giovedì 26 maggio 2011
sabato 7 maggio 2011
Soundscapes of Real Time...Ongoing
Riporto dal Gruppo facebook avviato di recente da Justin Winkler...
SOUNDSCAPES OF REAL TIME
Soundscapes_of_Real_Time_Ongoing
Soundscapes_of_Real_Time_Ongoing
Soundscapes of Real Time
This document collects the exchange of the Soundscape of Real Time Group
in conventional descending chronological order.
in conventional descending chronological order.
The Facebook Group «Soundscapes of Real Time» is an approach that aims at
integrating so far lacking political aspects into Soundscape Studies. Acoustic
Ecology is not to blame that it has been technologically critical but essentially
apolitical, since its epistemology was made for specific aims.
Soundscape Studies are challenged to realise the political dimension of all
sounds of culture and society, concerning citizenships and the political economy
of sound-transporting technologies. The Soundscapes of Real Time Group invites
you to share what you listen to coming from the web and other networks.
The field of observation has bee widened by the new social networks which are
now not only transmitters but essentially producers of sound events. Please help
us with your observations to enrich the corpus of evidence for the crucial status of
sound and of listening for the far-reaching political processes such as those that
are about to gain momentum in the Middle East.
integrating so far lacking political aspects into Soundscape Studies. Acoustic
Ecology is not to blame that it has been technologically critical but essentially
apolitical, since its epistemology was made for specific aims.
Soundscape Studies are challenged to realise the political dimension of all
sounds of culture and society, concerning citizenships and the political economy
of sound-transporting technologies. The Soundscapes of Real Time Group invites
you to share what you listen to coming from the web and other networks.
The field of observation has bee widened by the new social networks which are
now not only transmitters but essentially producers of sound events. Please help
us with your observations to enrich the corpus of evidence for the crucial status of
sound and of listening for the far-reaching political processes such as those that
are about to gain momentum in the Middle East.
This first paragraph is permanently worked over.
The following entries reflect the contributions of the group's members.
Justin Winkler 11-02-15
Noise from Middle East
The end of January has brought a lot of noise into radio and TV channels: scenes
from Cairo, but also other places in Maghreb and Near East have very much
stimulated compassion and wishful thinking.
Social networks appear to play a role by exceeding conventional thresholds,
overcoming social and physical distances. But, essentially, the world abounds of
sounds: voices and noises.
The events in Cairo have taught us that definitively noise is not a by-product of
life but life itself. Although TV stations show the spectacle of Tahrir square on the
screens, the real information comes from the noise that fills it in a way that cannot
be filtered off.
In the evening of February 11, 2011, a man reporting from immediate proximity of
the euphoric crowd had to talk close to his microphone and to listen his own voice
in a telephone-like receiver. This noise was worse than wind and his words were
totally flooded from time to time.
The noise of the crowds was loud. Loudness incarnates power, as Murray
Schafer has put it. But the case of noise is more than this. We have been
following the Egyptian upraise from the state of murmur to rumour and to
clamour. Steady noise is the guarantee of ordinary life and everyday order. That
is perhaps why military forces wanted to reinstall everyday life as quickly as
possible, the steady hum of ordinary sounds, familiar noises that are appeasing
the critical stages of transition. Power lies resides in the unheard noise that keeps
the world moving.
possible, the steady hum of ordinary sounds, familiar noises that are appeasing
the critical stages of transition. Power lies resides in the unheard noise that keeps
the world moving.
Justin Winkler 11-02-16
SOUNDSCAPES OF REAL TIME
Noora has asked pertinent questions which I have been answering like this.
Could Acoustic Ecology be criticized for being apolitical?
Or should it be criticized for criticizing technological development?
Were the "specific aims" you mention not strongly connected to time when
Acoustic Ecology was born? Would you agree that it had an agenda that was
rather simplistic compared with the situation and realism today, in particular in the
field of Social Media.
Acoustic Ecology (AE) is, as is ecology, a systemic approach, concerned with
"balances" of ecosystems. Don't expect it to solve cultural problems. AE has the
problem that this "balance" is rooted in perception and perception-based
culture(s). But despite the perception-consciousness problem many people
involved in it were dealing with it in the rather technical ways climatologists and
oceanographers would have done. This creates a specific epistemology that
cannot simply be transcended when approaching environments less easy to
objectify such as the Cultural, Ethical, Political. Thus, for me, AE reflects clearly
the time when it was created and within which it has been pioneering. But "The
past is a foreign country", and "they do thing differently there", as Hartley tells in
the first lines of The Go-Between – also epistemologies changed and reverted.
That's why I wrote that AE was not to blame for being apolitical: Because this
was not in the centre of the endeavour of the movement in the second half of last
century, even if anti-noise militancy can be called civil politics and there is a
sense for equity and justice.
On the basis of a re-evaluation of AE's epistemology many terms will have to be
re-evaluated as well. "Schizophony" is one of them, in which a particular, even
individual mistrust in the effects of technical communication find an expression.
Since Murray Schafer has coined the term, two generations have been raised
who live with the new facts and possibilities of technical manipulation of sound
and communication as a mater of fact. The shift of the techno-cultural
development has simply made drift "schizophony" off the centre of its intended
sense. (See – alas in German – http://www.iacsa.eu/srt/winkler_1998_schizophonie_karlsruhe.pdf )
The new Social Networks open new practices and attitudes towards transmitted
sound. Sound can be "touched" and is touching, be it transmitted or not.
Corporeality is challenged, in the form of violence (as the Egyptian event showed
and more are about to show) against physical ad psychic bodies and perceiving
minds. This goes beyond aesthetics (such as music or sound art) into the
political, issues of property (e.g. copyright), appropriation and the commons.
Justin Winkler 11-02-17
SOUNDSCAPES OF REAL TIME
http://www.iacsa.eu/srt/Soundscapes_of_Real_Time_Ongoing
http://www.iacsa.eu/srt/Soundscapes_of_Real_Time_Ongoing
It was once political
1) I do not really agree that soundscape studies have been apolitical. From the
vantage point of the seventies (when they begun) they were. In fact, we believed
that art (and related activities) could change (improve) the world. Naive as this
belief may have been, there certainly were political implications - perhaps not
necessarily the ones Murray, who certainly was and is no comrade, envisaged.
With the demise of the (sub)culture of the seventies obviously all this went down
the drain.
2) It seems that Justin is advocating that Acoustic Ecology become sort of a
branch of political geography. I do not feel at ease with this prospect, at least not
as long as A.E. will not, finally, clear up its conceptual framework. I wrote about
this, semiseriously, in a TNSN of 1998 and will speak about it at the Florence
meeting in May.
Albert Mayr 11-02-21
1) I do not really agree that soundscape studies have been apolitical. From the
vantage point of the seventies (when they begun) they were. In fact, we believed
that art (and related activities) could change (improve) the world. Naive as this
belief may have been, there certainly were political implications - perhaps not
necessarily the ones Murray, who certainly was and is no comrade, envisaged.
With the demise of the (sub)culture of the seventies obviously all this went down
the drain.
2) It seems that Justin is advocating that Acoustic Ecology become sort of a
branch of political geography. I do not feel at ease with this prospect, at least not
as long as A.E. will not, finally, clear up its conceptual framework. I wrote about
this, semiseriously, in a TNSN of 1998 and will speak about it at the Florence
meeting in May.
Albert Mayr 11-02-21
Thanks to Albert for clarifying my impulse. I answer, whilst Al Jazeera reports on
audible shootings in Libya.
I agree that the contention that soundscape studies have been apolitical might
overreaches the ideas and actions actually taken by a minority. And perhaps my
position is the one of a latecomer, from a period (the early 1990s) when
aesthetics and phenomenology had finally taken over.
My point is, however, based on a personal experience from 1995. In summer the
Bosnian war was raging, whilst I was translating Russolo's manifesto "Arte dei
Rumori" (http://www.iacsa.eu/jw/russolo_1916_geraeuschkunst_06-12-20.pdf)
and felt uneasy particularly with the chapter where the author glorifies the noises
of war. In some respect the same is the case right now, the day after the
massacres in Benghazi.
Yet I do not advocate AE or SsS to become a sort of political geography: political
or state geography have done too much harm in the past, serving the powers in
geopolitcal issues from "heartland" to "Generalplan Ost". No, the political is, as is
e.g. gender, inherent in any positioning of the listener, asking and entitling
him/her of choosing his/her spatial and temporal position as well as applying
his/her lifeworldly and ideological perspective. Space, time and perspective are
the tenets of the aural world, of being in the world and (except perhaps
Thoreau...) constituting a political being.
Albert, I have been trying to find your point in the New Soundscape
Newsletter1998 (8), was it in "Above and Below Acoustic Ecology"?
Justin Winkler, 11-02-22
lunedì 2 maggio 2011
domenica 1 maggio 2011
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)