Research

Conducting more research was something of importance to me in my project because what I have chosen to do is not something you come across everyday; an experimental audio piece with visual art. To begin with I hadn’t actually realised that my idea fell into a niche subject, so I wanted to know why it was and how/if this is something that people are aware of and wanting to change. Throughout our tutorials Emily has always mentioned pieces that she believes would be of interest to me, and books and other forms of literature I should read, and one of those was a keynote lecture by Hildegard Westerkamp.

Westerkamp, a composer, radio artist and sound ecologist (the study of the relationship between humans and their environment in sound, sometimes known as soundscape studies) gave a keynote lecture at the London School of Sound – a school of integration of sound, music, recordings and sound art – stating that her intention is “to build connections between the professional ear… the media ear… and the ‘daily life’ ear” (Westerkamp, 2009: 111). Opening the lecture following the applause received after being introduced she dove straight into a hearing exercise for the audience; she described the acoustics of the room “special” so she got the audience to applaud again as she wanted them to pay attention to the many different sounds being transmitted around the room. Evidently she has travelled quite a bit and, in regards to sound, that is something very important to her, as she says she wants to know the source of a sound, and there’s something she calls ‘travellers ear’; it’s different than the normal ear. When being in a new place you start to pick up on the new, foreign sounds around you, but this can be something that we do subconsciously – a sound you heard for the first time in a different place, when hearing that again somewhere else it takes you back to that original place, whether you remember when you heard that sound or not. Also something she mentioned when travelling is the fact that she can’t really escape having to go on planes, something she isn’t a fan of because when watching/listening to films on a plane you can’t hear it properly because the plane is just too noisy. Something significant that made Westerkamp so intrigued by the listening ear is that she was apart of the World Soundscape Project in the 70s with R. Murray Schafer which lead to “daily life listening suddenly became a conscious act” (Westerkamp, 2009:114) especially as the WSP was about wanting to know absolutely everything they could about sound, from the how the ear functions to the work of the acoustical engineer. This is something I think is important, that there is/was an organisation filled with people who are so committed to the world of sound, which is another thing that has opened up experimental music. Following on from mentioning this importance, the next topic she moved on to was her own compositions, and the process she takes and how she feels about her work; most of her compositions consist of sounds that she has gone out and retrieved herself, but all of them are based on environmental recordings, aiming to have a message in her pieces – this could be about ecology or the form of listening itself.

The more conscious we are of how sound functions in the environment… the more consciously sound will inform our own work with sound. (Westerkamp, 2009:124)

Throughout this lecture she really emphasizes the importance of listening, and it is just as powerful as the sounds themselves, using the example to back this of film soundtrack designers understanding this as they are very good at knowing how to capture the audience with sounds, drawing them in with what they are hearing along with what they are seeing. Something that was of interest to me when reading this paper was that she has been trying to define what a soundscape is, feeling that it has become obscured throughout the years, but on the flip side she also says “the soundscape gives information about the relationship between listener and the environment” (Westerkamp, 2009:116) so dwelling on this too much and its definition will take away it’s essence. It leaves me with the question, can you define a soundscape? Because there isn’t one simple path to creating one, a beginning or an end, a formula, so how can something like this have a clear definition? On the subject of soundscapes, she says they have the ability to bring out images in the listener’s mind, but if incorporated into a film where you are given the visuals, the soundscape creates an atmosphere for how we experience the viewing. My piece echoes this as I have provided the visuals which reflect what you hear; you look at the art piece, while the audio acts as the soundtrack. Reading this keynote lecture I enjoyed knowing that there are people out there that are this passionate about sound, and listening, and what they represent and the effects they can have on us, consciously or not, and that soundscapes are yes about the use of environmental recordings and if chosen the use of synths as well, but there isn’t, in my mind, a clear definition; it is left to the listener.

The visual art approaches soundscape with more interest in contextual that timbral aspects, and representational significance is more emphasized. (Rudi, 2016)

A shore piece that I myself found and read was The Noises of Art (2013), opening with saying that it was in the 1960s with the rise of pop art and installations is what has “eluded categorization” – the boundaries have started to dissolve – and then there was the ability for inspirations to be drawn on between different art forms. An artist mentioned in this was Robert Rauschenberg, who was apart of the pop art movement, and that he drew influence from John Cage by applying random composition (chance) in his music to visual art. The earlier combinations of different art forms; mainly audio and visual. Something I found of interest that was mentioned in this conference piece is that they see the growth of the digital age aiding the combination of different media forms, this because the internet has the ability to preserve all information, and being able to share it, so it is easy to access different forms of art – music, film, art etc. Another thing mentioned that intrigued me, especially about the visual part of my project, is that in psychology, neuroscience and psychiatry etc. they used to view vision as the more prioritised sense, yet this has come under question as the growth of audio and visual combinations unites the two sensory modes equally – this new view brings the challenge to creative practitioners “to acknowledge the artificial separation of expressive modes and to articulate a sense of their connectedness.” (The School of Art, 2013).

A sense should not be prioritised over the others, so the joining of audio and visual is an important step and I’m happy that I chose to incorporate both in my project, and to see once again that this is an important thing that people are taking notice of.

References:

Rudi, J. (2016) Soundscape as Social Construct. [online] Norway: NOTAM. Available from: http://users.notam02.no/~joranru/Soundscape_as_a_social_construct.pdf [Accessed 13 December 2016].

The School of Art. (2013) The Noises of Art. Audiovisual Practice in History Theory and Culture, Aberystwyth University, 4-6 September. Aberystwyth:  The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Westerkamp, H. (2009) School of Sound Symposium, London 2009; Keynote Lecture. London: Intellect Ltd. 111-126.