IN CLASS
1. PROJECT TWO CRITIQUES CONTINUED
2. OUR GUEST IS LENDL BARCELOS, SONIC RESEARCHER, DJ AND PHONOMAGUS who will lead us through various realms of the non-cochlear. Our conversation will deal with:
a. READ
Sophie Woolley: A Testimony on Cochlear Implant (2014) (Drive)
Picturing a Voice: Margaret Watts Hughes and the Eidophone
b. WATCH
Alison O’Daniel: The Tuba Thieves, Scene 61: The Kaleidoscopic Window (Drive)
Can you figure out the story being conveyed here? How did the story come together (or not) in your mind?
How do the three levels of information interact with each other?
c. EXPERIENCE THE NON-COCHLEAR
This week, listen to the sounds in your world that are not dependent on ears. Take copious notes.
a) Pay attention to sounds that your body is registering, without “hearing” them. List the sounds that are discovered by touch (vibrations), list the sounds that are discovered by sight. (Also try spending an hour each day with your ears blocked)
b) Pay attention to the sounds in your dreams.
c) Watch television with the sound off. What do you hear in your mind’s ear?
3. PROJECT THREE intro
PRIME TIME! Critique December 8
This project is structured as an experiment involving one 2-minute sound piece and text components. (Remember the Michael Snow piece, “Si Nopo Da” from Week 1 – the ethnographic forgery containing the Whitney Houston tune.)
1. Make a two-minute piece that will form the central part of the project. The piece can be an unedited field recording or a mixed and edited piece involving multiple sources. Do not use music. The recording should be complex enough (many levels) so as to allow for multiple interpretations.
2. Write three 200-word descriptions intended to influence the listener into adopting a specific perspective. These texts will be a mixture of fiction (lies) and accurate depictions that will steer the listener’s attention. These descriptions can be narrative (story), involve detailed descriptions of the sound occurring in the recording (remember the causal and semantic modes of listening).
3. Play the recording for four individuals (who are not class members).
#1. The participant will read Text #1 before listening to the recording.
#2. The participant will read Text #2 before listening to the recording.
#3. The participant will read Text #3 before listening to the recording.
#4. The participant will listen to the recording without any prior information.
4. After playing the recording, ask each participant two questions:
a) What did you hear?
b) What images/spaces were conjured by the recording?
5. Write a 1000-word summary of the experiment including:
a description of the piece you made, and how it was made
your intentions with the three “priming” texts
a discussion of what the listeners’ heard and visualized and whether these impressions lined up with your priming intentions
other insights that occurred during the process.
FOR NEXT WEEK
1. NOISE / SILENCE listening exercise
Each one of you has been assigned a one-hour (approx.) track or set of tracks to listen to, which will help you meditate on the concepts of NOISE and SILENCE. (Check that you are able to download and open the files. NOTE: in a few cases, there were so many tracks that I zipped them into a folder, with the .zip extension. You have to unzip to get to the files.)
Identify various ways in which noise functions. Is the noise on an acoustical level, or does it pertain to something else? Locate as many meanings of noise within your particular listening assignment. See some possible conceptions of noise below.
Listen to the track(s) several times.
Bring to class a list of 3 (or more) perspectives on NOISE and SILENCE, and how they complicate each other.
CONCEPTIONS OF NOISE (partial)
something which is out-of-place
an inability to accomplish something according to culturally-accepted norms where the non-musical meets up with the anti-musical
the limits of skill drive resourcefulness (of another kind)
is the seeking of ineptitude another form of skill?
trying to fail is not the same as being unable to do something
setting up insurmountable obstacles, performing inefficiency
deliberately making it difficult to make a proper sound
something which was private now made public (the abject?)
an incomprehensible deviation
an excessive situation, a spilling over
a parasite which rides along with the signal
something can be noisy without being loud at all
something which only becomes noisy over time
something which is outside of systems of evaluation
which cannot be immediately read and digested, which sticks in the throat noise is always contextual, relational
2. SILENT SPACE EXERCISE
Make a 10-minute recording in a space which you consider silent (understanding that silence is not an objective matter).
Listen to that recording.
Note differences. Things noticed in the recording that were not noticed when making it. Things the recording added to the experience. How the recording alters your memory of the event.