Rejecting the Idealism of the WSP: Towards a Postmodern Approach
Soundscape composers stress that the human disconnection from nature has resulted not directly from technology but in how we have chosen to use it. Norman, for example, argues that composers have a choice in how we use technology. Composers can practice a Schaeffer-inherited “sonic alchemy,” employing computers “’orchestrate’ sampled sounds from the ‘real world’, and to use sophisticated wizardry to cajole them into new forms, frequencies and fantastic documentaries,” thus promoting Schafer’s dreaded schizophonia, or they can create music that “seeks to preserve our connection to its recorded sources [Norman’s emphasis].”[3] In the latter option, the sounds may be heightened or transformed, but their meaning is ultimately maintained.
Robin Parmar, among others, has suggested that Schafer’s schizophonia represents an unrealistic, idealistic desire to repair the soundscape to an original pristine state, a desire to rebuild perceived lost connections “by way of the ‘preservation of soundmarks’, ‘repairs to the soundscape’, ‘imaginative excursions into utopia’, encouraging nature to ‘speak for itself’, and ‘the recovery of silence as a positive state.’”[4] For Parmar, Schafer’s efforts ultimately represent a “nostalgic enterprise in no way prepares us for the contemporary milieu in which the schizophonic is the norm.”[5] Parmar’s criticism of Schafer points to an observation of music scholar Simon Frith’s towards the broader world of ethnomusicology – the idea that any new technology is perceived as a “threat to the establishment,” considered “false and falsifying” and “opposed to nature and community.”[6] Lysloff and Gay further note how “when ‘natives’ use electronic devices or enjoy mediated performances, technology is considered intrusive and often rendered invisible by the [ethnomusicologist],” citing examples such as the insistence of ethnomusicologists to use “ambient ‘room’ microphones for recording gamelan music, even though the Javanese gamelan players usually record with direct microphones to feature the singers and provide clearer distinction between vocal and gamelan.”[7] Soundscape composers, on the other hand, reject this assumption of technology as “inauthentic.” Hildegard Westerkamp, for example, has come to deliberately evoke in her compositions what she calls a “creative use” of schizophonia, noting that the electroacoustic medium enables her to layer different “levels of remove,” where “the actual present, the recorded present of the running commentary, the reenacted and remembered past, as well as imagined events past or future, may co-exist with the listener moving fluidly between them.”[8] It is in this imagined space where a listener can draw their own personal meaning from the soundscape that Westerkamp presents.
Another soundscape composer who has explicitly embraced the schizophonic is Francisco López (1964- ), an experimental musician and sound artist based in Madrid, Spain. Described as the successor of Pierre Schaeffer’s acousmatic listening, López attempts to depict through his works an “environmental acousmatics,” or what he fondly refers to as “the Hidden Cicada Paradox” – that “there are many sounds in the forest, but one rarely has the opportunity to see the sources of most of those sounds.”[9] In an effort to further direct the listener’s attention to the sounds themselves rather than their sources, López leaves most of his recordings as “untitled,” and even his album covers are sparse of imagery. López infuses his soundscapes with sampled sounds from sources ranging from insects and human voices to heavy metal bands. He often manipulates the recordings so to erase any hint of where the sound may have come from, a process López describes as “exploring blurred territory between reality and the creation of self-contained sound environments through a long process of transformation of sonic materials.”[10] “In my conception,” López describes, “sound recording does not document or represent a richer and more significant “real” world. Rather, it focuses on the inner world of sounds.” In this sense, López’s work moves away from rationalization, categorization, and representation of sounds to the “being” of sound itself. López sketches through his work a realistic, non-bucolic view of nature that acknowledges how the richness and mystery behind the sounds of the soundscape.[11]
By rejecting schizophonia as a move towards a non-idealistic nature, soundscape composers such as López carve out an important philosophical shift that connects music, technology, and nature. Soundscape composers may not “celebrate” industrial noise, as Russolo suggests, but draw audience awareness towards it, engaging with it critically and interrogating how it has influenced all forms of life in both good ways and bad. For some composers, welcoming in noise in this way means embracing the totality of sounds produced by nature. In a recent interview, for example, field recordist and soundscape composer Jana Winderen, was asked the question “Are there such things as ugly-sounding lakes?” Winderen remarked that “’Ugly-sounding’ is a taste issue, not a scientific one. I have not found “Ugly” sounds, maybe because I enjoy listening to them so much.”[12] Winderen’s response comes back to the question of “what is music?” By considering all sounds of the soundscape as a source of both data (to understand it, to protect it) and music (sounds inherently worthy of aesthetic appreciation, whether or not they were “intended” by a composer), the question of noise is no longer even an issue. Other soundscape composers recognize the concept of “noise” in the soundscape, but in a way that addresses the sheer power and subliminal quality of nature. John Luther Adams, for example, has emphasized in his writings how the sheer physicality of noise has the power to touch and move us in profound ways that music can’t: “…noise commands our attention and breaks down the barriers we construct between our selves and our awareness.”[13] For Adams, embracing the noise of nature enables a listener to move beyond the limitations of self-expression and ultimately reach connection, that one thing soundscape composers seem to long for. In Adams’s words, noise “…invites communion, leading us to embrace the patterns that connect us to everything around us.”[14] Soundscape composition as a merging of music with noise, nature with technology, and the self with the other, speaks to the core of the word ecology. From the prefix eco- comes the Greek word oikos, or household. As the philosopher Giorgio Agamben has described, “this house should not be thought of in terms of the modern day single family home, but is rather “a complex organism composed of heterogeneous relations, entwined with each other…” [15] Through its innovative use of technology, soundscape composition, too, represents a study of relationships and interactions between seemingly disparate parts. In the following chapter, we’ll be getting into the specific works and techniques that shift perspectives, blur lines, and draw connections between human and nature in ways similar to how deep ecology strive to draws attention to “the oneness of all life.”
[1] Dunn, David. "Wilderness as reentrant form: Thoughts on the future of electronic art and nature." Leonardo (1988): 377-382.
[2] Norman, Katherine. "Real-World Music as Composed Listening.” Contemporary Music Review, Vol. 15, Part 1 (1996).
[3] Norman, Ibid.
[4] Parmar, Robin. "The garden of adumbrations: reimagining environmental composition." Organised Sound 17, no. 03 (2012): 202-210.
[5] Parmar, Ibid.
[6] Faulhaber, Edwin F. “Communicator Between Worlds: Björk Reaches Beyond the Binaries.” Doctoral Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2008.
[7] Lysloff, René T.A. and Leslie C. Gay, Jr. Music and Technoculture. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003.
[8] Westerkamp, Hildegard. "Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology." Organised Sound 7, no. 01 (2002): 51-56.
[9] López, Francisco. "Profound listening and environmental sound matter."Audio culture: readings of modern music. New York (NY): Continuum International Publishing Group (2004): 82-87.
[10] López, Francisco. "Profound listening and environmental sound matter."Audio culture: readings of modern music. New York (NY): Continuum International Publishing Group (2004): 82-87.
[11] López, Francisco. "Profound listening and environmental sound matter."Audio culture: readings of modern music. New York (NY): Continuum International Publishing Group (2004): 82-87.
[12] Fischer, Tobias. “Interview with Jana Winderen.” Tokafi.com, Web. http://www.tokafi.com/15questions/interview-jana-winderen/. (Accessed 10 July 2016).
Fisher, John Andrew. "The value of natural sounds." Journal of Aesthetic Education 33, no. 3 (1999): 26-42.
Fisher, John Andrew. "The value of natural sounds." Journal of Aesthetic Education 33, no. 3 (1999): 26-42.
[13] Adams, John Luther. Winter music: composing the North. Wesleyan University Press, 2004.
[14] Adams, Ibid.
[15] Dyson, Frances. The Tone of Our Times: Sound, Sense, Economy, and Ecology. Cambridge (MA): Leonardo, The MIT Press, 2014. Print.
