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Sound Final Project Proposal - Smithi Skunnawat
The idea that life is a curse is a theme I would like to explore.
Structurally speaking I think it’s going to be a flip flop back-and-forth between existential dread and absurdity (both in the quality of the sound low rumbling tones in the dread, maybe high pitched painful shrieks too, and something absurd like a laugh track or something). Then crescendoing in emotional honesty and seemingly a beautiful, pure moment. Then in the very last second of the piece, undercut it with self-deprecating humor again.
I want to explore it in the tone/context of absurdity as escape and engagement with the deepest pains we have. What I refer to here is a texture of reversals as a ‘shock’ to the ‘system’ of pain: creepy is familiar, horror is comedy, and the utmost serious thing is rendered ridiculous. It’ll be surreal, dark, and completely meaningless, yet charged with emotional truth. It’s not only post-modern, but it’s post-post-modern.
If postmodernism is a rejection of a grand ideology, irony towards universalism, skepticism towards the establishment, and any permutation of the aforementioned, post-post-modernism (by my definition) is a radical version of that idea to the point where senselessness is both embraced and hated at the same time, emotional honesty and truth is constantly revealed and buried by provocative humor, and the existential dread of the meaningless of it all coats the entire piece.
The underlying, strikingly painful core of this (which intrigues me specifically) is that the obligations we have been born with currently hold us in a sustained state of heightened discomfort. In other words: our primitive instinct/primordial mind which keeps us alive is the only obstacle stopping us from putting an end to our pain.
References that come to mind are the TV show Community (which is still operating in the post-modern sphere more than what I define as post post modern but it has infant post post modern tones/textures). Descartes’ radical doubt is greatly inspirational. Another way I might explain this conceptual approach is imagine David Lynch movies with a ‘meme’ styled twist. Memes are an amazing artform that express this pain very well: see mood board for examples: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11BlBCH-X7e3smomQp2tLQrm3Z0H8Xbsx3CDVDN3J55I/edit?usp=sharing
For more sonic (or sonically-inclined) references: see the following clips and explanations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6os2T58iyI
What I found useful here is the editing style which constantly flips back and forth between different ‘wavelengths’ of emotional connection, resulting finally in some form of emotional honesty, but they still don’t like each other and still trying to manipulate one another into some acceptable state of relationship (Duncan wants to avoid being Pelton’s friend, Pelton just wants emotional connection - both of them are coming at it from some deep, dark pain). This blend of humor and dark pain is perfectly capturing what I want to do with a final sound project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByC8sRdL-Ro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9pU1q8sy8
Bo Burnham’s music is STYLISTICALLY not very pushing the envelope, but in terms of content (actual ideas being communicated) I think he’s spot on with what I want to do with this final sound project.
The extraneous details:
We all demand of ourselves that we work with what we have towards a greater ideal (when life gives you lemons...), but what if one was born with a setback so great that in the remaining years of conscious existence happiness could never be achieved?
Perhaps one was born with an enormously unfortunately genetic predisposition to intense episodes of depression? Perhaps one was born with a father that would torture said child repeatedly so that the child’s only escape was to literally create a new consciousness (a common cause of dissociative identity disorder).
Whatever the reason, human happiness exists on a spectrum and some people have been given the utmost unfortunate circumstance of being too unhappy to continue living with the current conditions. (An ideal future may exist where none of these genetic/situational predispositions matter and happiness can be induced in a more guaranteed fashion - such as that we try to guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in some places, but even better. I’m talking of a potential utopia here, and I’m saying that until we reach that point, there will be human beings who live with intense pains that after doing a cost/benefit analysis, being alive is just not an investment worth the time.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-is-millennial-humor-so-weird/2017/08/11/64af9cae-7dd5-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.c4e5e5b68d83
If I were to encapsulate the main idea of this article it’s that when you mix social media styled sharing/viral ecosystems with a large amount of people suspended in existential dread with too much knowledge of how bad the world is and too little ability to affect it, we get the classic weird millenial humor.
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Week 8 Response - Smithi Skunnawat
What this reading sounds like to me is a survey into the possible approaches to analyzing a soundscape. “Soundscape studies attempt to unify” the research on the “relationship between man and the sounds of his environment.” Acoustic design is compared to industrial design in that it has the potential to improve lives in ways that are fundamentally interdisciplinary, combining arts, sociology, even science and economics. Music as indication of social welfare is interesting - cacophonous disarray mirrors the social structures as small, craven individuals vie for power, whereas the harmonious sounds of Mozart reveal an orderly social structure. I disagree with such a reductionist correlation as factors such as economic welfare leading to creation of the arts despite general social welfare is also possible (Russian Tzars leaving their peoples to die but still funding the arts for their own entertainment is an example off the top of my head).
Just a sidenote that I thought was interesting: A friend shared this video to me and reading through the keynote sounds made me think of it. It’s perhaps the opposite of the way keynote sounds are described: a note or tone that can be heard through a sort of auditory perception of an entirety of a soundscape. This video is the opposite of that - the evening out of all volume level and timbre, remaining only rigid categorizations of notes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7lODxnCcmo and yet through this rigid categorization of notes, we can almost hear an auditory illusion of the words being spoken. Tangent over.
Regarding sonic environments, I thought it was interesting that the authenticity of the earwitness was a potential consideration. A sailor whistling and listening for a timing of an echo as measurement for distance from shoreline is one example of a level of fidelity only achieved by having lived in said sonic environment before.
Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk is an interesting piece that is inherently a constructed in post production sort of soundscape, especially with the narration guiding the listening experience into a sort of subjective yet constructed sonic experience. What becomes interesting then is that this fits into the reading’s idea of acoustic design of a better ACTUAL sonic environment. One must design an acoustic environment on our own before we can start improving actual sonic environments. Just as industrial design seeks to improve how objects in our lives work with us, a soundscape like Westerkamp’s could do the same to our sonic environments. To perhaps play devil’s advocate, industrial design has a very specific cost/benefit-driven purpose, whereas acoustic design seems to tackle a more abstractly betterment of environments in the ways that perhaps basic research done at a national institute of health (not contributing directly to a pharmaceutical’s bottom-line, for example). This difference is important to keep in mind as the reading seems to imply a stronger connection between study of sonic environments and betterment of people’s lives as industrial design’s direct impact on the efficiency of a human being.
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Week 6 Reading Response
Having read LaBelle and Weheliye‘s arguments, I find most interesting that Weheliye constantly draws us back to this idea of humanization through enculturation of technological ‘sounding’ elements in black culture’s music, among other music (and the ways in which it relates to desire or even hyper desire) culminating in an attempt to reveal the humanity present in this mode, and yet LaBelle threads an entirely different plane by describing in detail how sound is inextricably linked to space, specifically how HUMANS occupy said space.
It is almost as if Weheliye is arguing for how the digital processes bring out humanity (by taking out whatever sense of timbre and space there is) yet LaBelle emphasizes how sound inexplicably can become less about the human and more about the space or the noise around it. This, in my interpretation of LaBelle, does not imply that these sounds are less human: rather it is relational. It is about how the human oral sound can relate to what is around it.
The digital processes that separate the ‘machines’ in Weheliye’s argument from the traditional way voices are supposed to sound are interestingly almost a manifestation and incorporation of the technological sounds into the modes that those Labelle studied were operating under. In other words, Weheliye’s pieces of study in the paper/chapter are, at the core, no different than what LaBelle is studying: sounds of humans. “I am sitting in a room” emphasizes the individuality and subjectivity, but uses technology as a means to distort the piece to emphasize such a thing. The incorporation of robotic sounds/digital distortions of the voice in the pieces Weheliye mentioned did the same thing: served to humanize and project the essence of what makes that voice individual.
This goes to show me that sound is about emphasizing or bringing out a certain part of the human voice, regardless of the means, it actually can serve to remind us of how human we are.
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Week 5 Reading Response
I read Lev Manovich’s “Remix and Remixability”.
I find his argument intriguing, but difficult to adopt his mindset. Bare with me.
Early in the essay he makes the argument that remix has always been a part of art making, and making in general. Ancient Rome remixing Ancient Greece, Renaissance remixing antiquity, etc.
What he now proposes is a framework that sees taking from a library to make our own pieces as all part of the same ‘train ride’. Messages sent from a messenger to a receiver is more like a train station where some people get off (some parts of the art is deleted) and new people get on (transformative qualities are added).
Simply put: it’s a continuing process, not a piece that gets broadcasted outwards to its one-stop ride. I can agree with him there, although the specifics of the mechanics, I’m unsure if I see eye-to-eye with Manovich. I think cultural elements can be cheaply remixed for a kitschy internet meme very fast, but to truly fundamentally transform a work of art in order to arrive at a new, meaningful message, it may take decades or even centuries. I unfortunately do not have the space here to expand on this idea, but feel free to reach out to me if an expansion is desired.
Manovich’s disagreement with the clear-cut distinction between a stock library and the object of art that makes use of said library is a mindset I adopt as well HOWEVER (here is where I disagree with his mindset), he is missing a real-world practical consideration. Relevance and popularity.
In the context of art philosophy, I have the following view. When George Lucas (or whoever was responsible for Star Wars’ story) took from Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and ‘remixed’ it from an old library of ancient myths and stories. Sure, but those stories have fallen out of popularity and relevance. Even today I already can feel how Star Wars is not resonating with the modern audience (for something as simple as transparent special effects to strange, out-of-date mannerisms in the acting, the tone of the piece as a whole, but most importantly the storytelling, while maintaining a Campbell-esque Hero’s Journey structure, is not ). The clear-cut distinction exists not as a mistake, but as a heuristic for sorting through what is relevant. The epistemological implication of ‘what is a library, what is an object of art that makes use of said library’ is easily answered with ‘There is no difference.’ He makes this very argument.
In the context of copyright, I feel like I can only speculate and comment my very transparently uninformed perspective. Have I read through manuals of copyright law? No. I have, however, listened to creators who are currently suffering from fickle changes in copyright policies on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. Lev Manovich’s mindset of art as train ride where transformation happens becomes interesting when an issue of copyright comes into play. Copyright’s role in society is to ensure that originality (or transformative artwork) is encouraged by ensuring that those creations are protected. Too strong a stance on copyright then we get no remix. Too weak a stance on copyright and no creators will ever want to do their work (or creators would only be hobbyists at best, not taking their art seriously enough to encourage masterpieces). I think Manovich’s argument lacks contextualizing under the context of copyright. This is paramount to whether holding his framework towards transformative art is ultimately a good for society and artists or not.
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Week 3 Reading Response
Joshua Banks Mailman’s seven metaphors for music listening seems to be an expansion of Michel Chion’s 3 kinds of listening. However, on an ontological level, Chion’s view of sound seems to be in direct contrast with Mailman’s. For instance, Chion’s view of listening is weighted on the sound as an object itself, whereas Mailman’s perspective weighs the emphasis on listening as happening in the mind (”mind as mirror” framework).
This difference does not come into play as fundamental disagreements or critiques between the two, but it does color their paper a certain way. Chion’s list of modes of listening describes how we can approach a better understanding of the ontological object of sound. Are we listening for the cause of the sound? Are we decoding it for semantical meaning? Are we actually listening for the texture, timbre, etc. of the sound?
Mailman then prefers metaphors to describe how the mind interprets sounds. The cognition of sounds and its affect on our very ‘feelings’ is the focus of this paper. Are we ‘improvising’ as we listen in that we tune our focus into certain sounds (the air conditioning, the heater, the humming that is a result of a dissipated echo of all the noises in this room, or just our own breathing, or even the sound of our own heartbeat?) Are we stressing the fidelity of our memory (oxymoronic to me and to Mailman) after the fact of listening?
These frameworks are incredibly valuable for me as I move forth in the sound pieces I will make. I seem to appreciate this emphasis on “how sound is interpreted” which I find analogy in film editing in the idea that the editor is like a magician directing the audience’s eye. This paper has given me a plethora of knowledge on how to direct the audience’s ear (and the modes in which we can do so).
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Week 2 Reading Response
The reading on noise and the political economy of music was full of interesting insights that I could only appreciate if I could pretend to agree with Jacques Attali’s assumption that noise/sound is the true way to ‘take in’ the world (not sight) “the world is not for the beholding... it is for hearing.”
I can only argue against that very assumption by pointing out the inaccuracy and fickle nature of our relationship with sound. The sound of an animal cry could easily be an edited audio clip of air leaving a tire in a small hole. The sound of rain could be replaced with that of frying bacon. Can we trust a world in which very inherently our sense and perception of sound is as fickle as a simple click of a few buttons on ProTools? Perhaps I stand from a 21st century vantage point and see easily too far on the shoulders of giants that Attali did not have the privilege of standing over (or perhaps this is a moment where he and I must simply fundamentally agree to disagree), but in no way could I find an opening for myself to wedge into agreement with Attali.
The politics and economics of sound and its fetishization and commoditization, on the other hand, carry great insights, but, to me, were rooted too deeply in the assumption that sound is our best access to the present world. I appreciated his framework that powerful institutions have taken hold of sound, especially “music”, and are twisting it to their ends in simple, replicable, discrete forms.
As for Douglas Kahn’s writing on noises of the avant-garde, I found it much less opinionated. It was a list of movements and perspectives on the approach to music/sound/noise creation, especially the avant-garde. The portion on simultaneism intrigued me the most and inspires grand ideas in me. The experimentation with simultaneous sounds to create awareness of a ‘space’ is something that fascinates me in a core way - I am a person who is incredibly aware of where I am and my entire life I have lived through uncertainty, so a heightened acuity to my surroundings became first habit, and now hobby. This is a constant thread in my life experience (being keenly vigilant to my surroundings). Through the simultaneistic approach to listening, “the eye... rouses itself to seize, in the simultaneity of [hearing]..., a swift meaning of life”.
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Response to Eric Benoit’s “Elegy” - Sound Aesthetics & Production - FMMC 0346
Eric Benoit’s “Elegy” is an interesting text for me to pick apart, since I both know him well and have worked with him, and therefore have had the chance to hear him explain his work to me.
This is a piece that uses pure emotional qualities of sound to communicate feelings to the listener. “Elegy” connotes serious reflection, especially into a sorrowful state. Knowing this is enough to interpret the piece as a series of sounds that symbolize an attack on the mental state, but keeping the weight, or the “point of view”, on the listener as sufferer. The uncomfortable high pitched tingling sensation is a viscerally real symbol of a constant pain. The respite we get at the 1 minute mark with a low hum only feels like brief respite: the low hum is slowly intruded upon by a higher ringing sound. The “room-tone” noise level is raised to increase the stress upon which the listener must undergo in order to hear more clearly: again these are more symbols of the ebb and flow of a pain.
The peak in discomfort enters near the end when the electronic stacatto sound buzzes as a sort of crescendoing high pitch attacks slowly. The emotions present here are open to any interpretation, but seeing that the piece is titled “Elegy” and relating it to the Greek poems might lend us to see this more as a tragedy in lieu of popular Greek storytelling. If so, might it be a stretch to interpret that crescendo-ing as an end to the pain? In the void of death? Did Oedipus not gauge his own eyes out to escape the pain of what he saw? Did Daphne not escape the sorrows of having been too beautiful by giving up her flesh for bark and leaves? Could “Elegy” not be a sound piece that ends on a note of resignation in death?
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