Bernie
On Aug 22, 2007, at 9:46 AM, Andy Wilson wrote:
> Bernie Krause wrote:
>> We've broken that down into three components: (1) the biophony,
>> meaning all of the sounds emanating from biological sources in a
>> given biome =96 marine or terrestrial. (2) the geophony, non-biological
>> sources of sound coming from (mostly) undisturbed habitats, and (3)
>> the anthrophony, comprised of human-induced sound from whatever
>> source.
>
> these seem to me to be powerful distinctions, the problems only
> arise if
> they are taken to be in any way definitive or exhaustive. there are
> many
> ways one might divide up the sonic universe depending on your
> intellectual, moral or scientific focus.
>
> many people on this list seem to have as their ideal 'pristine
> recordings of the calls and cries of animals' (because of the focus on
> pristine quality, i lurk on this list mostly for the technical
> information :-)
>
> some people i know are interested in the sounds of an idealised
> 'nature'
> which is supposed to be interesting because it is uncivilised. i find
> that interest a bit dull because of the way it fetishises the
> distinction between man and nature.
>
> others are interested in the musical qualities of unintentionally
> musical events (much phonography seems to have this focus).
> interestingly, the focus here is as much on the perceiving mind that
> hears a sound rather than the sound itself (it's perhaps a very
> Cageian
> approach).
>
> others may be interested in 'soundscapes' as such, whether human,
> 'natural' or mixed. they may be interested in the soundscape for
> musical
> reasons (they find interesting musical qualities), for scientific
> reasons (they are interested in the impact of the soundscape on either
> human or natural / animal behaviour), or for historical reasons (for
> what soundscapes and our relation to them reveals about historical
> sensibilities)
>
> whatever the motivation or goal, these are all interesting and useful
> ways of dividing up sonic experience.
>
> my own interest is a particular kind of stochastic, chaotic sound,
> whatever the source. so i may make use of many different kinds of
> source
> materials without preference. i have great recordings of the sea at
> Chesil beach rolling the pebbles there around in ways that sound
> interesting to me. i might be equally interested in the sound of a
> group
> of frogs or a group of children calling together, for similar reasons.
> my compositions often use the sounds of things being agitated in
> various
> ways (stones falling in unison, tin foil being crushed, etc., etc -
> ie.
> sources treated from the point of view of musique concrete.)
>
> on holiday in Norway recently i made hours of recordings but my
> favourite was one of a field full of sheep all with bells ringng,
> bleating together while a kind of 'field of bells' sounded around
> them.
> the sound is produced by sheep, not humans, but it is produced by the
> sounding of a human device (the bell), yet the sound i am
> interested in
> is that of the mass of bells, not any particular bell or the pattern
> produced by an individual sheep. it is not the sound of humans, not
> the
> sound of nature - just interesting because of the physical
> properties of
> the situation (bells being sounded at 'random' in a wide stereo
> space).
>
> the fact that there aren't hard and fast boundaries in principle
> between
> these different centres of interest, doesn't however mean that the
> various mailing lists don't have fairly well defined focuses - it just
> means that these focii aren't established on first principles, but
> emerge informally out of the economic, philosophic, scientific, etc.,
> interests that unite the participants.
>
> --
> Everybody gives lip service to the idea that people are
> the most important part of a software project, but nobody
> is quite sure what you can *do* about it.
>
> [][][] Andy Wilson | Mob: +44 (0)7739 908 253
> [][] Managing Director | Tel: +44 (0)20 7729 7060
> [] [] LShift Ltd | Web: http://www.lshift.net
>
>
>
> "While a picture is worth a thousand words, a
> sound is worth a thousand pictures." R. Murray Schafer via Bernie
> Krause
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
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