110). To distinguish it from the frontal, selective, or ignorant listening habit of everyday life, this awareness of simultaneity calls for recognizing the process of listening as a formative activity,6 which requires the listener’s endeavor in order to take place, shifting between different listening attitudes—generally between analytical and selective ones, as well as synthesizing and integral ones.

  Polyphonic music requires the same diversification and fluctuating of perceptual attitudes. It is the prototype of formative listening as it generates different shapes and auditory configurations, depending on the method of listening.

  This kind of formative listening represents a listening methodology. It upvalues the auditory in general, because it acknowledges that listening is not—as often declared—a mere instinct and emotion-based perception, but a practice of systematically as well as habitually applied attitudes and concepts, of engaging and disengaging, focusing and de-focusing, of selecting and merging, etc.7 The same applies for soundscape listening. As a set of approaches, it is a methodology of auditory appropriation. In this respect, the concept of soundscape is a figure-of-thought that reformulates auditory experience as practiced and experienced in virtually all situations. It shifts the time-based notion of sound to a spatial notion, without denying its time factor.

  An agitated, interactive, and participatory “all-in-one” and “all-at-once”, this is the environmental Gestalt McLuhan imagined and Schafer achieved. The awareness created by this environmental concept transgresses the borders of a mere cognitive model toward processual and aesthetic being, and paves the way for what McLuhan called the idea of “environment as artwork,” “designed to maximize perception” (McLuhan and Fiore 1967: 68). This alludes to Schafer’s soundscape as an aesthetic concept of everyday life, whose manifestations can be improved by supporting and carefully balancing its worthiness of being listened to.

  Ecology and its substructure

  Schafer’s acoustic ecology draws listener, sound, and environment together into a dynamic setting, in which changes in one factor influence all the others, in the end affecting the auditory manifestation itself (Truax 2001: 12). This includes the concept that environmental changes and pollution affect the quantity of noise and the aesthetic quality of a soundscape. It closely relates to the use of the term ecology in describing a state of neglect and damage of natural resources, and mirrors a concept of ecology that served as the starting point for environmental activism.

  However, by reading through Schafer’s The Tuning of the World, one does not get the impression that Schafer is talking about such an activist position. In 1977, the political connotation of the term ecology was less marked. Much more pronounced and in line with the debates of the time was Schafer’s anti-capitalist rhetoric. The question, then, becomes where is his ecological substrate situated?

  It is again McLuhan who leads us into a clarifiying and deepening understanding of ecology, which allows us to understand the complete extent of Schafer’s ecological substructure. Although McLuhan rarely used the term ecology, it emerged as one of his central ideas in relation to the mediated senses, describing an overall pattern of his thinking.8 His endeavor to understand media as environments was fed by his claim that society should regain control over them, which he considered “a matter of survival” (McLuhan 1969). (Here we have an allusion to Darwinist terminology—survival in the sense of being able to master electronic media’s impacts on psyche and intellect, and regain the individual’s freedom of wishing, acting and perceiving.) “We shape our tools, and then the tools shape us” (McLuhan 1964: xxi) is a famous and critical quote and underscores McLuhan’s ecological idea. It is based on his central thought that each sense or faculty that is extended technologically or stimulated excessively, “leads to the ‘closure’ or equilibrium-seeking among the other senses” (McLuhan 1964: 45), and to Narcissus Narcosis, the denial of the audile-tactile by a society that became addicted to images9 and despises that which is audible.

  The ecological notion that some of McLuhan’s successors carved out of his writings is not a biological one, dealing with natural resources, pollution, and sustainability, but a structural one that applies the term ecology in a systemic sense, identifying the factors of an environment and investigating their mutual influences, interdependencies, dynamic relationships, and configurations. A societal system is, according to McLuhan, the result of interdependencies between technology, order of the senses, and specific values and practices. According to McLuhan, one of the enormous impacts of these media systems is the shaping of perception.

  We find the same structure of argumentation in acoustic ecology. Throughout his book The Tuning of the World, Schafer describes the historical development of soundscapes and the factors that changed them. By exploring historically the cultures that favor or discourage the auditory sense, he came to the conclusion that sensory perception is marked by societal conditions, especially a society’s core values. Noises that represent them are sacrosanct, and are prioritized against values such as health, stress reduction, wellbeing, and beauty. Ugly and tedious sounds gain ground. In this context it becomes difficult to develop a relationship to auditory phenomena in everyday life, media, and art. Thus, the auditory sense shifts into the background and the impression arises that the sonic world generally lacks importance.

  One could paraphrase and adapt a McLuhan quote and apply it to Schafer: “If we understand the revolutionary influences on the faculty of listening caused by technologies and media, we can free ourselves from them, instead of accepting the resulting perceptual reductions as given facts” (McLuhan 1969).

  Aspects of participation and interaction

  In general, let us acknowledge here that if we talk about sound and soundscape we are talking about dynamic relationships, about correlating and interactive elements, and about agile configurations. In short, we are talking about living systems.

  Allow me to remind you of the first lines of my paper, the verses from Hoelderlin: “[S]ince we exist as conversation, listening to each other…”. This is similar. If we talk about conversation as derivative from soundscape, we talk about an environment based on a range of quite different listening methodologies in order to access plurality, complexity, and enhance communication.

  Joseph Weizenbaum’s Eliza,10 the famous programmed, artificial conversation from 1966, showed that if the control exerted on a partner in a system is too strict, if the rules are to formalistic and too narrow and leave no space for improvisation and surprises, the interaction gets stuck at some point, and shows its limits. Eliza is—as Weizenbaum conceded—an ironic example of this. Translating Eliza into the world of sound and imagining it as a conversation—as a specific soundscape—implies that creating meaningful interaction requires understanding. There is no understanding without listening—no meaningful contribution to the system’s action without listening. Even in this two-sided process of auditory communication it is not the linear, sequential, controlling approach that promises a meaningful process, but, on a small scale, the field approach between dynamic, interdependent elements—in this case two dialogue partners.

  “The individual listener within a soundscape is not engaged in a passive type of … reception, but rather is part of a dynamic system of information exchange,” confirms Barry Truax (2001: 11). He was the one who brought Schafer’s implicit assumption to the surface, of soundscape being a participatory or interactive process and a dynamic entity based on three basic constituents: listener, sound, and environment (Truax 2001: 12). As described by Truax, these elements are linked in a constant process of readjusting to each other, continuously shifting their mutual relationships. Having enlightened this animated liaison, we must concede that the triangular model, however, provides only a quite general mechanic, as it says nothing about the quality of the environment or the sou
nd, the intention of the listener and his cause for being in this environment, and what he wants to do there.

  “Instead of thinking of sound as coming from the environment to the listener and perhaps being generated back again, we will think of it as mediating or creating relationships between listener and environment” (Truax 2001: 12). With sound here being only a by-product, the question arises as to why and how this should take place—and how it can take place successfully. As applied to acoustic ecology, the main question is how to bring a soundscape’s major factors into mutual influence and interaction, such that the result is simultaneously informative, communicative, socially stabilizing, free from violence against individuals and minorities, and—last but not least—aesthetically pleasing.

  What is necessary is a frame in which the elements of the mosaic or the field can get involved with each other, in order to create something meaningful and authentic. The conditions of control and openness have to be balanced. Such a prototypical framework was developed by the so-called ars sermonis, the art of conversing, which was practiced in the time of Aristotle around 350 BC. It sought to establish a sustainable and lasting communication, not as a ritual, but as a simultaneously cognitive and socially meaningful interaction. It avoids being specious and quick in results, and relies mainly on the process itself.

  Ars sermonis, as explained by cultural historian Claudia Schmölders in the following, is not about pathos (the type of discourse that calls for action and decision) but about ethos (the demonstration of integrity, respect, and credibility). It is neither about mere information, nor about passionate persuasion, but about delight, bringing into accordance, and keeping the communication going (Schmölders 1979: 11–14). Ars sermonis seeks to fulfill three central virtues:

  affabilitas: affability, as intermediate between flattery and dissent;

  veracitas: veracity or sincerity, as intermediate between irony and grandiloquence, between lure and persuasion;

  urbanitas: serenity, as intermediate between scurrility and boredom (Schmölders 1979: 12).

  This is Ars sermonis’ flexible framework, which keeps communication flowing and within its participants can act reciprocally. All this is based on the actors, their environment, and their engagement in listening and speaking. In this system of clear, but flexible rules, there is room for improvised dialogue, which provides freedom, but also delineates the path to create meaning. Its elementary guidelines to keep communication flowing can be applied as an ideal model for conceptualizing, designing, changing and improving a soundscape in a city or in a busy building. All elements of a soundscape, constructed for everyday life, all mechanisms which emanate sounds, should be reassessed if they would fit and respond to the central values of Ars sermonis.

  Coda

  Much from tomorrow on

  since we exist as conversation, listening to each other

  have human beings undergone; but soon shall we be song.

  The poem talks about a common “we,” a multitude of minds, which identifies itself as a medium of communication: the medium of conversation. This medium is based on common rules of participation and interaction: listening, sense-making, understanding and sound-making, i.e., practicing a dynamic relationship based on listening and active sound production. The system of conversation assigns roles and behaviors, creates perceptual structures, coins values, forms social organizations and political systems, and can thus be considered an environment—an ecosystem according to ecology’s substructure mentioned earlier.

  “[S]ince we exist as conversation, listening to each other…” From the beginning, the quote from Friedrich Hölderlin sought to echo this essay’s wider context: understanding the terms environment, soundscape, and acoustic ecology as closely related systemic concepts based on paradigms not conforming to linear-causal approaches and inherited dialectical cognition. The philosophical traces of these “all around” concepts lead to Martin Heidegger’s concept of “In-Sein” (“being in” or “being inside” a system or an environment), which implies that a separation is not possible between a human being and the sphere in which he/she exists. Heidegger argues that the individual or the society amalgamates with its surroundings, such that object and subject—perceiving and creating the phenomena to be perceived—are inseparable (Heidegger 1953: 130).

  In the end, this is an existential concept: being a listening part of the auditory world as well as an auditory part of the listening world. This mindset is most probably the central pre-requisite for a sonic thinking.

  Notes

  1In German: gestaltendes Hören (the act of listening as an act of giving shape to the audible), cf. Breitsameter 2011. This act is described in Breitsameter (2007: 64–74).

  2While conversing with his radio producer Klaus Schöning live on air on the occasion of the premiere of his radio art piece A Winter Diary on WDR3 Studio Akustische Kunst, 17 April 1998.

  3A separate lecture would be necessary to identify the distorted characterizations that have been used to brush off acoustic ecology, namely in musicology. However, the acoustic ecology is currently appreciated as a cultural practice by media (especially middle European cultural radio), and by pedagogy.

  4According to E. H. Gombrich this field approach is rooted in Cubism at the beginning of the twentieth century. “[C]ubism sets up an interplay of planes and contradiction or dramatic conflict of patterns, lights, textures, … drops the illusion of perspective in favor of instant sensory awareness of the whole,” cf. McLuhan (1962: 25). Original: Gombrich (1959: 238).

  5Referring to media, their technologies and their context.

  6In the sense of the earlier mentioned gestaltendes Hören.

  7The US-American composer Pauline Oliveros for example teaches with her Deep Listening methodology a diverse array of ways of listening. For visual perception such methodologies have been reflected and discussed intensely throughout cultural history.

  8Because of this, McLuhan is considered the godfather of media ecology, an approach to media theory sharpened by scholars like Neil Postman, Lance Strate, and Christine Nyström.

  9Narcissus unaware that it is his own.

  10 Available online: http://www.med-ai.com/models/eliza.html.de (accessed June 1, 2015).

  Works cited

  Breitsameter, S. (1994), Soundscapes – Klanglandschaften. Streifzüge durch den Dschungel der Akustischen Ökologie. Baden-Baden: Südwestfunk.

  Breitsameter, S. (2007), “Radiokunst innerhalb und ausserhalb der Schule”, in V. Frederking, H. Jonas, P. Josting, and J. Wermke (eds), Medien im Deutschunterricht 2007 (Jahrbuch). Themen-Schwerpunkt Hörästhetik – Hörerziehung. München: kopaed.

  Breitsameter, S. (2011), Gestaltendes Hören – Erscheinungsformen, Wahrnehmungsweisen und Funktionen von Klang. München: Hans Seidel-Stiftung.

  Gombrich, E. H. (1959), Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  Heidegger, M. (1953), Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer-Verlag.

  Hölderlin, F. (1958), “Hymnen (1800–1804), Friedensfeier”, in F. Beissner (ed.), Friedrich Hölderlin: Sämtliche Werke. Kleine Stuttgarter Ausgabe, 6 Bände, Band 3. Stuttgart: Cotta. Also available online: http://www.zeno.org/ Literatur/M/Hölderlin,+Friedrich/Gedichte/Gedichte+1800-1804/%5BHymnen%5D/Friedensfeier (accessed June 1, 2015).

  McLuhan, H. M. (1962), The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

  McLuhan, H. M. (1964), Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Toronto: McGraw-Hill.

  McLuhan, H. M. and Q. Fiore (1967), The Medium is the Massage. New York: Bantam Books Inc.

  McLuhan, H. M. (1969), “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” Playboy Magazine (March 1969).

  Schafer, R. M. (1969), The New Soundscape. Scarborough: Barandol Music Ltd.

  Schafer, R. M. (1977), The Tuning of the World. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd.

  Schmölders, C. (1979), Die Kunst des Gesprächs. Texte zur Geschichte der euro
päischen Konversationstheorie. München: dtv.

  Truax, B. (2001), Acoustic Communication. Westport: Ablex Publishing.

  4

  Memories of Memories of Memories of Memories: Remembering and Recording on the Silent Mountain

  Angus Carlyle

  I’m not sure that the memory isn’t more reliable when it has no external aids to fall back on.

  Seneca 2004: Letter 87

  Memory: “I see us still, sitting at that table”. But have I really the same visual image—or one of those that I had then? Do I also certainly see the table and my friend from the same point of view as then, and so not see myself?—My memory-image is not evidence for that past situation, like a photograph which was taken then and convinces me now that this was how things were then. The memory-image and the memory-words stand on the same level.

  Wittgenstein 2007: 650

  What follows was written after a period reflecting on my experiences of one particular project of mine, reflections that drew me towards the claim that all sound is memory. In these pages I will introduce something of the project. I will also explain what is meant by my claim that all sound is memory and I will explore what I think are some of the implications released by that claim. Exploring how those implications pulsate outwards from the initial claim will involve: a recalibration of the relationships between listening, recording, remembering and composing; a reconsideration of the sustainability of the aligned notions of recording as blank registration and of the recordist as bland disembodiment; a recognition that the convention of the field needs disruption (at the very least, the convention of the field that gets articulated in field recording practice and discourse); and a speculation that these implications find themselves bifurcating between an internal and an external dimension, the internal dimension attaching to the solitary practitioner, the external one reaching out in its connections to others.