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bell-x-research · 5 years ago

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Soundscape in a Deskscape

There is no discernible difference between being asleep and being awake, within the first 20 steps of the day I am dressed, showered, fed and back adjacent to my bed sat at my desk. The work day begins. The condensed sense of space we occupy seems to reflect in time. Mornings are short, and the dark tinted skies quickly evaporate into bright winter daylight. Afternoons plunge away with the brewing of coffee. Every evening’s fleeting blackness is interrupted by the luminous car headlights scanning across our 6 windows. The night races in and you wonder, am I still awake or am I back asleep?. These sixteen hour days pass by choreographed by our three-roomed routine. All the uniqueness of a day diminishes with each iteration. Frighteningly the most striking daily element of diminishing value, is that of our sight. The visual intrigue of each day shallows. There are fewer novelties and nuances to be assimilated by our eyes while the same images and the same people fill our days. The closeness of computer screens and the hours poured thickly over pencil lead and paper do not suffice for stimulation or exercise. The eyes have become lazy to life, we have no need to react instinctively or quickly and we have forgotten what it means to have a reflex. A truly slovenly existent of sightly perception exists here. R. Murray Schafer remarks that since the development of perspective painting and the printing press of Renaissance times, our ears have given way to our eyes. (Schafer) Information no longer solely passes down through oral traditions of song and story. Instead, we live in an era of imagery, over-whelming amounts of imagery, and we are numb to it. But here, now, in our three roomed flat, things are different, the dwindling reliance on our eyes have set the waves in motion for a sonic renaissance! While our eyes begin to lose a certain focus the ears have tuned our consciousness into the immediate sounds of our surroundings. A day now begins to define its length along the quietly played symphony of banal circadian notes prickling in and out of the background of our work-from-home lives. Never has noise so vividly resembled sound. What was once an unmemorable product of careless listening in noise pollution is now the soundtrack to our day-to-day.

“Music is sounds, sounds around us whether we’re in or out of concert halls: cf. Thoreau” - John Cage (1969)

// to hear it:

The Morning Alarm, repeating shrill tones, insisting on a response…snooze.

the click and scrape of a door lock, footsteps, knock one, knock two.

groan.

the same footsteps shuffle on the cool tiles outside my door, more click-scrape

the shower bursts into muffled life, thin doors bang and taps squawk under morning pressure.

the alarm again, this time it stops abruptly.

Click, scrape, shuffle, click-scrape, my turn

gush, click, thump, tick, gurgle…”eggs?”

“eggs”

plastic crinkles, springs load

water trickles, cutlery ting and resonate, is that ‘A’ sharp?SnatcH! springs thrust back

an airy whoosh, we plant ourselves

satisfied murmurs, plates flutter and feet shuffle back to position.

the little Trojan fans begin to push hot air, a keyboard clicksandclacks in changing directions and the mouse snips snips polyrhythmically, concentrated gazes fall silent��

…

gush, click, thump, tick, gurgle, wait……pushhhd, pour, exhale

back to position…

…

faint chugging grows louder, a diesel engine lazily makes ground, a clumsy halt, ticking over, quick feet scuffle from door to door, click scrape..clack

the lazy chugging fades

…

click scrape, footsteps, click-scrape, thwack

more faint conversation comes and goes, some snippet of words float through the open window and fade away again

thud, clang-kkt!, is that ‘A’ sharp again? the heavy gate swings closed behind them

…

click-scrape thwack, shuffle, creak, slide

…now all kinds of engines faintly revving over uneven bumps, this remains consistent

…

slide, creak, thwack!…

quiet again

…

more diesel engines putter in and out, surely it must be nearly five?

…

ting..ting..ting, galvanised bells sound as footsteps descend from a height outside

more thud, clang-kkt!

…

clicksandclacks

…

clicksandclacks

…

sudden soft movements slide over carpet, fabrics fizz with static over limbs and heads careful thumps force heels swiftly into worn clunking boots

clack-scrapeA Brisk wall of cool air whooshes in on a whisper, scrape thwack and a tick tick tick as the freewheel trundles away over kerbs.

…

the soft voices come and go for some time, smaller engines cut off and come to rest peacefully outside my window.

I pay less attention to the noises I make

The Morning Alar……..

As the attractive visual landscape we once admired fades from view and all of a sudden becomes filled with text boxes, endless scrolling, loading bars and pixelated reflections of our groggy selves, another scape begins to rear its head. The Soundscape reincarnates itself, and an intrigue ensues. Notably it is not the product of our bodily selves we hear the most but it is the contribution of other people and things to the composition of this soundscape that asserts a prominence. As it is said, the “ear draws inwards”. The physical nature of sound challenges us when we try to make sense of the sounds we produce with our bodies. Our flesh becomes essentially a medium that falsifies and transfigures the sounds we push outward past these inward facing ears. For instance, we all cringe when we hear our own voices played back and deny that it represents us fairly. The ear that draws inward is exposed to the new, and when we really listen its the newness of sounds that excites us, which makes sense. Newness is to be coveted by our ears, for our ears are always on, our ears are forever absorbing and taking in. We more often than not, have a personal choice over the images and objects we put before ourselves to set our eyes upon. And a similar choice when we decide to plug in and listen to our favourite playlist of 1970s disco hits. Unusually with our ears, unlike most of our other senses, we are in most cases involuntary listeners to the World’s machine of sounds that begin and end around us at a constant beginning and ending rate. Listening is involuntary, we cannot close our ears, like we can our lids at will. What is it we are actually hearing and listening, are there significant sounds that we hear in what we might perceive as noise, are there the sounds of individuals, of dominant louder and sharper sounds, or are there sounds just more numerous than the last or the next one? Can we identify “sounds within the cacophony” as one might have in post industrialised New York City of the early 20th century!

Much of Emily Thompson’s writing in “The Soundscape of Modernity” I find useful in distilling down what it is that I am hearing or even how to describe the situation through which the noises have come about. Is there a concentration of people near me, how urban is the environment, what organic sources are acting, what mechanical or autonomous noises are being produced or what kind of rhythm does the noise have? I am curious too as Thompson identifies the inspiration of modern world noises on Jazz avant-gardism which was subsequently criticised as “an impulse for wildness” in its transfiguration of mechanisation and industrialisation as it stimulated barbarianism. A rebellious streak. And in return does my personal experience of exposure and listening to works by the likes of John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Philip Glass or even Mike Oldfield have an affect on how I listen back to noise, on how I could find novelty or music in their sounds? I makes me question us all and how in tune today are we to the keynotes of the soundscapes we situate ourselves in. How much insight into our geography, community, or even social structuring do the sounds about us describe? How, when we close off one sense and inspire ourselves about another, we can transform the soundscape once overlooked as mundane, give it audibility and clarity and open our ears and minds to noises that again have never so vividly resembled sound!

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