Sound around.The Urban Soundscape: theoretical text responses.

A technology of thinking. Embodied Public Space.RMIT 2011.

Introduction.

This book is a series of theoretical text responses to readings relating to the relationships between body, site and sound. The reading progress from the exploration of bodies and the sensory perceptions of bodies examining the physical and mental realms of inhabitants, towards the concepts of spacial awareness and relative boundaries of objects and bodies, then concluding with the investigation of the impact of site on the bodies ability to create sound spaces and conceptual concepts of lost sounds.

This book is a technology of thinking, and links to an investigatory project called “The Urban Soundscape”, which was conducted as part of the Embodied Public Space course at RMIT 2011, faculty of Architecture and Design.

Contents.

1. Flesh. Georges Teyssot, The Mutant Body of Architecture in Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Flesh: Architectural Probes.

2. Philosophical thinking. Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Embodying Space: An Interview‘ in Architecture From the Outside.

3. Site writing. Jane Rendell, ‘Prologue: Pre-Positions‘, in Site-Writing.

4. Built crushed voice. Paul Carter, ‘Sound Houses, Scripting for public spaces’, in The Sound In Between, Voice Space Performance.

5. Infinite forgotten sound. Verena Kuni, ‘Time Flowers, or Men Shall Know Nothing of This’, in Between Zones: On The Representation of The Performative and The Notation of Movement. Bodies to building beats. Bibliography.

Flesh.A reading of ‘The mutant body of architecture’ by Georges Teyssot.

The mutant body of architecture investigates how society is morphing from the physical realm of occupying space to meet and communicate, towards cyberspace and virtual reality as “with the increasing use of machines, transportation and communication technologies, we are arriving at, some say, a disembodied style of life.”p.10. This reveals an interesting phenomenon that we as humans are dematerializing. Being replaced by technology, disjointed by new forms of communication leading to a world where people dwell in their individual hubs and live their lives in an electronic format of communication, scarcely seen to physically inhabit spaced that were once full of bodies.It is an odd thing to contemplate the changing spaces of the world we inhabit and the future relationships between bodies and spaces that may be. Considering the body is a marvellous machine with “extraordinary negotiations taking place between the subject and object, the body indeed, corporeality itself-becomes the best vehicle for the interrogation of the status of subjectivity.”p.10. Teyssot introduces the following concepts:Exteroception, which involves our five senses, situated on the surface of the body and exposed to the exterior world. Proprioception, related to our sense of balance and proper positioning in space, and to muscular tensions. And Interoception, which refers to all the sensations of visceral organs situated in the body’s interior.”p.11.These terms break the body into independent elements capable of reacting with space. The text relative to objects and the body was useful towards examining tools of sound, in terms of objects and the body itself. Teyssot says “learning the use of a tool or instrument is accomplished through a process of incorporation.” p.15.“A spacial process of incorporation occurs, which is born out of the use of tools, instruments and equipment, components of an equipment structure, can disappear from our attention when used on a daily basis.”p.15.Yet when these objects create sound we are still drawn to them. A stationary phone on a desk will be ignored the majority of the time, it is an inanimate object inhabiting but not actively engaging or reacting to it’s surroundings. Yet when it rings, we will often divert our attention towards it, as we are expecting it to perform, to create some other action; a light, vibrate, more sound. It demands our attention through it’s activity of sound.Sound can be an example of “bodies projecting outside themselves.”p.15. And thus “the incorporation of technology is not effected by “imagining” a new environment, but by reconfiguring the body itself, pushing outward to where its artificial extremities encounter ‘the world’.”p.15.“The body is a kind of biological given which can be cancelled out of the equation or simply held constant whereas, the matter to be studied and understood is rather what society pumps into the body.”p.22-23. Teyssot was referring to elements of nutrition but I considered this statement in relation to all forms of input into the body, be it information, sounds, scents; and how the body would be described via these inputs.

“It is generally thought that the knowledge can only be of the whole, just as a view is always an overview… when there is a fragment, there must be an understood designation of something whole, which was so previously of will be so subsequently.”p.34I also think this statement is relevant to the topic I am pursuing as sound reverberates and invades every corner of a space in varying levels of which portions and fragments of sound can reach many bodies, but the question is whether they will follow the source of the sound to experience more and relate it to a context.Invitation begins with an experience.

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Philosophical thinking.A reading of ‘Architecture from the Outside’, by Elizabeth Grosz.

Elizabeth Grosz predominantly a philosopher, interested in architectural discourse and this intertwining relationship between the body, architecture and the realms of habitation the body takes within space, throughout her writing focuses towards different methods surrounding concepts of embodiment and futurist technology, and how these can be adhered to concepts and considered when designing spaces.

She develops quite thorough thought processes into the meaning of designed spaces and their intentional use in conjunction with the notion of community and social boundaries, opening up the concept of embodiment through thoughts, expectations, social norms and spectral extensions of the body saying “there is nothing to stop any position from becoming reactive when it’s used without thought, when it’s used in an automatic or doxical way.”“Space is the ongoing possibility of a different inhabitation. There are no boundaries which can be maintained under social conceptions, they are forever evolving. Space or spaces is the product of a community, as much as it is the product of a designer.” The fluidity of space and change in use of space via activation begs the questioning in relation to spacial occupation through sound, and whether sound is considered an active agent which can activate space and change the designed intention of a space, even through accidental occupation.

In relation to habitation of the mind, and connections created through cyberspace she expresses that “all you can do is use the social spaces, including cyberspace, a supplementary augmentations of aspects of your identity.”Yet I think she makes a good point that “this can’t be your only space. This computerized or virtual space is always housed inside another space – the space of bodily dwelling.”

Elizabeth Grosz concludes quite openly that, “it is true that one cannot think the body, because we still don’t know what the body is, or what it is capable of doing, where its limits or its capacities are. More than that, we don’t know what a body is because a body is always in excess of our knowing it, and provided the ongoing possibility of thinking or otherwise knowing it. It is always in excess of any representation, and indeed, of all representations.” Leading onto more philosophical possibilities and arguments that if we do not know the body how are we to identify the separation between thought and body, and thus evaluate the relationship between thought, body and spaces.It is a twisting interview challenging connections and expectations I had previously of the relationship between the body, thought and physical- or cyber- space.

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ACTIVATION

Site writing.A reading of ‘Prologue: Pre-Positions‘, by Jane Rendell.

Rendell explores the idea that the interpreter struggles to be impartial or objective and will always experience the ‘entanglement in inter subjective spaces of desire, projection and identification’.p.3. Through this evaluation the object becomes the performer, from the perception of the interpreter who review the piece with preconceptions informed by past experiences. Delving further Rendell explores the coexistence of object and subject, evaluating the role of the conceptual space of the creator, the wider context of the situation and the art-critic relationship within an individual work, constantly comparing each within a critical space. It is this precognition which veils all sensory experiences.

The article illuminates the relationship towards situated criticism and others; art writing and site writing.Can we experience a site inclusively, immersing or prohibiting ties of body/self and object? The introspection of how position informs relation is inviting as we consider how body, self and object are able to recognise each other. ‘Identification involves the interrelationship of two processes each working in different directions – introjection, the internalisation of certain aspects of the other through self-representation.’ It is impossible to to immerse or prohibit ties between body and site as sound as an element of fluxuation is bound to influence and bind senses towards consiousness of these elements.

The ‘two-way movements between critic and work suspends what we might call judgement or discrimination in criticism, and instead, though what I call the practice of site-writing, traces and constructs a series of interlocking site, relating, on the one hand, critic, work and artist, and on the other, critic, text and reader.’ p.4

Rendell draws attention to the performative and interpretive relationship between the critic and the work, and this is determined through “situatedness”p.4. The ‘boundaries between subjects and objects [as] more porous and arguments are not only made directly, but indirectly, through association and implication.’p.4.

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Built crushed voice.A reading of ‘Sound Houses, Scripting for public spaces’, by Paul Carter.

Paul Carter expressed his negative opinions towards the relationship between structure and sound in the urban environment, contrasting situational examples between the sound we experience at home versus the public environment saturated with urban structure. He relays that ‘the unpredictable and open-ended calls of everyday life are relegated outside; the closure of musical structures, harmonising with the architectural enclosure, unfolds inside.’ p.159. He considers that ‘although friendly to an architecturally inspired music, buildings are hostile to sound. It is not only the undifferentiated urban roar that they turn their backs on, but the human voice.’ p.159. Driving a negative perception of the structures we surround ourselves in everyday and indeed aspire to design, clearly not with the relationship of sound at the forefront of functional experience.The expression of such a stifling vocal experience is vividly portrayed as Carter says ‘In effect, building reduces speech to the reproduction of a pre-inscribed recording, a recital of phrases whose place and meaning has already been fixed. There is no more scope for improvisation within walls of stone than there is within the precincts of the classical sonata. And outside the little fall of the cadenza the orators or performers who risk speaking for themselves are immediately in danger of losing their place, being exiled from the privileged position in the public space.’ p.160. Giving the sensation of the urban environment belittling it’s creators and everyday inhabitants. Though Carter concedes that ‘not all structures are acoustically hostile. The permeable walls of the tent purify sound, masking it’s physical origin while preserving the ambient real-time background. Bell towers from an acoustic point of view are quiet interiors turned inside out, they broadcast indiscriminately in all directions, creating temporarily an alternative city where orientation an distances are registered aurally in terms of volume, pitch, tone and interval.’ p.160.Delving deeper solidifying ties to embodiment, sound and environment, Carter speculates ‘if the function of sound is to re-align public spaces with human interests, to restore them as zones of dialogue response to the ebb and flow of human presence, then it is important that those spaces achieve an identity.’ p.161.Relaying that the mere nature and function of structures such as ‘solid walls not only keep out the changeable seasons they prohibit the crowd.’ p.160.

Progressing from physical production and embodiment of sound Carter then looks at digitized sound noting that ‘computer generated sound may stimulate the feel evolution of sound events, but it remains a closed system; there is a limit to the number of permutation it can create – while in principle there is no limit to the acoustic contingencies of everyday existence.’ p.168. ‘Environmental sounds for example (birds, pneumatic drills) may not communicate propositions but they signify sound environments and contain spacial semiotic.’ p.169.Carters views on the relationship and facilitation of sound and embodiment is greatly influenced by environment and his negative perceptions to design without contemplation of facilitation of space for experience of sound.

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Infinite forgotten sound.A reading of ‘Time Flowers, or Men Shall Know Nothing of This’, by Verena Kuni.

Verena Kuni explores temporality and transience in art in connection with sound and music, and their transformation observing sound exhibits and art installations. ‘Sound that has died away leaves a trace. As though an echo had remained behind that we could recall to life at any time to hear the sound once more – even when it has not been recorded and no score exists. Yet as the score can be lost entirely or in part, this echo tends to dissolve. In and with time, it becomes porous, disintegrates into the finest dust, which settles in the cracks of out memories. In the end, we will indeed be unable to tell with any certainty whether there has every been a sound there. And yet the world seems to be full of them.‘ p.281.It is the philosophical pondering towards our relationship with sound and the sounds we inherently remember wether consciously chosen or passively absorbed, and the expression of the experience we have which led me to work with sound as a medium for my project. As such I found this reading to reconfirm my interest through the detailed writings, which it often hard to achieve due to the speciality of language surrounding sound and the way in which it is represented both verbally and visually.

The example of Bruce Nauman’s art installation consisting of a ‘tape recorder, with tape loop of a scream wrapped in a plastic bag, and cast into the centre of a concrete block,’ is ‘a gesture that, though it seems powerful, is in fact helpless: the attempt both to conserve and to silence where this is, on the one hand, nothing to save and, on the other hand, nothing that can be muted.’ p.281. This representation of the relationship we have with particular sounds predetermined by our past experiences, or our primeval vocal reactions, is highlighted communally through this piece and outlines humanities fascination with the polarity of sound and silence. As well as the relationship of preserving sound experiences as is evident via ‘the invention of Thomas Alva Edison’s phonograph, which was invented to take hold of the human voice beyond the death of it’s source. ‘p.281.

It is the nature of sound to linger in our minds, to be recalled days afterwards, like that song you heard on the radio and hum subconsciously. But the question begs about the sounds in between. ‘How many inaudible sounds live around us? p.283.‘And how tightly may the layer of these sounds rest on things whose echo has already disintegrated and disappeared from the radius of our perception save for a distant memory we might recall?’It is that, which ‘men shall never know. But untiringly they press their ears to the silence out there. And, on occasion, they construct the strangest machines designed to make the inaudible audible. To catch those sounds time has already dispersed. And those that were never destined for our ears.’ p.283.

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Bodies to building beats.

There has been a deeper understanding of the relationship between sound, body and site unveiled. It is the in-depth probing towards the sensory perceptions of the body, and it’s innumerable systems which in collaboration allow such a comprehensive network of conscious and unconscious occurrences to be analysed and documented, which leads to continual questioning about the experiences perceived. This has allowed me to gain a broader understanding of why we are intrigued by such enigmatic episodes and the relationships between our everyday surrounding and ourselves. It was the inherent ability of sound to encapsulate all physically, objects and bodies and resonate to define spaces so holistically, that inspired me to investigate sound experiences, as is shown by the latter readings.

Michelle McDonell.

Bibliography.

1. Georges Teyssot, The Mutant Body of Architecture in Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Flesh: Architectural Probes, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.

2. Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Embodying Space: An Interview‘ in Architecture From the Outside, New York: MIT Press, 2001.

3. Jane Rendell, ‘Prologue: Pre-Positions‘, in Site-Writing, London: I.B. Taurus, 2010.

4. Paul Carter, ‘Sound Houses, Scripting for public spaces’, in The Sound in between, voice space performance, NSW: NSW University press, 1992.

5. Verena Kuni, ‘Time Flowers, or Men Shall Know Nothing of This’, in Between Zones: On The Representation Of The Performative And The Notation Of Movement, Edited by Raphael Gygax and Heike Munder, Zurich: Migros museum, 2010.