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Listening:

Acousmatic and Embodied

MUSC265Electronic Music Theory and Analysis

Reprise and a question

Schaefferian (Pierre) listening emphasisesabstraction through the phenomenologicalreduction (epoch) that allows reduced listening

(ecout reduite)

Schaferian (R. Murray) listening emphasisescontext through the idea of the soundscape

How can we advance beyond these two opposedperspectives, the Schaefferian and Schaferian?

Beyond Schaeffer vs Schafer

Ihdes contemporary phenomenology, built onauditory field (focus, fringe, horizon), is one way, asit acknowledges both reduced and contextuallistening as possible approaches to the complex and

heterogenous experience of listening Another possibility is to look at the body (and

imagined bodies) as a mediator of abstract andcontextual listening; body as midway point betweenthe mental/internal and physical/external,subject (listener) and object (world)

What is embodied listening?

Concept of embodied listening (EL) presumesinter- action/relationship between mind, bodyand world

EL a sub-field of embodied cognitionwhichassumes the following:The human mind-brain is an organically embodied

representational system, a system that enters into statesthat are systematically interrelated and that stand in

intentional relations to the environment in which thehuman organism is embedded Nussbaum in Ferrar

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Embodied cognition assumes and investigatesthe body as a an active component in cognition:Researchers at the University of Aberdeen found that when people

were asked to engage in a bit of mental time travel, and to recall pastevents or imagine future ones, participants bodies subliminally actedout the metaphors embedded in how we commonly conceptualizedthe flow of time.

As they thought about years gone by, participants leaned slightlybackward, while in fantasizing about the future, they listed to the fore.

The deviations were not exactly Tower of Pisa leanings, amounting tosome two or three millimeters shift one way or the other.Nevertheless, the directionality was clear and consistent.When we talk about time, we often use spatial metaphors like Imlooking forward to seeing you or Im reflecting back on the past, said Lynden K. Miles, who conducted the study... It was pleasing to usthat we could take an abstract concept such as time and show that it wasmanifested in body movements. Angier (2010)

Note the similarity to a phenomenological approach(interrelation, intention, embedded)

The distinction between subject and object is blurred in mybodyOur body is not the object of an I think: it is an ensemble oflived meanings that finds its equilibriumI am conscious of my body via the world [just as] I am

conscious of the world through the medium of my body Merleau-Ponty

Embodied cognition regards mind-body-world as anensemble through which our consciousness operates

How we process information is related not just to ourbrains but to our entire body, said Nils B. Jostmann ofthe University of Amsterdam. We use every systemavailable to us to come to a conclusion and make senseof whats going on. Angier (2010)

Listening Exercise

In listening to the following example attend tothe following:

Acousmatic listening: when/why/how do you focuson sound itself ?

Embodied listening: when/why/how do you focuson your own or another implied body?

Alvarez, Javier.Mambo la Braque

Pleasure and embodied listening

Music is intimately connected with body movements. Until recently,research has almost exclusively examined the impact of music on bodymovements [entrainment]. Yet findings on embodied cognition in otherdomains suggest that the influence might also work in the oppositedirection: Real or imagined body movements during music listening maycodetermine music preferences. We had participants listen to music andconcurrently activate muscles whose innervation has been shown to beassociated with positive and negative... It i s concluded that bodymovements, both real and imagined, may play an important role in thedevelopment of music preferences. Sedlmeier et al

The autocentric or subject-centred senses focus on basic responses andfeelings of pleasure and displeasure. The emphasis is on subjectivereaction to something. Autocentric perception is primitive and basicand it is no coincidence that it is associated with the child's firstrelationships with the world. Smalley

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Displeasure and embodied listening

It is not often that a piece of music makes me cringe. Yet this is preciselythe reaction I have when I listen to Christof Migones Crackers [which]is composed from the sounds made by cracking human joints. Migonealternates raw recordings of joints cracking and interviews with thecrackers with tracks in which the materials have been processed and re-

shaped into compositions which draw out and transform their latentmusicality Later, I experienced a similar bodily reaction while listeningto another piece: Ground Techniquesby Neil Luck composed mainly ofuntreated sounds: recorded, but without further manipulation. Theopening section comprises a series of breathing sounds (more specifically,the sounds of the inhalation of breath and the plosive sounds of therelease of held breath), that are then imitated by instrumentalists.Listening to this, I found myself feeling tense, holding my own breath.Like Crackers, Ground Techniquesexplodes into sound when tension in the

performingbody can no longer be contained, spilling over the boundaries ofthe recording to touch the listeningbody. Sewell

Autocentricity and allocentricity

Autocentricity: natural, subjective listening for affect (emotion),including embodiment and environmental embeddedness; a reflexiveand indicative relationship to experience

Allocentricity: learned, objective listening for sonic qualities &abstract form, a disembodied listening ; an interactive relationship to

experienceAutocentricity and allocentricity exist in parallelAutocentric responses [toelectronic music] can be related to fear or apprehension initiated by theexaggerated magnification of the dimensions of realistic sounds the ways[acousmatic] sounds approach the listener and are perceived as objectsexisting in the space, and the bombarding of sounds at high intensit y. On theother hand the practiced allocentric listener might find such autocentricresponses rather crude and clichd... [Nevertheless] Shifts betweenautocentric and allocentric attitudes are thus a fundamental part of thelistening process. Smalley

Embodied Acousmatic Listening?

The lack of a visible performer may turn the listeners attentionback onto her own body Dusman describes how the absenceof a performing body causes her to become more aware of herown reaction and of her position as an embodied subject. Thelack of the very gestures upon which Fisher and Lochhead basetheir analysis causes a displacement of embodied activity from

performer to analyst. The absence of these gestures forces anawareness of the implicit embodied experience of listening

Sewell

The metaphors of musical movement, the directionality of thatmovement, and the notion of tension and release achieve theirsignificance from bodily experiences of moving, of spatialorientation, and of muscular feeling

Fisher and Lochhead, in Sewell

Indicative listening: embodied cognition

Indicative listening closely relates to embodiedcognition as an organically embeddedrepresentational system (Nussbaum)If we extend [the indicative relationship] to include a widerframe of references to experience outside and beyond music,we immediately penetrate both more extensively and deeply into the

relationship between musical experience and our experiences of livingThe concept of the indicative field and the indicative networkhas been created to explain the links between humanexperience and the listener's apprehension of soundingmaterials in musical contexts The notion of the indicativefield/network comprehends relationships that are consideredmimetic. Mimesis in music is the conscious and unconsciousimitation or representation of aspects of nature and culture[the life-world]. Smalley

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Embodied Indicative Fields

GestureEveryone has daily experience of gestural activity and isaware of the types of consequences of the energy-motion

trajectory. Gestural activity is not only concerned withobject play or object use but also enters into humanrelationships the [gestural] field does not stop with aphysical act since tension and resistance also concernemotional and psychological experiences. Thus in musicthere is a link between the energy-motion trajectory and thepsychological apprehension of sounding contexts evenwhen physical gesture is not present. Smalley

Energy and MotionThere cannot be sound without energy in the spectraldomain and there cannot be energy without motionThelistener can deduce the style of energetic physical actionfrom the spectral behaviour of a sound, and even wherethe sounding body is not known or real, energetic tensions

and releases are conveyed through spectral change Smalley

Object/Substance

In the object/substance field the popular sense of"thingness' is intended How can a sound be a thing whenit has no material existence? First because actual soundingmaterials can be used, simulated or alluded to.

Smalley

UtteranceThe fact that the sounds of utterance are generatedfrom within the body and that they are the essential

vehicle of personal expression and communication,makes utterance intimate and emotionally charged.

Therefore the listener's relationship with utterance is

often reflexive rather than indicative Inelectroacoustic music the voice always announces a

human presence, perhaps in a sounding context that isnot regarded as directly human. Smalley

BehaviourThe placing of sounds in a context automaticallyensures that some kind of relationship must exist

among them. The term behaviour may refer tohuman behaviour deduced from the utterance-network,

to relationships in and among the networks of object/

substance, environment or vision Smalley

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Jerry Lewis, The Errand Boy(1961)A proof of embodied listening through popular culture Bibliography

Angier, Natalie. Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes ThemLiterally. New York Times, 1 Feb 2010

Ferrer, Rafael. Embodied Cognition Applied to Timbre and

Musical Appreciation: Theoretical Foundation. http://www.bpmonline.org.uk/bpm10/ferrer_rafael-embodied_cognition_applied_to_timbre_and_musical_appreciation_theoretical_foundation.pdf

Sewell, S. (2010). Listening Inside Out: Notes on anembodied analysis. Performance Research, (July 2011), 37-41.

Smalley, D. (1996). The listening imagination: Listening inthe electroacoustic era. Contemporary Music Review, 13(2).

VUW Online Journals.

Discography

Alvarez, Javier.Mambo la Braque. On Excitations[CD], CD 05-156, VUW Audiovisual Suite.