This simple realization was the central idea for this experiment—and I started right away: I assigned the alphabetical letter A to the musical note A1 on the keyboard, then the letter B to the subsequent note B1, et cetera. After seven pairs of letters and notes I continued this sequence in the next higher octave, by assigning the letter H to the note A2, the letter I to the note B2, and so on, working my way through the alphabet.
Trying to stay within the confines and conventions of Western music, I had to make some deliberate decisions and concessions when devising this framework for my project. For instance, this modus operandi would ignore all the black keys on the keyboard in order to stay in the C major scale. I also decided to assign the spaces between words and sentences to musical rests: 16th rests between words, eighth rests after complete sentences and quarter rests after complete paragraphs. For simplicity’s sake, I ignored capital letters and punctuation symbols, except for commata and full stops, which are again assigned to musical rests. I experimented with the idea of inserting various percussive elements to represent the punctuation, but I found that this would divert the attention away from the musical notes.2
Since I accomplished this process with the help of a sequencer program, I had the possibility to assign virtually any sound a synthesizer or sampler could produce, because technically speaking, up to that point I was just programming MIDI-data. For abstraction’s sake, I could have used simple, rather neutral sounding sinewaves. Or pitched audio-samples of singing birds, or barking dogs for that matter. But since I was already working with a keyboard (and the piano roll in my sequencer program), I decided to stay true to the keyboard analogy and use the sounds of a sampled grand piano.
Another purely aesthetic decision was to add a little touch of reverb to the sound of the sampled piano, to make it less dry sounding. In retrospect this seems all the more fitting, since this project essentially deals with reflection.
So when placing these notes in my sequencer, I almost felt like a musical typesetter, who coordinates the lead types of every letter to form words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and eventually whole books. Ironically, this profession has become virtually obsolete since computer technology took over in printing shops, some 30 or 40 years ago. And here I was, sitting in front of a computer, setting types. However, my typesetting environment looked more like Figure v.2.
This mode of working turned out to be a very painstaking, but also almost meditative activity. It demanded a constant recursion to the text: I started refining expressions, weighing words, rethinking every sentence, every letter. It took time, but it also gave me time—time to think: I was reminded of the speech Eurythmy dancing in Waldorf schools, which aims to express the letters and sounds of poetry via elegant gestures and movements.
Also the printing telegraph came to mind, a mid-nineteenth century communication device with a strangely familiar interface (Figure v.3).
On a similar note, I found that this project bears a certain resemblance to some positions of conceptual art in the 1960s. Think, for instance, of Joseph Kosuth’s 1965 artwork “One and three chairs” which shows a chair, next to a photograph of it, next to the printed encyclopedia entry of the term “Chair”. The work of art here is dematerialized: it is NOT constituted by the chair or this combination of objects. They just describe the actual work: the art itself is the concept of the chair, the idea, the ephemeral thought (cf. Lippard 1973).
Figure iv.2
Figure iv.3
Consequently, this project manifests itself in various self-reflexive forms: there is the print-out of my script right here, you hear me speaking it out, I also rendered the notation sheets for it, of which you can see the first one right here (Figure v.4).
Then there is the waveform display of the rendered audio (Figure v.5) and finally we will listen to the audio version itself.
Unfortunately, the completed composition of my talk turned out to be way longer than I expected it to be, when using 16th note values and rendering at a reasonable speed of 100 beats per minute. Playing it back faster would blur and obliterate sonic detail that I consider essential to the experience. This is why we will only be able to listen to selected excerpts of it. However, for those interested, I will upload an mp3-file of the full composition to our conference-website.3
Figure iv.4
Figure iv.5
So I would like to invite you to take a few minutes to listen to the actual sound of the text I just presented to you. It will convert thought—via the detour of writing and retyping—again to its ephemeral form, not unlike speech, but presenting a different, maybe somewhat idiosyncratic, but by no means inconsistent, rendition of it. Maybe this will bore you, maybe you will be amused, maybe this will shed a new light on things. I don’t know yet, it’s an experiment and it’s a premiere. I just hope there are no typos in it. Ladies and gentlemen: the Sonotypes.
Notes
1During the 1920s, the Dada-artist Raoul Hausmann further developed the idea of the Optophone and turned it into a mechanical art object, which could simultaneously convert light into sound, and vice-versa.
2Endnotes, however, are played back at double the speed and only 75% of the volume.
3See and hear: https://soundcloud.com/sscherer/sonotypes.
Work cited
Lippard, L. (1973), Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Index
Aboulafia, Abraham here, here
abstraction here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
acoustic ecology here, here, here, here, here, here
Adams, John Luther here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Anahata Nada here
anthropic subversion here, here, here, here
anthropocene (post-anthropocene) here, here
apparatus of capture here, here, here
ars sermonis here
artistic research here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
aural architecture here, here
autoactive systems here, here
autobiographical here, here, here, here, here, here
Bacon, Francis here, here, here, here
Barthes, Roland here, here, here, here
bats here, here
binary here, here, here, here, here, here
Blesser, Barry here, here
body here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Cage, John here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
cardiac system here, here
chimes here
chóra here, here
churches here, here
Cicero, Marcus Tullius here
Clicks & Cuts here
code here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
conversation here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
DeLanda, Manuel here
Deleuze, Gilles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Deleuze, Gilles & Félix Guattari here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
becoming here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
milieu here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
style here, here, here, here, here
difference here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
digital here, here, here, here, h
ere, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
discreteness here, here
dispositive here, here
Dunn, David here, here, here, here, here
echoes here, here, here, here, here, here, here
environment here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
epistemology here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
ermida here, here
Eshun, Kodwo here, here
event here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
faciality here
felt sense here, here
field recording here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
formative listening here, here
future of music here, here, here
Gendlin, Eugene T. here, here, here
generative here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
genius loci here, here, here, here, here
Goebbels, Heiner
Berlin Q-Damm 12.4.81 here
Max Black here, here
Stifters Dinge here, here, here
Golem here, here, here
Heidegger, Martin here, here, here, here
Hölderlin, Friedrich here, here, here
human here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
hyperlinear here, here, here
hyperstition here
information here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
in|human here, here, here, here, here, here, here
inhuman (sound) here, here, here, here, here, here
insects here, here, here, here, here
intertextuality here, here, here
Italy here, here, here, here
Jackson, Michael here
keyboard here, here, here
Kircher, Athanasius here
Kosuth, Joseph here
Kubick, Chris and Anne Walsh here
Laruelle, François here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
layer here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
logos here, here
Lyotard, Jean-François here, here
Marsyas here
materiality here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
McLuhan, Herbert Marshall here, here, here, here
media archaeology here, here, here
mediation here, here, here, here, here
memory here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Messiaen, Olivier here, here, here, here
meter here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
MIDI here
mind-body dichotomy here
multistability here
nano-fascism here
Nietzsche, Friedrich here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
nodar here
noise here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
non-music here, here, here, here, here, here
non-philosophy here, here, here, here, here, here
notation here, here, here, here, here
O’Callaghan, Casey here, here, here
Optophone here, here
organised sound here, here, here, here, here
ophtalmocentrism here
Orpheus here
Parry, Richard Reed here, here, here, here
Paiva River here, here, here
performativity/performative here, here, here, here, here, here
periphery here, here
perspective here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
phenomenology here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Plato here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
process philosophy here
refrain here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
remix here, here, here, here
resonance here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
respiratory system here
rhythmight here, here, here
river here, here, here, here, here, here
Robbe-Grillet, Alain here, here
Roxette here, here
sampling here, here, here, here
Schaeffer, Pierre here, here, here, here
Schafer, R. Murray here, here, here, here
Schopenhauer, Arthur here, here, here, here, here
Schumann, Robert here, here, here
silence here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
sonic fiction here, here
sonification here, here
sonority here, here, here, here, here
sound art here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
sound propagation here, here, here, here, here, here
soundscape here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
sound source here, here, here, here, here
sound thinking here, here, here, here, here, here, here
sound without organs (SWO) here, here, here, here
speculative realism here
strata here, here, here, here, here
Summer, Donna here
syzygy of permanence and fluency here, here
techno here, here, here, here
technology here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
temporality here, here, here, here, here, here
territory here, here, here, here, here, here, here
The Black Soft here, here, here, here, here
the one here, here, here
the real here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
The Thing (John Carpenter) here
thinking-through-making here
thinking-through-media here, here, here
Thoreau, Henry David here, here
thought here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
time-consciousness here, here, here, here
timeline here, here, here, here
tinnitus here, here
tone color here
transformation here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
transition here, here, here, here, here
transposition here, here, here, here, here, here
typesetting here
vibration here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
vibrational ontologies here, here, here
walking here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
weather here, here, here, here
Whitehead, Alfred N. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
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First published 2017
© Bernd Herzogenrath, 2017
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Herzogenrath, Bernd, 1964– author.Title: Sonic thinking : a media philosophical approach / Bernd Herzogenrath.Description: New York, NY, USA : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc, [2017] | Series: Thinking media | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016034486 (print) | LCCN 2016048410 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501327209 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501327179 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781501327186 (ePUB)
Subjects: LCSH: Sound (Philosophy) | Thought and thinking. | Mass media.
Classification: LCC B105.S59 H47 2017 (print) | LCC B105.S59 (ebook) | DDC 10–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016034486
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-2720-9
ePub: 978-1-5013-2718-6
Sonic Thinking Page 34