dansk musikforskning online / særnummer 2015 danish musicology

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DANSK MUSIKFORSKNING ONLINE / SÆRNUMMER 2015
DANISH MUSICOLOGY ONLINE / SPECIAL EDITION 2015
LYD- OG MUSIKPRODUKTION
SOUND AND MUSIC PRODUCTION
Forord
3
Preface
5
Toivo Burlin
Experimentell musikproduktionsvetenskap som kulturforskande musikvetenskap:
Ett produktionsperspektiv på musik
7
Mads Walther-Hansen
Sound Events, Spatiality and Diegesis
– The Creation of Sonic Narratives in Music Productions
29
Totte Mattsson
Audiovisuella loopar och kollektiv live-looping
47
Jan-Olof Gullö, Ivan Höglund, Julia Jonas, Hans Lindetorp,
Anton Näslund, Joakim Persson & Peter Schyborger
Nobel Creations: Producing infinite music for an exhibition
63
Mark Grimshaw
A brief argument for, and summary of, the concept of Sonic Virtuality
81
Justin Christensen
Virtual Distance and Soundstage,
and their Impacts on Experienced Emotional Valence
101
Martin Knakkergaard
Numeriske tåger – eller hvad blev der i grunden af de tre andre causa?
119
Note on the contributors
132
Guest editors:
Martin Knakkergaard
(Department of Communication and Psychology, Music and Sound Knowledge
Group – MaSK, Aalborg University).
Mads Walther-Hansen
(Department of Communication and Psychology, Music and Sound Knowledge
Group – MaSK, Aalborg University).
Editorial board: Martin Knakkergaard, Mads Krogh, Søren Møller Sørensen
Dansk Musikforskning Online Særnummer, 2015: Lyd- og musikproduktion /
Danish Musicology Online Special Edition, 2015: Sound and Music Production
ISSN 1904-237X
© forfatterne og DMO
DMO publiceres på www.danishmusicologyonline.dk
Udgivet med støtte fra Forskningsrådet for Kultur og Kommunikation
Forord
Uddannelse og forskning i lyd- og musikproduktion er i stigende grad spredt ud over
forskellige institutioner, og inden for den sidste årrække er flere nye uddannelser dukket op i Norden, der beskæftiger sig med emnet. Denne opblomstring skyldes ikke
mindst skiftende markedsvilkår, nye teknologier og efterspørgsel på specialiserede
kompetencer i lyd- og musikbranchen. Dette særnummer om musik og lydproduktion
sætter fokus på diversiteten i feltet. Nummeret søger at afdække nogle af de forskellige former for teoretisk tænkning, æstetiske visioner og tilgange til praktisk udførelse, der eksisterer i forskellige forskningsdomæner inden for lyd og musikproduktion,
og hvordan disse griber ind over hinanden. Baggrunden for særnummeret er en konference med titlen “2. nordiske konference om musik og lydproduktion” afholdt på
Musikuddannelsen på Aalborg Universitet 12-13. maj 2015.
Særnummerets syv artikler beskæftiger sig på forskellig vis med udviklingen af analytiske og praktiske værktøjer til lyd og musikproduktioner, og det knyttes til både forskning og undervisning inden for feltet. I den forbindelse præsenteres konkrete bud på
begrebsudvikling – såvel som “begrebsafvikling” – fordret af nye digitale lydteknologier og nye tilgange til musikproduktion. Der gives desuden anvisninger til nye forskningsparadigmer og konkrete anvendelsesmuligheder i undervisningssammenhænge,
herunder kollektive musikproduktionsformer.
Den første artikel af Toivo Burlin aftegner konturerne af musik- og lydproduktionens
videnskabelige objekt. Burlin argumenterer for hvordan musikvidenskaben, i bredeste
forstand, kan drage nytte af et medie- og produktionscentreret forskningsparadigme,
der bygger på forskning udviklet inden for musikproduktionsdomænet.
I Mads Walther-Hansens artikel argumenteres der bl.a. gennem analytiske nedslag for,
hvordan særlige kunstgreb, tilgange og teknikker i musikproduktionen er med til at
fremkalde og understøtte oplevelsen af bestemte virtuelle handlingsrum, som er mættet med tegn, koordinater og information, der er afstemt i forhold til det æstetiskes
potentielle diegetiske implikationer.
Med afsæt i nutidens udstrakte brug af live loop-teknik beskriver Totte Mattson i sin
artikel nogle af de erkendelser og landvindinger, som blev indhøstet i et kunstnerisk
forskningsprojekt om brugen af såkaldt audiovisuelle loop af flere performere kollektivt. Projektets særligt tilrettede tilgange til loop-teknik fremstilles i historisk perspektiv og artiklen anskueliggør, hvordan teknikken er relevant såvel i performance som i
kompositionsarbejde og øvning.
Jan-Oluf Gullö redegør i samarbejde med Ivan Höglund, Julia Jonas, Hans Lindetorp,
Anton Näslund og Joakim Persson om kunstneriske og teknologiske udfordringer og
landvindinger i forbindelse med en kollektivt afstemt musikinstallation, der blev ud-
DANISH MUSICOLOGY ONLINE SPECIAL EDITION, 2015
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SPECIAL EDITION · 2015
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viklet til Nobel Museet i Stockholm i 2014. Artiklen baserer bl.a. sin fremstillingen på
kreativitetsteori og tidssvarende forestillinger om proces og flow og argumenterer for,
hvordan en heuristisk tilgang til det kollektive musikskabende arbejde, kan give anledning både til nye udtryk og forståelsesformer.
I Mark Grimshaws artikel argumenteres for en ny definition af lyd, der muliggør nye
måder at forstå, forme og interagere med lyd i fx lyddesign og computerspil. Ved at
betragte lyd som en “emergent perception” der udvikles i hjernen over tid, redegør artiklen for en teoretisk ramme til at forstå, hvorledes disse perceptioner kan udledes fra
hjernen, med det formål at designe audio.
På baggrund af forskning i dyrenes etologi og neurovidenskab fremsætter Justin Christensen hypotesen, at den følelsesmæssige effekt (både positiv og negativ) af musik er
kraftigere når lyden høres tæt på. Denne hypotese bekræftes i et forsøg med EEG og
taktile transducere, og der peges på fremtidig forskning til undersøgelse af forskellige
lydsceners effekt på lytteren.
Den manglende stoflighed i digital lyd er omdrejningspunktet i Martin Knakkergaards
artikel om de ændrede vilkår for musikproduktion digitaliseringen af lyd har medført.
Artiklen bygger sin argumentation bl.a. på en heideggersk teknologiforståelse og redegør ad den vej for, hvordan digitaliseringen synes at afvikle den klassiske opdeling
mellem proces og produkt og samtidig udfordrer selve det klingende musikalske artefakts proveniens.
Gæsteredaktionen vil gerne takke forfattere, peer-reviewere og den faste redaktion for
et godt og konstruktivt samarbejde om dette særnummer.
Martin Knakkergaard og Mads Walther-Hansen
Institut for Kommunikation
Afdeling for Musik
Aalborg Universitet
SPECIAL EDITION – SOUND AND MUSIC PRODUCTION · 2015
Preface
Education and research in music and audio production are increasingly scattered
across different institutions and, within the last few years, several new programs have
emerged in Scandinavia that deal with the subject. This growth is at least a result of
changing market conditions, new technologies, and demands for specialized skills in
the music and audio industries. This special issue on music and audio production
focuses on the diversity in the field. The issue seeks to uncover some of the different forms of theoretical thinking, aesthetic visions, and approaches to the practice
that exist in different research domains in audio and music production and how
they interact with the other. The special issue derives from the 2nd Nordic Conference on Music and Audio Production held at the Music Section at Aalborg University,
12-13 May 2015.
The special issue’s seven articles in different ways deal with the development of analytical and practical tools for music and audio production and they have relevance to
both research and teaching in the field. Within this context are presented specific proposals for concept development – as well as “concept dissolution” – that are driven by
new digital audio technologies and new approaches to music production. Also provided are new research paradigms and concrete applications in education contexts, including collective music productions.
The first article, from Toivo Burlin, delineates the contours of what is music and audio
production’s object of study. Burlin argue how musicology, in the broadest sense, can
benefit from a media- and production-centred research paradigm that is based on research developed in the music production domain.
Mads Walther-Hansen’s article analyses and argues, among other things, for how specific artifice, approaches, and techniques in music production help to create and support
the experience of a certain virtual action space that is saturated with signs, locations,
and information that are each attuned to the aesthetic’s potential diegetic implications.
Basing itself on today’s widespread use of live loop techniques, Totte Mattson’s article
describes some of the discoveries and advances that were developed in an artistic research project regarding the use of so-called audiovisual loops involving several performers collectively. The project’s specifically contextualised approaches to loop technique is presented within a historical perspective and the article illustrates how this
technique is as relevant to performance as it is to composition and rehearsal.
Jan-Oluf Gullo outlines, in collaboration with Ivan Höglund, Julia Jonas, Hans Lindtorp, Anton Näslund, and Joakim Persson, the artistic and technological challenges
and achievements of a collective, synchronized music installation that was developed
for the Nobel Museum in Stockholm in 2014. The article bases its argument on crea-
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tivity theory and contemporary notions of process and flow and argues for how a heuristic approach to the collective, creative music work may lead to new expressions and
as well as to new forms of understanding.
Mark Grimshaw’s article argues for a new definition of sound that enables novel ways
to understand, shape, and interact with sound in, for example, sound design and computer games. By regarding the sound as an “emergent perception” that develops in the
brain over time, the article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding how
these perceptions can be “extracted” from the brain with the aim of designing audio.
Based on research in animal ethology and neuroscience, Justin Christensen proposes the hypothesis that the emotional impact of music (both positive and negative) is
stronger when the sound is heard close to the listener. This hypothesis is supported in
a study using EEG and tactile transducers and identifies future research to investigate
the effect of various acoustic artefacts on the listener.
The lack of texture in digital audio is the focal point of Martin Knakkergaard’s article
on the changed conditions of music production that the digitization of sound has resulted in. The article bases its argument, inter alia, on Heideggerian technological understanding and explains, along the way how, digitization seems to dismantle the classic division between process and product while at the same time challenging the actual
sounding music artefact’s provenance.
The guest editors would like to thank the authors, peer reviewers, and the editorial
team for their good and constructive cooperation in this special issue.
Martin Knakkergaard and Mads Walther-Hansen
Department of Communication
Music Section
Aalborg University
TOIVO BURLIN
Experimentell musikproduktionsvetenskap som kulturforskande
musikvetenskap: Ett produktionsperspektiv på musik
Inledning
Föreliggande artikel är en vidareutveckling av några centrala teman i ett föredrag som
hölls vid 2. Nordiske konference om lyd- og musikproduktion i Aalborg 12–13 maj 2015.1
Syftet är att diskutera forskning om musikproduktion inom musikvetenskapen som
disciplin, å ena sidan, och hur en “musikproduktionsvetenskaps” perspektiv, å den andra sidan, kan bidra till att forma ett medieoch produktionscentrerat forskningsparadigm
inom musikvetenskapen.
Artikeln inleds med en historisk översikt på hur produktion av musik har uppfattats och studerats som vetenskapligt objekt: från tidiga diskurser kring fonogram, via
introduktionen av forskning på området inom musikvetenskapliga studier av konstoch populärmusik, till utbildnings- och forskningsdomänen “ljudoch musikproduktion”, tentativt kallat “musikproduktionsvetenskap”, som forskningsdomän. Utifrån
detta presenteras ett förslag på hur det interdisciplinära forskningsfältet, studier av i vid
mening produktion, medialisering och konsumtion av inspelad musik, kan utvecklas
till ett bredare medieparadigm inom musikvetenskapen som disciplin. Det görs genom att, med specifika tyngdpunkter, diskutera hur en musikvetenskaplig teori och
metod/praktik; “produktionsperspektivet” – som, förutom att vara ett bestämt teoretiskt perspektiv, också kan bestå i en experimenterande praktik kring ljudoch musikproduktion där syftet inte primärt är konstnärligt-musikaliskt men vetenskapligt gestaltande – används för att besvara musikvetenskapliga frågeställningar. Detta exemplifieras med en kortare fallstudie. Utgångspunkt för den övergripande diskussionen är ett
metavetenskapligt perspektiv.
1
“2. Nordiske konference om lyd- og musikproduktion” http://www.kommunikation.aau.dk/forskning/vidensgrupper/mask/lmp2015 [access: 2015-09-29]
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Toivo Burlin
Utgångspunkter
Ett av de karakteristiska dragen i det moderna musiksamhället som det ser ut in på
2000-talet, är musiklivets – skapandets, kommunikationens och konsumtionens –
fundamentala grund i teknologi och medier som arkitektur och struktur, en grund
som har blivit symbiotisk under de senaste etthundra åren, men intensifierat under
informationsålderns genombrott, genom allt tätare kopplingar.2 Konstarten och kommunikationsformen musik – om man väljer att betrakta det så – har ingått ett tillsynes permanent äktenskap med medierna och teknologin. Ingen musikform eller genre
står, eller kan stå, utanför denna fundamentala grund: de skillnader i relation till teknologin och medierna som finns mellan genrer och stilar ligger snarast på en kulturell
och musikalisk-stilistisk nivå och har olika historiska och musikestetiska orsaker, men
det är skillnader i grad och inte i art. Teknologi och applikationer för att spela in, bearbeta, sprida och konsumera musik – företrädelsevis i digital form – används nu i
en eller annan tillämpning av snart sagt varje medborgare, i de flesta åldersgrupper:
åtminstone i de nordiska länderna som i detta avseende, både vad gäller utveckling,
produktion, distribution och konsumtion, ligger långt framme globalt sett.3 Inte heller är det så att teknologin och medierna endast direkt angår medialiserad musik: även
levande musik är fullständigt beroende av den. Det gäller också genrer med särskilda
autenticitetsanspråk, som folkmusik och konstmusik.
Inte bara lyssnandet – konsumtionen och receptionen av musik – har blivit mobilt,
utan också produktionen. Mycket musik skapas idag – helt eller delvis – med en mobil
Digital Audio Workstation, ibland i hemmiljö.4 Därtill har inte bara den professionella
ljudoch musikproduktionen tappat mycket av sin en gång mer bestämda geografiska lokalisering.5 Också amatör- och semiprofessionell musikproduktion har påverkats i grunden, genom att avancerade audioteknologiska verktyg och system blivit ekonomiskt och
praktiskt tillgängliga för i stort sett alla som har intresset – något som har inneburit en
oerhörd demokratisering av audioteknologin och medierna. Digitaliseringen av all ljudinformation till likvärdiga och kompatibla format (som WAVE, AIFF) i sinsemellan likaså
2
3
4
5
Manuel Castells, Nätverkssamhällets framväxt. Informationsåldern: Ekonomi, samhälle och kultur band 1
(Göteborg: Daidalos, 1998), Patrik Wikström, The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).
Användandet av persondatorer, “smarta” telefoner/läsplattor är generellt högt i de nordiska länderna. Till dessa teknologier är en rad programvaror och applikationer avsedda för produktion eller
konsumtion av ljud knutna. Många av dessa har utvecklats i Norden. Produktionen av datorspel och
applikationer är t ex. viktiga branscher i Sverige och Finland – i Sverige “en viktig del i samhällsekonomin” och “Sveriges största kulturexport genom tiderna”: “Spelutvecklarindex 2015: Baserad
på årsredovisningar från 2014” (Dataspelsbranschen/Swedish Games Industry), 4-5. Världens 2015
största streamingtjänst för musik, Spotify, är svenskt. Norskägda streamingtjänsten Tidal (amerikanskt
från 2015) och WiMP är en annan viktig aktör. Soundcloud är svenskägt, med säte i Berlin. En mindre känd, men viktig bransch, är internationellt kända svenska hård- och mjukvarusynthesizers, som
Clavia: Nord, Propellerhead: Reason, Figure, Teenage Engineering: OP-1, Elektron.
Även om stora, professionella studior förstås fortfarande har en viktig roll att fylla.
Paul Théberge, “The Network Studio: Historical and Technological Paths to a New Ideal in Music
Making” i Social Studies of Science, Vol. 34, No. 5, Special Issue on Sund Studies: New Technologies
and Music (oct., 2004), 759–781.
Experimentell musikproduktionsvetenskap som kulturforskande musikvetenskap
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kompatibla digitala arbetsstationer, som Logic, Cubase och ProTools, med inbyggda funktioner för snabb spridning i “molnet”, förenklar och förstärker arbetsflödena närmast exponentiellt. Detta har gått hand i hand med en hopkoppling och integrering mellan användare och kreatörer i större musiksociala system, något som är helt i linje med informationssamhällets utveckling i övrigt (t. ex i de så kallade “sociala medierna”, “the cloud”).6
Digital audioteknologi och medier för produktion, mångfaldigande och spridning utgör alltså den fundamentala struktur varmed vilket musik produceras, sprids och konsumeras i västvärlden i början på 2000-talet. Hela detta system utgör en utmaning för
musikvetenskapen att tolka och förstå i specifikt musikvetenskapliga termer: hur påverkas
exempelvis musikalisk gestaltning och form, vad betyder begrepp som framförandepraxis
och musikestetik? Hur kan koncept som “musikhistorien”, “kompositören” och “verket”
omtolkas mot bakgrund av denna nya förståelsehorisont? Forskare inom andra musikdiscipliner, som komposition och musikpedagogik, liksom vetenskapsområden som ekonomi och sociologi, har på olika sätt uppmärksammat områdets vikt, men de insatserna är spridda och inte alltid i kontakt – därtill utgår de i det senare fallet av förklarliga
skäl inte från specifikt musikaliska villkor och problem, som musikvetenskap och andra
musikdiscipliner lättare får syn på. Men många icke musikvetenskapliga perspektiv på det
moderna musiksamhällets sociala, teknologiska och ekonomiska dynamik kan med fördel integreras i musikvetenskapens kärnområde – utifrån en interdisciplinär dialog.
I det följande kommer det argumenteras för det relevanta i att utveckla ett medieoch produktionscentrerat musikvetenskapligt forskningsparadigm, som på allvar utgår från
situationen efter sekelskiftet 2000 (men också de senaste 100 åren). Det kan göras i en
vetenskaplig relation med forskning inom andra discipliner som studerar produktion
av musik och medialisering, konsumtion och reception av inspelad och producerad
musik. Detta kan betraktas som ett interdisciplinärt område och behöver nödvändigtvis inte utvecklas till en separat disciplin. Det interdisciplinära forskningsfältet bör dock
principiellt skiljas från begreppet “ljudoch musikproduktion” som är en beteckning
ad hoc för ett utbildningsområde i första hand.7
En musikvetenskap om musikproduktion, medier och medialisering
Musikvetenskapen har som en traditionsstark humanistisk disciplin ett rikt förgrenat nätverk av teoretiska och musikaliskt-praktiska verktyg till sitt förfogande som –
med vissa modifikationer8 – gör den potentiellt väl disponerad att använda i studier
6
7
8
Patrik Wikström, The Music Industry: Music in the Cloud (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).
Gunnar Ternhag, “Musikproduktion – ett nytt ämne i högre utbildning” i Gunnar Ternhag och Johnny Wingstedt, ed., På tal om musikproduktion: Elva bidrag till ett nytt kunskapsområde (Göteborg: Bo
Ejeby förlag 2012), 79.
Musikvetenskapliga analysverktyg och metoder är ofta utvecklade för att appliceras på noterad musik
(som harmonisk analys, Schenker-analys). Vid lyssning till inspelad musik har man inte en notbild
tillhanda, utan analyser förutsätter en högre grad av strukturellt lyssnande där inte bara harmoniska,
melodiska och rytmiska förlopp bör tas i beaktande, utan också t ex. spatialitet, timbre, produktionsaspekter. Möjligen kan exempelvis en modifierad Schenker-analys (“Schenkerian Analysis”) tillämpas på inspelad musik.
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Toivo Burlin
av inspelad och medialiserad musik, trots att den hittills ägnats rätt lite åt detta. Till
skillnad från andra humanistiska och samhällsvetenskapliga discipliner, har musikvetenskap musiken (i någon form) som sitt primära vetenskapliga objekt och har också verktyg utvecklade för ändamålet, som olika slags musikanalys. Men dessa verktyg
har oftast utvecklats för att användas på en noterad musik i första hand och får en annan ontologisk status när de appliceras på inspelningar.
Musikvetenskapen bör därför omvandlas inifrån: bli en vetenskap som i grunden
– i både teoretisk och metodologisk mening – absorberar och förstår de senaste etthundra årens genomgripande och revolutionerande utveckling av produktion och medialisering av musiken. Nya teorier och metoder är i det perspektivet nödvändiga. Den
historiska och estetiska tradition som musikvetenskapen sprungit ur behöver, utifrån
detta perspektiv, inte enbart vara en intellektuell begränsning utan kan potentiellt bidra med inspiration till ny kunskap och nya perspektiv på musikstilistisk, musikteknologisk och medial utveckling, som kan vara svårare att utveckla i andra discipliner.
Det gäller sådant som den musikanalytiska, stilhistoriska och organologiska kunskapsbasen inom musikvetenskapen, som här är central. Däremot bör den musikvetenskapliga förklaringsmodellen om musikhistorien som nyckel till förståelse av förändringar i
musikalisk stil, form och funktion, i grunden omformuleras, när det gäller musikproduktionens utveckling: musikhistorien som koncept har en deterministisk kärna. Häri
finns en svårighet, eftersom idén om den historiska utvecklingen är en fundamental
humanvetenskaplig tankemodell. Den behöver heller inte upplösas, men kombineras
med mer synkrona perspektiv och också hämta inspiration från helt andra vetenskapsområden. I detta hänseende vill jag öppet förorda ett annat slags musik(forsknings)
perspektiv än de båda sinsemellan oförenliga, men tydligt humanistiska ytterlighetspositioner som, å ena sidan, hävdar att musik främst är kultur i en antropologisk, etnologisk eller Cultural Studies-mening, å andra sidan att musik “endast är musik” och
därför först och främst bör studeras och förstås som sådan, som musikalisk struktur.9
En musikvetenskap som kan ta in perspektiv och kunskapsområden med annat ursprung än den traditionella musikutbildningens, humaniora och samhällsvetenskaperna – som de tekniska vetenskaperna (teknologin är en viktig, i hög grad determinerande, komponent i musikproduktionen) eller naturvetenskaperna (exempelvis akustik
och psykoakustik är viktiga hjälpvetenskaper för att, också i humanvetenskaplig mening förstå, musikens spatiala och temporala aspekter, som kultur och struktur) – med
ett omfattande av det fundamentala musikteknologiska och mediala sammanhanget i
hela dess oerhörda komplexitet, kan utvecklas till ett sådant medieoch produktionscentrerat musikvetenskapligt forskningsparadigm. Detta paradigm bör undvika att
hamna i liknande reduktionistiska tankemönster som delar av det äldre musikvetenskapliga paradigmet odlat: att ersätta tonsättaren med producenten och verket med det
fonografiska verket är möjligen lockande, men inte en fruktbar utveckling om det stannar där. Det nya paradigmets perspektiv på musik bör bli mer komplexa; eftersträva
en annan förståelse av innebörden i begrepp (och fenomen) som musik, produktion,
9
Dessa slags ytterlighetspositioner framkom, bland annat, i debatten om musikvetenskapens framtid
i STM 2005–2008.
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medier. Det räcker inte att utgå från enkla, närmast binära begreppspar som “musik
och medier”, som två separata storheter som ibland ingår i en relation (till exempel:
“musiken på CD-skivan”). Tvärtom måste förståelsen av mediernas betydelse, för musik som konst och kommunikation, inkorporeras inom en mer holistisk förståelse av
begreppet och särskilt fenomenet musik.10 Det finns – utan att här vilja formulera något
anspråk om en enda lösning för musikvetenskapen – ändå goda skäl till att förändra vissa förgivet tagna synsätt: det gäller särskilt den grundläggande musikvetenskapliga värderingen av teknologin och medierna som något principiellt skilt från musiken
(och därmed som “ointressant”). Det gäller också mer allmänt humanistiska synsätt
på teknologin som något som framför allt, och i huvudsak, är laddat med kulturella
betydelser och koder – istället för att också se teknologin som den kraftfulla förlängning av människans instrumentella färdigheter och tankeförmåga som den är – och
som därför i hög grad bestämmer villkoren för vad som kan tänkas och skapas. De
senaste etthundra årens utveckling visar på en mycket nära symbiotisk relation mellan
musik, teknologi och medier, och på teknologins djupgående påverkan på kulturen.
Forskning om musikproduktion: historia och diskurser
Det finns ingen etablerad vetenskaplig disciplin som på ett direkt sätt utforskar produktionen av musik och ljud. Kunskapsområdet är interdisciplinärt till sin karaktär
och inbegriper bland annat musik (flera deldicipliner), ingenjörskonst, elektronik,
teknik och akustik – men även aspekter av organologi (läran om musikinstrumentens konstruktion och akustiska egenskaper), teknikhistoria, medieoch kommunikationsvetenskap liksom estetik i vid mening. Under det senaste decenniet när ljudoch
musikproduktionen blivit datoriserad och digitaliserad, kan man säga att datavetenskap, i tillämpad form, blivit en stöddisciplin. Även andra stöddiscipliner kan förstås
förekomma. På det hela taget finns dock en nära relation till produktionspraxis: hantverket, “den tysta kunskapen”, är mycket viktig, ja helt central, i sammanhanget.
Både i Norden, Storbritannien, Tyskland och USA har kunskap om produktionsmetoder under 1900-talet i hög grad lärts ut just i en praxisbaserad, hantverksorienterad tradition: inlärning och socialisation inom systemet har skett genom att man arbetat med inspelning och bearbetning av musik och ljud inom musikindustrin eller
filmindustrin, radion eller televisionen – på senare år också inom spelproduktionen.11
I begränsad omfattning har det sedan 1950-talet funnits högre utbildningar, ofta vid
radiostationer, där ett fåtal specialister har utbildats: mest känt är tonmeister-utbildningen i Tyskland. I Sverige fanns vid Radiotjänst (Sveriges Radio) från 1948 och efter
förebild från BBC en musikteknisk internutbildning, som fordrade både musikalisk
10
11
En del försök har gjorts inom teoribildningen kring intermedialitet, utan att helt övertyga: framför
allt troligen beroende på en högt utvecklad teoretisk abstraktionsnivå, där teorin tycks sakna verifiering gentemot en empirisk verklighet.
Jan-Olof Gullö, Musikproduktion med föränderliga verktyg. Diss. (Stockholm: Skrifter från Centrum för
musikpedagogisk forskning (MPC) KHM Förlaget, 2010). Toivo Burlin, Det imaginära rummet: Inspelningspraxis och produktion av konstmusikfonogram i Sverige 1925–1983 Diss. (Göteborg: Skrifter från
musikvetenskap, 2008), 243–343.
12
Toivo Burlin
och teknologisk kompetens – men utan systematisk forskning.12 Audio Engineering
Society, (AES), bör nämnas i sammanhanget. Detta sällskap är en av de äldsta vetenskapligt verksamma branschorganisationerna för ljudtekniker och musikproducenter
(grundat i USA 1948) och de publicerar regelbundet både en vetenskaplig journal, The
Journal of the Audio Engineering Society och har återkommande konferenser. Organisationen har också nordiska sektioner. Forskningen som utförs där tillkommer i huvudsak medlemmarna.13
Hur förhåller sig musikvetenskapen till detta kunskaps- och forskningsområde?
Inom de traditionella musikdisciplinerna – som musikvetenskapen – lämnades i ett
historiskt perspektiv produktionen av musik länge utanför; det uppfattades ofta ha
mer med ingenjörsvetenskap än med “de sköna konsterna” att göra. I modern tid kan
man däremot säga att det beror på vad man avser med musikvetenskap. Musikvetenskapens inriktning varierar mellan länder och forskningsinriktningar – med svårighet
låter sig disciplinen enkelt summeras på annat sätt än att den utifrån olika perspektiv
har “musik” som vetenskapligt “objekt”. Fragmentiseringen mellan subdiscipliner och
inriktningar är förhållandevis stor för ett litet ämne. Här är heller inte platsen att redogöra för denna bredd eller de historiska processer som lett fram till den. Men studier
av musikproduktion är idag ändå mer än en tendens inom disciplinen.
Vetenskapshistoriskt sett, så har forskningsfältet “ljudoch musikproduktion” och
“musik och medier” inom musikvetenskap växt fram interdisciplinärt i relation till
musiketnologi, sociologi, studier av populärmusik (“Popular Music”), medieoch
kulturstudier (Cultural Studies) men också direkt inom musikvetenskapen.14 Musikantropologin och -etnologin är de musikvetenskapliga subdiscipliner som först började använda sig av inspelningsteknologi för vetenskapliga ändamål och som därmed
först noterade inspelningens särskilda egenskaper som representationsform, särskilt
egenskapen att både timbre, spel- och sångsätt samt stil kan sparas med hög grad
av exakthet. Musik dokumenterades då ofta i utomeuropeiska kulturer, men även i
Europa och USA, i första hand som en musikalisk praktik, en praxis och som en del i
en större kultur – inte i egenskap av ett fixerat musikaliskt verk.15
Forskningsfältet “ljudoch musikproduktion” har också ursprung i studier av
konstmusikens interpretationspraxis. Redan på 1930-talet utgavs av kommersiella
grammofonbolag stora europeiska och nationella fonogramantologier (främst på
78-varvsskivor i boxar) som syftade till att omfatta och auditivt presentera den västerländska konstmusikens historia: redan i diskursen om dessa inspelningar framträdde ett reflexivt drag kring den musikaliska interpretationens historiska utveckling.16
Under 1900-talets lopp blev det efterhand än mer uppenbart för flera musikhistoriker
12
13
14
15
16
Burlin, Det imaginära rummet.
Audio Engineering Society http://www.aes.org, http://www.aes-sweden.se [access: 2015-08-30]
Läsaren hänvisas till forskningsöversikten i Georgina Born, “Afterword: Recording: From reproduction to representation to remediation” i The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music ed. Nicholas
Cook et. al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009), 286–304, 325.
Bruno Nettl, “Ethnomusicology: Definitions, Directions, and Problems” i Musics of Many Cultures: an
Introduction, ed. Elisabeth May (University of California Press 1980), 1–9.
Burlin, Det imaginära rummet, 74–75, 127–177.
13
att äldre inspelningar med konstmusik konserverade och representerade äldre, historiskt överspelade, interpretationsstilar, exempelvis inom violinspelet. På så sätt blev de
(ofta kommersiellt producerade) musikinspelningarna källor till att förstå sentida förändringar i musikalisk interpretationspraxis. Därmed bidrog de också till insikten att
stilistiska förändringar kan gå snabbt, vilket får konsekvenser för epistemologin kring
äldre musik. Vad kan man egentligen veta om hur det lät, när musik framfördes under
barocken, kunde vara ett sådant problem.
De tidigaste kända musikvetenskapliga undersökningarna av interpretationspraxis
utifrån inspelningar gjordes redan 1932, 1950 och 1960.17 Ett större musikvetenskapligt pionjärarbete som tog fasta på detta perspektiv var den brittiske musikforskaren
Robert Philips Some Changes in Style of Orchestral Playing, 1920–1950.18 Den studien
representerar ett första musikvetenskapligt medieparadigm, där det blev möjligt att
studera inspelningar av musik som ett primärt källmaterial – tidigare ett i det närmaste otänkbart perspektiv.19 Philip följde sedan upp detta arbete med ytterligare ett par
stora studier: Early Recordings and Musical Style och Performing Music in the Age of Recording, där perspektivet vidareutvecklades i olika riktningar.20 Robert Philip har sedan
fått flera efterföljare. Inom särskilt brittisk forskning om konstmusik finns, förutom
Timothy Day och Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, det flera forskare som gjort studier på området.21 Nicholas Cook har i sammanhanget hävdat att inspelningar, särskilt när det
gäller konstmusik, främst är källor till framföranden och därtill relaterad interpretationspraxis, snarare än de är att betrakta som en separat verkkategori. Det är ett problemkomplex som av andra forskare, inspirerade av en diskurs om musikinspelningen
som en separat verkkategori med särskild ontologisk status, teorin om “the Work of
Phonography” och “fonografins tidsålder”, i studier av inspelad konstmusik, fått radikalt annorlunda tolkningar.22
Den amerikanska riktningen “New Musicology”, som först formulerades av Joseph
Kerman på 1980-talet23 utvecklades främst i en vetenskaplig polemik med modernismen,
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, “Recordings and histories of performance style” i The Cambridge Companion
to Recorded Music ed. Nicholas Cook et. al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009), 321.
Robert Philip, Some Changes in Style of Orchestral Playing, 1920–1950, as shown by gramophone recordings. Diss. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
Robert Philip, Performing Music in the Age of Recording (Nev Haven, Conn: Yale University Press,
2004).
Robert Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance 1900–
1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Philip, Performing Music, José A Bowen,
“Finding the music in musicology: Performance history and musical works” in Rethinking music, ed.
Nicholas Cook et. al (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 424–452.
T ex. Martin Elste, Dorotoya Fabian, Michael Musgrave, Bernhard Sherman, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson,
“Recordings and histories of performance style” i The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music ed.
Nicholas Cook et. al. (Cambridge University Press 2009), 246–262. “Timothy Day, A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (Yale: Yale University Press, 2000).
Nicholas Cook, “Methods for analyzing recordings” i The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music
ed. Nicholas Cook et. al. (Cambridge University Press 2009), 221-245. Nordiska studier på området
med detta perspektiv är Tore Simonsen, Det klassiske fonogram. Diss. (Oslo: Norges musikhøgskole
Oslo, 2008), Burlin, Det imaginära rummet.
Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Harvard: Harvard University Press,
1986).
14
Toivo Burlin
med tysk formalism och positivism (som ofta blandades ihop). New Musicology öppnade dörren för att betrakta konstmusiken – det var den som man fortfarande i huvudsak
intresserade sig för – utifrån nya teoretiska perspektiv, exempelvis genom att anknyta till
teorier från litteraturkritik, sociologi, antropologi och genusvetenskap. En viss öppenhet
mot “Popular Music” liksom musiketnologin ingick också. Något större intresse för medier och musikteknologi visade man dock inte. Även om riktningens inflytande utanför
USA möjligen har varit begränsat, har flera av paradigmets ivrigast förfäktade idéer sedan
ändå blivit en del av musikvetenskapens normalvetenskapliga stadium – för att tala med
Thomas Kuhn – på så sätt att det, åtminstone i nordisk musikvetenskap, numera torde
tillhöra de verkliga ovanligheterna att forskare arbetar uteslutande utifrån formalistiska
eller positivistiska utgångspunkter. Att kulturen och samhället på något sätt bör ingå i en
analys av musik är inte kontroversiellt, men däremot motsatsen.24
Inom populärmusikforskningen, som växte fram under 1970- och 80-talen, problematiserades inte heller musikteknologins och mediernas betydelse för den musikaliska
gestaltningen i någon stor omfattning – detta trots att populärmusik i alla former var
fundamentalt och uppenbart beroende av båda dessa storheter. Förutom några viktiga och inflytelserika undantag – Philip Taggs studie över musiken till TV-serien Kojak,
Kojak: 50 Seconds of Television Music: Towards the Analysis of Affect in Popular Music25, där
musikteknologi och medieformer noggrant analyseras och presenteras i genomtänkta (men idag något daterade) modeller är ett exempel – låg fokus i 1970-talets populärmusikforskning inte vid musikteknologin specifikt. Men det växte gradvis fram en
medvetenhet om att såväl teknologi och medier hade haft stor betydelse för populärmusikens framväxt och utveckling. Dock dröjde det för forskarsamhället att uppmärksamma musikinspelningens specifika egenskaper som representation av musik, liksom
att börja rätt uppskatta musikteknologins och mediernas avgörande betydelse för både
musikalisk gestaltning och kommunikation. Från det sena 1970-talet till det tidiga
1990-talet formerades en mer sammanhållen musikvetenskaplig diskurs kring inspelad musik – huvudsakligen i den anglosaxiska världen. I slutet av 1990-talet och kring
sekelskiftet 2000 utkristalliserades diskursen till något av en embryonal subdisciplin
– eller möjligen snarare som en embryonal “subinterdiscipline”, som Georgina Born
kallar det – inte bara relaterad till musikvetenskapen, utan också till andra vetenskapliga discipliner, som antropologi och ett tvärvetenskapligt område som Cultural Studies.26 En betydande interdisciplinaritet finns sålunda med som grundläggande utgångspunkt och också som förutsättning för fältet. Under 2000-talets första år formerades dessa olika vetenskapliga initiativ på mer medvetna sätt.
“The Art of Record Production” (ARP) var ett av dessa initiativ: det är i inskränkt
mening en konferensserie och ett forskarnätverk, som sedan 2005 är relativt stort
inom fältet i de anglosaxiska länderna – särskilt i Storbritannien, där det etablerades,
24
25
26
Alastair Williams, Constructing Musicology (Ashgate, 2001), 2–7.
Philip Tagg, Kojak – 50 seconds of television music: Towards the analysis of affect in popular music (Göteborg: Musikvetenskapliga institutionen, Göteborgs universitet, 1979).
Georgina Born, “Afterword: Recording: From reproduction to representation to remediation” i The
Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music ed. Nicholas Cook et. al. (Cambridge University Press 2009),
286–304.
15
men också i USA och Kanada. Ursprungligen startades det som ett konferenssamarbete mellan Music Tank, ett nätverk för den brittiska musikindustrin, CHARM (The
AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music) och några
brittiska universitet. CHARM – lett av Nicholas Cook – hade parallellt sin egen forskningsverksamhet och ett flertal projekt som i hög grad var inriktade på att tillgängliggöra och undersöka äldre inspelningar som inte längre var upphovsrättskyddade.
Efterhand utkristalliserades konferensserien “The Art of Record Production” som en
separat verksamhet och med en modern produktionsprofil. Organisatörer och affischnamn har Simon Zagorski-Thomas och Simon Frith varit. I en modern, huvudsakligen
brittisk populärmusikvetenskaplig kontext, är CHARM och “The Art of Record Production” också en del av ett distinkt brittiskt musikvetenskapligt forskningsfält med ursprung i studier av “Popular Music”, “Popular Musicology”, delvis i nära samverkan
med brittisk musikindustri – en industri som från sekelskiftets dramatiska förändringar i medielandskapet har varit i behov av en akademisk legitimering.27
Inom forskningsfältet finns det en anglosaxisk slagsida vad gäller dominerande aktörer och fokus på anglosaxisk populärmusik – även om bidrag om exempelvis folkeller konstmusik från andra delar av världen inte saknats helt. Forskningsfältet har utvecklat en mer självständig akademisk status inte minst genom Art of Record Productions årliga internationellt turnerande konferens, som har en vetenskaplig tidskrift online, samt forum.28 Flera antologier, monografier och artiklar har utgivits med anknytning till detta växande fält. Några bör nämnas: CHARM:s The Cambridge Companion to
Recorded Music29, The Art of Record Productions The Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field30 och den metavetenskapliga studien The Musicology of Record Production.31 Även om nätverket har blivit dominerande i den musikproduktionsvetenskapliga diskursen finns det likartade diskurser och nätverk utanför detta,
i exempelvis USA och i de nordiska länderna. Nämnas kan i sammanhanget också antologin Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology32, som delvis liknar antologierna från CHARM och ARP. Men här formuleras också det tentativa disciplinnamnet
“phonomusicology” som syftande på en vetenskaplig disciplin vars huvudsyfte är att
studera inspelad musik, inklusive produktionskontexter och konsumtionsmönster.33
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
“Art of Record Production”, Home http://www.artofrecordproduction.com [access: 2015-08-28],
Toivo Burlin, “Art of Record Production, London 17–18 september 2005” [Konferensrapport], STM
Online vol. 9 (2006), http://musikforskning.se/stmonline/vol_9/burlin/index.php?menu=3 [access:
2015-08-31], Toivo Burlin, “The Art of Record Production” [recension] STM (2014), 1.
“Art of Record Production”, Home http://www.artofrecordproduction.com [access: 2015-08-28], Burlin, “Art of Record Production, Burlin, “The Art of Record Production” [recension] STM (2014), 1.
Ed. Nicholas Cook et. al, The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
ed. Simon Frith och Simon Zagorski-Thomas, The Art of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a
New Academic Field (Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate, 2012)
Simon Zagorski-Thomas, The Musicology of Record Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2014).
Ed. Amanda Bayley, Recorded Music: Performance, Culture and Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 2010).
Bayley, Recorded Music.
16
Toivo Burlin
Från musikvetenskap till musikproduktionsvetenskap – och tillbaka
Efter denna mycket generella översikt på hur forskning kring inspelad musik har utvecklats, ska jag nu gå över till en diskussion om hur jag ser på relationen mellan
musikvetenskaplig forskning om musikteknologi och medier, å ena sidan, och “musikproduktionsvetenskap” – för att därefter skissera hur detta kan utvecklas. Något måste
först sägas om begreppet musikproduktionsvetenskap och mitt val att använda det i denna diskussion – och då kommer jag in på den specifikt svenska situationen på området, som har inspirerat till detta resonemang. I Sverige har musikvetenskapen sedan
det blev ett universitetsämne i Uppsala 1948 varit en liten och i både forsknings- som
utbildningssyn fragmentiserad disciplin: institutionellt oftast avskild till universiteten,
lite vid sidan av övriga professionella musikutbildningar – till musiker, musiklärare,
tonsättare – som funnits och fortfarande finns vid musikhögskolorna. Samtidigt har
det sedan början av 1980-talet vid de regionala högskolorna växt fram kvalificerade
utbildningar i ljudoch musikproduktion, som tillgodosett både reella utbildningsbehov – bland annat har den svenska musik- och spelindustrins internationella framgångar under perioden gett “ringar på vattnet” – som bland annat påtagligt ökat intresset för ljudoch musikproduktionsfrågor och systematisk utbildning till professionell
kompetens på området. Samtidigt har detta, uppenbarligen stora, utbildningsbehov
inte tillgodosetts av musikvetenskapen eller musikhögskolorna. I båda har kompetensområdet hamnat “mellan stolarna”. Men de nya utbildningarna i Ljud- och musikproduktion har haft fokus på att utbilda i de rent instrumentella och teknologiska färdigheterna, att förbereda för en komplex och osäker arbetsmarknad. Forskningsanknytningen har kommit i andra hand. Men ur ett antal forskningsaktiva lärares initiativ
etablerades från början av 2000-talet olika nätverk med strategier för att öka forskningen på området, liksom knyta samman den som redan fanns – från 2002 och framåt i
ett litet antal svenska doktorsavhandlingar med produktions-, medieoch musiktekniska perspektiv, från olika lärosäten och inom skilda discipliner som musikteknik,
musikvetenskap och musikpedagogik. Förutom en hel del artiklar av dessa forskare,
publicerade i olika tidskrifter, bör i sammanhanget den svenskspråkiga antologin På
tal om musikproduktion: Elva bidrag till ett nytt kunskapsområde nämnas – ett av de första gemensamma forskningsinitiativ som togs – med bidrag av svenska, norska och
finländska forskare på området, men verksamma inom flera discipliner.34 Antologins
bidrag står sig väl jämfört med de engelskspråkiga antologierna. I högre grad än dem
diskuterar På tal om musikproduktion på en metanivå också ljudoch musikproduktion
som en akademisk domän (ett vetenskapsområde som delar vissa gemensamma grundläggande begrepp och metoder, men utan att vara en färdig disciplin). Gunnar Ternhag
menar, med vissa reservationer, att namnet “musikproduktionsvetenskap” är ett adekvat namn på denna forskningsdomän, som ännu inte utvecklats till en fullvärdig disciplin (och kanske heller inte kommer göra det). Ternhag menar att man, bland annat
för att påvisa domänens forskningsstatus, hellre bör tala om musikproduktionsvetenskap
34
Ed. Gunnar Ternhag och Johnny Wingstedt, På tal om musikproduktion: Elva bidrag till ett nytt kunskapsområde (Göteborg: Bo Ejeby förlag 2012).
17
än om Ljud- och musikproduktion, som låter som namnet på ett utbildningsämne. Jag
väljer att anknyta till begreppet musikproduktionsvetenskap för att markera att det i
detta sammanhang syftar på just ett interdisciplinärt forskningsfält.35
Det svenska antologiprojektet är nära relaterat till annan nordisk forskning inom
musikvetenskap men också i angränsande musikdiscipliner som musikteknik, komposition och musikpedagogik. Svenska avhandlingar inom området, exempelvis, med
utgångspunkt i olika vetenskapliga traditioner, är Berg 2002 (musikteknik)36, Burlin
2008 (musikvetenskap)37, Wingstedt 2008 (musikpedagogik)38, Gullö 2010 (musikpedagogik)39, Florén 2010 (sociologi)40, Sjölin 2011 (komposition)41, Nilsson 2011
(komposition)42, Andersson 2012 (musikvetenskap).43 Ovanstående svenska doktorsavhandlingar spänner från musiktekniska undersökningar, med exempelvis lyssningstester som metod, via studier av produktionspraxis i ett musikhistoriskt perspektiv,
från ämnesdidaktiska studier till konstnärligt-musikaliska undersökningar. Här finns
också studier som undersöker musikindustrins utveckling – ett forskningsområde som
också har växt i Sverige.44 Några doktorsavhandlingar inom musikvetenskap i Oslo har
också ett explicit produktionsperspektiv, men utifrån en musikvetenskaplig teoribildning.45 Även i Danmark har det producerats forskning om musik som har ett implicit eller explicit musikproduktionsperspektiv.46 Den forskning som totalt produceras
inom domänen “musikproduktionsvetenskap” – och dit hör även viss forskning om
ljud och musik i spel, liksom musikindustrin – finns alltså idag inom ett flertal discipliner. Ibland är forskarna möjligen inte medvetna om tämligen likartad forskning
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Gunnar Ternhag, “Musikproduktion – ett nytt ämne i högre utbildning” i Gunnar Ternhag och Johnny Wingstedt, ed., På tal om musikproduktion: Elva bidrag till ett nytt kunskapsområde, (Göteborg: Bo
Ejeby förlag 2012), 75–89.
Jan Berg, Systematic evaluation of perceived spatial quality in surround sound systems. Diss. (Luleå: Luleå
University of Technology, 2002).
Toivo Burlin, Det imaginära rummet: Inspelningspraxis och produktion av konstmusikfonogram i Sverige
1925–1983. Diss. (Göteborg: Skrifter från musikvetenskap, 2008).
Johnny Wingstedt, Making music mean: on functions of and knowledge about narrative music in multimedia. Diss. (Piteå: Department of music and media, Luleå University of Technology, 2008).
Jan-Olof Gullö, Musikproduktion med föränderliga verktyg Diss. (Stockholm: Skrifter från Centrum för
musikpedagogisk forskning (MPC) KHM Förlaget, 2010).
Thomas Florén, Talangfabriken: om organisation av kunskap och kreativitet i skivindustrin. Diss. (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm studies in sociology, 2010).
Anders Sjölin, Plastic modes of listening: affordance in constructed sound Environments. Diss. (London:
School of Media, Arts and Design University of Westminster, 2011).
Per-Anders Nilsson, A field of possibilities: designing and playing digital musical instruments. Diss. (Göteborg: ArtMonitor, 2011).
Anders-Petter Andersson, Interaktiv musikkomposition. Diss. (Göteborg: Skrifter från musikvetenskap,
Göteborgs universitet, 2012).
Nätverket Mirac: (Music Focused Interdisciplinary Reserach & Analysis Center) www.mirac.se [access:
2015-10-24].
Tore Simonsen, Det klassiske fonogram. Diss. (Oslo: Norges musikhøgskole Oslo, 2008), Hans T.
Zeiner-Henriksen, The “PoumTchak” Pattern: Correspondences Between Rhythm, Sound, and Movement in
Electronic Dance Music. Diss. (Department of Musicology Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo,
2010).
Martin Knakkergaard, Mads Walther-Hansen, Steven Gelineck, Morten Michelsen och Ulrik Schmidt
bör nämnas i sammanhanget. Se även Mads Walther-Hansen, Sound Events, Spatiality and Diegesis –
The Creation of Sonic Narratives in Music Productions. Sida 29-46 i detta specialnummer.
18
Toivo Burlin
inom andra discipliner, något som avhjälps genom etablerandet av forskarnätverk och
konferenser. Forskningsfältet är alltså interdisciplinärt och inbegriper bland annat tekniska, konstnärliga, pedagogiska och historiska perspektiv.
Metodologiskt så kan musikvetenskaplig forskning berikas från de andra disciplinerna, med såväl nya teoretiska perspektiv som de praktisk-instrumentella tillvägagångssätt som finns inom området. Ljud- och musikproduktioner av olika slag kan
användas som en metod och ett material för att besvara humanistiska (musikvetenskapliga) frågeställningar. Inom musikvetenskaplig metodik har detta en direkt anknytning till musiketnologins dokumentära metoder. Inom musikproduktion i praktiken (och inom aspekter av “musikproduktionsvetenskap”) kan man förvisso producera dokumentära inspelningar, men ett konstnärligt och tekniskt avancerat gestaltande
av musik är också en metod, och oftast ett mål. I det vidare forskningsfältet är – till
skillnad från i musikvetenskapen – relationen till moderna musikproduktionsverktyg
central. För att nå förståelse på djupet av ett musikproduktionsvetenskapligt problem
kan man där knyta ihop en vetenskaplig metadiskussion om produktionens villkor,
med att göra en produktion i praktiken, där olika teknologiska problem – som mixning och akustik – kan testas i olika programvaror. Forskaren kan få större insikt om
man alternerar mellan att arbeta med produktionen och utveckla den teoretiska reflektionen om produktionen. Detta leder till nödvändigheten av experimentella och
reflexiva förhållningssätt. Frågor om exempelvis historiska och teknologiska villkor för
musikproduktion kan i många fall prövas experimentellt med produktionsverktygen.
Forskningsområdet “musik och teknologi” eller “musik och medier” utgör annars fortfarande en liten specialitet inom nordisk musikvetenskap. Såväl i Danmark,
Sverige, Finland och Norge, är ansatserna till forskningsprojekt och teoriutveckling
inom det här berörda området få (det gäller för övrigt också i exempelvis Tyskland
och Frankrike). Med tanke på att den musikteknologiska och musikmediala utvecklingen i Norden nära följt övriga västvärlden, är det ett faktum att området inte har
ägnats större uppmärksamhet än vad det gjorts. Det har skapat ett kunskapsunderskott
och ett i vissa avseenden skevt musikvetenskapligt paradigm, som kommer till uttryck
i tendenser mot betoning av musikvetenskap som ett i teoretisk mening väsentligen
historiskt och i metodologiskt hänseende närmast filologiskt ämne; musikvetenskaplig
forskning befattar sig inte så mycket med medialiserad musik. Här finns det skäl till en
bredare omprövning av musikvetenskapens humanistiska status. De senaste etthundra
årens utveckling på musikens område är så fundamentalt omvälvande i ett mänskligt
och evolutionärt perspektiv, att musik före 1877 bör studeras med en särskild medvetenhet om den nutida förståelsehorisontens gränser.
I exempelvis Sverige har musikvetenskaplig forskning som helhet under 2000-talet
fortfarande haft viss slagsida mot konstmusik och också mot vad som måste kallas
för en tonsättarcentrerad forskning.47 I den polariserade svenska debatten om musik47
Ursula Geisler et al., “Svensk musikforskning idag: En självkritisk bild av vår vetenskap” STM vol. 91,
(2009), 77-132. Ett tidigt försök att vidga den – till synes närmast hermetiskt slutna – disciplinen
mot andra områden, var Henrik Karlssons artikel: Henrik Karlsson, “Ljudvärldar: Nya forskningsfält
för musikforskare”, STM vol. 82, (2000), 21–40.
19
vetenskapens framtid som fördes från 2005 och framåt (huvudsakligen i Svensk Tidskrift
för Musikforskning, STM, 2005–2008, även i Danish Yearbook of Musicology) framkom synpunkter och ställningstaganden som nu, med några års distans, framträder skarpare. Det
var av forskare inom den riktning där samhälls- och kulturaspekter tillmäts plats i musikaliska analyser, som medier och musikteknologi omnämndes som viktiga faktorer att
undersöka i relation till musik.48 Debattens två avdelningar initierades av Lars Lilliestam
2005 respektive av Tobias Pontara 2008. I den första diskuterades (den svenska) musikvetenskapens inriktning och framtid. Debatten synliggjorde viktiga ideologiska och
vetenskapsteoretiska skiljelinjer. I den andra fördes en metadiskussion kring hur man
förstår olika musikvetenskapliga diskurser. I detta sammanhang är den första intressantast, men jag vill även kort anknyta till den andra. I den första var det särskilt Alf Arvidsson som pekade på att musikvetenskapen behöver göra sin huvudsakliga vetenskapliga
omprövning mot bakgrund av det sociala och kulturella sammanhang som all musik i
vår tid befinner sig i: det senmoderna massmediesamhället.49 I den andra formulerade
Tobias Pontara en diskussion om musikvetenskapliga språkspel och diskurser.50 I Pontaras kritiskt diskursanalytiska perspektiv analyserades bland annat idén om en motsättning mellan det musikaliska “verket” i sig, kontra musiken i världen – en diskussion
med ursprung i New Musicology 51 och en kontradiktion som snarare bottnar i ett spel
med språket än något som självklart kan hittas i en skapande musikalisk praktik.
I produktionsprocessen, när man arbetar med produktion av musik i någon form
av musikstudio, eller i receptionsprocessen av musik, när en lyssnare senare tar del
av inspelningen, förbinds naturligt “världen” och “verket”. I produktionen av en inspelning tas det beslut av en mängd olika slag – musikaliska, tekniska, kommersiella
– som har en direkt relation till “världen”, är världen, utanför det “verk” som är i vardande. I musikvetenskapliga studier av musikaliskt skapande – som det tar sig uttryck
inom modern ljudoch musikproduktion – kan man alltså komma förbi sådana vetenskapsteoretiska dikotomier och samtidigt ställa mer relevanta och verklighetsnära
frågor om hur musik skapas och tolkas. När processen, snarare än det färdiga verket som
en sluten entitet står i forskarens fokus, förbinds på ett självklart sätt det musikaliska,
sociala, kulturella, historiska och teknologiska sammanhanget med det som blir “verket”. “Verket” kan i sammanhanget möjligen översättas med det fonografiska verket, den
verkkategori som ur ett perspektiv är relevantast att använda för alla musikinspelningar
de senaste etthundra åren och därmed för huvuddelen av den musik som har skapats
under perioden.52 Detta förhållningssätt, att fokusera på processen snarare än enbart
produkten, anknyter också till Alan P. Merriams definition av musik, som ett socialt
48
49
50
51
52
STM Online 2005–2008. Debattörer var Lars Lilliestam, 2005, Alf Arvidsson, 2005, Dan Olsson,
2005, Holger Larsen, 2005, Mattias Lundberg, 2006, Tobias Pettersson, 2007, Lars Lilliestam, 2007,
Tobias Pontara, 2008, Lars Berglund, 2008, Lars Lilliestam, 2008, Mattias Lundberg, 2008, Eyolf Østrem, 2008, Tobias Pontara, 2008.
Alf Arvidsson, “Svar på: Vad gör vi med musikvetenskapen?” STM Online, vol. 8, (2005).
Lars Berglund och Eyolf Østrem, “Music and the Wor(l)d – Musicology and Mankind. How We Got
Out of Analysis, and How to Get Back In”, STM, vol. 83, (2001), 13–26.
Berglund och Østrem, 13–26. Berglunds och Østrems artikel anknyter tydligt till New Musicology.
Burlin, Det imaginära rummet, 79–125.
20
Toivo Burlin
inlärt och konceptualiserat fenomen.53 Detta etnologiskt och antropologiskt influerade
perspektiv – musik som en socialt och kulturellt bestämd praktik i första hand – leder
vidare till “produktionsperspektivet” som jag utvecklar nedan.
Debatten i STM avslutades 2008 men har fått en sentida – mer konstruktiv – fortsättning i en artikel om musik och intermedialitet, signerad Mats Arvidson. Även Arvidson tar viss utgångspunkt i STM-debatten. Eftersom den representerar ett nytt perspektiv
inom musikvetenskapen som samtidigt är relaterat till det område som här diskuteras,
vill jag kort kommentera några av dess teser.54 I korthet presenteras de nya perspektiv
som Intermediala studier, med ursprung i litteraturvetenskap och Cultural Studies, erbjuder musikvetenskapen. Ursprungligen kallades forskningsfältet “Interarts Studies”
och tonvikten låg då vid att undersöka relationerna mellan konstarter inom en konstart.
Fältet har under 2000-talet orienterats mot beteckningen “Intermedial Studies”, med ett
större fokus vid “medier” (definierade på olika sätt) och medierelationer. 55 Syftet i Arvidsons text är att överskrida skillnaden mellan en verkcentrerad musikvetenskap och
etnologiskt och sociologiskt inspirerad musikforskning, samt formulera ett förslag till
hur en ny humanvetenskaplig disciplin som tar vår tids avancerade mediekultur på allvar skulle kunna se ut. Fältet “Intermedial Studies” erbjuder många relevanta perspektiv
och utmaningar för en musikproduktionsvetenskap i vardande. Perspektiven utgår väsentligen från analyser av färdiga verk, inte produktionsprocesserna bakom.
Ett implicit problem i det intermediala teorikomplexet, för den forskare som vill
studera produktionen av musik med utgångspunkt i intermediala perspektiv, är ursprunget i en litteraturvetenskaplig teoribildning – med fokus på texter – som inte är
omedelbart tillämpbar på inspelat ljud och musik. Den intermediala mediediskursen
ger än så länge bitvis fler frågor än svar.56 Det har exempelvis, vilket Arvidson refererar, av litteraturvetaren Lars Elleström gjorts lovvärda försök att utvidga mediebegreppet bortom deterministiska tekniska definitioner, men det ger en modell som är oklar
när det gäller den taxonomiska skillnaden mellan “konstarter” och “medier” (vilket
också har en motsvarighet i omdefinitionen från “Interarts” till “Intermedial”). Konstarter och medier är i Elleströms modell, enligt Arvidson, inte synonyma begrepp. Men
konstarter, som musik och litteratur, är specifika former av medier; “kvalificerade medier”.57 Inte desto mindre så ligger i det intermediala perspektivets grundläggande problemformulering att konstarterna och deras yttringar (som musikaliska eller fonografiska “verk”) aldrig är solitära utan alltid ingår i komplexa relationer med andra konstarter och medier. Separata konstarter, enligt 1800-talets estetiska modeller, existerar
alltså enligt intermedial teori inte – inte heller existerar diskreta medier. Arvidson,
som i hög grad hänvisar till amerikanska forskare inom New Musicology, menar att
53
54
55
56
57
Alan P. Merriam, The Anthropology of Music (Northwestern University Press, 1964).
Mats Arvidson, “Music and Musicology in the Light of Intermediality and Intermedial Studies”, STM
Online vol. 15 (2012).
Jfr Jens Arvidsons analys av fonogramkonvolut (“Record Sleeves”): Jens Arvidsson, “The Record
Sleeve and its Intermedial Status” i Changing Borders: Contemporary Positions in Intermediality (Lund:
Intermedia Studies Press, 2007), 55–83.
Mats Arvidson, “Music and Musicology.”
Arvidson, “Music and Musicology.”
21
flera av dem i själva verket arbetat inom ett intermedialt fält – utan att själva beteckna
det så. Han menar vidare att Intermedial Studies – om det utvecklas interdisciplinärt
och inte multidisciplinärt, som han menar att musikvetenskapen idag har utvecklats
– kan bli “the future foundational discipline of the humanities”. Graden av utveckling
av det interdisciplinära är nyckel till om ett fält (eller domän med mina ord) kan utvecklas till en ny disciplin eller inte.58
I detta sammanhang behöver det kort skisseras hur begreppet “medier” definieras
och förstås här, i denna text. Det finns många modeller och perspektiv för att definiera
och förstå mediebegreppet – som alla har sina specifika för- och nackdelar. I just detta
sammanhang är det viktigaste att jag inte diskuterar alla medier, utan endast de som
betraktas som “ljudmedier”; i det ansluter jag till Jonathan Sternes pragmatiska definition av medier som “sociala teknologier”: ett medium är helt enkelt en eller flera teknologier, som genom sociala praktiker kommer att fungera och uppfattas som ett medium.59 Man kan exempelvis tänka på radion, fonogrammet eller interaktiva programvaror på Internet som Spotify – teknologier som fått tydligt definierade sociala praktiker knutna till sig. Min medieuppfattning är också påverkad av Friedrich Kittlers syn på
teknologier och medier som ytterst strukturerande för verklighetsuppfattningen – även
om detta perspektiv, som kan uppfattas som deterministiskt, kan behöva nyanseras.
Men humanistisk forskning om musik och medier lider knappast av för mycket
teknisk determinism – utan snarare av en brist på insikt om de teknologiska produktionsvillkorens betydelse för kulturen. De teknologier som använts och används i den
musikaliska produktionsprocessen har i hög grad påverkat musikens gestaltning i produktionen; tydligt i exempel som den snabba framväxten av crooning kort efter den
elektriska inspelningsteknikens genombrott 1925, den nära relationen mellan genrer
som hard bop och progressive rock och LP-skivans duration, relationen mellan mixningskonventioner och bandspelarens antal kanaler, eller relationen mellan 2000-talets diversifierade semi- och professionella musikproduktion och den interaktiva, kompletta
studioarkitektur som erbjuds i Cubase, Nuendo, ProTools eller Logic – å andra sidan
så påverkar också användaren av mediet hur det används och därmed utvecklas. Men
teknologier och medier inverkar, enligt Kittler, i hög grad styrande på hur konstarter
och deras produkter gestaltas – snarare än tvärtom.60
Jag har i det föregående rört mig mellan musikvetenskapen som disciplin och musikproduktionsvetenskapen som domän, med syftet att både beskriva forskningsfältets
plats inom musikvetenskapen, hur framväxten av musikproduktionsvetenskapen gått
till, liksom redogjort för dess nuvarande akademiska position i förhållande till musikvetenskapen. I detta är det dock inte de akademiska positioneringarna som är viktiga
eller intressanta i sig, utan den nya kunskap som kan skapas när musikvetenskapen
– som en etablerad humanistisk disciplin – möter en domän med ljudoch musik58
59
60
Arvidson, “Music and Musicology.”
Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (London: Duke University
Press, 2003).
Friedrich Kittler, Maskinskrifter: Essäer om medier och litteratur. Mediehistoriskt bibliotek 1 (Gråbo:
Anthropos, 2003).
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Toivo Burlin
produktion som fokus, men med de disciplinära rötterna i, förutom produktionspraxis, musikteknik, elektronik, akustik, pedagogik, sociologi och komposition – för
att nämna några av de områden som förekommer som disciplinära utgångspunkter.
Domänen musikproduktionsvetenskap utforskar alltså – men ofta med teoretiskt
brokig grund – ett område av fundamental vikt i de senaste etthundra årens musikliv.
Därför kan det också bli en central del av musikvetenskapens moderna kunskapsbildning. Musikvetenskapen behöver vidareutveckla ett forskningsparadigm som tar frågor om produktion, medialisering och reception av inspelad musik på allvar. Det kan,
så ser argumentationen ut, ske i en samverkan med musikproduktionsvetenskapen,
men också med andra discipliner, domäner och teoretiska perspektiv. I detta argumenterar jag alltså på ett annat sätt än Mats Arvidson, i hans diskussion om relationen
mellan musikvetenskap och Intermedial Studies: jag menar istället att det är bättre
för musikvetenskapen om den dynamiskt utvecklas inifrån – och i dialog med andra
discipliner och domäner – än att väsentliga kunskapsområden lämnas utanför för att
istället hänvisas till discipliner i vardande. Musikvetenskaplig forskning ska inte retirera till redan väl upptrampade kunskapsstigar, utan istället erövra nya områden för
kunskap om musik.
Produktionsperspektivet
Det interdisciplinära forskningsfältet som här avses, studier av i vid mening produktion,
medialisering och konsumtion av inspelad musik, kan utvecklas till ett bredare, medieoch produktionscentrerat, musikvetenskapligt forskningsparadigm. Jag har antytt några olika linjer som detta kan göras efter, men jag ska i det följande sammanfatta dem.
Mot bakgrund av det föregående sagda skall jag utveckla en diskussion om hur metoder från musikproduktion kan implementeras och användas i en musikvetenskaplig
praktik, och på så sätt bidra till en utveckling av båda fälten. Inte bara musikvetenskapen behöver en nyorientering utan det bör idealt samverka med en mer genomgripande utveckling av musikproduktion som verksamhet, från en löst sammanhållen domän till ett mer sammanhållet vetenskapsområde – en musikproduktionsvetenskap. Det
är inte ett mål att etablera en ny disciplin, utan domänen, som den skisserats, kommer
utvecklas i en eller annan riktning ändå. Det vore dock önskvärt, enligt detta sätt att
se, om aspekter av det musikproduktionsvetenskapliga perspektivet bidrog till att utveckla ett medieoch produktionscentrerat musikvetenskapligt forskningsparadigm – vilket,
det ska omedelbart sägas, jag inte tror kommer utvecklas till något slutgiltigt system
för att förstå musik, som konstart och kommunikationsform, utan snarare, i bästa fall,
blir ett öppet och produktivt paradigm med potential att formulera relevanta frågeställningar om de senaste etthundra årens musik. Därtill med ett nytt metodologiskt
perspektiv – “produktionsperspektivet”. Vad avses då med detta?
Betydelsen av musikteknologisk kunskap och praxis, i arbetet i studion, för den
musikaliska gestaltningens slutliga form, är något som har påvisats i flera studier.
Även om det förstås ligger nära till hands för musikforskaren att först upptäcka det
musikaliska objektet – musikinspelningen, det fonografiska verket eller fonogrammet
23
som ett taktilt musikaliskt, kanske ett multi- eller intermedialt estetiskt objekt – så står
möjligen, i första hand, den inspelade musikens “heliga graal” att finna i själva produktionsprocessen: i det komplexa nätverket av musikaliska, personella och teknologiska relationer när något blir till musik, blir fångat, bevarat och kommunicerat på ett
medium. Att till fullo studera och försöka förstå de intrikata och komplexa aspekterna
av både musikaliskt, teknologiskt och kulturellt slag i produktionsprocessen – av vilken slags musik eller ljud som helst – är en musikvetenskaplig utmaning, men också
något som öppnar upp för en potentiellt ny förståelse av hur musik skapats och skapas i de 19:e och 20:e århundradena, och kanske tidigare än så.
“Produktionsperspektivet” har utvecklats ut ur produktionspraxis, musikpedagogisk verksamhet och musikproduktionsvetenskaplig forskning. Det är här avsett att vara
en del i ett medieoch produktionscentrerat musikvetenskapligt forskningsparadigm –
som är tillämpbart för inspelad musik, men också för musik som inte har denna representationsform. I en schematisk och tentativ form kan det ställas upp i ett antal punkter:
Definition av “produktionsperspektivet”
– Musikskapandet – i form av musikproduktion av något slag – är en mänsklig, social
och teknologisk verksamhet.
– I produktionen är gränsen mellan “musik” och “ljud” flytande (såväl i produktionspraxis och i filosofisk mening).
– I produktionen är gränsen mellan “externa” kulturella och teknologiska processer
och det musikaliska “verket” i vardande, flytande.
– Att se teknologins – produktionens – mediernas betydelse för all musik – även där den
inte är avsedd att märkas.
– Genre- och kulturöverskridande: perspektivet berör alla genrer, stilar och musikkulturer.
Musikvetenskaplig perspektivvändning
– Definition: Produktionsperspektivet utgår från människans interaktion med andra
människor, naturen, samhället/kulturen, teknologin, medierna (“livsvärlden”) för att
skapa, kommunicera och sprida musik.
– Definition: Musik/ljud och musik/teknologi hör alltid nära samman. Teknologierna
(till exempel musikinstrument, musikstudion) växlar – men de är grundläggande
för musikens existens. Teknologierna är en förutsättning för skapandet men är inte
enkelt determinerande.
– Definition: skapande av (inspelad) musik är samtidigt en process och en skapad/producerad produkt, samtidigt ett historiskt (diakront) fenomen och ett synkront fenomen, något med både kultur, samhälle och teknologisk utvecklingsnivå förbundet.
– Perspektivet flyttas: från noterade “verk” till musikskapande processer och (i kulturell mening “instabila”) auditiva produkter (något annat än “verk”).
– Perspektivet flyttas: all musik inkluderas – oavsett genre, kultur, produktionsmetod,
teknologisk nivå.
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Toivo Burlin
– Perspektivet flyttas: Produktionsperspektivet inkluderar och överskrider potentiellt
etablerade musikvetenskapliga subdiscipliner och traditioner.
– Perspektivet flyttas: Experimentell metodologi med ursprung i musikproduktionens praktik. Produktion av auditiva eller musikaliska artefakter kan användas som
en metod för att simulera olika produktionsformer eller musikaliska/auditiva miljöer (med vetenskapliga eller musikaliskt-konstnärliga syften).
Tre forskningsfält som ligger nära produktionsperspektivet, utan att sammanfalla med
detta, kan nämnas här, utan att jag gör anspråk på att beskriva dem komplett eller uttömmande: “Sensory history”, “Sound Studies”61 och nämnda “Intermedial Studies”.
Det första området – som kanske kan översättas med sinnesförnimmelsernas historia –
har producerat ett flertal intressanta perspektiv med ljudet som fokus under 2000-talets
andra decennium, exempelvis David Hendy’s Noise: A Human History of Sound and
Listening 62, Hillel Schwartz’s Making Noise: From Babel to Big Bang and Beyond 63 och
Veit Erlmanns Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality.64 I denna litteratur
ligger tonvikten endast ibland vid att hitta nya perspektiv på ljudet som både akustiskt och kulturellt fenomen, liksom människans auditiva relation till världen, samt
kontextualisera och problematisera begrepp som “musik”, “ljud” och “oljud”. Forskningsområdet “Sound Studies” ligger nära “Sensory history”, men har huvudfokus på
ljudens kulturhistoria i vid mening. Det är en i forskning omfattande tvärvetenskaplig
disciplin, som ligger nära både delar av musikvetenskapen liksom musikproduktionsvetenskapen liksom flera andra discipliner, med forskare som Karin Bijsterveld, Michel
Chion, Jonathan Sterne, Richard Leppert, R. Murray Shafer, Gilles Deleuze & Felix
Guattari, Jaqcues Attali, Mark Katz, Paul Théberge och Lisa Gitelman – för att nämna
några namn. Delar av Sound Studies vetter mer åt “Science and Technology Studies”.65
“Produktionsperspektivet” kan sägas vara ett bestämt musikvetenskapligt teoretiskt perspektiv – och en metod. Enligt detta – här tentativt formulerade – perspektiv,
studeras och betraktas inspelad musik (ytterst även icke inspelad musik) som samtidigt en process och en skapad/producerad produkt, som samtidigt är ett historiskt (diakront) fenomen och ett synkront, med både kulturen, samhället och den teknologiska
utvecklingsnivån djupt förbundet fenomen. Fokus är flyttat från noterade “verk” till
musikskapande processer och (i kulturell mening “instabila”) auditiva produkter. Perspektivet inkluderar all slags musik – oavsett genre, kultur och produktionsmetod och
teknologisk nivå. Produktionsperspektivet inkluderar och överskrider – potentiellt –
de etablerade musikvetenskapliga forskningstraditionerna, som exempelvis musikhistoria, musiketnologi och populärmusikforskning. Det upphäver också den principiella gränsen mellan studier av professionell respektive amatörproducerad musik.
61
62
63
64
65
Trevor Pinch & Karin Bijsterveld, The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (Oxford: Oxford Handbooks
in Music, 2004).
David Hendy, Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening (BBC: Profile Books, 2013).
Hillel Schwartz, Making Noise: From Babel to Big Bang and Beyond (Cambridge: MIT Press/Zone
Books, 2011).
Veit Erlmann, Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality (New York: Zone Books, 2010).
Pinch & Bijsterveld, The Oxford Handbook.
25
Ytterst upphävs också föreställda skillnader mellan en modern musikproduktionsteknologi och förindustriella musikteknologier, eftersom “teknologi” och “medium” inte
per definition är knutna till någon särskild epok.
Produktionsperspektivet befinner sig alltså som tentativt musikvetenskapligt perspektiv nära de perspektiv som utvecklats inom Musicology of Record Production,
Sensory Studies, som studerar ljudet som ett akustiskt och kulturellt fenomen och människans auditiva relation till världen och som kontextualiserar och problematiserar begrepp som “musik”, “ljud” och “oljud”; Sound studies (“Science and Technology Studies”) samt Intermedial Studies. Samtliga dessa vetenskapliga perspektiv kan, på olika
sätt, helt eller delvis inkluderas i eller relateras till produktionsperspektivet. Perspektivets gränser och relationer till de övriga områdena kan dock endast prövas i praktiken.
Liten fallstudie: producerad simulering av en folktrons auditiva miljö
Jag ska i det följande skissera en fallstudie, ett verkligt projekt66, som befinner sig mellan musikvetenskap/musiketnologi och musikproduktionsvetenskap – och diskutera
hur det kan omsättas med produktionsperspektivet. I den meningen är det ett “experimentellt” projekt och mitt exempel, min fallstudie eller “case”, i denna artikel. Ett musiketnologiskt problem omsätts här alltså i ljudoch musikproduktioner, som sedan används som ett särskilt slags källmaterial. Bakgrunden till projektet skisseras här mycket
översiktligt; tyngdpunkten ligger i hur produktionsperspektivet kan appliceras och därmed öppna för en diskussion om hur metoder från musikproduktionsvetenskap kan
prövas inom musikvetenskapen och därmed bidra till att utveckla ett medieparadigm.
I det äldre nordsvenska bondesamhället, som gradvis försvann från 1950-talet
och framåt, fanns en utbredd föreställning i folktron om ett naturväsen – vitra – som
bland många andra egenskaper sades ha en mycket vacker musik. Det finns ett antal
bevarade uppteckningar av vitras musik, som den uppfattades, och ett stort antal upptecknade beskrivningar av vitras ljudoch musikmiljöer, liksom ett mycket stort antal
inspelningar med memorat, inklusive musik, gjorda från 1940-talet och framåt.67
Tron på vitra var utbredd i norra Norrland och koncentrerad till dess centrala delar.
Generellt handlar föreställningarna om vitra om ett underjordiskt folk, som är mycket
lika människorna både i utseenden, beteenden och i levnadsvillkor, som lever parallellt med människorna i en delvis osynlig värld, i skogen, under jorden, sjöarna och
i bergen. De är människolika och har en interaktion med människorna, men är ändå
uppfattade som osynliga eller andliga väsen; dock uppfattas de som levande i den meningen att de föds, åldras och dör. De lever också i familjer. Vitra – särskilt kvinnorna
– beskrivs oftast som extraordinärt vackra varelser med mycket stora blå ögon. De kan
vara extremt långa, eller mycket småväxta, men oftast påminner de påtagligt om människor även i storleken.
66
67
Pågående projekt av Toivo Burlin (projektledare). Preliminär projekttitel: “Saivos sång”. Projektet utgår från ett folkloristiskt material och tillämpar etnologiska, musikvetenskapliga och “musikproduktionsvetenskapliga” metoder. Projektet presenterades vid Linnéuniversitet, Växjö, 28 maj 2015.
Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet i Uppsala (DFU).
26
Toivo Burlin
I ett stort antal memorat skymtar föreställningar om vitras musik fram. Beskrivningarna av musiken har det gemensamt att den beskrivs som särskilt vacker och annorlunda, som i vitterkornas koskällor som är stämda i olika toner; “så[da]na obegripliga skäller”, som en informant formulerar det. Det finns ett antal vallåtar, spelmanslåtar och jojkar som har hävdats komma från vitra och som nedtecknats som sådana:
som en låt “efter” vitra. Det finns beskrivningar av karaktären hos denna musik – med
beståndsdelar som kromatik eller annorlunda klanger. Utöver de memorat som beskriver vitras musik, finns det också många källor som vittnar om andra auditiva fenomen som röster och koskällor, som inte direkt kunde knytas till mänskliga ljudmiljöer
och som därför associerades med vitra.68 Vitras exceptionella musikalitet understryks i
flera memorat. Musiken sade man sig ha hört i naturen, och till det är ett nära relaterat, svårgripbart kulturgeografiskt problem kopplat: föreställningen om vitervägarna eller viterstigarna, de färdvägar som vitra sades använda sig av. Det reser frågan vad detta
auditiva fenomen i ett förmodernt samhälle, i brytpunkten till det moderna – som
alltså också har en spatial, rumslig dimension – hade för kulturell betydelse.69 Detta
ska dock inte besvaras här, utan låt mig raskt gå över till diskussionen om metodologi
och teoretiskt perspektiv.
Det bedöms vara en praktiskt genomförbar uppgift att utveckla ett antal studioinspelningar, gjorda i stereo och surround (exempelvis i 5.1) och i dem gestalta auditiva och musikaliska simuleringar av den auditiva och musikaliska informationen i memoraten om vitra. Beskrivningarna i memoraten är ofta så pass detaljerade vad gäller
beskrivningar av vilka ljud man hört och i vilken riktning de har kommit – till och med
enstaka kompletta melodier har upptecknats – att det med audioteknologi och lite fantasi är genomförbart att simulera detta. Eftersom det handlar om ljudvärldar som åtminstone delvis får antas vara av psykologiskt slag, snarare än ett “verkligt”, innebär det
just simuleringar utifrån memoraten. De är fiktiva på så sätt att de inte återger en auditiv miljö som kan förutsättas vara verklig i en absolut mening, men däremot en som
uppfattats varande som verklig i den kulturmiljö där den hörde hemma. Metoden, som
alltså är en del av produktionsperspektivet, kan närmast jämföras med en experimentell
musikarkeologi där man, utifrån ett ofta knapphändigt källmaterial, försöker återskapa
forntida ljudmiljöer.70 Men med auditiva simuleringar av ett urval memorat kan man
möjligen uppställa hypoteser och ställa frågor om de kulturella innebörderna i berättelserna om sällsamma auditiva miljöer, som människor sade sig ha upplevt. Möjligen
kan man också formulera nya slags frågor om vad musik är, eller kan vara. Jag ska skissera några få punkter med utgångspunkt i produktionsperspektivet ovan – jag lyfter inte
alla, utan endast ett litet urval. De besvaras heller inte, utan preciserar hur fallstudien
tentativt skulle kunna utföras, mot bakgrund av produktionsperspektivet. När man ska
68
69
70
Tone Dahlstedt, Tro och föreställningar kring vitra i övre Norrland (Umeå: Dialekt- och ortnamnsarkivet
i Umeå, 1976). Se även ett omfattande ljudmaterial i form av intervjuer på Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet i Uppsala (DFU). Hos författaren.
Toivo Burlin, “Saivos sång” [opublicerat manus, 2015].
jfr Musica Sveciae: Fornnordiska klanger: The Sounds of Prehistoric Scandinavia (Producer: Cajsa S.
Lund) (CD 1991).
27
producera de auditiva simuleringarna och analysera föreställningarna om vitras musik
bör man utgå från musikens funktion som del i människans interaktion med andra människor, naturen, samhället/kulturen och teknologin (vitras musik hördes ofta i ensamhet i
naturen, i utkanten av kulturen, musiken motsvarade vanligtvis den musikteknologiska
nivån i samhället), man bör utgå från att musik/ljud och musik/teknologi alltid hör nära
samman i en kultur – (vitras melodier och deras övriga ljud av koskällor och röster
blandas ofta i memoraten) det kräver alltså ett annat slags musikbegrepp; skapande av
musik är samtidigt en process och en skapad/producerad produkt, samtidigt ett historiskt
(diakront) fenomen och ett synkront fenomen – de är processer och (i kulturell mening
“instabila”) auditiva produkter. När det gäller föreställningarna om specifika händelser
och iakttagelser är de särskilt instabila eftersom de befinner sig i ett spänningsfält mellan en subjektiv psykologisk upplevelse (upplevelsen av vitra), den nedtecknade eller
inspelade berättelsen (memoratet) och slutligen den tolkning och simulering av händelsen genom en auditiv gestaltning, som forskaren i detta exempel utför.
Diskussion: Experimentell musikproduktionsvetenskap som kulturforskande musikvetenskap?
Jag har i denna artikel presenterat ett bestämt perspektiv på musikvetenskapens relation till musikproduktionsvetenskapen och argumenterat för att många av de problem, teorier och metoder som utvecklats inom den senare, genom en interdisciplinär
dialog, kan införlivas i musikvetenskapen. Jag menar att musikvetenskapen är i behov
av en metodologisk och teoretisk förnyelse, som är särskilt angelägen när det gäller
grundläggande synsätt vad gäller musikteknologin och mediernas betydelse för musiken. Att på ett reflexivt sätt använda produktionsmetoder från musikproduktionsvetenskapen kan vara fruktbart för att åstadkomma inte bara förnyelse i teoretiska och
metodologiska perspektiv, utan framför allt för att utveckla ny kunskap.
I domänen musikproduktionsvetenskap är – till skillnad från i huvuddelen av
musikvetenskapen – den instrumentella relationen till musikproduktionsverktygen
central. Möjligheten finns därför att relatera en vetenskaplig diskussion om produktionens villkor med en produktion i praktiken – att bedriva en “experimentell” musikproduktionsvetenskap. Produktionen kan förenas med en metavetenskapligt, reflexivt
förhållningssätt, mellan att genomföra en produktion – och utveckla teorier och modeller om produktionen. Frågor om historiska och teknologiska villkor för musik (och
musikproduktionen) kan prövas experimentellt med produktionsverktygen. Kan ljudoch musikproduktioner, “experimentellt” framställda enligt denna modell, användas
som en metod för att besvara humanistiska eller kulturvetenskapliga – specifikt musikvetenskapliga – frågeställningar? Med min fallstudie – med ett skisserat projekt om en
föreställd, supranormal musik och auditiva miljöer – konkretiserades resonemanget.
Mitt korta svar på frågan ovan är: ja, av forskaren framställda ljudoch musikproduktioner, experimentellt framställda och teoretiskt grundade i “produktionsperspektivet”, kan med hjälp av teorier från humanvetenskap, samhällsvetenskap eller andra
vetenskapliga fält användas som både en metod och ett material för att utveckla teorier om musikproduktionens villkor, igår och idag.
28
Toivo Burlin
Abstracts
I artikeln diskuteras hur musikvetenskaplig forskning om musikproduktion och en
“musikproduktionsvetenskaps” perspektiv tillsammans kan bidra till att forma ett
medieoch produktionscentrerat forskningsparadigm, inom musikvetenskapen. Det inleds
med en översikt på hur produktion av musik har studerats som vetenskapligt objekt.
Ett förslag presenteras om hur det interdisciplinära forskningsfältet – studier av i vid
mening produktion och medialisering av inspelad musik – kan utvecklas till ett bredare medieparadigm inom musikvetenskapen som disciplin. “Produktionsperspektivet”,
som inkluderar produktion som metod, introduceras därefter. Det exemplifieras med
en fallstudie.
The article discusses how musicological research on recorded music and “Music Production Studies” perspectives, respectively, together can help shape a media and production-centered research paradigm in musicology. It begins with an overview of how the
production of music has been studied as a scientific object. A proposal is presented on
how the interdisciplinary field of research – studying production of music and the mediatization of recorded music – can be developed into a broader media paradigm in
musicology as a discipline. “The production perspective”, which includes production
as a method, is then introduced. It is exemplified by a case study.
MADS WALTHER-HANSEN
Sound Events, Spatiality and
Diegesis – The Creation of Sonic
Narratives in Music Productions
Introduction
“You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire” is the opening track
on Queens of the Stone Age’s third studio album Songs for the Deaf.1 The track begins
with the sound of clanking keys, a car engine that starts and the alerting beeps warning the driver that doors are still open. A car radio is switched on and the car door is
slammed bringing the beep sound to a halt. The radio is tuned and eventually settles
on a station where a male voice announces: “Los Angeles, Clone Radio, we play the
songs that sounds more like everyone else, than anyone else.” The song following the
presentation opens with a steady drumbeat. Seconds after, a distorted guitar riff joins
in. What we are witnessing is a rock song, transmitted to us through a car radio; an
effect that emerges mainly as a result of low cut filtering in the 200 Hz region and a
high cut around 7kHz that creates the impression of a small lo-fi stereo-system. The
rock song is there for the listener as something played back into the virtual car setting,
and thus present only in a double-mediated sense.
There is a sudden change in the scene the moment vocals2 and bass guitar enter at
1’01 where the track abruptly increases in loudness and the frequency band increases
to full spectrum. The perceptual effect of this change can be described in at least two
ways. Either the radio track “pops out” of the car speakers, entering and now residing
in the virtual listening space (the car setting) that was previously established; or the
track “drags the listener in.” In both cases, the changing point of audition (POA) is
not the result of the track moving closer to the listener across the virtual space of the
recording. There is a change in the ontological3 level of the track and in this way the
1
2
3
Queens of the Stone Age. “You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire,” Songs for
the Deaf (Interscope, 2002). The album is produced by Josh Homme (front singer) with record engineers Adam Kasper and Eric Valentine.
Lead vocals on this track is Nick Oliveri and not Queen of the Stone Age’s usual front singer Josh
Homme.
Building on the viewpoint taken by Merleau-Ponty that the body-subject is intimately tied to lived
space and, consequently, that the phenomenal world equals the real world, my use of the term ontology refers to the categories (or hierarchies) of spatial being in the recording (e.g. that is how, and
at what ‘level’, spatial entities in the recording can be said to exist) that is formed in perception – a
•
ISSN 1904-237X
30
Mads Walther-Hansen
track transcends the virtual borders (in time and space) of the radio’s virtual space,
thus creating a dramatic increase of presence for the listener.
The example above serves to illustrate two points that will be dealt with in this
article: 1) the potential for sound engineers to radically effect the listener’s perceived
point of audition, and create different forms of tensions and contrast effects between
these different perspectives; and 2) the ontology of recorded sound (i.e. the time-space
continuum of the perceived auditory events) is only fully realized if we consider how
sound events coexist within the imagined performance space of recordings. The purpose of this article is to discuss the relation between sound qualities emerging from
studio-based editing and the perceived diegetic framing in a number of popular music
productions. I revisit the concept of diegesis in this context to explore its applicability in the analysis of recorded music and as a tool to conceive of the perceptual effect
emerging from recording and editing practices.
For several decades, film sound theorists have used the concept of diegesis to explore the relation between sound (e.g., background music, dialogue, voice over) and
image in film.4 More recently Anahid Kassabian has argued that the diegesis of the
film is not necessarily determined prior to the music, but music itself can construct a
diegetic framing depending on the degree of attention given to music in the particular scene.5 Also a number of studies have redefined the concept to explore the function of sounds in computer games.6 The reality of movies, like the reality of recorded
performances, never existed as a real event. Both movies and music recordings consist
of clips and layers of recorded material spliced together to form, in our experience, a
coherent event. Nicholas Cook notes this comparison between movies and music recordings writing that:
(…) the concept of diegesis applies just as well to sound recordings [as to movies],
and demonstrates the sense in which the relationship between the recording and
4
5
6
phenomenological ontology. Also – and this is in line with Brian Massumi’s thinking – I think of
reality as a part of virtual spatiality (e.g., something sensed as real through the virtual) rather than
contrasted to it. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945/2002); M. C. Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988); Brian Massumi, “Envisioning the Virtual,” in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality
ed. Mark Grimshaw (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
See David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Routledge, 1985); Michel Chion, AudioVision: Sound on Screen (New York: Columbia U.P., 1994); Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987); Étienne Souriau, L’Univers filmique
(Paris: Flammarion, 1953).
Anahid Kassabian, Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music (New
York: Routledge, 2001); Anahid Kassabian, “The End of Diegesis as we Know It?” In The Oxford
Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics, eds. John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman and Carol Vernallis
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Karen Collins, Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and
Sound Design (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008); Mark Grimshaw, The Acoustic Ecology of the First-Person
Shooter: The Player Experience of Sound in the First-Person Shooter Computer Game (VDM Verlag, 2008);
Kristine Jørgensen, “On Transdiegetic Sounds in Computer Games,” Northern Lights 5 (2007), 105117; Ulf Wilhelmsson. Enacting the Point of Being. Computer Games, Interaction and Film Theory (PhD
Thesis. University of Copenhagen, 2001).
Sound Events, Spatially and Diegesis – The Creation of Sonic Narratives in Music Productions
31
the experience is a semiotic one (…) it is through the act of listening which the recording prompts that we understand it as a trace of an event.7
Also Simon Trezise argues that the concept is useful to analyze the purely auditory domain8 but still there is no in-depth theorization of how the diegesis of music recordings is formed and exploited in the recording studio.
In the first part of this article I discuss diegesis in relation to the production and
perception of recorded popular music. Most producers seem to aim for mixes that
produce the illusion of a single diegetic frame containing all sound events. For this
reason, the best way to recognize the value of my argument is by exploring some of
the exceptions – that is, tracks where the diegetic relationship between sound events is
challenged or simply broken. In order to discuss the different ontological relationship
between sound events within recordings I use Gérard Genette’s classification of narrative events: the diegetic, meta-diegetic and extra-diegetic level,9 later used by Claudia
Gorbman in her classification of film sounds.10 Although there are many similarities
between how we make sense of audio-visual media and audio media, the notion of
diegesis is not unproblematic in the context of popular music productions. For this
reason, this article proposes a systematic theoretical framework to discuss the concept
in relation to recorded music – what I shall here call a phonographic diegesis. The second part of the article addresses a number of musical examples to exemplify different
modes of layering sound events.
Presenting the Story
In the third book of The Republic Plato contrasts narration (diegesis) with imitation
(mimesis) as two ways of presenting literary works. In narration, the story world is
presented through the narrator telling the story. The story world is thus located outside the time and place of the narrator. Imitation on the other hand is the mimetic enactment of the story. Here the story is told through dialogue, speech or bodily gestures
from within the story world.11
The term diegesis has reappeared a number of times in literary analysis. Gérard
Genette re-appropriates the term making a distinction between the story told and the
diegesis. The diegesis, he explains, rather than being the story itself, is the universe in
which the story takes place.12 Karol Berger addresses this discussion outside the context
of literary analysis, considering the diegesis of visual and auditory events in paintings
and music. Berger argues that we may connect the visual expression of paintings to
7
8
9
10
11
12
Nicholas Cook, “Methods for Analysing Recordings,” in The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music,
ed. Nicholas Cook et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 243.
Simon Trezise, “The Recorded Document: Interpretation and Discography,” in The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music, ed. Nicholas Cook et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 207.
Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, (1983/1988).
Gorbman, Unheard Melodies.
Plato, The Republic (English translation by Paul Shorey) (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 380
BC/1930).
Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, 17.
32
Mads Walther-Hansen
the literary “voice.” Analogous to the way the “voice” communicates literary content,
human figures in paintings communicate through visual bodily gestures presented to
us in specific environmental settings.13 Similarly, in music, a vocalist may present a story world from within the perceived reality frame by, for example, singing about present
feelings. He/she is then a character in the story world (mimesis). Or else the singer
may present a story about another time and place. He/she is then the narrator of the
world (diegesis). Also, as is often the case, the singer may switch between the different modes of presentation throughout the song.14 While there are obvious connections
between literary narration and vocal utterance in music, there are less obvious, yet still
significant, ways that a diegesis is established in the making of musical recordings.
Recorded tracks can be approached using the performance metaphor – as virtual
performances,15 perceived performances16 or phonographic performances17 – and this
line of thinking conditions the argument in this article as well as the aesthetic reflections presented in a vast number of books and articles dealing with analysis and production of music recordings. The performance metaphor is contingent on a causal listening mode. Here the listening experience is directed towards the behavior and gestures of performers associated with the production of the musical piece. These gestures
belong to the sound-producing event as the way the performers express themselves.
Simon Frith uses a visual analogy claiming that:
(…) to hear music is to see it performed, on stage, with all the trappings. I listen
to records in the full knowledge that what I hear is something that never existed, that never could exist, as a ‘performance’, something happening in a single
time and space; nevertheless, it is now happening, in a single time and space: it
is thus a performance and I hear it as one.18
Although the presence of gestural elements in auditory experience is largely dependent on the particular genre (the performative aspect of the listening experience is definitely stronger in a Rolling Stones track than in one of Brian Eno’s ambient productions), the exploratory dimension of auditory perception19 is integral to most music
listening. In the rock domain this link is particular salient where the tracks often construct the idea of a distinct performance event, that is, the illusion that the music was
performed simultaneous despite layers of non-simultaneous recording takes that have
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Karol Berger, “Diegesis and Mimesis: The Poetic Modes and the Matter of Artistic Presentation,” The
Journal of Musicology 12, 4 (1994): 407-433, 415.
For a thorough account of self-impersonation see Wendy Doniger, The Woman Who Pretended to be
Who She was: Myths of Self-imitation (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 2005).
Allan F. Moore and Ruth Dockwray, “The Establishment of the Virtual Performance Space in Rock.”
twentieth-century music 5, 2 (2008): 219-240.
William Moylan, The Art of Recording: The Creative Resources of Music Production and Audio (New York:
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992).
Cook, Methods for Analysing Recordings.
Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
211.
Eric F. Clarke, Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005).
33
gone into its making. The discussions in this article is limited to recordings well-suited
to the performance metaphor (i.e. recordings that encourage us to listen to it as a performance event framed by a particular time and place) in order to argue for some of
the extended meanings that emerge from the staging of sound in the recording studio.
Taken as perceived performances, recordings are affective because they allow the
listener to engage in an imagined relationship with the performer, by participating in
a perceived performance event. Philip Auslander has called this affective state, the experience of liveness, by arguing that in spite of the fact that recordings represent a temporal gap between the performance and the reception, recordings form a technologically mediated co-presence of a performance.20
One may argue that there is always a diegetic layering in record listening; this is, in
fact, true. What we witness when we put on a record is the medium telling the story of
a performance. This is no different from the relationship between the videotape and
the film. The record, as well as the videotape, underlines in a very direct way the temporal and spatial gap between the perceived event and the moment and place of play
back. It is through the recordings “act” of playing the event back to us that we come
to witness the performed event, and it is here that we are presented with the ontological division between the “here and now” of the playback situation and the “then and
there” of the perceived performance.
When we listen to music we have before us a phonogram – either in the form of a
physical media (e.g., vinyl record or CD) or as a media-file (e.g., mp3 or wav). In a certain sense, phonograms are to record producers and sound engineers, what books are
to writers. There is an author (or several authors) behind the specific configuration of
sounds presented to us in recordings; this is analogous to the authors behind every word
we read in a book. Despite these similarities, few people buying music would probably
know the record producer involved in the recording; in contrast, most readers will know
the author behind the book. Books, also, are usually listed by author’s name, while popular music phonograms are seldom, if ever, displayed by the name of the sound engineer or producer (unless the engineer or producer equals the performer). In this way, the
musical performer certainly takes center stage in the history of musical recordings.
This fact, however, only tells us something about sound engineers’ hidden status
in the history of record making, not, as a number of scholars have acknowledged, that
sound engineers have actually played a profound role in the way music records have
come to sound.21 While it may be contentious to entitle record producers authors (or
co-authors) of the recording, it allows us to focus more on the way sounds are staged
within the virtual space of the recording. Record producers mold sounds in and after
the recording and thus create imaginary images of performances for the listener. In
this way, recordings present a narrative emerging from the specific structure of sound
events, analogous to the narrative present in books that emerges from the specific
20
21
Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Oxon: Routledge, 1999).
see Mark Cunningham, Good Vibrations: A History of Recording Production (Chessington, Surrey: Castle
Communications, 1996), and Albin Zak, The Poetics of Rock: Cutting Tracks, Making Records (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001).
34
Mads Walther-Hansen
structure of words – presenting a specific angle the story the specific way the story is
told. Books and phonograms are the final product presenting the story or perceived
performance in its fixed form. In this way, one of the tasks of record producers is to
present a specific story22 of a performance among the many that could be told.
From an audio-visual to an auditory diegesis
To outline this argument further I want to propose an analogy between filmic events
and sound events in recorded music. The events we experience in films are that of
characters acting out their lives. These events frame the film’s fictional reality – its
diegesis. The diegesis of the film is thus the presented filmic “reality;” that is, everything that logically belongs to the fictional world the film portrays, whether included
(on-screen) or excluded (off-screen) from the picture frame.23 On-screen sounds are,
for instance, voices of characters on the screen or music coming from visualized playback systems. Off-screen sounds can be voices of characters that are not visualized,
environmental sounds or music that belongs to the world of the characters, that is,
music played back from a playback device outside the screen but in the film’s fiction.
Extra-diegetic sounds emerge from outside the filmic reality; for instance, background music or other sound effects added to bring the viewer into a certain mood.
The sources of non-diegetic sounds are not visualized, such as the voice over often
heard in documentary films. Claudia Gorbman proposes that sounds may also operate at a meta-diegetic level, meaning that sounds belong within the character; as is the
case, for example, with sound presented as belonging to the character’s imagination.24
Bordwell and Thompson present a more overall distinction between non-diegetic
(non-story space) and diegetic (story space). These categories are further sub-classified
in terms of the temporal relation between sound and image. Diegetic sounds may occur either simultaneously or non-simultaneously (earlier or later in the story) relative
to the image, such as in the case of sound flashbacks or flash-forwards, while nondiegetic sounds may be marked as past (e.g., historical voice over present images),
present (e.g., a narrator speaking in present tense) or later (e.g., a reminiscent narrator). Bordwell and Thompson state, however, that the temporal relationship of nondiegetic sound to the story is mostly irrelevant to the filmic experience.25
In recorded music the perceived temporal relation between sound events has a
more profound role for the classification of diegetic, meta-diegetic and extra-diegetic
22
23
24
25
Since this article deals with virtual performances as something constructed in the recording studio,
I take story and narrative to be interchangeable terms. In this way, I see no difference between how
the story is told (the narrative), and the perceived event (the story), both are products of narrating
(see also Genette, 1983/1988). A study of recordings as documents of actual events should obviously distinguish between narrative and actual story.
Gorbman, Unheard Melodies; Christian Metz made a similar distinction between what he called ‘ordinary sound’ and ‘sound-off’, see Christian Metz, Language and Cinema (De Gruyter, 1974).
Gorbman, Unheard Melodies, 22-23.
David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies), 1997.
35
events. Meta-diegetic sound events are indexes of events that took place before the
diegetic events, while extra-diegetic sound events are indexes of events that take place
after the diegesis. As already stated, contrary to film, diegetic layering in recorded
music is not conventional practice. When the experience of extra-diegetic or metadiegetic events occurs, however, they often emerge, as we shall see in the next section,
as a consequence of both a spatial and temporal hierarchy between sound events.
The virtual space of recordings
Record listening is an instance of what Pierre Schaeffer called an acousmatic situation26, that is, a situation in which we hear something without seeing its cause. According to Schaeffer this situation may potentially (or ideally) lead to a listening experience stripped of any relation to a sound-producing event (reduced listening).27
Several other scholars, however, argue that auditory perception is fundamentally exploratory.28 When listening to sounds we seek information regarding what is going on
— what is that sound the sound of? What kind of event is taking place and what kind
of source is involved? Michel Chion even claims that the acousmatic situation, rather than removing causal references, actually enhances the listener’s interest in sound
events.29 In this way the acousmatic situation results in a new and, in many ways, enhanced aesthetic involvement compared to actual musical performances.
In audio-visual media the question of diegesis emerges in the relationship between
sound and image. In recordings the question of diegesis emerges in the relationship
between sound events and other sound events, more particularly in the relationship
between sound events and the imaginary image of the performance. This perceived
performance takes place in an imaginary performance setting that is most often conceptualized in terms of its impossible30 or unnatural31 characteristics compared to actual acoustic spaces. This space is dimensional although often not with clearly defined
acoustical properties.
In the most general sense we may think of space, whether actual or virtual, as either
a prerequisite or a product of perception; that is to say that in every act of perceiving
something, space is presupposed. Like the scene in a film, the auditory performance
takes place somewhere. Sound sources are presented to the listener in certain spatial
configurations that form a performance space. William Moylan has proposed the con26
27
28
29
30
31
Acousmatics is derived from the name Pythagoras gave to his uninitiated students (akousmatikoi),
who received their lectures from behind a veil.
Pierre Schaeffer, “Acousmatics,” In Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music eds. C. Cox and D. Warner (New York: Continuum, 1966/2004).
See Clarke, Ways of Listening; Simon Emmerson, Living Electronic Music (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007);
Luke Windsor, “Through and Around the Acousmatic: The Interpretation of Electroacoustic Sounds,”
In Music, Electronic Media and Culture ed. Simon Emmerson (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate,
2000).
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision, 32.
Timothy Warner, Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution (Bodmin:
Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003).
Francis Rumsey, Spatial Audio (Oxford: Focal Press, 2001).
36
Mads Walther-Hansen
cept of the sound stage to describe the perceived two-dimensional stage on which
sound sources are located. According to Moylan the sound stage is located in front of
the listener at a certain distance.32 Sound sources often have different locations on the
sound stage, and often they exist in different acoustical spaces; yet, listeners will unconsciously group them together to form a coherent performance.33
It is tempting to define the sound stage as a diegetic frame in so far as the sound
stage – the specific spatial formation formed in the act of listening – often frames the
perceived performance. Being the focal space of the listening experience, the sound
stage is, however, more like the visual screen in films. For instance, we may think of
sound events that appear to arrive from outside the sound stage, yet still “participating” in the perceived performance. Such examples are clearly considered exceptions
and often involve quite radical editing. We may imagine, for example, hearing a sound
event with a perceived location in an adjacent room, performing with another performer located just in front of us. The argument here is that while everything located
on the sound stage must belong to the diegesis of the perceived performance, everything that belongs to the performance need not be located on the sound stage.
My use of the word performance is understood as an event that takes place in a given
time and place. The perceived performance may, as is often the case, include all sound
events in the recording. However, in some cases sound events exist outside the temporal
and spatial frame of the perceived performance. Clearly, there can be no sound events
in recordings without a virtual space in which the listener can situate these events. We
may, however, say that the recording holds a single diegesis, only in so far as all sound
events in its virtual space are in fact perceived as being temporally related. If not, we
may think of some sound events as belonging to an extra-diegetic or meta-diegetic level.
The phonographic diegesis emerges from the specific configuration of sounds in
the recording, and is bound to the idea of recordings as perceived performances and
the virtual place and time of these performances. Recordings carry a virtual history as
well as a virtual space. While the perceived performers may be heard as performing
at the same time in the same place, they may also be heard as performing before and
after each other. I am not referring to musical linear time, but to virtual historical moments where we perceive that the events took place. In this way, there is a very direct
connection between virtual spatiality and virtual history, as the spatial separation is
often realized in terms of the temporal separation between sound events. We may exemplify this with Queens of the Stone Age’s “You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I
Feel Like a Millionaire” mentioned in the introduction of this article. In this recording, the change in the perceived point of audio is not only related to spatiality (e.g.
the performance leaps from one perceived performance space to another); the changing point of audition is also related to temporal change (e.g. the performance leaps
from a certain point in the recordings virtual history – something pre-recorded played
on the radio – to a later point in time – the moment of playback in the car setting).
32
33
See also Justin Christensen, Virtual Distance and Soundstage, and their Impacts on Experienced Emotional
Valence. page 101-118 in this issue.
Moylan, The Art of Recording.
37
This leads me to my definition of diegesis in recorded music. The diegesis equals
the perceived temporally connected performance. Sound events in the diegesis simply
take place at the same time and the perceived performers can then logically respond
to (hear) each other. In some cases, the diegetic bond is broken. This happens, for instance, when we experience that perceived performers respond to pre-recorded material (meta-diegetic sounds) or sound events that emerge after the perceived performance
took place (extra-diegetic sounds).
Arguably, listeners tend to group the sound events into a single overall stream.34 It
simply makes sense to listeners to hear recordings as perceived performances, despite
the spatial paradoxes often involved in doing so. Breaking up sound events into ontologically different layers is, therefore, something that demands radical recording techniques and sound editing, as I will exemplify further in the second part of this article.
Classification of sound events and the creation of meaning in recordings
As already proposed, certain ways of categorizing filmic sounds are applicable in describing certain kinds of phonographic sound events and to account for the creation
of meaning in music production. In most recordings all sounds are grouped together
on a single sound stage, forming a unified perceived performance. There are, however,
several examples of tracks that do not present a single perceived performance space
and thus challenge the idea of the sound stage. I propose four categories (Table 1) that
describe the relationship of sound events to the perceived performance space.
Diegetic on-stage sound events:
Sound events in the perceived performance space.
Diegetic off-stage sound events:
Sound events absent from the perceived performance
space, but temporally present.
Meta-diegetic sound events:
Internally re-produced non-diegetic sound events. These
sound events takes place prior (in the virtual history) to
the perceived performance, reproduced from a media
within the sound stage.
Extra-diegetic sound events:
Externally produced non-diegetic sound events. These
sound events takes place after (in virtual history) the perceived performance, causing the perceived performance
to appear reproduced from within a new embracing ontological frame.
Table 1: Classification of phonographic sound events
Diegetic on-stage sound events are the most common category. Although musicological analysis may reveal that a track consists of many different acoustical environments, the listening experience most often involves hearing the perceived performance
34
Albert S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound (Cambridge and Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990).
38
Mads Walther-Hansen
as spatio-temporally present in spite of the apparent acoustical paradox involved in
doing so.
Diegetic off-stage sound events are defined as sound events that appear acoustically
non-present in the primary acoustical environment. These sound events “participate”
in the perceived performance events and are thus temporally co-present, however, the
off-stage sound events are acoustically separated from the on-sound stage events. This
acoustical separation can involve illusions of sound events located behind a physical
obstacle, for instance, sound sources located in an adjacent room.
Meta-diegetic and extra-diegetic sound events are examples of a layering of perceived performances. In both cases one sound universe is presented through the other. Hence, two juxtaposed performances merged together in the track, for instance, as
is the case in mash ups, are not understood here as an instance of diegetic layering.
Diegetic layering, in my definition, emerges when listeners get the illusion of a hierarchical relation between two virtual spaces. Meta-diegetic sound events are sound
events emerging from a media within the diegesis of the perceived performance.
Analogous to paintings that portray a room in which another picture is present,35
meta-diegetic sound events are illusions of pre-recorded sound events played back in
the perceived performance situation. Logically performers (on the sound stage) can
hear these sounds while performing. There is thus both a temporal and spatial division between diegetic sound events and meta-diegetic sound events.
Extra-diegetic sound events emerge outside and after the diegetic performance. Like
meta-diegetic sound events, extra-diegetic sound events emerge as a media-withinmedia effect. However, in the first case, the meta-diegesis is in the embedded media,
while the in the second case the diegesis is in the embedded media.
Although the categories I propose are easily definable, they are not always straightforward to use in the description of recorded sound. Problems arise from the fact that
the diegesis is not always clearly defined in listening, and from the fact that sound
events do not necessarily have the same ontological status throughout a track. In
this way, the ontological hierarchy of sound events may change from the first hearing of a track to the second, as the scene of the performance is formed in the listening situation.
Off-stage sound events
Filmic off-screen sounds are sounds with non-visualized sources that take part in
the filmic events. In the case of the voice, we would define it as off-screen when we,
the audience, cannot see the mouth of the filmic character speaking.36 Phonographic
off-stage sound events are defined in terms of the spatial (acoustical) separation between sound events. In films there need not be any acoustical division between onscreen and off-screen sounds. In fact off-screen sounds may often appear acoustically
35
36
Berger, “Diegesis and Mimesis,” 421-422.
Michel Chion and Claudio Gorbman, The Voice in Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999).
39
closer to us than on-screen sounds. Phonographic off-stage sounds on the other hand
emerge when we experience that performers are located in different environments. As
a result they cannot “see” each other. In this way, phonographic off stage sounds are
defined from the point of view of the performers. What makes off-stage sound events
comparable to off-screen sounds is that off-stage sound events mimic sound sources
that would not be visible if we could see the performance. Thus, in order to account
for the link between off-stage sound events and filmic off-screen sounds, we have to
imagine what we would be able to see in an actual performance.
A notable example of off-stage sound events occurs in the tune “I Won’t Hurt You”
from the album Smiling and Waving37 by the Norwegian singer Anja Garbarek. In this
track, there is a significant acoustical separation between the lead vocal in front and a
guitar and percussion sound. Although the percussion sound appears too mechanical to be actually performed, the environmental co-presence with the humanly performed guitar assists in animating the percussion sound.38 The off-stage effect occurs
primarily as a result of low-pass filtering around 400Hz (with a fairly steep slope) on
guitar and percussion. In this way, the listener may experience some concrete material
separating percussion and guitar from the sound stage. Accordingly, we get the impression that we would be able to see the vocalist, who is located just in front of us, while
the sounds heard emanating from behind the barrier are invisible. For this reason we
may think of the vocal as on-stage and guitar and percussion as off-stage. Following
this line of thinking the guitar sound and the percussion sound appear inaccessible to
both the listener and the on-stage vocalist and therefore signal a spatial rupture in the
horizontal dimension. The vocalist appears lonely on the sound stage, yet she participates in a shared performance with off-stage sound events. This experience emerges as
a result of the combination of a temporal co-presence and an acoustical separation.
The example, then, illustrates the importance of distinguishing between a sound stage
(a circumscribed acoustic space) and a perceived performance universe (the totally of
synchronous sound events).
Contrary to filmic off-screen sounds that may change to on-screen sounds if the
source becomes visible,39 phonographic off-stage sounds are not loaded with such expectations. We simply do not expect phonographic characters to move. Neither do we
expect a change of listening perspective.
The experience of off-stage sound events does not necessarily occur in all tracks
where a closer analysis may reveal acoustically detached sound events. Most of the
time, listeners group sound events into a single perceived performance in spite of the
inherent spatial paradoxes that this grouping implies. Off-stage sounds often emerge
37
38
39
Anja Garbarek, “I Won’t Hurt You,” Smiling and Waving (Virgin, 2001).
We may also notice the semiotic connotations of the percussion sound, relating it to the sound of
the performer’s heartbeat. The sound may, then, be heard as something internal to the performer –
something the listener hears only through the vocalist hearing, feeling or imagining it. Since the guitar sound is located in the same acoustical environment as the percussion track, we may also locate
the guitar sound in the mental interior of the performer. In this sense, we may think of the percussion and guitar sounds as meta-diegetic – on-stage and internal – instead of off-stage.
Chion, The Voice in the Cinema.
40
Mads Walther-Hansen
as a result of heavy processing, for instance applying a high cut filter at 250 Hz or
other spatial effects that clearly creates the illusion of two separate environments.
Whether this illusion in fact occurs, obviously depends on many aspects related to
both production and reception. While the visual frame in film clearly separates inside
and outside, such borders do not (or only vaguely) exist in recorded music. For this
reason, we must be content with blurred lines between phonographic off-stage and
on-stage sound events.
Meta-diegetic sound events
While it may prove difficult to argue for off-stage sound events in recordings, one can
find many clearer examples of meta-diegetic sound events. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You
Were Here” from the album Wish You Were Here40 from 1975, for instance, has a very
salient diegetic layering of sounds.
The track opens with the sound of a radio being tuned. As the tuning settles on a
station, a guitar sound is heard, apparently emerging from the radio. At this point, a
diegetic layering is already implied between the radio playback and the performance
within the radio. We do not, however, hear any acoustical signs of a virtual playback
environment in which the radio, logically, must be situated. The sound from the radio
simply does not activate an acoustic space and we do not hear any signs of human
presence “outside” the radio. Thus, the radio in-itself remains an abstract non-spatial
object. This experience is particularly strong when played back through headphones,
where the radio can only be heard through the right headphone.
This experience changes quite radically when we hear coughing and breathing
noise in the center position at 0’26. The coughs and breath noises do not arrive from
the radio, rather, from the room in which the radio is playing. In this way, we come to
experience a perceived radio listener and, accordingly, the spatial and temporal separation between the radio listener and the radio performance. The diegetic layering of
sound events is, thus, fulfilled as we hear both the radio performance and the listener
simultaneously. As a guitar starts playing at 0’42, we get the illusion that we are hearing someone playing along to the radio track. As a result, the playback environment
is transformed into a combined playback and performance environment. We hear
the radio performance in the knowledge that the guitar performer hears it too. The
fact that the diegetic frame is consolidated gradually on top of the meta-diegetic level
seems to intensify the presence of the diegetic frame. This effect emerges as a result of
the shift in auditory focus. Listeners are likely to naturalize the meta-diegetic level in
the first bars of the radio-guitar – attend to it as if it was diegetic – only to be surprised
by the presence of the guitar when the diegetic level is set in motion.
At 1’34 the vocal enters. From this point in the song, the radio performance gradually becomes less noticeably, and at the 1’36 it disappears completely, without any
clear demarcation of its disappearance. As the drums enter, followed by bass and
40
Pink Floyd, “Wish You Were Here,” Wish You Were Here (EMI, 1975).
41
piano, the performance environment is transformed (expanded) again into a stage. In
this way, the intro presents a gradual shift from a performance in an “everyday setting”
to a performance “on stage.”
The intro of “Wish You Were Here” is an example of a media-within-media effect,
or to expand on William Moylan’s terminology,41 a sound stage in sound stage experience (Figure 1). The diegetic guitar performer situated in Sound Stage A can hear the
meta-diegetic guitar performance in Sound Stage B. On the opposite, the performer on
Sound Stage B cannot hear the performer on Sound Stage A. In other words, it is the
diegetic performance that makes it possible for us to hear the meta-diegetic performance, and not the other way around.
Figure 1: media-within-media
While it makes sense to talk about an ontological rupture between sound stage “A”
and “B,” the addition of sound stage “A” have implications for the way listeners attend
to sound stage “B.” The primary perceptual effect pertains to a further mediatization
of sound stage “B.” The effect of another layer of virtual mediation is a weakening of
the indexical relation to a pre-medial world. It is not that the performance on sound
stage “B” necessarily ceases to be heard as one. It is rather that the perceived performance recedes into the background, as a mediatized phenomenon in sound stage “A,”
something that is available to us only through it being present to someone else.
The media-within-media effect is in fact a common type of media based staging42
heard in many different forms in newer pop and rock albums. “Wish You Were Here,”
however, is a particularly clear case as the performance space is gradually established.
From the outset we get to hear a performer on the radio, what we may call a metadiegetic performer (analogous to Genette’s meta-diegetic characters43). While meta-diegetic sound events are still indexical of meta-diegetic performers, the index is generally weaker compared to diegetic sound events. The meta-diegetic performer appears
to us, only as the last part of the indexical chain, embedded in another index and on
the wedge of slipping from the listening experience.
41
42
43
See Moylan’s definition of the sound stage in The Art of Recording.
Simon Zagorski-Thomas, PhD in Music Composition. PhD Thesis (University of London, 2008).
Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited.
42
Mads Walther-Hansen
Another interesting case of diegetic layering is found in Björk’s “There’s More To
Life Than This” from her album Debut.44 The track opens with the sound of a lot of
people chatting in a large room. A dance beat emerges in the background and we realize that the setting is some kind of dance club. At 0’35 Björk’s vocal is heard close-up.
Throughout the track the listener is locked to this position just in front of Björk as she
walks around in the dance club. Everything the listener hears is from Björk’s point of
audition or more specifically from the position just in front of Björk’s mouth. In this
way, the track has a dynamic sound stage analogous to a moving camera that gradually changes what is considered “on-screen.” Like point of view screen shots in films,45
the point of audition46 perspective in “There’s More To Life Than This” generally enhances our identification with the vocalist.47
The sound of the background music seems to arrive from a set of loudspeakers in
the room in which Björk is positioned. Accordingly, we may think of the background
musicians as located on a meta-diegetic level. The music in-itself is of course diegetic in the sense that Björk can hear the music in the room she is in. However, this is
not the case the other way around. The musicians performing the background music
do not share reality with Björk. Thus, the background music stands in a hierarchical
relation to Bjork’s performance in that the ontological level of the former mediates
through the ontological level of the latter.
At 1’37 we hear Björk open a door to enter an adjacent room, and as she closes the
door behind her, background sounds are cut off. In this way, we get the experience
that Björk is now alone in another room and therefore not visibly connected to the
rest of the sound sources (the sound system and the chatting people) in the recording.
There is, thus, a clear division between on-stage sounds (Björk’s voice) and off-stage
sounds in this scene. Björk’s intimate vocal address is further intensified48 due to the
one-to-one illusion provided by the virtual environment.49
We may think of the back track as doubly displaced. Since it emerges through a
medium located off-stage, we may conceive of it as an off-stage meta-diegetic performance. As a result of the ontological division Björk takes on the role as the narrator addressing the background music. She is, so to speak, telling the story about the other
44
45
46
47
48
49
Björk, “There’s More to Life than This,” Debut (Elektra/Asylum, 1993).
James D. Buhler, David Neumeyer and Rob Deemer. Hearing the Movies: Music and Sound in Film History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Chion, Audio-Vision, 89-92.
Philip Auslander – referring to Mary Hunter, “The Stage Director in Cinema”, In Theatre Arts (May,
1949) – makes a similar comparison between a stage director’s “manipulation of audience attention” and the moving camera lens in film that move from one point of interest to the next – a “psychological camera eye”. Philip Auslander, Livenes: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (Routledge
1999).
See Nicola Dibben, “Vocal Performance and the Projection of Emotional Authenticity” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology edited by Derek. B. Scott (Farnham and Burlington:
Ashgate, 2009).
The track was allegedly recorded live at the (now closed) Milk Bar nightclub in London. Using a
handheld microphone Björk walks through the club to the toilet as the backing track is played back
at the club’s sound system, see Ian Gittins, Björk: Human Behaviour: The Stories Behind Every Song
(London: Carlton Books, 2002).
43
ontological layer, and responds to its rhythmic and tonal structure. What is interesting is the way the causal relation between the background music and the voice seem
to change direction through the track. Björk is clearly responding to the background
music, as she sings along to it, and her performance is, thus, logically located after the
events heard in the background recording. The choir voices heard dubbing her voice at
0’47, however, announce a sense of simultaneity, and the causal chain even reverses at
1’04 where the choir seems to respond to Bjork’s voice. Taking these events literally we
are presented with a spatial and temporal paradox, arising from the experience of perceived performers responding to events that takes place after the moment of responds.
Extra-diegetic sound events
Extra-diegetic sound events refer to anything “outside” the performance universe, that
is, anything the performers on-stage cannot hear. We find an example of this in Air’s
“Radio #1” from their album 10.000 Hz Legend.50 At 3’14 we suddenly hear a male
voice humming along to the chorus. The male voice sings along to the track and, thus,
takes part in the performance. He appears, however, temporally separated from it.
When the voice enters, the listener suddenly hears the initial performance through another diegetic layer. In this way the listening perspective changes. This is achieved by
ducking the diegetic sound events with side chain compression when the male voice
enters. This effect is common in many documentary films, television commercials,
and in radio broadcasting when the speaker presents a track, while we hear the music
in the background. In television these voices are called voice-overs. In the purely auditory domain they do not have a name, but as they are clearly comparable to the voiceovers we encounter in audio-visual media, phonographic voice-overs seems an appropriate term here.
Considering the title and the lyrics of the song, the impression of a radio speaker
humming along to the track immediately comes to mind. There are, thus, two temporally separated perceived performances: (1) The radio speaker’s performance that enters at 3’14; and (2) the performance formed by the rest of the sound sources. The
radio speaker is addressing the diegetic performance in a very direct sense by singing
along to it. He is, in one sense, pointing us in the direction of the song; in another
sense it can be perceived as an intrusion, interrupting the relationship between the performance and the listener. The listener must zoom out when the radio speaker enters
to embrace both performances. In this way, the diegetic performance seems more distant in time and space when the extra-diegetic voice is forced upon the listener.
Where Air’s “Radio #1” plays with an extra-diegetic voice, the Japanese noise rock
band Boredoms plays with extra-diegetic medium sounds in the track “Super You”
from the album Super AE51. The track has no clear melodic or rhythmic structure, but
consists of layers of distorted guitars floating in an out of each other. This noise atmosphere is disrupted several times during the track by the sound of a tape reel being
50
51
Air, “Radio #1,” 10.000 Hz Legend (Virgin, 2001).
Boredoms, “Super You,” Super æ (Warner Music, 1998).
44
Mads Walther-Hansen
fast-forwarded several times – as if someone else were winding the entire track for us.
The effect is most profound in the following intervals 0’30-0’32, 0’55-1’00, 3’31-3’51
and 5’16-6’30. Several clearly audible tape splices further enhance the impression of a
tape recording. The tape-reel effect may be seen as an instance of diegetic layering. The
tape-machine is not an effect in the performance, but a medium that belongs to another ontological world than the perceived performance. Contrary to the extra-diegetic
layer in “Radio #1,” however, the extra-diegetic layer in “Super You” lacks human presence. Instead the tape machine may be seen as a substitute for the human narrator. It
is essentially the tape-machine that makes it possible for us to hear the performance –
it tells the story of another time and place. The medium-within-medium effect found
in “Super You” is interesting precisely because it changes the listener’s otherwise direct
relation to the performance through the recording, by adding an extra ontological layer between the listener and the performance.
Discussion
We are now in a position to return to the Queens of the Stone Age example mentioned in the beginning of the article. In “You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel
Like a Millionaire” we are presented with two listening perspectives: (1) through the
position of the car driver hearing music through the car radio and (2) as a “directly”
mediated performance presented to us through our own loudspeakers. Like this, we
hear movement from a meta-diegetic to a diegetic level. The meta-diegetic level “eats
up” the diegetic level, enhancing the experience of loudness and intensity. While we
may say that the song is presented to us at a meta-diegetic level – as a consequence of
its location in the car radio – the meta-diegetic level quickly obliterates as the quality
of the sound changes, removing the car setting from experience.
While the physical division between sound and its natural source – the possibility to move sound to another host – became reality with the invention of the phonograph in 1876, the possibility to layer sounds, and potentially create diegetic layering of perceived sound events, emerged with sound-on-sound recording several decades later. After some of Les Paul’s first experiments with sound-on-sound recording,
Patti Page working with Mitch Miller on the Mercury Record Label used this idea to
sing along to herself on her 1947 recording of “Confess.”52 This recording is the first
known example of sound-on-sound recording using tape, and was marketed as “Patti
Page and Patti Page,” suggesting how this effect was seen, as least partly, as an act of
vocal gimmickry.
Of course, the emergence of multitrack technology in the 1950’s quickly initiated
many examples of singers dubbing themselves, and today the practice is so conventional that most listeners will not even notice the overdubs that have gone into making the many layers of voices they are presented with on different recordings. Listening (back) to Patti Page’s recording with today’s ears, there is, however, something dis52
Patti Page, “Confess” (Mercury, 1947).
45
jointed about the perceived performance caused by the sonic quality of the dubbed
backing vocal. The backing vocal appears temporally and spatially displaced. The effect is unintentionally created and results from the audible technological artifacts –
such as tape hiss – arising when recording from one tape to another. Yet, listeners may
experience a media-within-effect placing the backing track on a meta-diegetic level.
In some instances, knowledge about the original event behind the perceived performance may have an effect on the listening experience. Such is the case with Natalie
Cole singing a duet with her late father Nat King Cole on “Unforgettable.”53 Although
there is no clear indication in the actual sound that Natalie Cole’s voice was recorded
30 years after Nat King Cole’s voice, our knowledge about the making of the song may
intrude on the listening experience. Natalie Cole is mediating the past event being
both listener of her father’s recording, while performing to it and, in effect, creating
a new one. In so far as we may mark Nat King Cole’s voice as a past event, his voice
is, in a very peculiar way, both diegetic and non-simultaneous. Although the contextual story accompanying the virtual duet is noteworthy, the temporal separation between recorded takes is in no way uncommon. We may, for instance, think of rap vocals heard performing to sampled phrases with a clear origin in past recordings. As in
“Unforgettable,” the temporal separation in rap music is mostly not an audible feature
of the sonic material, but rather contextual information that impacts on the listening
experience.
Conclusion
In this article I have suggested how the concept of diegesis may work to classify sound
events in recorded music and how the concept is useful to account for the production
of meaning in music production. With reference to Genette’s classification of narrative levels,54 I have argued that diegetic layering of sounds within the virtual space
of music recordings can be classified as meta-diegetic, diegetic or extra-diegetic. Although the discussed tracks shows examples of unusual spatial distributions of sound
events, they support the argument that it makes sense to think of a phonographic diegesis that can be exploited creatively in music production to create different forms of
narrative effects.
The idea builds on the performance metaphor and the belief that listeners hear recordings as documents of a fictional past event. I have argued that diegetic layers in
recordings should be defined primarily according to the perceived temporal relationship between sound events. Meta-diegetic sound events are either performer-internalsounds or pre-recorded performances played back through a media in the diegesis.
Whereas film sound theorists often pay most attention to the former, I redefine meta-diegesis to account for the experience of a media-within-media effect. The notion
of meta-diegesis then applies when we experience that diegetic performers (pres53
54
Natalie Cole, “Unforgettable,” Unforgettable, With Love (Elektra, 1991).
Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca and New York: Cornell University
Press, 1972/1980).
46
Mads Walther-Hansen
ent events) can “hear” meta-diegetic performers (past events), but not the other way
around. Likewise extra-diegetic sounds emerge as a media-within-media effect. Extradiegetic sound events, however, appear after the diegesis and thus logically become
the new present as the diegesis is relocated to the past.
As I demonstrated through the examples the, diegetic layering of phonographic
sound events may take various forms, and often the listener is presented with ambiguous or even conflicting acoustical cues. In addition, I suggested that previous knowledge about the production of the track have an effect on the nature of the perceived
performance. In this way, the notion of the phonographic diegesis may open up for
further reflection on the experiential aspects of virtual spatiality in recorded music.
Abstracts
The use of studio-based effects and recording techniques to shape the sound quality
and aesthetics of recordings are addressed in a number of studies. This article explores
how such practices have shaped the sonic narrative of recordings and listeners’ point
of audition. Building on research into literature and film sound, and by considering
the spatiality of a number of popular music productions, I outline the concept of diegesis in the context of recorded music. I conclude by proposing a way to categorize
sound events relative to the perceived performance space of recordings.
En lang række videnskabelige publikationer har undersøgt den måde hvorpå optageteknikker og efterbehandling af musik i lydstudiet har formet optagelsens æstetik.
Denne artikel har fokus på hvordan det auditive narrativ samt lytterperspektivet er designet i lydstudiet. Med afsæt i litteraturstudier og filmlydstudier, og igennem korte
analyser af en række populærmusikproduktioner, argumenteres der for en redefinering
af diegese-begrebet og en kategorisering af lyd i optagelsens virtuelle performancerum.
HÅLLBUS TOTTE MATTSSON
Audiovisuella loopar och kollektiv
live-looping
Upprepningens magi har gett upphov till en mängd kompositionsstrukturer och ligger till grund för ett otal musikstilar. Alltifrån renässansens variationsformer över fasta
ackordstrukturer över bluesens 12-takters formler till dagens technomusik. När det idag
talas om loopar och looping menas en upprepning av ett musikaliskt parti, både som
en teknisk arbetsmodell (man kan t.ex. sätta något i loop i ett sekvenser-program för
att prova en idé, öva eller snabbt få in ett antal tagningar) och som ett konstnärligt redskap där en artist eller kompositör skapar musikaliska sekvenser vilka återupprepas,
överlagras och moduleras med hjälp av olika tekniska hjälpmedel. En sub-genre eller
snarare en form för musicerande som vuxit fram ur detta arbetssätt är livelooping där artister med hjälp av loopteknologi framträder med oftast väl inrepeterade föreställningar
och där tekniken gör det möjligt att bygga ett ofta imponerande “one man band”.
Loopteknik
Tekniken som gör detta musicerande möjligt är olika former av “delays”, oftast konstruerade så att de kan styras med hjälp av fotpedaler. Mer avancerad teknisk utrustning gör det också möjligt att bygga överlagringar (pålägg) och på så sätt successivt
skapa ett allt komplexare ljudlandskap. Med pionjären loopmaskinen Ecoplex Digital
Pro, som kom ut på marknaden i början av 1990-talet, så introducerades möjligheten
att också kunna synkronisera flera loopmaskiner med varandra och på detta sätt också kunna loop-musicera tillsammans i ensembleform. Denna möjlighet till kollektivt
liveloopande är dock till stora delar fortfarande ett outforskat fält.
Projektets bakgrund och frågeställningar
Denna artikel beskriver det konstnärligt/tekniska forskningsprojektet “Audiovisuella
loopar” som genomförts på Högskolan Dalarna av Hållbus Totte Mattsson, Henrik
Carlsson, Andrew Scott och Sören Johansson. Projektet finansierades av EU:s regionaliseringsfond och Region Dalarna och pågick under perioden jan 2011 till och med
november 2012.
Projektet tog avstamp i ett mindre pilotprojekt “interaktiva loopar” som genomfördes vid Högskolan Dalarna under HT09/VT10. Detta projekt hade som mål att ta
fram teknik och programvaror samt arbeta fram en modell för ett interaktivt konstDANISH MUSICOLOGY ONLINE SPECIAL EDITION, 2015
•
ISSN 1904-237X
48
Hållbus Totte Mattsson
närligt agerande mellan teknologi, tekniker och musiker. Konceptet provades sceniskt
bland annat i samband med ett framträdande med vevlire-duon Hurdy-Gurdy och
den amerikanska stråkkvartetten Kronos Quartet i Carnegie Hall, New York 13/3-10.1
Med dessa erfarenheter som utgångspunkt formulerades Projektet “Audiovisuella
loopar” där interaktion mellan flera musikanter i kombination med loopade visualiseringar varit i fokus.
Projektet utgick från önskemål och frågor från etablerade loopartister om att kunna integrera visuell looping för att förhöja närvarokänslan (“live”-upplevelsen) i sina
framträdande. Är det musiken eller att det liveloopas som är upplevelsen för publiken? Är det egentligen någon skillnad i om man startar ett konventionellt “backing
track” eller en uppspelning av den just inspelade loopen när man trycker på knappen? Vad innebär det om den just inspelade loopen visualiseras samtidigt som den
spelas upp? Dessa frågor och funderingar ledde framtill formulerandet av följande
frågeställning.
Hur kombinerar man visuell (live-)looping med “traditionell” liveloop-teknik
för att förhöja närvaro-känslan i ett framträdande?
En annan central frågeställning handlade om teknikens användarvänlighet i samband
med att den används av flera musikanter i ensembleform och hur den påverkar musicerandet.
Kan man skapa förutsättningar för ett kollektivt musicerande med loop-tekniken som gör det möjligt att enkelt kunna starta ett kreativt samspel med tekniken, oavsett tekniska förkunskaper eller genrebakgrund?
Projektets syfte och mål
Syftet blev således att designa ett system och en arbetsmetod för kollektiv livelooping
både auditivt och visuellt. Systemet skulle bygga på befintlig teknik och programvara och ligga inom rimliga prisramar för en användare. De ramar vi satte upp inom
projektet var att både det visuella och auditiva materialet skulle byggas upp av loopar
skapade i stunden, det vill säga inget förinspelat material eller färdiga videoklipp fick
användas. Projektet har haft tre delmål:
– Att anpassa programvaror och finna arbetssätt för audiovisuell live-looping utifrån
önskemål av artister från livemusikscenen.
– Att prova ut den kollektiva livelooptekniken med musikanter från olika genrer.
– Att i ett sceniskt verk visa på den audiovisuella loop-teknikens konstnärliga möjligheter.
1
Allan Kozinn, “From the Top of the World: Warmth Amid Ice,” New York Times, March 3, 2010, besökt 22 oktober 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/arts/music/15arctic.html?scp=1&sq=hurdy-gurdy&st=cse&_
r=2&
49
Historisk återblick
Nya musikaliska idéer baserade på minimalism, seriell musik och utomeuropeisk musik bland efterkrigstidens unga tonsättare, inte minst John Cage, och utvecklingen av
bandspelaren blev avstampet för ett experimenterande med musik som också använde
inspelningar. Tidiga försök gjordes redan under slutet 40-talet med ljudeffektinspelningar på grammofonskivor (musique concréte) av bland annat Pierre Schaeffer2.
Med hjälp av manipulerade bandinspelningar samt flera sammankopplade bandspelare skapade Lester William “Les Paul” Polfuss3 och Karlheinz Stockhausen m.fl under
50-talet nya metoder för musikskapande som landade i möjligheter att på olika sätt
spela in, överlagra och manipulera ljud4.
Intressant är att se hur framförandeformen (konsertformen) för dessa verk skapar
olika lyssnings-estetik. Dels har vi musik uppbyggd av enbart inspelningar som sedan
spelas upp med hjälp av högtalare (acousmatic music) och utan att det finns en utövare på scenen vilket blir ett “nytt” lyssnande för en konsertpublik (acousmatic listening). Begreppen introduceras av Pierre Schaeffer som lånat dem från hur Pythagoras
undervisade sina elever dold bakom ett förhänge (acousmatic) – “in ancient times,
the apparatus was a curtain; today, it is the radio and the methods of reproduction”5.
Här ryms allt från bandkompositioner av t.ex. Stockhausen, skapade med ett slags
“bandslöjds-teknik” till blandformer av inspelningar tillsammans med “levande” musiker. I det senare fallet är ljudbandet en tydlig separat del av helheten som publiken
är fullt medveten om. Sedan har vi artister som använder sig av bandspelaren för att
spela upp backing-tracks i sina live-framträdande där inspelningen skall vara en för
publiken “omärklig” del av framförandet. Här hittar vi t.ex. pionjären Les Paul med
sin egenutvecklade “Paulverizer”, en styrenhet att montera på gitarren för att kunna
starta och sköta den “dolda” bandspelaren som spelade upp förinspelade grunder att
spela till och att också spela in pålägg över. Ett exempel på hur autenticitet-kravet från
publiken, och kanske även artisten, styr teknikutvecklingen och hur den presenteras
– framträdandet fick inte upplevas som play-back trots att det delvis (och ibland till
stor del) var det.
I början av 60-talet bildades San Fransisco Tape Music Center som blev ett forum
för unga avantgardistiska tonsättare, bl.a. Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender och Steve Reich, med ett fokus på minimalistisk musik med bandspelaren som
redskap6. Även andra inspelningsredskap provades bland annat Maestro Echoplex,
ett bandeko med justerbart tonhuvud vilket gav möjligheter att styra delay-tiden och
att spela in överlagringar. Detta bandeko introducerades av Ramon Sender för Terry
Riley som sedan använde det i sin första loopbaserade komposition “Mescalin Mix”
(1961). När Terry Riley beskrev hur “Mescalin Mix” kommit till för en fransk radio2
3
4
5
6
Thom Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music (London: Routledge 2002), 90f.
Greg Milner, Perfecting Sound Forever – the Story of Recorded Music, (Croydon: Granta 2010), 125.
Holmes, Electronic, 95f
Pierre Schaeffer, Acousmatics. C. Cox & D. Warner (red.) Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music
(New York: Continium), 77.
Holmes, Electronic, 78.
50
ingenjör vid RTF:s (Radiodiffusion-Television Francais) radiostudio i Paris 1963 och
ingenjören då satte en bandloop mellan två bandspelare, där den ena använde inspelningshuvudet för inspelning och den andra använde det för uppspelning, skapades prototypen för dagens livelooping med möjligheter till feedback och overdub7.
Systemet som Riley kom att kalla “Time Lag Accumulator” är i princip samma uppkoppling som sedan använts av Robert Fripp och Brian Eno bland annat vid inspelningen av det klassiska albumet “No Pussyfooting” utgiven 1973. När Fripp sedan i
slutet av 70-talet började ge solokonserter med livelooping kallade han systemet för
“Frippertronics” (i princip identiskt med Rileys “Time Lag Accumulator”). Att Riley
inte ger ett erkännande till den ingenjör som faktiskt är uppfinnaren av “Time Lag
Accumulatorn” är en smula märkligt då det borde varit lätt för honom att ta reda på
hans namn. En trolig kandidat är Jaques Poullin som var innovatör och tekniker tillsammans med Pierre Schaeffer mellan 1958 och 1975 vid GRM (Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète) en avdelning vid RTF8. Om Riley verkligen (med hjälp av
den “okände” franske ingenjören) var först med att konstruera detta system är dock
ett ämne för diskussion, snarlika uppkopplingar användes av Mauricio Kagel i verket
Transición II för piano, percussion och två bandspelare (1958-59) och även av Vladimir Ussachevsky, Pauline Oliveros och Ramon Sender. Man kan kanske säga att livelooping helt enkelt låg i tiden.
En banbrytande kompositionsmetod som utvecklades av Steve Reich som ligger
nära loop-tekniken var “gradual phase shifting” även kallad “phasing”. Detta innebär
att flera identiska fraser repeteras men inte riktigt håller synk utan istället glider de
isär och skapar då hela tiden nya mönster och upplevelser utan att man behöver tillföra något nytt musikaliskt material.9 Ett tidigt exempel är kompositionen “It´s gonna
Rain” (1965). Denna kompositionsmetod blev en viktig inspirationskälla för Brian
Eno i skapandet av sin “Ambient music” ett tidigt exempel är albumet “Discret Music”
(1975) där också en “Time Lag Accumulator” används10.
Nästa stora kliv i loopteknik-utvecklingen blev Lexicons loop-maskin PCM42 som
konstruerades av Garry Hall och kom ut på marknaden 1981. Det var ett digitalt delay
som också gick att kontrollera med hjälp av en fotpedal vilket öppnade upp möjligheten att kunna spela ett instrument med händerna och samtidigt styra live-loopingen
med fötterna. Detta arbetssätt är än idag det vanligaste och utforskades först av tonsättare och artister som Pauline Oliveros, David Torn och Mattias Grob. Flera loop-maskiner kom ut på marknaden under slutet av 80-talet men blev inte några försäljningssuccéer. Lexicon gjorde ett nytt försök med Jamman, utvecklad av Garry Hall och Bob
Sellon som släpptes 1993. En välkonstruerad och prisvärd maskin som tyvärr snart
togs ur produktion på grund av för liten efterfrågan.
7
8
9
10
Evelyn Gayou, “The GRM: landmarks on a historic route”. Organised Sound, Vol.12 (3) (Cambridge:
University Press, 2007), 203-211.
Robert Fink, Repeating ourselves: American minimal music as cultural practice (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 106f.
Brian Eno, Ambient Music. C. Cox & D. Warner (red.) Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (New
York: Continium, 2004), 94-97
51
En förklaring kan vara att loop-maskiner konstruerades efter en musikalisk estetik
(solistisk med långa linjer utan tydliga form-delar osv.) som inte attraherade mer populärmusik-orienterade köpare. I slutet av 80-talet kom också den kanske mer lättarbetade samplern som man kan säga också är en form av loop-maskin men som istället
använder redan inspelade loopar som lätt går att växla emellan. Möjligheter som livelooping maskinerna dittills saknat.
En del av dessa begränsningar kom Matthias Grob förbi med hjälp av en av Garry
Hall ombyggd PCM42:a. Han var dock inte nöjd utan längtade efter ett mer musikaliskt och intuitivt loop-instrument med möjlighet att bland annat växla mellan flera olika formdelar. Tillsammans med programmeraren Eric Obermühler och senare
också Kim Flint konstruerade han i början av 90-talet sin Loop Delay som, med hjälp
av Keith McMillen chefstekniker på Gibson, släpptes ut på marknaden under namnet
Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro 1994.11 Denna maskin är modellen för konstruktionen av mjukvaran Ableton Live:s plugin Looper som ligger till grund för systemet som
presenteras i denna artikel.
Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro
Oberheim Exhoplex Pro är en viktig milstolpe för utvecklingen av loop-tekniken. Med
namnet Echoplex knyts historien ihop då det också var namnet på det bandeko som
Terry Riley använde i sin första loopbaserade komposition “Mescalin Mix” som beskrivits ovan.
Denna maskin innehöll en fantastisk massa möjligheter men var inte riktigt färdigutvecklad när den kom ut på marknaden. Den innehöll en del buggar och inköpspriset var mycket högt.
Många av Echoplexens möjligheter har sedan kopierats och legat till grund för den
fortsatta teknikutvecklingen och idag finns det ett flertal olika välfungerande loopmaskiner, både som mjukvaror och separata moduler, t.ex. den mycket populära
Boss RC-300. Echoplexen innehöll dock en unik möjlighet som inte kopierats – BrotherSync – en funktion som gjorde det möjligt att enkelt koppla ihop flera Echoplex
som då höll en gemensam synk och där också valfri enhet kunde starta en ny session.
Denna funktion har dock varken kommit till någon större användning eller utvecklats vidare fram tills nu. Den beskrivs i manualen på följande sätt.
any unit can define the basic cycle time just by recording a loop. The other units
can then be synchronized to that loop time. Have an Echoplex jam session! If
you think that the Echoplex opens up a lot of possibilities for a single player,
imagine the possibilities for multiple performer.12
11
12
Matthias Grob, “How the Gibson/Oberheim Echople CameTogether”, 1996, besökt 22 oktober
2015, http://www.loopers-delight.com/tools/e3hoplex/OBechoplexhistory.html
Echoplex, Digital Pro User´s Guide,1994, besökt 22 oktober 2015, http://www.loopers-delight.com/
tools/echoplex/echoplex.html
52
Att ta vara på och utforska dessa möjligheter till loop-musicerande i ensembleform
“kollektiv livelooping” var en av de centrala utgångspunkterna för projektet. Detta
ledde till följande två kravspecifikationer på det system som konstruerades:
– Flera musikanter skall kunna loopmusicera tillsammans i perfekt synkronisation.
– Vem som helst skall kunna starta en session och då definiera ett gemensamt tempo.
Vad är Live?
När Thomas Edison 1877 för första gången läste in “Mary had a little lamb” i tratten
till fonografen och sedan vände på processen och spelade upp inspelningen så uppstod samtidigt dikotomin “live” kontra inspelning. Auslander menar att innan inspelningstekniken (mediatization) var “live” (liveness) meningslöst – en ickefråga – begreppen är helt beroende av varandra.13 Vidare så innebar samtidigt detta att musik
som hittills alltid upplevts i någon form av audiovisuell kontext helt plötsligt förekom i en enbart auditiv form. Ur detta startade en ny visualiseringsprocess där lyssnarens fantasi och föreställningar tillsammans med en allt starkare kommersialisering
kring musiken skapade en stark visuell kultur kring de framväxande genrerna och subgenrerna men också att live-begreppet omformades.14 Auslander utgår ifrån rockmusik från 60-talet och framåt och problematiserar kring hur framförandet (live) alltmer
gått mot ett återskapande av fonogram-inspelningen. Om framförandet sker fullständigt playback eller inte är för fansen idag helt oväsentligt så länge artisten finns på
scenen och agerar i någon form. Det upplevs av publiken fortfarande som en autentisk live-konsert som förmodligen skulle förlora i trovärdighet om musiken skiljde sig
för mycket från inspelningen. Värt att notera är att Auslander läser av dessa tendenser
15 år före Avicii och fenomen som Hatsune Miku. Avici (Tim Bergling).15 är ett av
de större namnen inom dagens DJ-kultur och framträder på enorma arenor med sin
musik som framförs till största delen playback. Hatsune Miku16 som är en helt konstgjord artist, ett hologram med en datorproducerad röst, turnerar och framträder “live”
för stora publikskaror i “sitt” hemland Japan. Begreppen “autenticitet” och “live” blir
enligt Auslander definierade av de kulturella och ideologiska konventionerna som gäller inom genren, konventioner som hela tiden förändras (musikvideos, “backdrops”,
“visuals”, skivkonvolut, kläder, frisyr osv.). Edisons inspelning av “Mary had a little
lamb” har i denna medieringsprocess omformats till att bli “live”.
Denna medieringsprocess är i live-looping koncentrerad till en i stunden pågående
process där livemusicerandet transformeras till medierad form. Kombinerar vi detta
med filmloopande så blir upplevelsen faktiskt att vi samtidigt vänder på processen –
det medierade framförandet, musikloopen, blir “live-eriserad” som en filmloop. Diko13
14
15
16
Philip Auslander, Liveness:Performance in Mediatized Culture. (New York: Routledge, 1999), 42f.
Auslander, Liveness, 53f.
Tim Bergling, Avicii – Ultra Music Festival 2015, konsertvideo, besökt 21 november 2015, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8CsjAtg1k
Hatsune Miku, Crypton Future Media – Hatsune Miku –World is Mine, 2010, video, besökt 22 oktober
2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEaBqiLeCu0
53
tomin mellan inspelning och liveframförande blir upphävd och vi upplever en syntes
mellan de båda. Detta ger upphov till ett helt annat förhållningssätt till begreppet
“live” då processen och flödet också fortsätter även om loop-artisten gör ett uppehåll
i sitt eget musicerande.
Audiovisuell Live-looping vad är det?
Att använda visuella medel och metoder i scenkonst för att förstärka (musik)upplevelsen har en lång historia alltifrån ljussättning och målade kulisser framtill dagens virtuella scenografi och enorma digitala “backdrop” skärmar. Kopplingen mellan musik och
det nya mediet film och dess estetiska möjligheter blev ett nytt fält för 1920- och 30-talets avantgardistiska konstnärer. Med namn som Oskar Fischinger, Viking Eggeling,
Walter Ruttman och Hans Richter skapades genren “Visual Music”17 som är en viktig
inspiration för dagens VJ-artister. Inom VJ-ing utgår man från förinspelade videoklipp
som processas i realtid med olika mjukvaror och spelas upp synkront med musiken.18
Vår visuella ambition var att kunna fånga stunden då musikloopen skapades och sedan projicera den som en filmloop på en “backdrop” där den även kunde vävas ihop
med övriga rörliga bilder från framförandet på scenen. Till skillnad från hur materialet
för en VJ-artist skapas så skulle vårt filmmaterial skapas i stunden och automatiskt spelas upp i synk med musiklooparna. Vår första vision var att den visuella loopingen skulle fungera som en “spontan” förlängning på loop-musicerandet (utan teknisk support).
Detta visade sig dock inte fungera tillfredsställande. För att fungera och bli konstnärligt
intressant så krävdes det en medskapande videokonstnär. Auslander använder begreppet
“Mixed-media performance”19 för ett framträdande som blandar levande framträdanden
med film, video, projiceringar osv., ett begrepp som passar bra i detta sammanhang. Till
skillnad från den elektroniska videoscenen, där mycket skapas som fasta installationer
av artister som Ryoji Ikeda och Carsten Nicolai, är det centrala för vårt projekt att det är
ett live-framträdande – det händer här och nu – Audiovisuell Live-looping.
Livelooping idag – olika arbetssätt, olika scener, olika filosofi
Den ursprungliga arbetsmetoden och filosofin för livelooping styrdes av teknikens
begränsningar. Artisten började med en tom loopmaskin i vilken musiken skapades
och byggdes upp i stunden och var borta så snart framförandet var över och man
drog ur kontakten. Att spara materialet var en omständlig process som krävde att man
tog fram och kopplade in någon form av inspelningsutrustning. Nu räcker det oftast
med ett enkelt klick med musen på datorn och sedan finns hela sessionen sparad.
Idag är tekniken även på andra sätt mycket mer sofistikerad och begreppet
livelooping täcker in ett flertal arbetsmetoder med olika estetik och filosofi beroende
17
18
19
Brian Evans, “Foundations of a Visual Music” Computer Music Journal Vol.29 (4) (The MIT Press,
2005), 11-24.
Michael Faulkner, VJ, audio-visual art + vj culture (Laurence King Publishing, 2006).
Auslander, Liveness, 36.
54
på hur artisten vill presentera sig för publiken. För en del artister är det centralt att
publiken är medveten om och kan uppskatta “loopandet” vilket blir en viktig del i
konsertupplevelsen. För andra är loop-tekniken ett hjälpmedel för det musikaliska
uttrycket utan något egenvärde och inget som publiken behöver känna till. Slutligen
är loop-tekniken för ytterligare andra ett hjälpmedel för att öva, komponera och improvisera. Ett annorlunda sätt att musicera med och för sig själv.
Loop-tekniken som en inrepeterad hårt arrangerad del i ett framträdande.
Tekniken möjliggör för artisten att göra “det omöjliga” med avsikt att uppträda live
inför en publik. På detta sätt arbetar t.ex. den svenska numera i New Orleans boende loop-artisten Theresa Andersson. Hon började använda loop-teknik av ekonomiska orsaker då hon helt enkelt inte hade råd att ta med sig ett band. Hon komponerar inte låtarna med hjälp av loopteknik utan “transkriberar” färdiga arrangemang
till loop-arrangemang. Dessa övar hon sedan in och framför dem noggrant inrepeterade “live” inför en konsertpublik eller videoinspelade och utlagda på YouTube där
de fungerar som en viktig marknadsföringskanal för henne.20 Hennes image och framträdanden bygger på att publiken är medveten om och uppskattar live-loopandet. För
andra är loop-tekniken ett hjälpmedel för det musikaliska uttrycket utan något egenvärde och inget som publiken behöver känna till. Se till exempel hur den engelske
soloartisten Ed Sheeran utnyttjar loop-teknik i sina solo-framträdanden.21 På ett delvis
annorlunda sätt jobbar Third Brother22 en kollektivt liveloopande popduo som använder ett egenutvecklat system där båda liveloopar mot ett förprogrammerat klicktrack. Denna teknik är snarlik det sätt som Les Paul och Mary Ford utvecklade redan
under 50-talet. Se t.ex. deras demonstration av sin version av “How high the moon” i
Alistair Cooke’s TV program “Omnibus” från 1953.23
Loop-tekniken som en möjlighet att fånga ögonblicket.
Att starta från noll och låta loopkompositionen växa fram som en improvisation i dialog med sig själv är den “klassiska” formen av livelooping. Detta är ett sätt där man
bejakar teknikens ögonblickliga feedback och låter den pågående processen styra musicerandet “det kan aldrig bli fel – bara annorlunda”. Den ungerske psykologen Csíkszentmihályi använder i sin banbrytande forskning kring kreativitet begreppet “flow”24
20
21
22
23
24
Carina Jönsson “Loopen får en att låta som många”, Dagens Nyheter, 3 december, 2012, besökt 22
oktober 2015, http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/musik/loopen-far-en-att-lata-som-manga/
Ed Sheeran, Multiply Live in Dublin, konsertvideo, 2014, besökt 22 oktober 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR3vIjAZDnM
Third Brother “Videodokumentation av en konsert på Gamla Elverket, Falun”, 24 mars 2012, besökt
22 oktober 2015, http://bambuser.com/v/2499152
Les Paul och Mary Ford “How high the moon ”, TV-program, 23 oktober 1953, besökt 22 oktober 2015,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCEmAgak9V8&index=1&list=PL8NlZ84fylP1MI8KYEXHqd4iwjl
CSx3yH
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, (New
York: Harper Collins, 1996)
55
vilket passar väl in på detta musicerandesätt. Han beskriver “flow” som ett tillstånd
där man är helt uppslukad i sitt handlande utan plats för självmedvetna reflektioner
och med en stark känsla av att ha full kontroll.
Loop-artisten Samuel “Loop-Tok” Andersson25 har utforskat detta kreativa “flow”
som livelooping skapar när han varit musiker till dansklasser och det centrala varit ett
i stunden skapande/komponerande utan tid för analytisk reflexion och möjlighet att
starta om processen. Ett arbetssätt som han sedan tagit med sig upp på scen och där nerven och närvaron växer ur att publiken känner och är medveten om att vad som helst
kan hända precis här och nu. Denna arbetsmetod är den samma som Terry Riley använde sig av under mitten av 60-talet då han gav improviserade, ibland flera timmar långa,
performance-konserter med sin “Time Lag Accumulator” på olika scener i New York26.
Loop-tekniken som ett låtskrivar-/förproduktions-redskap
Loop-teknikens direkta återkoppling och “flow” gör den till ett mycket kreativt kompositionsredskap. Ett redskap som fungerar som en “jante-killer”, dvs. hindrar ett negativt reflekterande självmedvetande, och där intellektets eftertanke aldrig får chansen
att stoppa de kreativa processerna. Detta sätt att använda loop-teknik för att komponera/arrangera musik provades t.ex. av gruppen Hedningarna i arbetet med förproduktionen av cd-skivan & (2012). Bakgrunden var att bandet ville hitta ett annat sätt
att bygga arrangemang och bakgrunder än att “hänga framför skärmen” och programmera, ett arbetssätt som oftast exkluderar alla utom “dataexperten”. Utgångsmaterialet bestod av en fragmentarisk hög av olika melodier, snuttar och idéer och möjligheten att i stunden kunna pröva, utvärdera och kombinera materialet utan att processen
hela tiden stannade av gav helt nya möjligheter till ett gemensamt kreativt skapande.
Dessa live-loopade bakgrunder togs med till studion och blev sedan en grund för den
fortsatta produktionen.
Artisten samarbetar med en (oftast dold) loopare
YouTube är idag ett viktigt forum också för livelooping vilket lett till flera intressanta
lösningar för artisten att visa publiken att “det är på riktigt”. Ett exempel är Gianni and
Sarahs version av Radioheads låt “Karma Police” 27 där vad som händer “bakom scenen” presenteras i en separat video28. Detta dras till sin spets i videon “Roll Up” av ensemblen Walk off the Earth29 där vi får följa en snitslad liveloop-bana och där rollerna
25
26
27
28
29
Samuel Andersson, Livelooping- – att fånga ögonblicket, Videodokumentation, 31 januari 2012, besökt
22 oktober 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4caRcRCKBg
Gianni och Sarah (2011a) Karma Police-Gianni and Sarah (Walk of the Earth), video, 25 oktober 2011,
besökt 22 oktober 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE2kANx8WdA
Gianni och Sarah, Karma Police, Behind the Scenes (Gianni and Sarah) , video, 26 oktober 2011, besökt 22 oktober 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hsXYRc6vWg
Walk off the Earth, Roll Up-Walk off the Earth, video, 26 april 2011, besökt 22 oktober 2015, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8nkJ1_Ee0
56
tydligt delas upp i “The Looper” (den som sköter loop-tekniken) och “The Loopee”
(artisten som utför musiken som loopas). Denna video är uppdelad i två bildrutor
som visar dessa båda funktioner parallellt så publiken förstår att “detta händer just nu”.
Förutom den “frihet” att koncentrera sig på musiken och uttrycket istället för att
behöva fokusera på knapptryckandet så ger detta arbetssätt nya möjligheter till interagerande med en (mer eller mindre synlig) tekniker. Detta öppnar upp för många
spännande möjligheter där man t.ex. kan tänka sig ett band där en eller flera av medlemmarna loopar upp sig själva eller varandra och dessa loopar sedan blir med och
påverkar fortsättningen av improviserandet/musicerandet. Detta sätt att arbeta har
bland annat den amerikanska stråkkvartetten Kronos Quartet utforskat i sitt samarbete med den inuitiska sångerskan Tanya Tagaq, där delar av musiken loopas av teknikern och skickas tillbaks till scenen för att generera nya impulser och infall i musiken.
Enligt uppgifter från Brian Mohr, ljuddesigner för Kronos Quartet, vid seminariet “Dagens teknik som konstnärligt redskap” med Kronos Quartet och deras tekniska medarbetare på Uppsala Konsert & Kongress den första november 201230. Ett annat scenario
är att “tonsättaren” också hanterar loopteknologin och bygger en interaktiv komposition av olika sekvenser från bandet som samtidigt ger impulser och feedback till det
fortsatta skapandet. Se t.ex. tonsättaren och instrumentinnovatören Paul Dreschers
samarbete med Steven Schick31. Ett ytterligare exempel är den konstmusikaliska liveloop-duon essens:132 och deras samarbeten med olika tonsättare som specialskrivit
kammarmusikaliska verk för deras sättning klarinett, fiol och liveloopteknik.
Andra former av looping
Looping är en viktig teknik inom dagens dans-scen med sitt ursprung i den Jamaicanska dubben som växte fram under 60-talet och erövrade club-scenerna under 70-talet.
Från början handlade det om olika tekniker där man använde LP-skivan och Maxisingeln som medium (schratch, breaks, toast, remix osv.). Ett flertal stilar och speltekniker utvecklades, bland annat “Turntablism” – en teknik där man använder skivspelarna som ett instrument. Intressant är att konstatera att en likartad spelteknik utvecklades av Pierre Schaeffer under 40-talet då han experimenterade med flera grammofonspelare vilket bland annat hörs i verken “Etudes de Bruits” som framfördes live
vid direktsändningar i franska radion 194833. Med en nära koppling till repetitiva minimalistiska musikströmningar företrädda av bland andra Steve Reich och Philip Glass
växer discon under 70-talet fram ur soul och funk i New Yorks gay-kultur. Med den
17 minuter långa remixen av Donna Summers låt “Love to love you babe” 1975 gjord
av Giorgio Moroder förebådas DJ-kulturen. Genom att loopa, manipulera och live-re30
31
32
33
http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/uppsalakonsertkongress/pressreleases/uppsala-international-sacred-music- festival-the-kronos-quartet-2-november-805446
Paul Drescher, Schick Machine Excerpts – Final Version from Mondavi Center, video, 2 mars 2011, besökt
22 oktober 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS2MJwmBB5Y
Essens:1 Hysteria (Muse, Live Cover by essens:1), Video, 20 augusti 2011, besökt 22 oktober 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhD1JFOOdko
Holmes, Electronic, 91f.
57
mixa musik från flera skivspelare skapar “Disk-jockey” inom DJ-kulturen långa sammanhängande dans-set med ett bestämt BPM34. Under 80-talet övergår tekniken i den
framväxande techno-musiken där ny musikteknologi som trummaskiner och samplers blir viktiga byggstenar. I en sampler lägger man in förinspelade sekvenser ur en
personlig ljudbank eller “samplade” från fonogram med kända artister. Dessa samples
loopas och spelas upp vid framförandet med hjälp av olika styrenheter (midiklaviaturer, fotpedaler, pads osv.).
Konstruktion av vårt system
Vår ursprungliga ambition var att koppla samman flera loopmaskiner och datorer
med olika mjukvaror. De synkproblem som uppstod i samband med detta ledde
dock till att vi fick tänka om och istället satsade på att försöka “stänga in” hela projektet i en dator vilken kunde styras med ett antal fotpedaler.
Vi valde att gå vidare med mjukvaran Ableton Live 8 och dess plugin Looper då denna plugin kopierat många av Echoplexens smarta lösningar. För att styra mjukvaran så
valde vi att använda Behringer FCB1010 midi-pedaler som fick smeknamnet “brädorna”.
Mjukvaran sätter ingen begränsning för hur många musiker man inkluderar men vi satte gränsen för vår loop-ensemble till högst fyra musiker inte minst för att uppkopplingen av hårdvarorna (“brädor”, mikrofoner, lyssning osv.) inte skulle bli för komplicerad.
Då livelooping vanligen utövas som en solistisk konstform innebär det att tekniken
och gränssnittet också är designat utifrån det perspektivet. Detta visade sig skapa en
hel del problem när vi ville designa mjukvaran för en loop-ensemble. Avgörande för
oss var att musikerna kunde känna sig kreativa och trygga och att de upplevde att de
hade kontroll över sina “loop-instrumentet” utan att behöva läsa av en datorskärm35.
En god design bygger på “feedback” mellan användare och maskin vilken skapar
tillförsikt, bekräftelse och ger tydliga signaler om vad som händer36. Då vi ville att vårt
system också skulle fungera för musikanter utan så stor erfarenhet av musikteknologi
och då dagens mjukvaror innehåller en sådan mängd funktioner och möjligheter så
blev det första steget att begränsa dessa valmöjligheter. Med hjälp av midi-mapping
kunde vi välja enbart de funktioner vi ville skulle vara aktiva och sedan placera ut dem
bland fotpedalens tio knappar. För att skapa ett så intuitivt och lättförståeligt gränssnitt som möjligt även för någon utan stora tekniska förkunskaper och för att förhindra att man av misstag valde fel knapp så färgkodade vi de viktigaste funktionerna.
Inspirerade av affordance-begreppet hos Gibson37 utgick vi från de färger som har blivit en konvention för de olika grundfunktionerna dvs. röd = inspelning, grön = uppspelning, gul = pålägg, och vit = stop. Våra referensartister bestod av lärare och elever
34
35
36
37
Robert Fink, (2005) Repeating ourselves: American minimal music as cultural practice, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), 55f.
Per Anders Nilsson, A field of possibilities – Designing and Playing Digital Musical Instruments, (Diss.
Kållered: Ineko AB Nilsson, 2011), 34.
Donald A Norman, The design of future things, (New York: Basic Book, 2005), 138f.
James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, (New York: Psychology Press, 1986).
58
från Musik-konservatoriet i Falun samt kollegor och studenter vid Högskolan Dalarna
med en bakgrund i olika genrer (bl.a. folkmusik, kammarmusik, progressive rock och
dagens dansscen). I mindre ensembler, trios och kvartetter provade de kontinuerligt ut
vår design och gav feedback på systemet. Vi videodokumenterade dessa “testkörningar” vilket gav oss möjlighet att i efterhand gå tillbaka och följa det kreativa arbetsflödet för att kunna förbättra interaktionen med tekniken.
Ett problem med Looper och Ableton Live gränssnitt, just på grund av att det är
konstruerat för solistisk livelooping, är att det är omöjligt att se statusen för mer än
en plugin i taget. Detta gör att när flera loopar rullar samtidigt så är det omöjligt att
se och veta vilken status respektive Looper befinner sig i (en Looper kan ha fyra olika
status Record, Play, Overdub, eller Stop). Detta kan bli ett stort problem när flera
musikanter loopar samtidigt om någon missar att gå ur overdub-läget på sin Looper.
Loopern fortsätter då att spela in tills den blir överstyrd och “systemet brakar ihop”.
Detta skapade en frustrerande osäkerhet hos musikanterna när vi först testade vårt system. Lösningen blev ett liknande system som för fotpedalerna. Genom ett lokalt trådlöst nätverk visades statusen för de olika looparna med färgsymboler på en iPad eller
iPhone. Systemet döpte vi till Loopstatus-skvallret.
“Loopstatus-skvallret”
Detta system bygger på integrationen mellan Ableton Live och programmeringsverktyget Max4Live. Max är ett programmeringsverktyg/programmeringsspråk gjort för att
i första hand skapa musik- och videorelaterade applikationer. Max har integrerats direkt i Ableton Live i form av mjukvaran Max4Live. Detta gav oss möjlighet att utöka
Ableton Lives funktionaliteter med en specialskriven programkod som med hjälp av
Ableton Lives eget programmeringsinterface API lyssnar till en Loopers status och håller koll på förändringar i denna. När en förändring sker skickas statusen vidare internt i vårt Max-objekt som ett numeriskt värde vilket i sin tur triggar ett OSC-meddelande (Open Sound Control) som slutligen skickas till en i förväg angiven IP-adress
på det lokala nätverket. Denna IP- adress matchar sedan en enhet lämplig för visning,
exempelvis en iPad eller iPhone. Vi har i vårt system valt att installera TouchOSC
som är en app vilken låter användaren bygga egna gränssnitt för att skicka och ta
emot OSC-meddelanden. Vi har valt att bygga ett gränssnitt som visar ett antal olika
“lysdioder” som lyser rött, grönt eller gult respektive för Record, Play, eller Overdub.
Om ingen av dioderna lyser betyder detta att Loopern befinner sig i Stopläge.
Våra tidiga programmeringar av Brädorna för att styra looparna var för begränsade
vilket våra referensartister påtalade. Behovet av variationer som B och C-delar, olika
loop-längder, “flytande loopar” (loopar som inte följde synk) osv. ledde till ett antal
olika försök som landade i en grundsetup och programmering som också blev en metod för att lära sig hantverket och filosofin bakom loopandet. Denna “loop-pedagogik”, har vi sammanfattat i en enkel “Loop-Tutorial”38.
38
Finns att hämta på https://github.com/mrhenko/audiovisual-loops
59
Ganska snart märkte vi att tekniken öppnade för flera olika användningsområden, det handlade inte bara om ett sceniskt musicerande med riktning mot en publik
utan lika mycket om ett spontant musicerande med varandra för sin egen skull. Detta ledde till olika sätt att koppla tekniken och också flera helt olika sätt att utnyttja
den på. De kraftfulla monitorhögtalare vi från början använde blev överflödiga och
istället blev lyssningen i hörlurar med ett “mjukt” reverb det som passade det mer
intima “kammarmusicerandet”. Ett musicerande som ofta byggdes upp med enbart
röster. Det visade sig också att Hearback-systemet, ett system där varje musikant med
en egen liten mixer kan styra sin egen monitor-lyssning, inte fyllde så stor funktion i
detta sammanhang då man naturligt mixade sig själv och sina loopar med mikrofonavståndet. Dessa erfarenheter ledde till att vi konstruerade två delvis olika system, ett
mycket nerbantat, “snabbriggat” och tekniskt okomplicerat för workshops samt ett
mer avancerat tänkt för ett sceniskt framträdande av en loop-ensemble.
Filmloopandet
Då Max4Live pluggarna som är integrerade i Ableton Live visade sig kunna skicka information som mjukvaruprogrammet Isadora kunde ta emot så valde vi det för att
sköta filmloopandet. Vi såg också i detta en möjlig lösning för synkproblematiken
mellan filmloopar och musikloopar.
Ett grundläggande problem då man vill synkronisera bild och ljud beror på ljudets och den rörliga bildens olika informationstäthet. En digitalström som omvandlas till rörligbild innehåller nästan tvåhundra gånger mer information än en ljudström av motsvarande upplösning. Till exempel så är det är inte ovanlig att bilden
blir fördröjd med upp till en tiondels sekund enbart när man kopplar en kamera
till en projektor. Har man varit på en utomhuskonsert med storbildsvideo har man
kanske märkt att musiken och bilden oftast inte är synkroniserade. Här spelar ljudets och ljuset olika hastighet också in, ett visst antal meter från scenen kommer
det av tekniken fördröjda ljuset att hinna ikapp ljudet tack vare ljusets snabbare
fortplantning och det skapas en “sweet spot” där ljud och bild är i synk. Att ljudet
och bilden hela tiden synkroniserar är ett måste för den upplevelse vi vill skapa –
om bilden och ljudet inte upplevs som enhetligt så faller helt enkelt hela idén med
audiovisuella loopar.
Problemet visade sig vara svårlöst men vårt “Loopstatus-skvaller system” var användbart även för detta ändamål då OSC protokollet kunde användas för att förmedla information från programmet Ableton Live via Max for Live till bildbehandlings
programmet Isadora. Dock visade det sig innehålla en allvarlig begränsning då det
ej kunde skicka ett “loop off”- meddelande för att tala om att nu skall kameran sluta
spela in och börja spela upp filmsekvensen. Konsekvensen blev att vi var tvungna att i
förväg definiera en del av looplängderna.
Till slut fick vi ett fungerande system som kunde spela in och spela upp tre olika visuella loopar samtidigt. Dessa visuella loopar kunde sedan kombineras med ytterligare material från “live”-kameror, videoeffekter samt live animeringar. Detta gav
60
många möjligheter för en videokonstnär att interagera i en gemensam audiovisuell
loopföreställning.
Dessa erfarenheter pekar på att ett meningsfullt loopande med kombinerat ljud
och bild kräver en delvis bestämd form på musiken och passar bäst in i en välrepeterad föreställning för att komma till sin fulla rätt. Vårt resultat presenterades i en
audiovisuell föreställning under konferensen Audiovisual days vid Högskolan Dalarna, Falun den 20-21 september 201239.
Resultat
Forskningsprojektet visar på nya tillämpningar och möjligheter för loopteknik och
nedan redovisas de viktigaste resultaten.
– En teknisk modell för audiovisuell looping, baserad på mjukvaruprogrammen Ableton Live och Isadora, är framtagen och presenterad på scen.
– Ett användarvänligt system för kollektiv livelooping är färdigutvecklat och används av
artister i flera olika genrer.
Systemet bygger på produkter från företagen (Ableton Live, Cycling74, Apple och
Behringer) men kan även byggas i Windows-miljö med hård och mjukvaror från andra varumärken. Det finns också olika freeware-versioner av bland annat Echoplex
Digital Pro att tanka hem från nätet t.ex. loopmjukvaran Mobius. Vi har utgått från
att de flesta musikanter idag redan har en egen laptop och någon form av touchskärm (mobil, iPod, iPad, eller liknande) vilket gör att kostnaden för att skaffa sig en
“liveloop-rigg” inte är så stor. Viktigt att framhålla är även att systemet är “genreobundet”, dvs. det krävs inga genrespecifika, tekniska eller musikaliska, förkunskaper för
att kunna musicera med tekniken vilken har provats ut med hjälp av musikanter med
bakgrund i flera olika genrer. Systemet är heller inte styrt av en “master-slave” funktion
mellan de olika loopmaskinerna utan är konstruerat så att det är möjligt för vem som
helst i ensemblen att när som helst starta en ny “session”. Vidare har en metod och ett
undervisningsmaterial i kollektiv livelooping som bygger på en standardiserad programmering samt färgmärkning av styrknapparna tagits fram. Detta material är avsett
att bland annat användas i workshops.
Resultaten finns presenterade på Audiovisuella mediers hemsida40. Denna sida
fungerar som gemensamt presentationsforum för samtliga projekt finansierade med
medel från EU:s regionaliseringsfond och Region Dalarna. Här finns video-dokumentation från workshops och föreläsningar. De olika programmeringar som gjorts, vår
“Loop-Tutorial” samt våra olika lösningsförslag på gränssnittsproblematiken finns att
hämta hem från github.com41 som “open sources” – vår förhoppning är att detta ma39
40
41
Mattsson, Exempel kollektiv audiovisuell livelooping, Videodokumentation, 21 september 2012, publicerad 17 oktober 2014, besökt 22 oktober 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAlQjswmfv0
AVM, Audiovisuella loopar: Kollektiv livelooping – ett oprövat sätt att musicera, hemsida, 26 september
2012, besökt 22 oktober 2015, http://www.du.se/sv/AVM/Startsida/Audiovisuella-loopar/
https://github.com/mrhenko/audiovisual-loops
61
terial skall vara så lättillgängligt och “förståeligt” att den som blir intresserad själv
skall kunna kasta sig in i den kollektiva liveloopingens spännande och okända värld.
Slutord
Tekniken har visat sig ha en stor kreativ potential. Med enbart en kort instruktion
och några enkla etyder så startar en kollektiv process där den omedelbara feedbacken
ger ett flow som lockar fram skaparglädjen hos musikanterna – man har helt enkelt
otroligt kul! Dessa erfarenheter har lett vidare till tankar om hur looptekniken skulle
kunna användas i musikundervisningen och där ser vi flera spännande möjligheter,
bland annat
– Ett annorlunda ensemblemusicerande där tekniken ger möjligheter till flera musikaliska roller
– Ett kollektivt kompositionsredskap där interaktionen med tekniken ger upphov till
oväntade och nya musikaliska lösningar
– Ett övningsredskap där den omedelbara feedbacken gör att man snabbt kan prova
och utvärdera musikaliska idéer (t.ex. andra stämmor, komp, riff osv.)
Vidare tror vi också att tekniken kan vara ett användbart hjälpmedel inom vården.
Lusten att hitta synk med sig själv stimulerar användandet av motoriken och systemet
går enkelt att förenkla och anpassa så att man oavsett handikapp kan styra och musicera med looparna.
Dessutom är möjligheterna att möta och interagera med sin egen röst och tillfredställelsen att vara delaktig i en process viktiga ingångar till musikterapeutiska processer.
62
Abstracts
Loop-teknik i solistiska sammanhang är en idag väletablerad musicerande form dock
är möjligheterna att använda tekniken i ensembleform ett mer eller mindre oprövat
fält. I projektet “Audiovisuella loopar” som genomförts vid Högskolan Dalarna presenteras ett system för kollektiv livelooping där upp till fyra personer loop-musicerar
tillsammans och där loopandet samtidigt kan spelas in och spelas upp som videoklipp. Tekniken har visat sig ha en stark kreativ potential. Med enbart en kort instruktion så startar en kollektiv process där den omedelbara feedbacken ger ett “flow” som
lockar fram skaparglädjen hos musikanterna. Dessa erfarenheter pekar på spännande
möjligheter att använda tekniken i musikundervisning och musikterapi.
The use of looping techniques is today a well established form of solo musicianship
but more or less unproven in the context of ensemble performance. In the project
“Audiovisual Loops” at Universtiy College Dalarna a system was developed to allow
collective live looping for up to four people performing together and at the same time
as video loops of the performance were created and presented. This technique has a
strong creative potential. The collective process starts with just a short introduction
and the immediate musical feedback creates a “flow” that quickly brings out the creative potential of the musicians. This experience points forward to exciting possibilities
for use in music educations and music therapy.
JAN-OLOF GULLÖ, IVAN HÖGLUND, JULIA JONAS, HANS LINDETORP,
ANTON NÄSLUND, JOAKIM PERSSON & PETER SCHYBORGER
Nobel Creations: Producing infinite
music for an exhibition
Introduction
This article describes an artistic music production project that was a part of an exhibition
on the Nobel Laureates in 2014: Nobel Creations. The exhibition’s aim was to creatively interpret the various Nobel prizes in design, fashion and music. The exhibition took
place at the Nobel Museum (fig 1.) in Stockholm and students produced the artistic
content. The music productions, the empirical content described in this article, consisted
of various compositions that were woven together and distributed by loudspeakers in
the exhibit hall without interruption through the four months the exhibition lasted.
Figure 1. The Nobel Museum at Stortorget in central Stockholm. The Nobel Museum’s aim is to, through
creative learning and exhibition techniques as well as modern technology and elegant design, spread
knowledge as well as to create interest and discussion around the natural sciences and culture. The inventor Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) wrote in his will that physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature
and peace would each year receive a part of the revenues of his fortune. More than 800 Laureates have so
far been awarded the Nobel Prize.1 (Foto: © Peter Schyborger)
1
“About the Nobel Museum,” Nobel Museum, accessed August 30, 2015, http://www.nobelmuseum.
se/en/about-us.; “Nobel Prize,” Britannica Academic, accessed December 01, 2015, http://academic.
eb.com/EBchecked/topic/416856/Nobel-Prize.
•
ISSN 1904-237X
64
J-O. Gullö, I. Höglund, J. Jonas, H. Lindetorp, A. Näslund, J. Persson & P. Schyborger
The ideas behind Nobel Creations
Can artistic representation explain a Nobel Prize? This question was a fundamental issue for Nobel Creations (2014.12.05-2015.03.01).2 The exhibition took its starting point
in a statement that over the years many of those who have received the Nobel Prize
have shown an exceptional creativity in their research, writing or peace work. And in
many ways their creativity can be compared with the cross border creativity that many
artists, musicians or artistic creators, such as successful designers can express in their
work. Therefore creativity unites the Nobel Laureates with artists and creators since
their intrinsic creativity encourages them to think in new ways, to question established
theories, and to innovative put together combinations of insights from different fields.
Similar projects have been on going since 2011, when the Nobel Museum initiated cooperation with Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm. Students of fashion produced six creations that were shown in the exhibition Fashion Innovation
(2011.12.06–2012.01.22).3 The first exhibition was followed up with Fashion Innovation
2 (2012.12.04–2013.01.20)4 and Fashion Innovation 3 (2013.12.05–2014.05.04),5 which
also included interpretations in music composition created by students from the Jazz
Department at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm – KMH.6 In Nobel Creations
2014, four master students from the Music- and Media Department at KMH also joined
the production team. Their task was to create interactive music for the exhibit hall.
Music that was going to be heard without interruption all through the four months
the exhibition lasted. Although previous research reports experiences of how music has
been used in exhibitions at museums or how interactive media may be used in such
contexts,7 this project primarily has been based on experiences from projects at the
KMH in creating music for film, video games and Web-based contexts as well as experiences at the Nobel Museum from the previous years’ exhibitions about Nobel Laureates.
The Nobel Prize was instituted Alfred Nobel and why he donated his fortune to an
international award can be explained by the way he lived his life. Alfred Nobel was
born in Stockholm 1833. In his early childhood the family was very poor and moved
to St. Petersburg when the father, Immanuel Nobel who was an inventor, got a major
2
3
4
5
6
7
“Nobel Creations,” accessed August 30, 2015, http://www.nobelmuseum.se/en/exhibitions/nobelcreations
“Fashion Innovation,” accessed August 30, 2015, http://www.nobelmuseum.se/en/exhibitions/fashion-innovation
“Fashion Innovation 2,” accessed August 30, 2015, http://www.nobelmuseum.se/en/exhibitions/
fashion-innovation-2
“Fashion Innovation 3,” accessed August 30, 2015, http://www.nobelmuseum.se/en/exhibitions/
fashion-innovation-3
Kungliga Musikhögskolan i Stockholm.
Antonio Camurri and Pasqualino Ferrentino, “Interactive environments for music and multimedia”
in Multimedia systems 7(1) (1999): 32-47; Rita Kottasz, “Understanding the Influences of Atmospheric Cues on the Emotional Responses and Behaviours of Museum Visitors” in Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing 16:1-2 (2006): 95-121; Fredrik Lindstrand and Eva Insulander, “Setting the ground for engagement–multimodal perspectives on exhibition design” in Designs for Learning, 5(1-2) (2012): 30-49; Pam Meecham and Elena Stylianou; “Interactive Technologies in the Art
Museum” in Designs for Learning 5(1-2) (2014): 94-129.
65
contract in Russia. Therefore Alfred Nobel never got education in school but received
some private lessons during his years in Russia.
Through the agency of his father, Alfred studied chemistry, an area he later would
become very proficient in, but Alfred was also interested in literature and in his teens
he would rather be a writer than anything else. The father, who became a successful
and industrialist, not least when it came to producing armaments, sent his son Alfred
on trips around the world to meet with various business contacts. During his travels,
Alfred recurrently saw or heard of people getting injured in accidents related to blasting works where nitro-glycerine was used as an explosive. He took strong impression
of such accidents and this resulted in that he a few years later provided great effort to
invent explosives that were much safer to handle than nitro-glycerine. Alfred Nobel’s
most famous inventions: the dynamite and the detonator were very successful and
were spread worldwide. Nobel created an international empire for the production and
sales of explosives and built factories all over of the world.
Despite Alfred Nobel’s lack of formal education, he gradually became a highly respected scientist. In 1884 he was elected into the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences
and in 1893 he was appointed Honorary Doctor of Philosophy at Uppsala University. In total Alfred Nobel had more than 350 different patents registered and over the
years he became very wealthy. He never married and had no children and he did not
want other relatives to inherit his wealth. In 1888, eight years before he actually died,
a French newspaper by mistake published Alfred Nobel obituary. It was titled: The
merchant of death is dead.8 In the article Nobel was disconcerted and this made him
concerned about how he would be remembered. Therefore Nobel in his will decided
to institute the prices we now know as the Nobel Prize. He wanted his fortune to be
used to create a series of international prizes for those who confer the greatest benefit
on mankind in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Alfred
Nobel died in 1896 and the Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901, and over the years
more than 800 laureates have been awarded the Nobel Prize for their creative work.9
The concept of creativity
But what is it that makes creativity so interesting that it needs an exhibition in a museum? Although people throughout history obviously has carried out creative actions
and has been engaged in what we nowadays would call creative work, the concept of
creativity, with its current meaning, is relatively new and contrasts to previously established views:
The connection backwards was with the sense of creation involving some metaphysical force, as in the divine ordination of the world and all in existence
8
9
“Alfred Bernhard Nobel,” Britannica Academic, accessed December 01, 2015, http://academic.eb.com/
EBchecked/topic/416842/Alfred-Bernhard-Nobel.
Alexandra Selivanova, “Alfred Nobel”. Tekniska Museet, accessed October 29, 2015. http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/1/1910.html.printable.
66
within it. But this force was now located within the individual human being,
becoming the object of personal spiritual search for those seeking the wellspring
of truth and beauty. This organicist notion of creativity has had a powerful influence over the whole modern period, including among those who broke with
Romanticism or developed aesthetic values counter to its central tenets. It distinguishes the artist as someone whose ‘inner’ voice emerges from self-exploration,
and whose expressive power derives from imaginative depth. Artistic creativity
has become synonymous with this sense of exploration and expressive power.10
Nowadays, creativity is instead expected to lead to a result or product and creativity
should not to be understood as creation in a general sense, such as the human ability
to create mental images, emotions and beliefs by imagination. Furthermore, creativity
is understood as a creative process that firstly requires knowledge of the field in which
the creative activity takes place; secondly, requires knowledge of, or methodical skills
for, new ways of thinking and/or creative processes; and thirdly, creativity primarily
requires internal motivation by the creative person rather than external motivation.
The idea that creativity, by this definition, is more a knowledge and a skill rather than
some sort of divine power and/or indication of high intelligence is primarily based
on research carried out in the latter half of the 1900s. Jay Paul Guilford gave an important contribution in this direction as he highlighted that: “creativity and creative
productivity extend well beyond the domain of intelligence.”11 At that time, creativity had been noted very little in the previous psychological research and Guilford was
critical towards what he saw as too great confidence in what had been given to different psychometric intelligence tests and he meant that intelligence tests only could reveal very little about a person’s creative nature. Although some of Guilford’s research
results arguably be can discussed, his contribution is important, not the least as he
emphasized that:
…creativity represents patterns of primary abilities, patterns which can vary
with different spheres of creative activity. Each primary ability is a variable along
which individuals differ in a continuous manner. Consequently, the nature of
these abilities can be studied in people who are not necessarily distinguished
for creative reasons.12
Guilford’s approaches that both intelligence and creativity consists of multiple abilities are ideas that recur in later works and research. Such theories have not at least
made a great imprint in teacher education, such as e.g. Howard Gardner’s theory of
multiple intelligences.13 Modern research in creativity can be divided into three different waves. In the first wave researchers focused on studying the personalities of ex10
11
12
13
Keith Negus and Michael J. Pickering, Creativity, Communication and Cultural Value, (London: Sage
Publications, 2004), 4.
Joy Paul Guilford, “Creativity” in American Psychologist Volume 5, Issue 9, (1950): 444–454.
ibid. 454.
Howard Gardner, Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. (New York: Basic books, 2011).
67
ceptional creators and in the second wave researchers focused on the internal, mental processes when people were engaged in creative activities. The third wave has a
socio-cultural and “interdisciplinary approach that focused on creative social systems:
groups of people in social and cultural contexts”.14
The notion of creativity based on knowledge of or methodical skills for new ways
of thinking and creative processes, and that creative work not only is reserved to the
creative genius, is something that repeatedly has received attention in post Second
World War educational research. Psychological theory can also be used to explain different aspect of creativity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory is for instance an
important contribution as the theory can explain how creative people achieve greater
motivation when their skills are challenged.15
In research on music production, or record production, Philip Mcintyre argues that
the romantic ideal to see creative activity primarily as self expressive “independent
from any perceptible constraint”16 appears to be a widespread opinion in the music
industry, but that this opinion is based on myths, not on theories or empirical academic research. Instead McIntyre points out a background to creative activity in music
production based on recent research that give possible explanations why and how, engineers songwriters, performers, and not at least music producers, “allow creative activity to occur”17 during the music production process.
Also in musicology and research on music education the view has shifted in recent
research away from the nineteenth century’s Romantic tradition with the myth of the
creative individualistic master genius. Pamela Burnard makes an important contribution when she, among other things, highlights the musical creativity as a collective or
collaborative activity:
Whether the collective process flavours listening, collecting, downloading, sampling, performing, mashing, DJing, dancing, or ‘style mixing’ […] at an urban
dance music club, the way we think about musical creativity falls far short of
grasping the potential multiplicity of musical creativity today. Yet music needs
an audience. Audiences engage in ‘a collective experience’, and are a part of,
‘doing’ music.18
Further more, Burnard points out that complementarity and interplay of multiple
types of creativity, such as individual and collaborative, cultural and intercultural, reception-venue and audience-generated, participatory and innovatory, are important
for composers and that composers also use technology as a mediating tool to support
innovation. Explanations of this kind corresponds very well with the way research14
15
16
17
18
Keith Sawyer, Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation. (Oxford University Press, 2011), 4.
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, (New York:
Harper Collins, 1996).
Phillip McIntyre, “Rethinking creativity: record production and the systems model”, in The Art
of Record Production: An Introductory Reader for a New Academic Field, ed. Simon Frith, and Simon
Zagorski-Thomas, (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2012),149.
ibid. 162.
Pamela Burnard, Musical Creativities in Practice. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 14.
68
ers in other fields, such as Becker19 on collaborative production of art and Burgess,20
Howlett21 and Moorefield22 when they describe the music producer’s operations and
professional role. Thus, a music production activity that is characterized by creative
collaborative innovative work where old structures for labour division no longer are
valid. Instead music production is described as an activity that is characterized by creative collaborations, all in order to create the artistically and/or commercially successful productions as possible.
One aspect that recurs in contemporary research on creativity is that education in
school rather than to develop children’s and young peoples creativity and innovative
abilities rather do the opposite. Burnard shows explicit criticism of the myths, teachers
and others working in the educational field, may have on children’s and young people’s creative abilities by, referring to current research provide information “that goes
well beyond many adult preconceptions and simplified definitions of what constitutes
children’s musical creativities”.23 But that schools fail to develop children’s creative
abilities also has attracted attention outside the field of music. Not at least Sir Ken
Robinson has made this kind of knowledge widespread through his presentations in
popular scientific contexts24 by criticising the school systems’ inability to make use of
and/or to help to develop children’s creativity.
I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human
ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of
human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that
we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won’t
serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children.25
But such opinions are unfortunately not new. Already sixty-five years back, Guilford
was into similar thoughts by asking the following questions:
Why is there so little apparent correlation between education and creative productiveness? Why do we not produce a larger number of creative geniuses than
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982).
Richard James Burgess, The Art of Music Production: The Theory and Practice. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Richard James Burgess The History of Music Production. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
Michael John Gilmour Howlett, “The Record Producer as Nexus: Creative Inspiration Technology
and the Recording Industry.” (PhD diss., University of Glamorgan 2009).
Virgil Moorefield, The Producer as Composer: Shaping the Sounds of Popular Music. (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 2005).
Burnard, “Musical Creativities,” 278.
Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, (Oxford: Capstone, 2011); Ken Robinson,
“Changing education paradigms”, RSAnimate, 16 June, 2008, accessed October 29, 2015, https://
www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/videos/2010/10/rsa-animate---changing-paradigms/rsa-lectureken-robinson-transcript.pdf; Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica. Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, (New York: Viking, 2015).
Ken Robinson, “Do schools kill creativity?,” TED, February 23, 2006, accessed October 29, 2015,
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity/transcript?language=en.
69
we do, under supposedly enlightened, modern educational practices? These are
serious questions for thought and investigation. The more immediate and more
explorable problem is a double one: (1) How can we discover creative promise
in our children and our youth? and (2) How can we promote the development
of creative personalities?26
One possible way to develop creative abilities within the framework of projects in
education and training is the use of structures and theory that underlie educational
models for constructive alignment27 since learners construct meaning from what they
do in order to learn. The model is that teachers start with the outcomes that the students are intended to learn, and align teaching and assessment to those outcomes.
Biggs & Tang emphasizes, with reference to recent research on learning and knowledge development, that the best learning experience for an individual often happens
when he or she teaches someone else. That is one explanation why peer teaching is a
particularly powerful way of learning. Activities of what people use and do in real life
and what they talk about with others also results in good learning and a much better
learning for most people compared with what is learned when they hear, see or read
about something. Biggs & Tang also highlight the importance of multimodal learning:
“We learn through activating different sense modalities: hearing, touch, sight, speech,
smell and taste. The more one modality reinforces another, the more effective the
learning”.28 Feedback is another aspect that Biggs & Tang bring forward as particularly
valuable for individual knowledge development, but also is highly valid for collective
learning. Formative feedback is particularly important in creative contexts when provided during the learning process, the formative feedback is telling the learners how
well they are doing and what might need improving.
iMus – an interactive musical audio playback framework
Music requires that people act or interact. Musical instruments are designed for musicians to interact with and when musicians play with others they extend the interaction
with each other. In some cases there is also an audience interacting with the musicians and in some cases the musicians interact with other creative people like dancers
or actors for example. In the early days of movies there was no audio tracks and live
musicians accompanied the silent movies. Later when film got audio, a whole new
genre – recorded film music – was established. Over the years, film music, as a genre,
has developed into an art of its own and today film music is a well-established field in
academic studies and research.29 Furthermore, since the soundtrack can be considered
to have a decisive impact on a film’s success, film music is therefore dedicated special
26
27
28
29
Guilford, “Creativity,” 444-445.
John B. Biggs and Catherine So-Kum Tang, Teaching for Quality Learning at University: What the Student Does, (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2011), 96.
ibid. 63.
David Neumeyer, ed., The Oxford handbook of film music studies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014), 3-6.
70
attention at, e.g., film festivals and film awards, and leading film composers can be
accorded considerable media attention and also be given superstar status.30 With this
legacy of film music, composers and producers of new interactive environments like
computer games, web pages and perhaps also exhibitions at museums try to integrate
and use music in similar ways as in film music. The music is used to tell a part of the
story, create an atmosphere or perhaps increase the experience for the viewer or user.
Nowadays, when computers and mobile phones and other mobile devices in general have very good audio quality and the bandwidth of Internet connections has been
highly increased, it is in many cases possible to produce music that sounds good by
means of new digital, interactive media. But still there are some challenges, though:
Music in interactive environments or media needs to be able to change depending on
events occurring inside the media and it is necessary that changes can happen in a
similar way as if the music was performed by live musicians. Therefore music that is
traditionally produced: composed, arranged, recorded and mixed for a linear context
like tracks on a CD, can be difficult to use in interactive music and media production.
In interactive media the music needs to interact with the user just like musicians interact with each other.
Different frameworks or software has been developed to try to solve the challenge
of having the music responding to events in a musical way, like for example changing
instrumentation or harmony on the next bar-line by trigging audio files with music
and make crossfades between different audio files.31 In general, such audio frameworks have neither been standardized nor music-composer-friendly and therefore
many composers have not been composing for interactive media. One example of this
is Microsoft Direct Music that was released in 1996 along with the music production
tool Direct Music Producer (DMP). The aim of this software was to provide a useful tool and a standard for music to be integrated into productions using Direct X.32
DMP had a steep technical learning curve and there was an obvious risk that composers would lose their musical creativity having to overcome too many technical obstacles in the workflow.
Thus, there has been a lack of effective tools to compose for interactive media,
where the composer’s creativity and experience of already existing music production
tools could be used, and that the tools could be used to build effective bridges between the composer and the programmer of interactive media. Wwise33 and FMOD34
have recently been developed and these two software tools are widely spread but lim30
31
32
33
34
Dean Keith Simonton, “Film Music: Are Award-Winning Scores and Songs Heard in Successful Motion Pictures?”, in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 1, no. 2 (2007): 53-60.
Johnny Wingstedt, “Making music mean: on functions of, and knowledge about, narrative music in
multimedia” (PhD diss., Luleå tekniska universitet, 2008).
“DirectX Audio: Making Audio Special FX”, Microsoft, last modified July 19, 2011, accessed October
29, 2015, https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/DirectX-Audio-Making-48867ceb.
“Wwise Empowers Audio Creators” Audiokinetic , accessed October 29, 2015, https://www.audiokinetic.com/download/documents/Wwise_Brochure_March2014_en.pdf.
“Introducing FMOD Studio”, Firelight Technologies, accessed December 1, 2015, http://www.fmod.
org/products.
71
ited when it comes to features driven by musical needs, perhaps because these tools
rather are developed for use in computer games than for creative musical composition work. Other recent examples of new software for interactive music are e.g. ELIAS
– Elastic lightweight integrated audio system35 that is aimed for use in different platforms and Dinahmoe Labs who have created an audio framework and different software for web technology and their software mixer “The Rick Astley Remixer”36 provides the user with an entertaining example of how technology of this kind can be
used for real-time playback and processing of musical content. Interestingly enough,
both ELIAS and Dinahmoe Labs are developed and based in Stockholm.
In Nobel Creations a special framework and software, iMus, was used. iMus, which
is developed by Hans Lindetorp and the result of an artistic research project at KMH,
was redesigned for the project.37 Over the years, students from the Music and Media Production Department at KMH have been working with several interactive music production projects in different context. Due to the lack of efficient software for
interactive music production iMus was developed based on knowledge and experiences from many of these student projects. The technology being used in iMus is Web
Audio API, a high-level JavaScript for processing and synthesizing audio in web applications.38 What makes iMus useful is that it is designed to be easy to apply in different
contexts and therefore very suitable for an interactive music production project in a
museum such as Nobel Creations. Further more it is web based which makes it easy
to use on all kinds of platforms and units. iMus will be described in depth on another occasion, but briefly, it solves the challenge that music in interactive environments
needs to be as if it was uniquely composed to the linear course of events that are the
results of the users interaction, including control of optional external parameters as
input as well as the randomised playback of programmed events. iMus also has special features to solve the pulse-based music challenges in interactive contexts.
The music production project
Since 2011 the Nobel Museum has staged an exhibition about the new laureates. For the
exhibition in 2014-15 Nobel Creations, product and interior design and fashion students
from Beckmans School of Fashion expressed their interpretation of the different individual prizes and respective laureates in creating garments and a variety of complementing graphic objects. To accompany the designs, students studying jazz at KMH composed different pieces of music, inspired by the prizes. Their music was played in headphones by the different displays (Fig 2.). In addition to this a production team of mas35
36
37
38
“Adaptive Game Music”, ELIAS – Elastic lightweight integrated audio system, accessed October 29,
2015, https://www.eliassoftware.com/.
The Rick Astley Remixer”, Dinahmoe Labs, accessed October 29, 2015, http://dinahmoelabs.com/
rickastley.
Hans Lindetorp, Documentation iMus. KMH: Stockholm, accessed December 1, 2015. http://momdev.
se/interactivemusic/documentation.html
Paul Adenot and Chris Wilson, Web Audio API: W3C Editor’s Draft. WC3, last modified, December 1,
2015, accessed December, 1, http://webaudio.github.io/web-audio-api/.
72
ter students from the Music Production program at KMH: Ivan Höglund, Julia Jonas,
Anton Näslund and Joakim Persson, created interactive music for the exhibition hall.
Figure 2. The Nobel Museum exhibition hall. (Foto: © Peter Schyborger)
A challenging objective
The objective was to create a soundscape in the room that would be played six days
per week for four months. The music would be played through a total of 18 speakers, including two subwoofers. Four of the speakers, seen in green (fig. 3), played a
continuous background soundscape composition. The six “blue” speakers, spread out
around the exhibition hall built into big pieces of foam, played triggered sound effects
and musical parts, based on the prices they represent, all while doing so in time and
key with the backgrounds.
Figure 3. Speaker set up in The Nobel Museum exhibition hall. (Foto: © Anton Näslund)
73
In the centre of the exhibition hall, there were six iPads, one for each Nobel Prize category, with interactive menus and information about the laureates and their respective
prizes. When a visitor touched the screen of the iPad to change it from the menu to a
submenu or to the next page of information, different versions of the musical parts
coming from that particular speaker was played .
When all six iPads were active at the same time they would play like a small ensemble with six different musical parts and six different instruments, all in sync and in
key. Six iPads were used and each iPad had five sub menus (Fig. 4). In a total, 30 different musical parts could be played in any combination with the background music
also in sync. All this was made possible through the iMus audio engine.
Figure 4. iPads used in the exhibition hall. (Foto: © Peter Schyborger)
The production and composition process
The composition process started when the nominations of the 2014 Nobel Prize laureates were announced including presentations of their work for which they were being awarded. The production team discussed possible influences that could draw on
musically, and decided that each music producer would work separately, creating four
individual soundscape compositions for the exhibition. Next the production team visited the museum to check out the acoustics of the exhibition hall. The room is rather
large and reverberant, which led to the preliminary conclusion that it would be preferable to avoid using a lot of effects and instead to try to keep the sound quite dry. There
74
were some background noises observed in the room that might interfere with the
music, most notably an air-condition system that hummed at different frequencies at
different times. This was noted but an assumption was made that the music probably
would mask the background noises quite easily, which later turned out to be correct.
The objective was to vary the music throughout the day by dividing the different compositions into three sections that followed a cadence in the key of F major. The fourth
composition would be used as a background for guided tours and would interrupt the
other compositions whenever there was a tour. This composition remained at a lower intensity level at all times and left more space in the frequency range used for speech.
The next phase was to make demos of some parts of the music with something for
each part of the exhibition hall; a background that played from the speakers in the
four corners of the room, triggered sounds for any of the six displays and ensemble
parts for the central iPad section containing six speakers. The music demos were tested
in the museum and played back in speakers and evaluated by the production team. At
this time just a few speakers were used in approximate locations in the room.
Figure 5. The dimensions of the room and the hard acoustics were challenges for the composers.
(Foto: © Peter Schyborger)
The dimensions of the room proved to be a bit problematic, because the sound coming out of the corners of the room and the sound emanating from the iPad-section in
the middle of the room appeared slightly out of time when the listener moved closer to one or the other (Fig. 5). This made the production team decide to limit the
75
use of percussive sounds only in one side and to use tousling sounds with longer and
smoother attack in the other.
One challenge was to accomplish variation and change without having to compose
extremely lengthy pieces. The precondition was that the music would play six days a
week for four months, so we couldn’t allow it to get on peoples’ nerves nor could it
sound exactly the same at all times. The solution was to use compositions that could
be divided up into flexible building blocks and then be combined in many different
ways, all of them musical sounding. The way to do this was to keep it simple. Quite
paradoxically, the simpler the music was composed, the more ways it could be combined and varied. Some of the compositions will actually play for years before repeating themselves.
The general idea behind the soundscape was to create an airy, interesting and pleasing atmosphere that left space for the visitors to communicate with each other in the
room. The soundscape gave the exhibition an inviting, ethereal feel. The compositions
contain blend of traditional instruments like live string instruments and modern software synthesizers. The idea behind this was to show openness to multiplicity and to
create a link between old and new, a nod to the history of the Nobel Prize.
The compositions are filled with details that are musical interpretations of the
Nobel Prizes; the sweeping movement of a microscope appears as a sweeping filter
sound, hexagonal patterns in the brain appear as musical sixths and sextuplets, high
frequency blue light from an LED lamp appears as high pitched blue notes.
The music was composed and arranged with a special technique. The different
tracks were cut into parts and pieces to fit into the programming part. The music was
composed so that the parts could be mixed with each other in any order.
The music had to be arranged so that it could be played for hours and still never to
give the listener feeling of being repetitive. Most of the compositional work was done
in Apple Logic Pro, both in the compositional stage and for editing (Fig. 6).
Figure 6. A screenshot of the Apple Logic Pro project in the compositional stage. (Foto: © Anton Näslund)
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The iMus audio playback framework39 was used to play music in the museum hall.
With iMus it was easy for the production team to make prototypes during the production of music and try out different ideas in different pieces in the exhibit hall in the
Nobel Museum. In iMus, audio files are used for playback. The file can be a musical
phrase, one bar of drums, a hit or a sound of any kind. To make it work within the
software the composer has to break down the music into small pieces, or fragments,
and when it’s played back the software puts it back in order. The smallest piece or musical phrase, the file, needs to have some kind of musical information and it is divided
into three parts: an upbeat of any length, the phrase itself with a predesigned musical
length depending on the tempo chosen, and a tail of any length (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. Example of the files cut into parts and pieces, an upbeat of any length, the phrase itself with a
predesigned musical length. (Foto: © Anton Näslund)
This particular format makes it possible to stack or sequence the files and secure that
they can overlap in an understandable musical context due to the fact that they have
a specific musical length, for example a bar or a beat. A random selection of files can
be added and played back similar to an arrangement window in a Digital Audio Workstation, DAW, with any number of tracks or parts. It is also possible to use different
lengths of loops on the different tracks. There can also be any number of arrangements. This all together makes it possible to, at one event, to go from one arrangement
to another, or at another event, for example, mute a track. All music files were exported
into mono aiff-files with their reverb tails intact so that transitions would be seamless.
While composing the production team had to try different combinations during the
process to hear that all parts would be compatible with one another as they were to
39
Lindetorp, “Documentation iMus”.
77
be put together by a randomizing algorithm when performed. During the project the
iMus system was further developed in close cooperation between the programming designer Hans Lindetorp and the production team who composed the music.
During the try-outs and tests several modifications were made. For example, the
background music that was played while guided tours were being held was chopped
up into individual notes and bars to make it more responsive to actions in the room
and the more people who moved about in the room, the more stems in the background music would be triggered, increasing the intensity of the background music. In
the ceiling, there were infrared sensors picking up the movements when visitor walked
about in the room, controlling both the background music and the motion triggered
sound effects played from the different display stations.
Figure 8. The final set up of iPads in the centre of the exhibition hall. (Foto: © Peter Schyborger)
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Completing the project
Everything came into place within the last couple of days before the opening ceremony (Fig. 8). The materials used in displays and installation of a carpet in the exhibition
hall changed the acoustics to a much drier sound than what it originally sounded like.
This made it possible to play music a little louder than what was planned and programmed. But the acoustic changes in the exhibition hall also had the effect that the
music sounded a bit dryer than expected.
The opening was a big success and the museum was packed with people. When the
exhibition closed four months later the staff at the museum told us that they had enjoyed the music, and that people had come to the exhibition just to listen to it, which
was wonderful for us to hear. This was the first time in the history of the museum
that they’d had music playing through speakers in the exhibition hall. Because of this,
there were some initial worries that it might not work to have music playing there, but
everyone was very happy in the end. The tour guides were very pleased with the music
and was happy to talk to visitors about it. The staff actually said they would miss the
music once it was gone.
Final reflections
This project shows that people together can be very creative. And by combining different art forms, using well thought through teaching methods and structured project
planning which aims to develop creative actions, young people, students in learning,
together can create artwork that far exceeds what they individually could cope.
Another key experience is that it is possible to compose and produce music that
is playing week after week in an exhibition hall where staff members work for many
hours daily, and that they after four months of listening still had not got tired of the
music. How is that possible? Perhaps one explanation is how the music was composed
and produced. The production team knew that their compositions would be played
for many hours each day in the museum hall and therefore they put special effort to
make music that was possible to listen to for a long time without the listeners would
become tired of it and maybe even become annoyed. None of the members in the production team had ever composed music in this way before. Even if they all, in different ways and other genres, are experienced as composers and producers, it was a true
creative challenge for them to compile their compositions and productions during the
project and perhaps that extra ordinary challenge contributed with flow and creativity. The design of the project, with tight time schedules, is perhaps also one possible
explanation why the music production processes actually allowed creative activity to
occur similar to the theoretical framework described by Philip McIntyre.40 Overall, the
project thus shows good evidence that the romantic ideal, that creativity and creative
capacity would be something individual, inborn and inherent in creative people, not
40
McIntyre, “Rethinking creativity,” 160.
79
is valid since the participating composers and music producers clearly developed their
creative capacity during the project by cooperating with each other. By composing
music in a genre they never worked in before, in an environment that they not previously had created music for and with newly developed software and audio equipment
used in innovative ways, the project has given the participants unique experiences that
they can add to their repertoire of generic skills. And such skills may certainly be valuable for them in future music production projects. Another important aspect to highlight and reflect upon is that education, according to Ken Robinson, may lead to that
pupils and students creative ability is hampered.41 It is therefore important, especially
in compulsory school but also in higher education, to create conditions that develop
creative abilities of those who participate in training by allowing creativity to occur.
iMus,42 the technical framework and software that was used during the project, has
been further developed as a result of the experiences and new knowledge the production team gained during project. Furthermore the results of the project give clear support to theories of learning showing that peer teaching and activities of what people
use and do in real life and what they talk about with others provides good conditions
for learning and development of new knowledge.43 And the basic educational idea for
this project was to try, as far as possible, to emulate how composers and music producers work in real life. During the project, different things happened that led to unexpected problems. And these problems had to be solved. The production team had
challenges of various kinds, not the least of time pressure. Therefore, the project sent
the participants on a journey that wasn’t an emulation of real life. It was real life for
composers and music producers. And to learn in real life is probably one of the best
ways to create new knowledge and develop creativity.
Perhaps we also can learn something from what Alfred Nobel did and the way he
lived his life. Although he lacked formal training school and had no higher education,
he learned in his own way and became very successful. And by learning and experiencing different cultures in real life, Alfred Nobel developed an outstanding creative ability.
41
42
43
Robinson “Do schools kill creativity?”.
Lindetorp, “Documentation iMus”.
Biggs and Tang, “Teaching for Quality Learning at University”.
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Abstracts
Under ett konstnärligt kollektivt musikproduktionsprojekt på Nobelmuseet i Stockholm i 2014 användes nyutvecklade metoder för komposition och musikproduktion.
Med en specialutvecklad programvara skapades musikproduktioner som svarade interaktivt på museibesökarnas handlingar. Musiken spelades upp genom flera högtalare
i utställningshallen, vecka efter vecka och utan avbrott under de fyra månader som
utställningen pågick. Projektets resultat ger klara belägg för att det romantiska idealet, att kreativ förmåga främst skulle vara något individuellt, medfött och inneboende,
inte är giltigt. Istället visar projektet att när olika konstformer kombineras och projekt
genomförs med kreativa mål kan människor i samverkan skapa konstverk som i kreativ bemärkelse vida överstiger vad de individuellt klarar av att åstadkomma.
In 2014 a collaborative artistic music production project gave rise to the development
and use of new methods for composition and music production. With a specially designed software engine the music productions responded interactively to actions of
the visitors at the Nobel Museum in Stockholm. The music was distributed by multiple loudspeakers in the museum hall, week after week without interruption through
the four months the exhibition lasted. The results of the project show clear evidence,
that the romantic ideal, that creativity and creative capacity primarily is individual, inborn and inherent, is not valid. Instead, by combining different art forms, using structured project planning, aiming to develop creative actions, people can create artwork
in collaboration, that far exceeds what they individually can achieve.
MARK GRIMSHAW
A brief argument for, and summary
of, the concept of Sonic Virtuality1
Introduction
When that august body, the Acoustical Society of America, publishes a definition of
sound in the American National Standards bible on Acoustical Terminology, and an innocent question on the wording of that definition to an acoustics-based colleague of
mine provokes a negative response – “[the] definition [is] out of scope for most of
the purposes I know [the definition] is only operational for some purposes [...] It is
therefore necessary to use domain-specific definitions”2 – then there is clearly something quite wrong. In extremis, one might reasonably ask, if there is no agreement as
to what sound is even among acousticians, is the entire scientific basis for the study of
acoustics fundamentally flawed?3
As this essay makes clear in its opening sections, there historically have been and
currently are several definitions of sound and so among the first aims of the essay
are to enumerate some of the most important definitions, to tease out differences
between them, and to highlight inconsistencies both with each definition and in the
context of our experiences, physically and phenomenologically, of what sound is.
What is the purpose of such an initially hermeneutic approach? It is precisely this:
to argue for a definition of sound (and its underlying concepts) that is more consistent with recent research and thinking, that is more consistent with our phenomenological experience, and that has more use-value in the context of new technological
developments. On this last point, my interest has been sparked by research collaboration with colleagues in the field of computer game sound. In particular, our work
with biofeedback has, for our thinking about sound, its effects, and how to design affective sound, inspired and clearly necessitated the need for a new definition of what
1
2
3
In a 2015 book, my co-author Tom Garner and I put forward an alternate definition and concept of
sound (M. Grimshaw and T. Garner, Sonic Virtuality: Sound as Emergent Perception, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)) that was in opposition not only to the standard view of sound (the one
used in acoustics) but that also opposed other more philosophical definitions that have appeared
over the last decade or so. I presented a brief presentation of the book and its ideas to the Musik og
lyd konference in early 2015 and what follows is an expansion of that paper and so a summary of
some of the major points of Sonic Virtuality.
Personal email communication, 1st September 2015.
Probably not. But, as I explain in this essay, acousticians are misguided concerning what they study.
Thinking that what they study is sound, they are in fact studying sound waves.
•
ISSN 1904-237X
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Mark Grimshaw
sound is.4 What becomes clear from this research (and other research investigating responses to audio) is the highly individualistic sound we experience – the phenomenon of
sound is context-specific where that context includes the perceiver’s brain and the wider
environment. Rather than attempt to use statistical methods and rationales to smooth
over such differences in order to produce a generalized, mass-produced, one-size-fits-all
audio artefact (for computer games and elsewhere), I prefer the approach of sound design that celebrates and utilizes these personal differences because this, I believe, increases our engagement with computer games (and other multimodal artefacts), increases the
possibility of enhanced presence in virtual environments, and leads to new sound design
archetypes. Most importantly, though, such an approach, and the results deriving from it,
gets us closer to what sound is as the object of design and as the object of study; in order
to design sound, one must first know what it is. Hence the definition offered here.
I begin the essay proper by enumerating various current definitions of sound and
discussing a number of identified problems with them. The first section deals with
what is termed the standard definition of sound in the western world (there are actually several of these ‘standard’ definitions) and the inconsistent and incoherent uses
to which this definition is put. Following this, I present some other definitions that
are philosophical and, towards the end of the section, are more phenomenological. In
this second section, I also present a short discussion of everyday listening. I then move
onto a presentation of the new definition and a brief outline of the concept of sonic
virtuality before closing with some speculative thoughts on the definition’s and concept’s use and implementation by sound designers.
The standard view of sound
The multiplicity of physics-based definitions
Whenever I ask my students what is sound?, beyond regular and frequent answers such
as noise, music, or speech, almost invariably I am told that sound is a sound wave. This
definition (or a variation of it) is probably the answer many of the readers of this article would provide because it is the standard Western definition as found in physics and specifically acoustics. The 10th edition of The Concise Oxford English Dictionary provides the following primary definition of the noun: “vibrations which travel
through the air or another medium and are sensed by the ear.” A fuller definition,
in which I attempt to be more precise by dint of the use of jargon, may be stated as:
sound is a pressure wave moving through a medium and whose properties of direction of travel, frequency, and amplitude lie within the sensory range of an auditory system.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) provides two (possibly three)
definitions of sound to be used depending upon the context in which sound is to be
4
Biofeedback in this context involves the use and interpretation of data from psychophysiological devices such as electroencephalographic headsets for the real-time processing or synthesis of audio for
the purposes of close control of arousal and emotions during computer gameplay. As an example: in
a survival horror game, the game engine will sense that you are not scared enough and will immediately respond with more scary sounds.
83
used or studied. Sound is either “(a) Oscillation in pressure, stress, particle displacement, particle velocity, etc., propagated in a medium with internal forces (e.g., elastic
or viscous), or the superposition of such propagated oscillation” or the “(b) Auditory
sensation evoked by the oscillation described in (a).”5 Sound is thus, and variously, an
oscillation in any of an unstated number of physical properties, the superposition of
such oscillations (and one must assume the plural here), or the auditory sensation of
this oscillation (presumably also the sensation of superpositions of such oscillations).6
In a popular article describing the process of an auditory brainstem implant, there
appears this statement: “the area where the axons (nerve fibres) and cochlear nucleus
(synapses)—which transport sounds picked up by the ear to the cerebral cortex—are
found”.7 In this case, sound appears (in similar manner to the two ANSI definitions)
to exist simultaneously in two states: the vibrations to be picked up by the ear and
the auditory sensation of such vibrations. Such ambiguity, vagueness, and imprecision
(perhaps surprising to those expecting the claimed-for exactitude, rigour, and precision of the natural sciences) can also be found in scholarly textbooks and academic
articles on acoustics and psychoacoustics as Pasnau makes clear when he enumerates
several examples that, taken together, bring into focus the incoherency of the standard
physics-based definitions of sound. For instance, in the same 19th century acoustics
textbook by John Tyndall, sound is located within the brain, within the sound source,
or is to be found moving within the medium8 while, in a modern handbook dealing
with the perception and cognition of hearing, sound is described both as a compression wave and as the sound source itself.9 Finally, an acoustics textbook I have long
used for teaching (and from which I myself was taught) describes sound as “a mechanical disturbance of the medium”.10 While the authors admit that it is a simplistic
definition, it is nevertheless the one provided on the opening page of this standard
textbook and there are so many flaws with it that it is difficult to know where to begin.
5
6
7
8
9
10
American National Standard, Acoustical Terminology. ANSI/ASA S1.1-2013
This definition has the following note appended: “Not all sounds evoke an auditory sensation, e.g.,
ultrasound or infrasound. Not all auditory sensations are evoked by sound, e.g., tinnitus.” From part
b) of the definition, sound is defined as an auditory sensation; what the note is clarifying [sic], then,
is: “Not all sounds evoke a sound [...] Not all sounds are evoked by sound.” I suspect the reader may
be as puzzled as I am by such claims while secretly applauding such pataphysical dadaism from the
normally po-faced field of acoustics.
D. Pouliot, Hearing Without Ears (Auditory Brainstem Implant). Accessed August 25, 2015, http://lobe.
ca/en/non-classee/hearing-without-ears-auditory-brainstem-implant/#.VdQuvbfGam4.
On one page alone, the following statements occur: “It is the motion imparted to this, the auditory
nerve, which, in the brain, is translated into sound” and, discussing exploding gases in a lecture theatre, “every ear in this room is conscious of a shock, to which the name of sound is given”. On a later
page, the following appear: using the analogy of balls in a row hitting against each other (thus the motion of the first ball is transferred to the last), Tyndall states that “thus is sound conveyed from particle
to particle through the air” and yet, when describing how this motion sets the tympanic membrane
vibrating, which motion is itself transmitted along the auditory nerve to the brain, it is in the brain
that “the vibrations are translated into sound”. Tyndall’s book was written four years after, and is heavily indebted to, von Helmholtz’s Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen, a work of some significance in the
canon of modern acoustics. J. Tyndall, On Sound, (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1867), 2-4.
R. Pasnau, “What is Sound?” The Philosophical Quarterly 49:196 (1999): 318-319.
D. M. Howard and J. Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, (Oxford: Focal Press, 1996), 1.
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Mark Grimshaw
Problems with these definitions
As there are rather many definitions of sound as a physical phenomenon, to avoid
confusion I shall group them together under what Pasnau terms the standard view of
sound.11 For Pasnau, this term brackets together two common concepts found within all these definitions. First, as Aristotle first identified, that sound is the object of
hearing and, second, that sound exists in the medium (for humans, typically air) and
thus sound in the standard view, however the definition is formed, is the object of our
hearing and this object consists of vibrations or oscillations in a medium. The second definition provided by ANSI – that sound is an auditory sensation – complicates
matters as it might be said to reference Aristotle’s statement on sound but it does not
directly reference the second common concept that Pasnau identifies. It is, however,
best viewed not as a physics-based definition but as a psychology-based definition.
Nevertheless, psychoacoustics both uses this definition and relies for it on the presence of sound waves.
There are two fundamental categories of problems with the quite singular standard
view of sound. First is the issue of the language and the words used in the definitions
bracketed under that view. Second is the quite limited usefulness of such definitions.
First, the wording. In the OED definition, which or whose ear does the sensing of
the vibrations? Human ears only or those of other animals, birds, and insects? What
precisely is an ear – is that of reptiles, such as snakes, properly termed an ear when it
comprises only what may be described (in human terms) as the inner ear? What of the
case of auditory brainstem implants where the useless ear (or auditory nerve) is bypassed with a microphone – do the recipients of such implants sense sound without
the use of ears? What of tinnitus – particularly subjective forms such as the high-pitched
ringing experienced by many – where are the vibrations or oscillations in a medium?
If such tinnitus sufferers do indeed hear sound, then the definitions provided by
ANSI can be discarded out of hand. Even my attempt to use jargon to more accurately
define sound while remaining true to the standard view fails when one asks two simple questions: what precisely is the auditory system and what is the frequency range of
hearing?12 Across hearing species, there are widely varying hearing frequency ranges. If
sound is indeed a pressure wave/vibrations/oscillations in a medium that can be sensed
by the ear/auditory system, then, as a thought experiment, if both a human and a dog
are subject at the same time to the same sound wave at 30kHz, why should it only be
defined as sound for the one simply because the other’s auditory sensory apparatus cannot sense it? And what of infrasound that can be felt through the skin – is the auditory
system simply part of our tactile sense because, as one famous (and famously profoundly deaf) musician has suggested, “hearing is basically a specialized form of touch”?13
Related to this problem of the wording is the use made of the definitions because
the use that sound as a definition is put to depends to a large extent on the firmness
(or not) of the wording (although definitions can be blithely disregarded as is the
11
12
13
Pasnau. “What is Sound?” 309-310.
A good human hearing range is typically quoted as between 20Hz and 20kHz.
E. Glennie, Hearing Essay, (1993). Accessed August 19, 2015, https://www.evelyn.co.uk/hearing-essay/.
85
case previously noted with Tyndall happily defining sound as a motion propagated
through air while at the same time stating that sound exists in the brain). If one cannot agree on one rigorous definition of sound, then how does one know precisely
what the object of study is (let alone hearing) or, indeed, if two articles purporting to
deal with sound are, in fact, dealing with that same object of study or hearing?
The second category of problems is, for me, the more egregious and the reason why
I have spent some time devising what I believe to be a more precise, comprehensive,
and useful definition of sound: the standard view of sound is too limited in its scope;
it does not match the reality of our experience and thus is too limited in its use-value.
My objection is founded upon two disparate frameworks of knowledge that might
broadly be defined as objective and subjective. The physics-based definition attempts
to be objective because industrialization requires standardization and mass production
and so two people subject to the same sound wave at the same time and at the same
location will (must), according to such definitions, hear the same sound. Similarly, assuming all things technological are equal, the same audio data played back at different
times will (must) produce the same sound waves particularly if that audio data is in
digital format. This, at least, is the theory; endlessly reproducible sonic artefacts, identical copies of some original, and all neatly packaged for the digital consumer.
The reality of our experience is somewhat and frequently different and this, I believe, is where the standard view of sound fails. Two simple and easily accessible
demonstrations will suffice to show this. The first is the well-known McGurk Effect
(numerous examples of which can be found on the Internet including one produced
by the BBC14). Briefly, the syllable ‘baa’ is spoken, recorded, and played back over two
videos, one in which the subject articulates ‘baa’ (from whence the syllable ‘baa’ is recorded) and the other in which the subject articulates ‘faa’ (the lip and tongue movements are quite distinct between the two). Thus, the same audio data is reproduced
multiple times and so, on the same equipment and settings and in the same location, the same sound waves move through the air and so, according to the standard
view of sound, the same sound is reproduced time and time again. If sound is the
sound wave then the same sound should be heard at all times by all listeners or even
the single listener. This does not happen. Instead, what is heard are the syllables ‘baa’
and ‘faa’ over the appropriate image as if two different sets of sound waves are being
produced. If part of the standard view of sound is that sound is the object of our hearing, it is interesting to note that listeners, when asked what they hear, report the two
different sounds (i.e. the objects that they hear) despite the presence of only the one
recorded sound wave. One must conclude either, that if sound really is a sound wave,
then sound is not the object of our hearing or, that if sound really is the object of our
hearing, then sound waves are not sound. Either way, the standard view of sound is as
incoherent as Pasnau claims.
On the issue of the effects of cross-modality of hearing and vision (and other
senses) and how that issue affects our understanding of what sound is, I return to
14
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0
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Mark Grimshaw
this later. The second demonstration is what might be broadly termed mimicry if not
outright trickery and it trades on ambiguity of the source and/or inexperience of the
listener but, unlike the McGurk Effect, does not use other sensory modalities. There
are two examples I present here both of which are easily testable. The first is to play
for a subject the recording of a Geiger counter. Anyone familiar with the characteristic crackling sound will invariably give the correct answer upon being asked what the
sound is but others will give different answers such as the preparation of popcorn. My
favourite example, though, is the extraordinary mimicry of the Australian lyrebird that
has a repertoire of sounds including camera shutter (replete with automatic winding
motor), chainsaws, alarms, and sirens. Those not familiar with this creature and its
ability to mimic such sounds will typically label the sounds as listed above (assuming
familiarity with these objects) while those familiar with the widely available examples
of the bird’s mimicry on the Internet will immediately label the sounds as the lyrebird.
In the above paragraph, the astute reader will have noticed a subtle shift in my use
of language. It is a shift in the use of the word ‘sound’ that now equates it with the
objects that (originally) produced the sound waves that were recorded for these two
examples. This relates to our everyday experience of sound that, again, I return to later
being content for now to state that this everyday definition of sound is not one that
finds favour with the standard view of sound (in this everyday definition, sound is the
sound wave source – logically, the sound produces the sound wave and so sound waves
supervene upon sounds – sound waves, then, are how sounds are made manifest15).16
Other definitions of sound
It is not my intention to thoroughly detail or even list all definitions of sound both
historical and current. Here, I present definitions that, in many respects, oppose the
standard view of sound although some still rely on the presence of sound waves
(which, in these definitions are not themselves sound); the definition encapsulated within sonic virtuality that I present later does not rely on this presence. For the
reader wishing to peruse a fuller list of sound definitions, I refer them to Nudds and
O’Callaghan and especially to Casati and Dokic.17 18 Those I present here are, I believe,
15
16
17
18
R. Casati and J. Dokic, “Some Varieties of Spatial Hearing,” in Sounds & Perception, eds. M. Nudds
and C. O’Callaghan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 98-99.
Even those adhering to the standard view of sound fall prey to this equivalence between sound and
sound source as Pasnau describes elsewhere in this article and as in this example from an acoustics
textbook: “Trained singers [...] exhibit an effect known as ‘vibrato’ in which their fundamental frequency is varied [...]” (Howard and Angus. Acoustics and Psychoacoustics. 193). Thus, the fundamental is a property of the singer and not a vibration in the medium of air. (I should state here that,
while it can be fun, it is not my intention to attack such trivial and venial deviations from scientific
orthodoxy – I would quickly become a hostage to fortune myself were I to do so – but rather to
demonstrate the yawning chasm and barely sustainable tension that exists between the standard
view of sound and our everyday experience and understanding of sound.
M. Nudds and C. O’Callaghan, eds., Sounds & Perception, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
R. Casati and J. Dokic, “Sounds,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005/2010). Accessed June
3, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sounds/.
87
useful in this article’s context because they begin to take on a phenomenological flavour where the focus shifts from the physical properties of, and changes in, a medium
toward a focus upon sensation, perception, and cognition. Furthermore, those definitions that I do describe below are reasonably current as of date of writing. One should
not, however, make the mistake of assuming that stressing the importance of perception to any study of sound or, indeed, defining sound in perceptual terms is anything
new. Bregman’s work, for example, and although one must assume that he holds to
the standard view of sound because “sound enters the ear”,19 is important in that it is
an earlier statement in favour of analysing the perception of sound rather than sound
wave properties and even earlier instances of this type of thinking (although dealing
with music rather than sound) can be found in Carl Stump’s Tonpsychologie – an early
example of phenomenology.20
Before I begin, though, I wish to briefly present another physics-based definition of
sound that is of some interest and this is the conception of sound as comprising particles. This is an ancient idea that has recently (in its bare bones conception at least)
been given a new lease of life. The Greek philosopher Democritus, an early proponent
of classical atomism active during the 5th and 4th centuries BC, proposed that sound
was a stream of atoms emitted by a thing. What is of interest here is the description of
sound as comprising particles (the atoms) that was (re)proposed in 1947 by Gabor;21
a concept that has found use both in the fields of granular synthesis and quantum
physics (where the sound particle is termed the phonon22).
Sound as a property of an object
Pasnau, in his argument for the incoherency of the standard view of sound, suggests
instead that sounds reside “within the object that ‘makes’ them [...] sounds are either
vibrations of such objects, or supervene on those vibrations”.23 While this statement
is ambiguous (sound is either a vibration or is contingent upon a vibration), Pasnau
is quite clear about the location of the sound – it is within the object and thus “objects have sounds”.24 This question of the location of sound, rightly so, is fundamental to the genesis of any definition of sound, no less for Pasnau who appeals to the
veridicality of our auditory perception. This perception informs us that sound, like
colour, is located at the object and is part of the external world (hence we can use the
location of sound to locate objects in that external world): “we do not hear sounds
as being in the air; we hear them as being at the place where they are generated”.25
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
A. S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis: The Perceptual Organization of Sound. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990), 7.
C. Stumpf, Tonpsychologie. (Leipzig: Verlag Von S. Hirzel, 1883).
D. Gabor, “Acoustical quanta and the theory of hearing,” Nature 159 (1947): 591–594.
Specifically, it is the long-wavelength phonon (the acoustic phonon – the curious concept of the
‘sounding sound’ or ‘sound having to do with sound’ if one were to translate this literally) that gives
rise to sound (thus, the phonon itself is not sound).
Pasnau. What is Sound? 316.
Ibid. 316.
Ibid. 311.
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To locate sound elsewhere is a denial of the veridicality of our perception, a denial that, for Pasnau, is a step too far as it “shakes the very foundations of our cognitive assumptions”.26
Sound as an event
Basing his idea upon Aristotle’s statement that “sound is a particular movement in
air”27 – a statement that prima facie appears to support the standard view of sound
– O’Callaghan argues that sound is an event that sets a “medium into periodic motion”.28 He arrives at this definition via two other passages in De Anima: “everything
which makes a sound does so because something strikes something else in something else again, and this last is air” and “sound is the movement of that which can
be moved”.29 In this definition, sound waves, and indeed our perception of them, are
mere by-products of sound events and these events, comprising as they do movement,
involve change and therefore take place over time.
Sound as both object and event
Here, I come to the first phenomenological definition of sound in which sound neither possesses physicality nor is it the property of a physical (and external) object.
For Scruton, sound is both object and event; that is to say, sounds are secondary
objects and pure events because they do not undergo change, as physical objects do,
and they do not happen to anything.30 Scruton’s approach is closer to the valid, veridical definition of sound that I aim for because it is founded upon an assessment
of “those features of sound that make sound so important to us [...] socially, morally, and aesthetically”.31 Furthermore, Scruton takes account of acousmatic phenomena arguing that sound (e.g. in the case of radio broadcasts or audio recordings)
suffers no loss in coherence when divorced from its physical source and no loss in
what “is essential to the sound as an object of attention”.32 This perceptually based
definition of sound is heavily influenced by studies in music perception including
those phenomena that produce “a virtual causality that has nothing to do with the
process whereby sounds are produced”;33 the streaming and grouping of musical
notes based upon their similarity in timbre or pitch and their temporal proximity
to each other.
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Ibid. 316. That Pasnau uses the word ‘assumptions’ does at least, in my view, keep the door ajar for
such a denial.
Quoted in C. O’Callaghan, “Sounds and Events,” in Sounds & Perception, eds. M. Nudds and
C. O’Callaghan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 27.
Ibid. 37.
Quoted in Ibid. 27.
R. Scruton, “Sounds as Secondary Objects and Pure Events,” in Sounds & Perception, eds. M. Nudds
and C. O’Callaghan, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 50.
Ibid. 62.
Ibid. 58.
Ibid. 64.
89
Non-cochlear sound
Another phenomenological definition of sound is presented by Riddoch who states
that sounds “first and foremost [are] worldly phenomena”.34 For Riddoch, the standard view of sound has failed in “demonstrating a causal mechanism linking our
neurological processes with the supposed subjective effect – the world of our perception”35 and, furthermore, that view does not take into account the idea that sounds
“are always in the first instance meaningful sounds”.36 On this basis, he argues that
cochlear sound (i.e. that sound involving sound waves) is in fact non-cochlear sound,
a group in which Riddoch also includes synaesthetic sounds (see cross-modality below), infrasonic sounds that are detectable by other body parts than the ear (see, for
example, Glennie37), and auditory imagination.
Everyday listening
While he does not provide a definition of sound per se, in his focus on what he terms
everyday sounds and everyday listening, Gaver also objects to the standard view of
sound and, for this reason, his work merits inclusion here.38 39 Importantly, Gaver’s
everyday sounds are non-musical sounds. He therefore focuses on sounds that are inharmonic and noisy because these, he explains, have never been the subject of acoustics or psychoacoustics, two fields that prefer to concentrate on periodic and therefore pitched sounds.40 While this situation has changed somewhat in the intervening
years, Gaver’s complaint that studies conducted under the aegis of the standard view
of sound display methodological bias still holds. This can be summed up neatly in a
statement provided by Gibson (by whom Gaver was influenced): the standard view
of sound “treats physical sound as a phenomenon sui generis, instead of as a phenomenon that specifies the course of an ecological event; sound as pure physics, instead of sound as potential stimulus information”.41 Thus, for Gaver, an incomplete
and inaccurate view of sound is formed when a) only musical tones are studied, and
the results then used to build up a picture of sound and auditory perception and
b) the language used to describe sound (frequency, amplitude, and so on) is inadequate to the task of describing our everyday experience of sound in which we typically equate sound and sound wave source – a subject is played a sound and asked by
the white-coated psychologist to describe what has been heard; ‘I hear a plane’, the
subject responds much to the frustration of the psychologist who requires the answer
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
M. Riddoch, “On the Non-cochlearity of the Sounds Themselves” (paper presented at International
Computer Music Conference, September 9-14, 2012, 14).
Ibid. 14.
Ibid. 13.
Glennie. Hearing Essay.
W. W. Gaver, “What in the World do we Hear? An Ecological Approach to Auditory Perception,” Ecological Psychology 5:1 (1993): 1–29.
W. W. Gaver, “How do we Hear in the World? Explorations in Ecological Acoustics,” Ecological Psychology 5:4 (1993): 285–313.
Gaver. How do we hear in the World? 286-287.
J. J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 86.
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to be couched in the scientific language and terminology seen as appropriate to the
study of sound.42
Problems with these definitions
There are a number of issues that can be raised from the above definitions and that
leave me unconvinced about each of them. The first I wish to deal with is the location
of sound whether that sound is an object, a property of an object, or an event. Equally, the standard view of sound displays some incoherency within it as to the location
of sound, if not in its definition(s) (although the two ANSI definitions given above
provide two distinct locations) then in the lax ways to which these definitions have
been put. (These I have noted above.)
The location of sound is always given in relation to the organism that hears the
sound (thus, from the point of view of location of sound, sound is always the object
of hearing whatever its definition). The locations may therefore be roughly grouped
as distal, medial, or proximal in relation to the listener. The standard view of sound
(and the first ANSI definition) encapsulates the view that sound location is medial;
it is located, as a vibration, in a medium between the sound source and the listener.
This begs a number of questions not least of which is is sound therefore static or mobile?
Here, we run into further problems with the standard view in that sound (in such definitions) does indeed move through the medium but it surely must initially be distal
(as it issues forth from the sound source not the medium) and ultimately proximal
(this, presumably, is where the second ANSI definition takes over – sound is auditory
sensation originating in the ear of the listener).
Our everyday experience of the location of sound is typically that it is distal. That
is, the sound is located at the sound source, hence our everyday equation between
sound and sound source. This experience is expressed in terms such as ‘the knocking
is inside that wardrobe.’ But we also experience sounds as mobile (while the sound
source is static) as in ‘the knocking is coming from that wardrobe.’ Equally, we can
also experience sound inside the head and this need not be tinnitus or auditory hallucination or the imagination of sounds as those who have experienced in-head localization of sound through headphone use will be familiar with. One should therefore
be cautious with and somewhat mistrustful of definitions of sound (or at least theories about the location of sound in which location is fundamental to such definitions
of sound) that appeal to everyday experience as there is an incoherence here too, no
less than in the standard view of sound.
Thus, one should be distrusting of the sound as the property of an object definition provided by Pasnau because it is based on the supposed everyday location of
sound as being at the sound source (the object). Equally, there is an incoherence in
Pasnau’s view when the case of cinema (see further below) is used; sound is located in
our everyday listening on the screen yet there are no vibrations there of the type that
Pasnau claims are the sounds themselves. Regarding sound as an event, O’Callaghan is
42
Gaver. How do we Hear in the World? 286-287.
91
frustratingly vague in stating that “sounds are events that take place near their sources,
not in the intervening space”43 while being explicit that “sounds are stationary relative
to their sources”.44
On the location and locatedness of sound, the evidence from neuroscience is of
interest as are the observed effects of cross-modality, particularly those effects arising
from the interoperation of vision and hearing. In the first instance, I specifically refer
to neuroplasticity as it relates to the auditory system. In auditory neuroscience, the localization of sound refers to the ability to locate the sound wave source viz. the source
of the sound. Thus, in this branch of science, sound is located distally – to locate the
sound is to locate the source of the sound because the sound is located at that object
or event. The book on which this article is based is able to go into far greater detail on
the subject of neuroplasticity than I have the space to do so here, therefore I will limit
myself to some brief notes on the most pertinent points to be made.
There are a number of studies (on humans, other animals, and birds) demonstrating that the artificial blocking of one ear displaces (in some cases significantly)
the horizontal localization of sound when compared to localization using two unimpaired ears (binaural hearing).45 (See, for instance, Slattery and Middlebrooks or
Kacelnik and colleagues.46 47) This phenomenon is as expected if one subscribes to
the Duplex Theory of sound localization.48 By itself, this raises questions as to the location and act of locating sound – one could infer, for example, that if sounds are
sound waves (which radiate out from a source) then sounds can be located as being
in or from a direction that is different to where the sound wave source is if binaural
hearing is impaired (the same effect is not noticed with vision if one eye is shut). In
this case, and logically, sound is not located at the sound source but is mobile and
in the medium. Nevertheless, these neurological studies prefer to state that sound is
being incorrectly localized (because sound is distal and located at the sound source
in this science).
43
44
45
46
47
48
O’Callaghan. Sounds and Events. 48. This intervening space is the medium between sound source
and listener and through which the sound waves (that are the effects of sounds) travel. What
the space or locus is between the sound source and the medium in which the event takes place,
O’Callaghan never states. One should also ask: precisely how near is ‘near’?
Ibid. 46.
See, for example, F. L. Wightman and D. J. Kistler, D (1997). “Monaural Sound Localization Revisited,”
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101: 2 (1997): 1050–1063 for some objections to these
studies on the basis that full monaural hearing is never achieved and that the test signals used do
not include everyday sounds.
W. H. Slattery III and J. C. Middlebrooks, “Monaural Sound Localization: Acute Versus Chronic Unilateral Impairment,” Hearing Research 75:1-2 (1994): 38–46.
O. Kacelnik, F. R. Nodal, K. H. Parsons, and A. J. King, “Training-induced Plasticity of Auditory Localization in Adult Mammals,” PLoS Biology 4:4 (2006): 0627–0638.
Briefly, organisms with binaural hearing use two overlapping channels of auditory information in
order to localize sound; for humans, lateral sound sources can be localized using interaural level difference if frequencies in the sound wave are above about 640Hz and interaural time difference if frequencies in the sound wave are below about 740Hz. Ambiguity about the direction of sound sources
directly ahead or behind and for sound source position on the vertical plane are resolved through assessing the spectral filtering effects of pinnae and through the simple expedient of moving our heads.
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Some of these studies and others demonstrate that such mislocalization of the
sound source (although it remains accurate localization of the sound wave or some
point along its front) can be corrected over time and such re-localization facilitated
and hastened along with training.49 The brain’s processes and physical structures for
localization change and adapt to the new monaural conditions and such neuroplastic ability is maintained throughout life.50 Interestingly, some studies suggest that the
brain can store more than one of these auditory localization schema, switching almost
immediately among them as the subject’s monaural and binaural conditions change.51
Outside of neuroscientific studies, there are numerous everyday examples of the human ability to localize the sound in some direction or at some spot other than from
where the sound wave travels or the sound wave source is. The prime example of this
is what is known in psychoacoustics as the ventriloquism effect52 or in film studies and
related areas, with some minor differences to the ventriloquism effect, as synchrony
or synchresis.53 54 Briefly, synchresis is the cross-modal effect of multi-modal stimuli
(in this case, visual and aural) being perceived as one event and it is an effect that is
fundamental to that cinema that uses diegetic sound. It relies on the ability to separate sound from the sound source (sound waves and the cinema’s loudspeakers) and
to localize the sound not at the sound source but on events, objects, or characters depicted on the screen. This bears some relation to the McGurk Effect discussed above in
that the sound heard depends to some extent on the image seen but the difference is
to do with the location and localizing of sound. As with the neuroscientific evidence
from sound localization studies above, synchresis is a process that relies on the ability
to locate sounds other than where their sound wave sources are and, thus, to perceive
that the sound travels in a direction other than the direction the sound waves themselves radiate from.55 This not only casts further doubt on the Duplex Theory, but also
further reinforces my doubts about the standard view of sound and other definitions
such as sound as property of an object or sound as event (located at or near its source).
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
e.g. P. M. Hofman, J. G. A. Van Riswick, and A. J. Van Opstal, “Relearning Sound Localization with
New Ears,” Nature Neuroscience 1:5 (1998): 417–421.
See, for example, M. Schnupp, I. Nelkin, and A. King, Auditory Neuroscience: Making Sense of
Sound (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2010).
e.g. Hofman et al. Relearning Sound Localization with New Ears.
See, for example, D. H. Warren, R. B. Welch, and T. J. McCarthy, “The Role of Visual-auditory “Compellingness” in the Ventriloquism Effect: Implications for Transitivity Among the Spatial Senses,”
Perception & Psychophysics 30:6 (1981): 557–564.
J. D. Anderson, The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory, (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996).
M. Chion, Audio-vision: Sound on Screen, trans. C. Gorbman, (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994).
It may be that this is also an instance of neuroplasticity and an example of the ability to store and
recall instantaneously multiple auditory localization schema. The cinema, of course, is not a laboratory scenario where binaural hearing is artificially impaired but I am unaware of studies conducted
on cinema audiences looking for evidence of auditory neuroplasticity. One schema is learned and
used within the artificial environment of the cinema or when watching television or playing computer games, with at least one other schema for use elsewhere where sounds ought be perceived as
originating from the sound wave source – very important when crossing the road, for example. However, see below for an argument concerning our active locating of sound.
93
One other objection I have to some of the non-standard view definitions relates to
the methodology used. This is particularly the case with Scruton’s definition. My objection here relates to Scruton’s insistence that humans alone have the ability to perceive order in sound (and thus they alone can perceive music as opposed to sound)
and the basis of his thinking behind the definition being studies of music perception.56 In the first case, this claim rests upon increasingly shaky ground.57 Second, in
limiting his thinking to music studies alone, Scruton derives a definition that is founded upon the wrong object of attention; music is neither sound alone nor is it alone
sound. O’Callaghan displays a similar bias towards musical or pitched sounds (which
I believe weakens his argument for a definition of sound) when he states that a sound
event sets a “medium into periodic motion”58 – not all sound waves are periodic and
thus O’Callaghan’s definition is not for all sounds.
The intention of this section has been to briefly enumerate and examine a number
of questions concerning the standard view of sound and other definitions of sound.
This is because, to my thinking, there are inconsistencies in the definitions and incoherency within some of the more accepted definitions and this leads me to question
their validity and therefore their effectiveness and suitability of purpose.59 The next
section presents an alternative definition. As with the definitions and their problems
listed above, the presentation of this new definition is necessarily brief. Its full exposition can be found within the book on which this article is based.
Sonic Virtuality
Sound is an emergent perception arising primarily in the auditory cortex and that is
formed through spatio-temporal processes in an embodied system
This definition of sound is the one that my co-author Tom Garner and I developed
first in response to our many objections to other definitions that we deemed wholly
unsatisfactory and/or incoherent and, second, as a result of several years collaboration particularly in the area of biofeedback and computer-game audio. There is no
intention to replace the standard view of sound – briefly, that sound is a sound wave
– although we contend that what is studied in physics and acoustics is not sound but
sound waves; seen from that point of view, the standard view of sound (waves) is perfectly valid (if a little inconsistent in its application), verifiable, and usable (usability
is what definitions are about, after all). Our intention is to provide a definition that a)
56
57
58
59
Scruton. Sounds as Secondary Objects and Pure Events. 62-66.
See A. D. Patel, J. R. Iversen, M. R. Bregman, and I. Shulz, “Studying Synchronization to a Musical
Beat in Nonhuman Animals,” The Neurosciences and Music III—Disorders and Plasticity: Annals of
the New York Academy of Sciences (2009), 459–469 for an overview of claims for music perception
abilities among non-humans.
O’Callaghan. Sounds and Events. 37.
I am not the first to point out the many inconsistencies and outright incoherency of the standard
physics-based definition(s) of sound and here I only provide a few of the many objections that could
be and are raised. Others providing fuller accounts include Pasnau (1999) and Riddoch (2012).
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answers the many questions and supports and explains the positions we have about
sound that are not answered or evidenced by other definitions and b) has a use-value
particularly in the area in which we work, work that may be described as human-centred sound design. As stated, Tom Garner and I have worked and continue to work in
the area of computer game audio and are especially interested in the real-time recognition of player affective states, feeding data on those states into the game engine, and
using them to synthesize or process audio in response (which then re-engages with
the players’ affective states thus creating a biofeedback loop). This can be done and we
have done it.60 61 What is difficult, though, is the recognition of emotions and affect
beyond basic valence and arousal and what is lacking is comprehensive knowledge on
the effects that sounds (rather than music) and changes in audio parameters in various contexts have on the individual’s arousal state and emotions. Clearly, a model of
sound founded upon a definition of sound that acknowledges the human factor, and
particularly its subjectivity, will be of some use here. And this not only has use in my
particular field but it also has use within other fields such as the field of recording music and sound. Before I move onto some thoughts about such usage, though, I need to
unpack the definition above and to explain its genesis.
Sound is an emergent perception . . .
This is the core of our definition; sound is a perception within our minds – thus, the
origin of sound is there – and its creation is an on-going, emergent process.
. . . arising primarily in the auditory cortex . . .
This emergent perception is initiated in a corporeal system and is centred upon the auditory cortex. A number of factors together contribute to the emergence of sound as these
include both corporeally external factors (the exosonus) such as sound waves and stimuli
across other sensory modalities, and internal factors (the endosonus) such as other perceptions (thus cross-modality), emotions, memory, reasoning, knowledge, and so forth.
. . . and that is formed through spatio-temporal processes . . .
The emergence of sound takes place over time and is inherently spatial being part of
the process of locating self in the world.
. . . in an embodied system.
Following ideas expressed in the field of embodied cognition, the perception that
is sound is a brain- and body-based function and is indivisible from the wider environment – the embodied system in which sound emerges comprises brain, body,
and environment.
60
61
M. Grimshaw and T. Garner, “Embodied virtual acoustic ecologies of computer games,” in The Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio, eds. K. E. Collins, B. Kapralos, and H. Tessler, 181–195. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
T. A. Garner and M. Grimshaw, “The Physiology of Fear and Sound: Working with Biometrics toward Automated Emotion Recognition in Adaptive Gaming Systems,” IADIS International Journal
on WWW/Internet 11:2 (2013).
95
From this definition, several key propositions and assertions arise that are more fully
stated and supported in the book:
– It is the sonic aggregate that is the engine for the emergence of sound and it comprises fluid and dynamic spatio-temporal relationships of sensuous/nonsensuous,
material/immaterial things and phenomena
– The set of material, sensuous components of the sonic aggregate we term the exosonus – it is not a requirement for the emergence of sound
– The set of immaterial, nonsensuous components of the sonic aggregate we term the
endosonus – it is a requirement for the emergence of sound
– Using Deleuzian terminology62, all components of the sonic aggregate, whether
exosonic or endosonic, are actual as is sound. The actualization that is the emergence of sound as a perception derives from processes that are themselves virtual
– It is the force of potential in the fluid, dynamic sonic aggregate that, when achieved
under particular spatio-temporal conditions, leads to the actualization itself
– The hear and now of sound is the emergent actualization in the here and now and it
requires the presence of a perceiver
– In order to locate ourselves, we cognitively offload the location of sound onto the
environment – this is an active (re)location of sound
– Sound is meaningful because different types of meaning form part of the endosonus; sound waves are inherently meaningless
– A sound wave may be acousmatic but a sound is never acousmatic. Hence, reduced
listening (the concept of a sound divorced from source, cause, environment, and
meaning – and thus listenable to in and of itself) remains a theoretical concept not
achievable in practice
– Discussions of real sound and virtual sound are invalid as there is no such distinction
– The emergence of sound can determine epistemic perspective as epistemic perspective can determine the quality and nature of the emergent sound
– Imagined sound is as much sound as that sound perceived in the presence of
sound waves.
It should be immediately clear from the above that our description is, in large part,
founded upon the Deleuzian concept of the virtual. Thus, the sonic aggregate has
some equivalence to the concept of the virtual cloud. It is from this sonic aggregate,
with its dynamic tension and shifting potentials, that sound is actualized as an emergent perception. This aggregate comprises the endosonus and may optionally, as it frequently does, also comprise exosonic components such as sound waves. In the assertion that sound waves are not necessary to the emergence of the sound perception, the
definition thus accounts for a wider and, to my mind, more valid view of what sound
is than the standard view is capable of doing. In doing so, it tackles a number of in62
e.g. virtuality encompasses the idea of a dynamic virtual cloud of potentiality from which actualization
occurs. It is important to note that, in this conception of virtuality, the virtual is a mode of the real
and not to be contrasted to the real (pace real worlds and virtual worlds).
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consistencies and sonic anomalies at odds with this standard view such as tinnitus
(which is sound) and how the McGurk Effect is perceived as different sounds despite
the presence of the same sound wave.
I have previously stated that the question of the location of sound is fundamental
to many definitions of sound; if one can decide where sound is then one is halfway to
defining what sound is because the location is descriptive of the sound’s environment.
I do not think that the concept of sonic virtuality is likewise so dependent upon the
location of sound but, nevertheless, I feel bound to use the definition and concept to
explain the location of sound.
How is it that, for something so fundamental to the daily living of so many organisms including humans, for something that for so long has been an object of intense
study, and for something for which the standard view of sound offers a medium-specific location, there is so much disagreement about the location of sound? Perhaps
there is something wrong with all those definitions. The concept of sonic virtuality
offers this explanation: the origin of sound is in the secondary auditory cortex63 but,
where the mind is a system comprising brain, body, and environment, sound can be
located anywhere in this system. This is not to say that the definitions founded upon
or arguing that sound is distal, medial, or proximal are all, and at one and the same
time, correct. Far from it. Such definitions use the passive form of ‘to locate’ and so
sound is to be found somewhere, typically out there in the world.
Sonic virtuality, on the other hand, uses ‘to locate’ in the active sense. We ourselves
locate, that is, place (rather than find) sounds somewhere within the system of which
the mind is comprised. This is the cognitive off-loading that is one of the tenets of embodied cognition. This locating of sound is learned and develops through early childhood into an automatic act of placement and it explains the close and cross-modal
relationship to vision as we, while babies, cast around, looking for the source of a
sound wave, beginning to learn the associations between movement, size, and material and sound waves. It is a skill that can be lost and relearned (as neuroplasticity
demonstrates) and it can be adjusted at will to new physical environments (such as
the cinema or when playing a computer game where the location of a sound wave in
air or the location of the origin of that sound wave are very different to those places
where we actively locate the sound). The ability to actively locate sound arises from
the necessity of being and acting within an ecology and to listen is to be present in a
world, whether virtual or real – sound is the means not to locate objects in an external
world but rather to locate our selves in relation to other objects.
Clearly, and as I have stressed throughout, an article cannot go into the detail that
a book can; Sonic Virtuality is a more substantial and substantiated treatment of the
subject matter and, in addition to what has been cursorily covered here, also includes
evidence and support for the concept from the virtual acoustic environments of com63
This is justified more substantially in the book but, briefly, the assertion arises because this is the
common locus where activity is observed when sound is perceived either in the presence of sound
waves or through an act of imagination, bidden or unbidden.
97
puter games, the philosophy of knowledge and belief, auditory imagery, hallucination
and other pathologies, imagination, and creativity and is at pains to demonstrate the
practical purpose of the definition. It is on this last point that I will close the article.
The presentation upon which this article is based was delivered at a conference on
sound and music production and so, although the book gives different examples, I
will provide an argument for the use-value of the definition and concept of sonic virtuality within the domain of sound design and will do this by means of a brief example of the concept as it might be used.64
If, as our definition asserts, sound is a perception that arises in the brain, then the
obvious question to ask is can we extract it? Before I look more closely at this question,
I need to clarify the terminology, particularly the word ‘extract.’ If sound is a perception in the brain, then, once extracted from the brain, it is no longer sound. To be
more precise, then, ‘extraction’ is used metonymically here to stand for the transposition of sound to audio data. My speculative answer to the question then is, and for
reasons outlined below, no, not yet, but it will be possible in the near future. Thus, one
should begin to lay the groundwork for this possibility and the necessity of this is one
of the reasons for devising the concept of sonic virtuality.
Neural decoding, as it is known within neuroscience circles, is a developing field
used, among other purposes, for the extraction of still and moving images from the
visual cortex.65 Neural activity is decoded and visually represented on a monitor and
this decoding is accurate enough to be able to recognize features of the image the subject is concurrently gazing at. There is work afoot on extracting speech66 and plans
to extract music from the brain67 but, first, there are good reasons to state that music
and speech are conceptually and perceptually distinct to sound (even if somewhat and
sometimes related) and, second, there are different processes and different regions in
the brain involved.68 69 Previous and current composers and performers that make
64
65
66
67
68
69
One possibility that did not make it into the book concerns the cross-modality of sound and smell
perceptions and its relevance to presence in virtual environments. See Grimshaw, M. and WaltherHansen, M., “The Sound of the Smell of My Shoes,” (in proceedings of the 10th Audio Mostly Conference, October 7-9, 2015).
See, for example, S. Nishimoto, A. T. Vu, T. Naselaris, Y. Benjamini, B. Yu, and J. L. Gallant, “Reconstructing Visual Experiences from Brain Activity Evoked by Natural Movies,” Current Biology 21
(2011): 1641-1646. I must stress here that the orthodoxy of neuroscience does not express the same
concept of image as I do of sound. That is, in this case, vision is the perception of an image and that
perception is not the creation or emergence of an image itself. Thus, what is being extracted is not
the image but the perception of that image.
B. N. Pasley, S. V. David, N. Mesgarani, A. Flinker, S. A. Shamma, N.E. Crone, et al., “Reconstructing
Speech from Human Auditory Cortex,” PLoS Biology 10:1 (2012).
J. Thompson, M. Casey, and L. Torresani, “Audio Stimulus Reconstruction using Multi- source Semantic Embedding, in Neural Information Processing Systems,” (paper presented at the Neural Information Processing Systems Workshop on Machine Learning and Interpretation in Neuroimaging, December
9-10, 2013).
R. J. Zatorre, P. Belin, and V. B. Penhune, “Structure and Function of Auditory Cortex: Music and
Speech,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6:1 (2002): 37-46.
R. J. Zatorre and A. R. Halpern, “Mental Concerts: Musical Imagery and Auditory Cortex,” Neuron 47
(2005): 9-12.
98
Mark Grimshaw
use of data gathered from brain activity are merely using audification and sonification
techniques70 rather than the extraction of sound (or music or speech).
The definition of sound presented here, and especially the concept of the sonic aggregate, is necessary to any thinking on how to extract sound.71 It makes sense to conceive of sound as emerging from something like a sonic aggregate in the context of
phenomena such as the McGurk Effect and when aware of the effect of higher order
cognitive processing on auditory perception72 and the effect of cross-modal sensation
on auditory perception.73 74 75 Sound may arise primarily in the auditory cortex but
there are other sensory, perceptual, and cognitive factors involved too and these must
be taken into account when attempting to extract sound.
Let us assume that, sometime in the future, it becomes possible to extract sound
from the brain. Then what? If the extraction of sound is the transposition of sound to
audio data then it becomes possible to conceive of, and design the possibility for, a
process of sound design whereby the sound designer imagines and projects sound into
a digital audio workstation. Thus, the sound conjured up in the absence of sound waves
becomes available for manipulation as audio data, for copying, and for reproduction
in the form of sound waves. This will fundamentally change the role of sound designer.
Naturally, as sound in our concept is highly individual, the sounds emerging from the
sonic aggregates of others then exposed to these sound waves are likely to have some
differences to the original. This exemplifies the inherent subjectivity of the emergent
perception and the necessity for the involvement of the perceiver that becomes evident
from any study of sound – the sound is the object of perception, the sound wave is
the object of sensation – and this difference is what missing from the standard view of
sound and neither is it fully accounted for by other definitions of sound.
70
71
72
73
74
75
See M. Ortiz, “A Brief History of Biosignal-Driven Art: From Biofeedback to Biophysical Performance,” econtact 14:2 (2012) for an overview.
Or a definition and concept that are similar.
e.g. N. Bunzeck, T. Wuestenberg, K. Lutz, H-J. Heinze, and L. Jancke, “Scanning Silence: Mental Imagery of Complex Sounds,” NeuroImage 26:4 (2005): 1119–1127.
M. Hoshiyama, A. Gunji, R. Kakigi, “Hearing the Sound of Silence: A Magnetoencephalographic
Study,” NeuroReport 12:6 (2001): 1097–1102.
J. Voisin, A. Bidet-Caulet, O. Bertrand, and P. Fonlupt, “Listening in Silence Activates Auditory Areas:
A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study,” The Journal of Neuroscience 26:1 (2006): 273–
278.
R. J. Zatorre, “There’s More to Auditory Cortex than Meets the Ear,” Hearing Research 229 (2007):
24-30.
99
Abstracts
Sonic virtuality is a conceptualization of sound devised with several purposes in
mind. First, it provides a holistic definition of sound that takes account of factors beyond the bare physics of sound waves and their propagation. Second, in providing
such a definition, it attempts to explain a number of sonic anomalies that existing
definitions of sound, of which there are several, do not satisfactorily explain. Third,
in its concept of sound as an emergent perception sited within the mind, it provides
the conceptual framework to work with sound in the context of new and developing
technologies. The essay begins with an enumeration of several existing definitions of
sound and problems with them, focusing in particular upon the western world’s dominant definition of sound as a sound wave, and then provides a brief exposition of
sonic virtuality before concluding with a speculative example of its use.
Sonic virtuality er en måde at begrebsliggøre lyd, som er udarbejdet med en række forskellige formål. For det første rummer begrebet en holistisk definition af lyd, der omfatter faktorer som udelades i den fysiske forståelse af lydbølger og deres spredning.
For det andet gør begrebet det muligt at forklare en række lydmæssige uregelmæssigheder, der ikke forklares ved eksisterende definitioner af lyd. For det tredje, ved at udvikle et lydbegreb, hvor lyd forstås som en emergent perception der eksisterer i sindet,
gives en begrebsramme til at arbejde med lyd i relation til nye og kommende teknologier. Artiklen begynder med en redegørelse for eksisterende definitioner af lyd og deres
iboende problemer. Der fokuseres især på den dominerende definition af lyd i den
vestlige verden – lyd som en lydbølge. Derefter gives en kort gennemgang af sonic virtuality og der konkluderes med et tænkt eksempel på begrebets anvendelse.
JUSTIN CHRISTENSEN
Virtual Distance and Soundstage,
and their Impacts on Experienced
Emotional Valence
Introduction
For this paper, I borrow theories from animal ethology research, which suggest that
varying levels of valence are experienced in response to being varying distances from
a predator. Adopting ideas from the theory of refinement, I examine whether these
survival instincts have relevance for a music listening experience, focusing on how a
listener’s virtual distance from the signal source might alter their experienced emotional valence of music. As well, I investigate whether changes to distance cues affect
all of the presented basic emotion categories (happy, sad, fearful, calm) similarly, or if
changes to distance cues affect each of the basic emotional categories differently. I also
add a third distance condition, including trials that combine audio and haptic stimulation in the nearfield. This follows from the theory that multimodal experiences are
often deemed to be more trustworthy signals.
Links between Aesthetic Emotions and Survival Emotions
Prior to 2000, the bulk of music research focused on music as a cultural invention. As
a result, ‘biomusicology’ with its investigations into the biological functions of music
is still a relatively new and growing field.1 In 2007, Frijda and Sundararajan presented a theory of refinement2 as an elaboration on James’ theory of emotions,3 where
aesthetic emotional responses are seen as refined forms of more coarse survival responses. ‘Refined’ for this theory means that the emotions do not obviously manifest
themselves in overt behaviors such as fight or flight responses. This theory of refinement suggests that emotional responses induced by aesthetic response are the same
as emotions aroused by survival instincts, differing mainly in regards to the magnitude of the emotional response, and their resultant behavioral and physiological
1
2
3
Nils Lennart Wallin and Björn Merker, The Origins of Music (MIT Press, 2001.
Nico H. Frijda and Louise Sundararajan, “Emotion Refinement: A Theory Inspired by Chinese Poetics,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 2, no. 3 (September 2007), 227–41, doi:10.1111/j.17456916.2007.00042.x.
William James, “II.—What Is an Emotion?,” Mind, no. 34 (1884), 188–205.
•
ISSN 1904-237X
102
Justin Christensen
responses. This fits well with Patel’s “transformative technology of the mind” theory.
Patel states:
“neuroscientific research suggests that music is an invention that builds on diverse pre-existing brain functions, rather than a trait that originated via processes
of natural selection (…) growing evidence from neuroscience also suggests that
music is biologically powerful, meaning that it can have lasting effects on nonmusical abilities…”4
As further evidence for music’s connection to everyday goal-directed emotions, Peretz
has hypothesized that music’s universal appeal is likely due to music being “…particularly well suited (or designed) to invade emotion circuits that have evolved for emotional vocalizations.”5
While musical emotions are often considered personal and enigmatic, emotional
responses to music within a ‘basic emotion’ framework (happy, sad, fearful) are remarkably invariant across listeners,6 and are already easy to distinguish by children
already by the age of six.7 Schmidt and Trainor also found that emotional valence (attractiveness vs. averseness) in music is also significantly correlated to specific brain
activation patterns as measured by EEG.8 Several other EEG studies by Altenmüller
et al.,9 Flores-Gutiérrez et al.,10 and Tsang et al.11 also support these results for hemispheric lateralization of function in music listening, where “Positive emotions were
related to a preponderance of left frontal activation whereas negative emotions resulted in a more bilateral fronto-temporal activation with preponderance of the right
hemisphere.”12 These results show that there are numerous benefits for using music
to study the neural correlates of emotion. Stefan Koelsch has listed a number of them
that are applicable for the current study.
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Aniruddh D. Patel, “Music, Biological Evolution, and the Brain,” in Emerging Disciplines, ed. C. Levander & C. Henry, (Texas, Rice University Press: 2010), 91–144.
Isabelle Peretz, William Aubé, and Jorge L. Armony, “Towards a Neurobiology of Musical Emotions,”
The Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to Speech and Music in
Man, (Oxford University Press, 2013), 277.
Ibid.
Joseph G. Cunningham and Rebecca S. Sterling, “Developmental Change in the Understanding of
Affective Meaning in Music,” Motivation and Emotion 12, no. 4 (December 1988), 399–413,
doi:10.1007/BF00992362.
Louis A. Schmidt and Laurel J. Trainor, “Frontal Brain Electrical Activity (EEG) Distinguishes Valence
and Intensity of Musical Emotions,” Cognition & Emotion 15, no. 4 (2001), 487–500,
doi:10.1080/0269993004200187.
Eckart Altenmüller et al., “Hits to the Left, Flops to the Right: Different Emotions during Listening
to Music Are Reflected in Cortical Lateralisation Patterns,” Neuropsychologia 40, no. 13 (2002): 2242–
56, doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(02)00107-0.
Enrique O. Flores-Gutiérrez et al., “Metabolic and Electric Brain Patterns during Pleasant and Unpleasant Emotions Induced by Music Masterpieces,” International Journal of Psychophysiology 65, no. 1
(July 2007), 69–84, doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2007.03.004.
C. D. Tsang et al., “Frontal EEG Responses as a Function of Affective Musical Features,” Annals of the
New York Academy of Sciences 930, no. 1 (June 2001), 439–42,
doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb05764.x.
Altenmüller et al., “Hits to the Left, Flops to the Right,” 2242.
Virtual Distance and Soundstage, and their Impacts on Experienced Emotional Valence
103
“…(1)Music is capable of evoking strong emotions (…) (5) Both listening to
music and making music can evoke emotions, enabling investigators to study
interactions between emotion and action. (6) Music can be used to study the
time course of emotional processes, with regard to both short-term emotional
phenomena (in the range of seconds) and longer-term emotional phenomena
(…) (7) It appears that, with regard to human evolution, music is originally
a social activity. Therefore, music is well suited to study interactions between
emotion and social factors. [emphasis in the original]”13
Emotional Valence and Distance
The present study explores how acoustic processing of musical examples (from differing basic emotional categories: happy, sad, fearful, calm) to simulate acoustic spaces,
where the virtual sound sources appear at varied virtual distances from the listener,
might evoke distinct emotional approach/withdrawal motivations in subjects, seen
through anterior brain asymmetry of induced EEG event-related oscillations (EROs).
Emotional valence has often been tied to action tendencies towards rewards (appetitive stimuli) and away from danger or punishment (aversive stimuli). Valence falls
under appraisal theories of emotion, where “A common tenor of these theories is that
(external or internal) phenomena, circumstances, actions, individuals, or objects are
evaluated as “good”, that is, contributing to achieving a goal, or “bad,” that is, obstructing the achievement of a goal”.14 The use of virtual distance for this study is inspired by work in animal ethology,15 and by the work of David Huron.16
Animal ethology research has shown that there are changes to the levels of both physiological arousal and action tendency motivations (valence) that result from varying an animal’s distance from a predator. Bracha17 presents the theory that a freeze response of an
animal is activated when flight or fight are no longer effective options, when a danger is
too close and too oppressive to effectively escape from. Relatedly, according to the “distance-dependent defense hierarchy”18, a close predator induces a fight response, while a
moderately close predator induces a flight response. Combined, these two theories present
three different distance associations for three of the F’s of a fight-or-flight response. In addition to these categories of fear responses with their distinct distance associations, anticipatory anxiety responses can frequently be induced in response to distant perceived threats.
13
14
15
16
17
18
Stefan Koelsch, Brain and Music (John Wiley & Sons, 2012), 203.
Stefan Koelsch, “Music-Evoked Emotions: Principles, Brain Correlates, and Implications for Therapy,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1337, no. 1 (March 2015), 193, doi:10.1111/nyas.12684.
John Maynard Smith and David Harper, Animal Signals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
David Huron, “Affect Induction through Musical Sounds: An Ethological Perspective,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 370, no. 1664 (March 2015):
20140098, doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0098; David Huron, “Understanding Music-Related Emotion: Lessons from Ethology,” 2012, 23–28.
H. Stefan Bracha, “Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Faint: Adaptationist Perspectives on the Acute Stress
Response Spectrum.,” CNS Spectrums 9, no. 09 (September 1, 2004), 679–85,
doi:10.1017/S1092852900001954.
Stanley C. Ratner, “Immobility of Invertebrates: What Can We Learn?,” The Psychological Record, (1977).
104
Justin Christensen
Anxiety responses are often considered ameliorated fear responses, neither as immediately aversive nor inducing as much arousal in the sympathetic nervous system as
fear.19 In comparing fear responses, the “distance-dependent defense hierarchy” found
that the emotional quality of a fight response was both more negatively motivating
and caused higher levels of arousal in the prey than the emotional quality of a flight
response.20 In a slight variation from these other anxiety and fear responses, which
show a direct negative correlation between the averseness experienced and the arousal
levels exhibited, a fright response displays an acutely negative valence with a reduced
arousal level. This combination is likely the result of the prey’s intention to reduce
movement as much as possible as part of the freeze response.21
Related to ethological action tendencies, Isobel Peretz considers action tendencies and movement to be key components of emotional reactions to music. “Much
music is composed with very specific action tendencies in mind – getting people to
sing, to dance, march and fight, or work and play together.”22 While these action
tendencies for music are unrelated to animal fear response action tendencies, following the theory of refinement mentioned earlier, music’s action tendencies can
be seen to be more refined versions of the coarse animal survival instincts. This is
further supported by music having similar reward motivated brain activations towards food23 and drugs,24 and away from threats.25 Juslin and Västfjäll suggest
that music uses mimesis (or emotional contagion) to express emotional valence,
as music can mimic the ‘natural emotional attributes’ that are found in emotional
speech signals (as has been investigated in Lundqvist et al.26, Peretz27, and Lima &
Castro28).29 As a result, I chose the musical selections for this investigation to follow
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Bruce Duncan Perry and Maia Szalavitz, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a
Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us about Loss, Love, and Healing
(New York: Basic Books, 2006).
Ratner, “Immobility of Invertebrates.”
Stefan Bracha, “Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Faint: Adaptationist Perspectives on the Acute Stress Response Spectrum.”
Isabelle Peretz, “The Nature of Music from a Biological Perspective,” Cognition, The Nature of Music,
100, no. 1 (May 2006), 22–23, doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.004.
Dana M. Small et al., “Changes in Brain Activity Related to Eating Chocolate,” Brain 124, no. 9 (September 2001), 1720–33, doi:10.1093/brain/124.9.1720.
Anne J. Blood and Robert J. Zatorre, “Intensely Pleasurable Responses to Music Correlate with Activity in Brain Regions Implicated in Reward and Emotion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 20 (September 2001), 11818–23, doi:10.1073/pnas.191355898.
Nathalie Gosselin et al., “Amygdala Damage Impairs Emotion Recognition from Music,” Neuropsychologia 45, no. 2 (2007), 236–44, doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.07.012; Patrik N. Juslin and
Daniel Västfjäll, “Emotional Responses to Music: The Need to Consider Underlying Mechanisms,”
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31, no. 05 (October 2008), 559–75, doi:10.1017/S0140525X08005293.
Lars-Olov Lundqvist et al., “Emotional Responses to Music: Experience, Expression, and Physiology,”
Psychology of Music, (October 2008), doi:10.1177/0305735607086048.
Peretz, Aubé, and Armony, “Towards a Neurobiology of Musical Emotions.”
César F. Lima and São Luís Castro, “Speaking to the Trained Ear: Musical Expertise Enhances the Recognition of Emotions in Speech Prosody,” Emotion 11, no. 5 (2011), 1021–31, doi:10.1037/a0024521.
Patrik N. Juslin, László Harmat, and Tuomas Eerola, “What Makes Music Emotionally Significant?
Exploring the Underlying Mechanisms,” Psychology of Music, (August 2013), 1-25,
doi:10.1177/0305735613484548.
105
the natural attributes of emotional speech patterns. This will be discussed more in
the methodology section below.
For evaluating the valence aspect (approach withdrawal motivations) of emotions
evoked in the subjects of this study, I measured the subjects with EEG. In past EEG
studies, both approach/withdrawal motivations30 and positive or negative valence31
have been found to be correlated with EEG hemispheric asymmetry. Activity in the left
prefrontal cortex has been associated with approach motivations and positive valence,
while right prefrontal cortex activity has been associated with withdrawal motivations
and negative valence. Connected with this, Rutherford and Lindel have associated positive emotions, such as happiness, with a motivation to move towards this cause of
happiness. They similarly have associated negative emotions, such as fear or sadness, 32
with a motivation to withdraw from the situation that causes this negative emotion.33
The hemispheric asymmetry in the brain linked with emotional valence is observed
by measuring alpha lateralization (the inverse power in the Alpha band34 of neural oscillations, now defined as 8-12 Hz.), as lower Alpha power has been connected with greater neural activity in the corresponding brain region.35 These hemispheric asymmetries
measured by alpha lateralization have already found to be a good fit with self-reported
affective responses both for positive and negative film clips36 and for music examples,37
so this gives promise for this methodology. Recently, Kragel and LaBar38 also found distinct dimensional mapping between differing emotional states through FMRI testing,
which is quite promising for a more precise neural mapping of emotional states.
While these results all support significant correlations between localizations of
brain activation patterns and emotional valence, the emotions perceived often differ
from the emotions evoked in the listeners. Zentner and Scherer state:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
Eddie Harmon-Jones and J.J.B. Allen, “Anger and Frontal Brain Activity: EEG Asymmetry Consistent
with Approach Motivation despite Negative Affective Valence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 5 (1998): 1310–16, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1310.
Robert E. Wheeler, Richard J. Davidson, and Andrew J. Tomarken, “Frontal Brain Asymmetry and
Emotional Reactivity: A Biological Substrate of Affective Style,” Psychophysiology 30, no. 1 (January
1993), 82–89, doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1993.tb03207.x.
With the exception of anger, which is a negative, but approach motivated emotion.
Helena J. V. Rutherford and Annukka K. Lindell, “Thriving and Surviving: Approach and Avoidance
Motivation and Lateralization,” Emotion Review 3, no. 3 (July 2011), 333–43,
doi:10.1177/1754073911402392.
Other frequency bands of neural oscillations are named Delta (0-4 Hz.), Theta (4-8 Hz.), Beta (1230 Hz.), Gamma (30-80 Hz.)
DB Lindsley and JD Wicke, “The Electroencephalogram: Autonomous Electrical Activity in Man and
Animals,” Bioelectric Recording Techniques, 1974.
Andrew J. Tomarken, Richard J. Davidson, and Jeffrey B. Henriques, “Resting Frontal Brain Asymmetry Predicts Affective Responses to Films,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59, no. 4 (1990):
791–801, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.59.4.791; Wheeler, Davidson, and Tomarken, “Frontal Brain Asymmetry and Emotional Reactivity.”
Tsang et al., “Frontal EEG Responses as a Function of Affective Musical Features”; Altenmüller et al.,
“Hits to the Left, Flops to the Right.”
Philip A. Kragel and Kevin S. LaBar, “Multivariate Neural Biomarkers of Emotional States Are Categorically Distinct,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, (March 2015), nsv032, doi:10.1093/
scan/nsv032.
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Justin Christensen
“The aforementioned research tradition made valuable contributions to an understanding of music-specific affects—for example, by pointing to the possibility that
canonical emotion labels may not do justice to the emotions evoked by music”.39
They also found that while positive emotions are aroused similarly to how they are
perceived, negative emotions are more often perceived than felt. The studies by Gabrielsson,40 and Kallinen and Ravaja41 both support this view, with findings that sad and
fearful music are still quite likely to evoke positive emotional valence in listeners.
The trustworthiness of a signal: multimodal vs. unimodal
As an added component to my explorations with this study, I added a multimodal
nearfield condition to the stereo audio nearfield and stereo audio virtually distant
conditions. I did this as I was interested in studying whether the addition of a multimodal component could increase the trustworthiness or closeness of the signal. I
only added the haptic stimulation to the nearfield condition, since tactile stimulation is limited by the length of a subject’s limbs, and thus this biological limitation
might further increase the trustworthiness of a close signal, and add to a greater sense
of nearness.
As one means for deciding which stimuli animals should motivate themselves towards or away from, animals judge the credibility of the signal given off by stimuli in
their environment. Scott-Phillips has described a signal as:
“Any act or structure that (i) affects the behaviour of other organisms; (ii)
evolved because of those effects; and (iii) which is effective because the effect
(the response) has evolved to be affected by the act or structure.”42
As a result, trustworthy signals given off by animals are highly social encounters, benefitting both the sender and receiver of the signal. These signals are often multimodal,
as trustworthiness can be heightened through having trustworthy performances registered across multiple perceptual modalities.43
Among these trustworthy signals, we can include many human emotional expressions. Juslin usefully summarized Scherer’s definition of emotion44 as:
39
40
41
42
43
44
Marcel Zentner, Didier Grandjean, and Klaus R. Scherer, “Emotions Evoked by the Sound of Music:
Characterization, Classification, and Measurement,” Emotion 8, no. 4 (2008): 496,
doi:10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.494.
Alf Gabrielsson, “Emotion Perceived and Emotion Felt: Same or Different?,” Musicae Scientiae 5, no.
1 suppl (September 2002), 123–47, doi:10.1177/10298649020050S105.
Kari Kallinen and Niklas Ravaja, “Emotion Perceived and Emotion Felt: Same and Different,” Musicae Scientiae 10, no. 2 (September 2006), 191–213, doi:10.1177/102986490601000203.
T. C. Scott-Phillips, “Defining Biological Communication,” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 21, no. 2
(March 2008), 388, doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2007.01497.x.
Ibid.
Klaus R. Scherer, “Psychological Models of Emotion.,” in The Neuropsychology of Emotion., ed. Joan
Borod (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 137–62.
107
“…emotions are relatively brief and intense reactions to goal-relevant changes in
the environment that consist of many subcomponents: cognitive appraisal, subjective feeling, physiological arousal, expression, action tendency, and regulation…”45
Emotions have evolved and are an influential part of social practice as they reliably
convey information of interest to both the sender and the receivers of these emotional
expressions through changes in speech prosody, speech rate, facial expression, changes
in gestures, general body language and action tendencies.46
For sound localization, humans use micro-time deviations between the ears, loudness cues, spectral information, as well as correlations from early and late reflections.47
Compiled together, these features help give cues to localize a sound source. The more
these features have a combined agreement with past experiences of sound localizations,
the more easily the listener adapts to them and accepts them as being trustworthy.48
The soundstage of a recording is the recreation of a virtual musical experience in a
3-dimensional space. From the recording, the listener is often able to localize the individual sound sources in this virtual space, and derive cues for their distance from the
source.49 This current study explores how these distance cues can alter the evoked emotional response for musical examples with diverse approach/withdrawal motivations.
My hypothesis is that musical stimuli should cause stronger valenced responses in
the nearfield than at a distance regardless of whether they are negative or positive. The
motivation to approach appetitive stimuli in the nearfield should be exhibited more
strongly in the nearfield than from a distance. Likewise, motivations to withdraw from
aversive stimuli should be exhibited more strongly in the nearfield than from a distance. Thus, music experienced as being negatively valenced at a distance should be
even more negatively valenced in nearfield, and music that is experienced as having a
positive valence at a distance should be even more positively valenced in nearfield.
Method
Subjects
This study included 12 participants with a mean age of 24 years, including 7 males
and 5 females, with 8 of them having had over 5 years of musical training. The data
from two subjects were removed. One subject self-reported as being left-handed, and
since handedness has in the past shown an effect on alpha lateralization, their results
were removed prior to data analysis. The EEG results of a second subject included
45
46
47
48
49
Patrik N. Juslin and Petri Laukka, “Communication of Emotions in Vocal Expression and Music Performance: Different Channels, Same Code?,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 5 (2003), 770–814,
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770.
Klaus R. Scherer and Paul Ekman, Approaches To Emotion (Psychology Press, 2014).
Jens Blauert, Spatial Hearing: The Psychophysics of Human Sound Localization (MIT Press, 1997).
P. Zahorik, E. Brandewie, and V. P. Sivonen, “Auditory Perception in Reverberant Sound Fields and
Effects of Prior Listening Exposure,” Principles and Applications of Spatial Hearing, (2011), 24–34.
See also Mads Walther-Hansen, Sound Events, Spatiality and Diegesis – The Creation of Sonic Narratives
in Music Productions. p. 29-46 in this issue.
108
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frequent and severe artifacts in the AF4 electrode, so their results were also removed
prior to analysis. Correspondingly, the final collected results were drawn from 6 male
and 4 female participants.
Apparatus
This experiment was conducted using a stereo setup with KH120A speakers and SVS
sub. For creating a haptic response, a Clark synthesis TST239 tactile transducer was
used, and it was connected to the stereo through a stereo to mono bridge (with applied resistors) and then passed through its own 200 watt amplifier. The EEG device
used was a 14 channel emotiv epoc headset with software development kit, consistent
with the international 10-20 EEG electrode placement,50 referenced with a left-hand
CMS (Common Mode Sense active electrode51).
The music used for the experiment was: 1. a slightly sped-up and transposed-up excerpt of Hoppipolla from Sigur Ros (happy), 2. an excerpt from Arvo Pärt’s, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (sad), 3. A slowed-down excerpt of Imogen Heap’s hide and seek,
stretched to 8 times the original duration by using PaulStretch52 (calm), 4. Streets of Pripyat from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl soundtrack (fear). These musical examples
were collected from a number of online sources53 that rated them as being exemplars
of their respective emotional categories. I initially chose a few exemplars from each of
these 4 emotional categories, and further selected from these based on their psychoacoustic features, based on appraisal theories of emotion.54 Furthermore, none of the musical
selections contained either sung or spoken text. Both the Hoppipolla and hide and seek excerpts were taken from karaoke versions, with the solo voice stripped from the track.
Distant versions of the musical excerpts were prepared with distance-related headrelated transfer functions in Ircam Spat55 to convey a sense of distance. I processed the
distant sources through Spat at a radiated distance of 20.52 meters from the virtual listener, with a reduced room presence (seen in figure 1 below) and a reduced room live50
51
52
53
54
55
Richard W Homan, John Herman, and Phillip Purdy, “Cerebral Location of International 10–20 System Electrode Placement,” Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 66, no. 4 (April 1987):
376–82, doi:10.1016/0013-4694(87)90206-9.
The CMS is a reference electrode which all other electrodes are measured against to help reduce
movement artifacts.
Computer application for extreme stretching of digital audio files.
Among the online lists were:
http://www.nme.com/photos/50-most-uplifting-songs-ever/279564 ;
http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2010/09/27/130157375/the-saddest-music-in-theworld-7-tunes-to-make-you-tear-up ;
http://www.thefourohfive.com/music/news/article/top-10-horror-video-game-music-themes ;
https://michelsabbagh.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/7-video-game-soundtracks-that-give-me-goosebumps/ ; Paulstretch calm ambience discussed in B Sturm, “Generation of ambient background textures from a given waveform,” (master thesis, Aalborg University Copenhagen, 2011).
David I. Leitman et al., “Getting the Cue: Sensory Contributions to Auditory Emotion Recognition
Impairments in Schizophrenia,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 36, no. 3 (May 2010), 545–56, doi:10.1093/
schbul/sbn115.
Jean-Marc Jot and Olivier Warusfel, “Spat: A Spatial Processor for Musicians and Sound Engineers,”
In CIARM: International Conference on Acoustics and Musical Research (1995).
109
ness. These values were lowered, as I felt this gave the distant sounds a slightly more
realistic feel. All other parameters were left at their standard preset values. Figure 1 below shows the configuration for perceptual factors in Spat, used for the creation of the
virtual distant listening situation. All of these parameters remained unchanged for the
near-field setting, except for the distance setting (under Radiation), which was changed
from 20 meters to 1 meter. Spat automatically alters other parameters (such as source
presence) to match the change of distance. After the excerpts were prepared with Spat,
they were normalized to -18dB LUFS (Loudness Units relative to Full Scale56). Perceived loudness has shown to have a strong effect on evoked emotional responses to
music,57 so the aspect of loudness as a contributing factor to distance was removed
to minimize the perception of loudness itself as a possible extraneous experience
variable. This changing of the virtual distance of the recording is largely considered a
change to the ‘soundstage’ of the recording, altering the depth and richness of the original recording to give a new soundstage. For this experiment, the original soundstage
was not removed from the recording prior to adding new distance cues with Spat.
Figure 1: Perceptual configuration of Spat for virtually distant listening situation.
Design
The experiment contained 3 distance conditions (far, near, near with haptic stimulation), 4 emotion conditions (happy, calm, sad, fear), and each musical example was
presented in each condition to each listener as a repeated measures test. The order of the
musical excerpts was randomized according to a Latin square to minimize order effect.
56
57
Esben Skovenborg, “Loudness Range (LRA) – Design and Evaluation,” Audio Engineering Society Convention 132 (April 2012): 1–12.
Laura-Lee Balkwill and William Forde Thompson, “A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Perception
of Emotion in Music: Psychophysical and Cultural Cues,” Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal
17, no. 1 (October 1999), 43–64, doi:10.2307/40285811.
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Justin Christensen
Each listener’s alpha lateralization was taken against his or her own baseline, which
was calculated as an average from a combination of the EEG recording period prior to
testing, as well as an average of the alpha lateralization during the testing period. This
way, I could measure the emotional valence as motivations negatively away from or
forwards from their baseline.
Procedure
EEG data was recorded in OpenViBE58 at a rate of 128 Hz. These EEG recordings
were supported with subject feedback responses. The EEG recordings were then analysed through the use of EEGlab59 and ERPlab60 in Matlab. Data was passed through
a 2-way least squares FIR bandpass filter, using a high-pass filter of 180 poles, attenuated to -6 dB at 2.5 Hz. The EEG signals were then segmented into six 6 second
epochs (768 samples at 128 Hz) per musical excerpt. These epochs were chosen from
the last 45 seconds of each musical excerpt (which are roughly 60 seconds in duration for each), to allow a training period for the listeners to better reach the desired
evoked emotional state. Much of the work of preparing an EEG signal for analysis are
methods of noise reduction or artifact removal, or methods for increasing the signalto-noise ratio. Here, the high-pass FIR reduces noise from eye-movement and muscle
activity, while the epoch segmentation increases the signal-to-noise ratio.
Artifacts were then corrected with a combination of AMICA and wavelet noise reduction. AMICA makes an independent component analysis (ICA61) decomposition
of input data, running multiple ICA models for best fit. Once AMICA separated the
EEG signals into individual components, I ran a stationary wavelet transform (SWT62)
wavelet noise reduction on the EEG components to remove artifacts. This SWT noise
reduction used a HAAR wavelet wave shape, 5 levels, and was thresholded with a Rigorous SURE algorithm (an adaptive thresholding based on Stein’s Unbiased Risk Estimator). The HAAR wavelet shape gives a good compact representation of certain types
of artifacts (e.g. eye blinks) and the adaptive thresholding relies on the Gaussian distribution of EEG signals. As a result, the SWT keeps the artifact and removes the EEG
signal. A clean EEG residual signal is recovered by subtracting the artifact signal from
the original. I implemented my wavelet noise reduction mostly following the method58
59
60
61
62
Yann Renard et al., “OpenViBE: An Open-Source Software Platform to Design, Test, and Use Brain–
Computer Interfaces in Real and Virtual Environments,” Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 19, no. 1 (February 2010), 35–53, doi:10.1162/pres.19.1.35.
Arnaud Delorme and Scott Makeig, “EEGLAB: An Open Source Toolbox for Analysis of Single-Trial
EEG Dynamics Including Independent Component Analysis,” Journal of Neuroscience Methods
134, no. 1 (March 2004), 9–21, doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2003.10.009.
Javier Lopez-Calderon and Steven J. Luck, “ERPLAB: An Open-Source Toolbox for the Analysis of EventRelated Potentials,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8 (April 2014), doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00213.
ICA attempts to separate independent signals from the mixed signals in each electrode through
blind source separation. As seen in: Pierre Comon, “Independent Component Analysis, A New Concept?,” Signal Processing, Higher Order Statistics, 36, no. 3 (April 1994), 287–314, doi:10.1016/01651684(94)90029-9.
G.P. Nason and B.W. Silverman, “The Stationary Wavelet Transform and Some Statistical Applications,” in Wavelets and Statistics, ed. Anestis Antoniadis and Georges Oppenheim (Springer New
York, 1995), 281–99, doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-2544-7_17.
111
ology of Akhtar et al.63 Finally, a liberal threshold of (-200 and 200 µVolt) was used to
discard extreme values. This combination of SWT and AMICA is a very powerful artifact removal tool, especially for the removal of eye blinks and movement artifacts.
The Hemispheric asymmetry scores were then computed by subtracting the PSD
(power spectrum density) of channels in the left hemisphere from their homologs in the
right hemisphere.64 For this, I used an implementation of Welch’s method to compute
the PSD.65 I based my measurements from the combination of log-transformed results
from the F3/4, F7/8, and AF3/AF4 EEG electrodes. These results were then saved into
bins and summed for all of the participants. Following this, the results were indexed by
their categories of virtual distance and evoked basic emotion to allow for statistical comparisons of variance against the results from other categories of distance and emotion.
Results
A two-way repeated measures ANOVA was run to determine the effect of different virtual distances for music evoking different emotions (happy, sad, calm, fear). All of
the music listening situations were normally distributed (p > .05), as assessed by Shapiro-Wilk’s test of normality on the studentized residuals. The data also contained no
outliers, as assessed by no studentized residuals greater than ± 3 standard deviations.
Three data points fall outside of ± 2 standard deviations, and they can be seen in the
boxplot below in Figure 2. The Shapiro-Wilk’s test is run to ensure that the results
come from a normally distributed population, and that noise is not a major contributing factor that skews the final results.
Figure 2: Boxplot of mean alpha lateralization with their standard deviations
across all 12 conditions. Distant conditions are repeated on right to provide
symmetry
63
64
65
Akhtar, Muhammad Tahir, Wataru Mitsuhashi, and Christopher J. James. “Employing spatially constrained ICA and wavelet denoising, for automatic removal of artifacts from multichannel EEG
data.” Signal Processing 92, no. 2 (2012): 401-416.
Cheryl L. Dickter and Paul D. Kieffaber, EEG Methods for the Psychological Sciences (SAGE, 2013).
“…Welch’s method improves the reliability of the PSD by dividing a discrete time signal into a subset of shorter segments, applying the DFT to each of the segments in the subset and then averaging
the results .” in Ibid, p. 106.
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When not using haptic stimulation in the nearfield listening situations, there was no statistically significant (p < .05) two-way interaction between distance and emotional quality of the music, F= 0.742, p = .537. However, there was a significant variance between
the emotional conditions F=3.673, p=.026. Mauchly’s test of sphericity indicated that
the assumption of sphericity was met for the interactions of the emotional conditions,
χ2(2) = 0.442, p = .363. This suggests that changes to distance cues do not affect the presented basic emotion categories (happy, sad, fearful, calm) differently from one another.
In figure 3 below, one can see that the individual emotional conditions move nearly in parallel with one another (with the exception of the calm condition). When this
occurs, even when there is a reasonable distance between the conditions, the interaction effect is not likely to be statistically significant. Significant interactions between
conditions are much more likely to be seen when the conditions take different courses.
Figure 3: Comparison of alpha lateralization for musical examples of different emotional qualities in virtually distant and nearfield listening situations.
In contrast to the results without haptic stimulation, the inclusion of haptic stimulation in the nearfield condition is consistent with the hypothesis that changes to distance cues do affect the presented basic emotion categories (happy, sad, fearful, calm)
differently. As seen in figure 4 below, when using haptic stimulation in the nearfield
listening situation, there was a statistically significant (p < .05) two-way interaction between changes of distance and emotional quality, F = 3.994, p = .019. Mauchly’s test of
sphericity indicated that the assumption of sphericity was met for the two-way interaction, χ2(2) = 0.626, p =.681.
113
Figure 4: Comparison of alpha lateralization for musical examples of different emotional qualities in virtually distant and nearfield haptic listening situations.
Figure 5: Comparison of all listening conditions together
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Justin Christensen
With the inclusion of haptic stimulation in the nearfield condition, alpha lateralization
did not significantly (p < .05) change over time for the happy condition between distant and near-field conditions, F= 0.182, p = .052. Neither did alpha lateralization significantly change over time for the calm condition between distant and near-field conditions, F= 2.406, p = .159 or for the sad trial, F= 0.075, p = .791. However, alpha lateralization did significantly change over time in the fear trial, F= 8.447, p = .02. The differences between the emotions at a virtually distant listening position were not significant,
F=2.768, p=.064, nor at a virtually near-field listening position, F=2.225, p=.111. These
results suggest that with a small sample size it is difficult to determine the impact of
changes of distance due to individual variance, especially for differences of small statistical power. The results also imply that the statistical power (F) between distant and nearfield conditions can vary greatly depending upon the basic emotional category presented. The statistical power for fear was strongest at F=8.447, followed by calm (F=2.406),
happiness (F=0.182), and finally sadness (F=0.075). The strong statistical power for the
fear listening situation was a large contributing factor in achieving a significant result.
There exists “…many methodological problems for measuring physiological indices (e.g., individual differences, time-dependent nature of measures, difficulties in
providing effective stimuli).”66 This does not even take into account non-brain related
artifacts, such as electromyogram (EMG) and electrooculogram (EOG) that very often
exist in an EEG signal and can make analysis difficult. Given the error variance that
these methodologies produce, it is arguably more problematic for the no-specificity
hypothesis.67 With the significance exhibited in the larger condition interactions, and
the significance of the fear trial, in addition to the various very nearly significant conditions (p<.05), this suggests further work in this area with larger sample sizes and
better controlled conditions are warranted.
Discussion
If emotional responses to music at a nearfield are to be considered to be more strongly valenced than virtually-distant music sources, then the zero-point baseline does not
seem to be a tipping point that separates positively-valenced experiences from negatively-valenced experiences. This is especially the case when comparing the distant
condition with the nearfield including haptic stimulation condition. If one only examines the standard deviations away from the mean, then both individual results and
combined results show that both of the near conditions diverge further away from
their means than the distant condition. The average standard deviation for the individual evoked responses at a distance is .2865, while nearfield is .45175, and nearfield haptic is .38225. The average standard deviation from the mean for combined
results at a distance is .537, while nearfield is .742, and nearfield haptic is .611. This is
66
67
Patrik N. Juslin and Petri Laukka, “Communication of Emotions in Vocal Expression and Music
Performance: Different Channels, Same Code?,” Psychological Bulletin 129, no. 5 (2003), 770–814,
doi:10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.770, p. 772.
Ibid.
115
supported when looking at the graphs (see figures 3 and 4), which show an opening
up between the distant (left) and near (right) conditions. Making post-hoc speculation, there is the possibility that the zero axis baseline for valence is closer to -.5. This
would present results consistent with the hypothesis in that emotional valence for virtual sources in the nearfield are more intense than emotional valence for sources from
a distance.68 This conjecture suggests possibilities for more detailed future work.
One clear finding is that the results are not consistent with their status as purported exemplars for evoking certain discrete emotional categories as described on online lists. These results, with their discrepancies from the expected evoked valences,
are also supported by many of the subjective responses of the post-exam debriefing.
A number of the subjects described their experiences of the music in terms of how it
would be placed in a movie. The fear music was considered by many to ‘anticipate’
something big or bad to happen. The happy music was often heard as ‘triumphant’,
or ‘trying to be triumphant’. The sad excerpt was described as ‘cinematic grief’, while
the calm excerpt evoked feelings of ‘floating’ or ‘religion’. These mismatched results are
also supported by earlier EEG music research, where the perceived emotions did not
fully match evoked emotional responses.69
In contrast with these discrepancies, the results of the nearfield haptic condition
match closely with the expected evoked emotional valence for their respective emotional categories. Does this support the idea that multimodal signals are more trustworthy? These results, while very speculative, suggest future work in this area is warranted. However, before these results can be considered more than speculation, they
need to be tested against more clearly quantifiable measures of perceived emotion.
In this study, I used qualitative research methods, discussing descriptions of perceived
emotions in a post-exam debriefing. This encourages highly individualized answers,
which does not easily allow for ranking or quantifiable comparisons. For this reason,
future work should include either a 23-item self-report scale immediately following
each excerpt, such as in Stephens et al.,70 or as continuous ratings on a computer application with a 2-dimensional emotional matrix, such as in Egerman et al.71 One
of the reasons for my hesitation in advocating for this theory is that there is another
possible interpretation for these results. The spectral envelope of the fear excerpt produced the strongest response from the tactile transducer, so the aberrant result in the
nearfield haptic condition for the fear excerpt could likely result from perceived overstimulation from a novel source. None of the subjects had previously experienced lis68
69
70
71
In support of this post hoc theory, Altenmüller et al exhibits a somewhat similar skew in their results
especially from their male participants. Seen in: Altenmüller et al., “Hits to the Left, Flops to the Right.”
Schmidt and Trainor, “Frontal Brain Electrical Activity (EEG) Distinguishes Valence and Intensity of
Musical Emotions.”
Chad L. Stephens, Israel C. Christie, and Bruce H. Friedman, “Autonomic Specificity of Basic Emotions: Evidence from Pattern Classification and Cluster Analysis,” Biological Psychology, The biopsychology of emotion: Current theoretical and empirical perspectives, 84, no. 3 (July 2010): 463–73,
doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.014.
Hauke Egermann et al., “Probabilistic Models of Expectation Violation Predict Psychophysiological
Emotional Responses to Live Concert Music,” Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 13, no. 3
(2013): 533–53, doi:10.3758/s13415-013-0161-y.
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Justin Christensen
tening to music with a tactile transducer prior to testing, so it is possible that above a
certain threshold the haptic stimulation would be felt as weird or overpowering and
something to move away from.
Since the original soundstages were not stripped from the recordings, another attractive interpretation of the results without haptic stimulation is also possible. The
calm excerpt was greatly stretched prior to processing with Spat so its original soundstage would have also been distorted for the nearfield listening condition. All of the
other excerpts largely kept their original soundstages, so these results could instead
indicate more positively valenced results for the original soundstage when compared
to a more distant version of itself.72 In future, the soundstage of the original should be
stripped and replaced with a virtual nearfield (instead of layering the new soundstage
over the original) to rule out this possibility.
Conclusions
The evoked responses for the nearfield conditions diverge further away from the mean
than in the distant condition, which suggests a correlation between the virtual distance and the strength of valence experienced. Another interpretation results from
comparing the original ‘intended’ soundstage with a more distant version, where the
intended soundstage is experienced as having a more positive valence than its more
distant version for most conditions. Furthermore, the multimodal audio haptic version most closely matches the intended evoked emotion. This could suggest an increased signal trustworthiness when using a multimodal signal. Further work will be
needed with larger sample sizes and more controlled soundstages to adequately resolve the possible implications of the results. Other aspects that would be good to
explore in future work are: an inclusion of multiple virtual distances, the addition of
haptic stimulation to a distant condition to attempt to destabilize the ‘trustworthiness’
of the distance perceived, independent variations to the early and late delay features of
the reverb, and a possible inclusion of a more external environment that might better
conform with animal ethological approaches.
72
The vast majority of the subjects did not recognize most of the excerpts. From 10 subjects, only 2
subjects recognized the happy excerpt, 2 recognized the sad excerpt, 1 recognized the sad excerpt,
and none recognized the fear excerpt. As a result, I would be very reluctant to suggest that these responses resulted from connections to memories of past listening experiences.
117
Abstracts
Research from animal ethology and affective neuroscience suggest that a listener’s perceived distance from a signal source can alter their experienced emotional valence of
the music. Furthermore, appraisal theories of emotion suggest that emotionally valenced responses will diverge according to the type of emotion presented. For these
exploratory investigations, subjects listen to selected musical excerpts on speakers in
combination with a tactile transducer attached to their chair. The listening sessions
are recorded on EEG supported by subject feedback responses. My hypothesis is that
musical stimuli should cause stronger valenced responses in the nearfield than at a
distance. Thus, music experienced as being negatively valenced at a distance should be
more negatively valenced in nearfield, and music that is experienced as having a positive valence at a distance should be more positively valenced in nearfield. The results
are largely consistent with this hypothesis, but can also be found to be impacted by
the original soundstage of the musical excerpts presented.
Forskning i dyrenes etologi og neurovidenskab peger på at lytteres opfattelse af afstand til en lydkilde har en direkte indflydelse på den affektive valens musikken fremkalder. Herudover peger “appraisal” teori på, at den følelsesmæssige respons vil variere
alt efter hvilken type emotioner lytteren præsenteres for. I denne undersøgelse blev
en række testpersoner præsenteret for musikeksempler gennem højtalere, mens de
var placeret i en stol påmonteret en taktil transducer. Lyttesessionerne er optaget med
EEG, og der er yderligere indsamlet mundtlig feedback fra testpersonerne. Min hypotese er, at musikstimuli vil have en større valens når musikken høres tæt på, end når
den høres på afstand. Således vil musik med en oplevet negativ valens, når den høres
på afstand, have en en endnu større negativ valens, når den er hørt tæt på. Ligeledes
vil musik med en oplevet positiv valens, når den høres på afstand, have en endnu større positiv valens, når den høres tæt på. Resultaterne af undersøgelsen understøtter i vid
udstrækning hypotesen, men der bør samtidig tages forbehold for at resultaterne kan
være influeret af den originale lydscene i de valgte musikklip.
MARTIN KNAKKERGAARD
Numeriske tåger
eller hvad blev der i grunden af de tre andre causa?
Med digitalteknologien har Jacques Elluls maksime, at “Fremskridt er som at tælle; der
er ingen grund til at stoppe ved et bestemt tal, et bestemt teknologisk trin, man kan
altid tilføje et nummer”,1 fået en næsten paradoksal dobbeltbetydning: Vi er med digitaliseringen netop stoppet, ved 0 og 1, og med dette talpar omtyder vi alt, hvad der
lader sig omtyde, til tabeller i en ustoppelig bevægelse, som ser ud til at efterlade det
omtydede til glemsel og nostalgi.
Afhængig af hvordan vi anskuer disse tabeller, i det rene Aristoteliske perspektiv
eller i Heideggers mere spekulative optik, ser det ud til, at det enten er causa finalis
eller causa efficiens, som tabellerne fremstiller for os, men holder det og hvad blev der
så af causa materialis og causa formalis?
Og at producere betyder netop at stille frem, at fremstille, dette vægter ifølge sagens
natur det ‘stillads’, der fremtræder gennem udøvelsen af den teknik eller teknologi,
den ‘montage’, gennem hvilket noget stilles frem, får form, materialiseres. Hvis imidlertid dette stillads er uadskilleligt fra det fremstillede synes accenten entydigt at falde
på aesthesis, den måde det fremstår på; poiesis og mimesis forbliver skjulte.
Med den digitale musikproduktion som case søger dette paper at kaste lys over
denne hermetik, hvor selv simulakret simuleres og ethvert materiales plasticitet og forventede natur formes med de samme midler, som det selv består af, og på de samme
vilkår, som det selv gør.
Indledning
Det er velkendt, at nutidens musikværker for en meget stor dels vedkommende bliver til i samspil med en eller anden form for DAW.2 Det kan gælde uanset om det er
musik, der formes og afsluttes i indspilningsstudiet, som det længe har været tilfældet
for det meste af populærmusikken, eller om musik, der komponeres helt eller delvist
af måske blot en enkelt komponist eller performer og som i princippet når en første
endelig form i studerekammeret, der efterfølgende fx kan fortolkes live. Er der i det
sidste tilfælde tale om populærmusik vil komponisten i dag ofte blive refereret som
en producer.
1
2
Jacques Ellul, The Technological System (USA: The Continuum Publishing Corporation, 1980), 222f.
Min oversættelse.
Digital Audio Workstation. Se i øvrigt Toivo Burlin “Experimentell musikproduktionsvetenskap som
kulturforskande musikvetenskap: Ett produktionsperspektiv på musik” i dette særnummer side 8f..
•
ISSN 1904-237X
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Martin Knakkergaard
Det forhold, at DAWen ofte spiller en helt central rolle i fremstillingen og formningen af musikværket, giver umiddelbart anledning til at sammenligne komponistens
kreative arbejdsform og –vilkår med en billedhuggers eller skulptørs, idet komponisten i DAWen kan arbejde med sine musikalske og kunstneriske ideer og mål direkte i
materialet og ikke skal omkring transskriptioner i form af fx noder og partiturer. Selv
om der sagtens kan arbejdes på baggrund af skitser, der er fastholdt i notation eller
udviklet i samspil med et traditionelt musikinstrument, er der tale om en historisk
set enestående situation, hvor det musikalske artefakt sammensættes og tilrettes, ja,
i virkeligheden modelleres3 direkte som et klingende materiale, et på sin vis færdigt
produkt i stadig forandring.
Lyd, der i disse rammer nu fremstår som et plastisk medium, er dermed blevet til
komponistens stoflige materiale på samme måde som fx ler og fedtsten er det for billedhuggeren og designeren. Men den palet, som komponisten har at arbejde med, omfatter mange flere værktøjer og teknikker og meget mere vidtrækkende muligheder end
dem, billedhuggeren har adgang til; det forhold er givet med selve det digitale format.
Det digitale materiale kan, idet det netop er digitalt, bearbejdes, processeres, formes og forandres i en grad som langt overskrider de grænser og muligheder, der gælder for ethvert arbejde med et fysisk materiale, idet man i det digitale domæne dybest
set slet ikke er bundet af den virtuelle materialitet, som et digitalt format i almindelighed fremtræder som. Hvor den fysiske lyd, hvis materialitet – ontologi – strengt taget
blot er trykforskelle i luft og som i traditionelle mekaniske medier, som vinylplader og
magnetbånd, optræder lagret som henholdsvis fysiske aftryk og elektriske svingninger,
er bundet til fysikkens love og begrænsninger – en violinstreng kan fx ikke opspændes
ubegrænset, den vil sprænges, når spændingen overskrider en vis tærskel – er den digitale ‘lyd’ ikke bundet af andet end de muligheder og begrænsninger, som er givet med
det binære format – den digitale emulering af violinstregen kan spændes ligeså hårdt
det skal være uden at sprænge, den kan ikke sprænge, men en sprængning kan optræde simuleret, hvis programmøren har indarbejdet en sådan emulering i koden.
Samtidig kan det digitale læses – aflæses eller udlæses – efter forgodtbefindende,
idet lyd og musik ikke længere reproduceres, “… men rekonstrueres. Eller konstrueres.
For vi kan læse de binære tabeller som ‘hvad-som-helst’ uden at skele til, hvordan og
af hvad de er dannet.”4
Disse forhold drager det digitale materiales substantialitet i tvivl; for hvad er det
for en overjordisk tilstandsform, det optræder i, når det uden videre kan unddrage sig
fysikkens love og overskride dens grænser og hvad får det af betydning, når vi i vores
kreative stræben efter bestemte udtryk, former og æstetiske mål, arbejder i materialer
som strengt taget ikke er der, ikke engang forbigående – som musikken måske er.5
3
4
5
Martin Knakkergaard, “Modellering” in Flyvende Licens: om musik og computer (Aalborg: Undervisningsministeriet og Institut for musik og musikterapi, 1996).
Martin Knakkergaard, “Silent Music” (Kapitelskitse i anledning af DSfMs symposium Musik, lyd og
digitalisering, 24. april 2010).
Martin Knakkergaard, “The Music That’s Not There” in Handbook of Virtuality, ed. Mark Grimshaw
(USA: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Numeriske tåger
121
Nicholas Negropontes simple beskrivelse af forskellen mellem det analoge og det
digitale som en overgang fra atomer til bits er velkendt og den er i sin nærmest bagatelliserende troskyldighed egentlig ganske forjættende.6 Men den dækker jo netop
over, at ethvert kendetegn og potentiale og enhver begrænsning og dynamik, der er
knyttet til ‘tingene’ i deres atomare konstitution, uundgåeligt vil bortfalde i processen, fordi disse er givet med tingenes stoflighed, og dermed med deres ‘væren’ i verden. Det digitales mindsteenhed, bit’en, er ikke i verden i egentlig forstand. Bits kan
kun optræde i en eller anden form for repræsentation: som huller i et hulkort, høj
eller lav spænding, nuller eller ettere osv., og for at lette læsning og sikre overskuelighed kan de fx repræsenteres hexadecimalt og ordnes i enheder som Bytes, Words osv.,
men i sidste ende er de blot tabeller, der udelukkende består af den simplest tænkelige
forskel, noget eller intet.
For musikkens verden er det derfor nærmere den abstrakte repræsentation, som
igennem århundreder har domineret kompositionsarbejde inden for i hvert fald den
kunstmusikalske tradition, som det musikalske materiale i det digitale domæne kan
sammenlignes med. For materialet er alligevel ikke materiale i egentlig forstand, det
er ligesom notationen underkastet andre begrænsninger, end dem, der gælder i den
fysiske verden.
Men det digitale domænes forening af den abstrakte repræsentation og den konkrete manifestation udløser spørgsmål om proveniens og proces, som aldrig tidligere
har kunnet stilles meningsfuldt, for hvad er det i grunden for en materialitet, vi har at
gøre med, og hvordan optræder den i og hvordan virker den tilbage på processen.
Hertil kommer, at det tekniske – eller teknologiske – element i musik er og har
altid været evident. Det er svært at forestille sig en musik, eller musikalsk kommunikation, som ikke er baseret på og også helt afhængig af enheder, systemer, metoder,
instrumenter osv. Og disse elementer indvirker alle på formningen og realiseringen af
det musikalske artefakt. Med digitalteknologiens entré får disse en helt ny rolle, idet
de hermed optræder som repræsentationer og ikke er til stede i egentlig forstand. Set
i det lys bliver det pludseligt sværere at afgøre, hvordan disse elementer indvirker på
den musikalske formning, end det hidtil har været. Der foreligger således en situation,
hvor det i stigende grad er vanskeligt at gennemskue, hvad der indvirker på eller forårsager hvad i fremstillingen af nutidens musikalske artefakter og da alt i disse artefakter
– også deres ‘konkrete’ væren – i princippet træffes inden for den digitale teknologis
domæne, forekommer det nærliggende at forsøge at afdække indvirknings- og årsagssammenhænge ved at tage afsæt i Heideggers bestræbelse på at ‘forstå’ teknik.
Causa
I foredraget Spørgsmålet om teknikken,7 hvis sigte primært er en bestemmelse af teknikkens væsen (dasein) og en afklarende tolkning af det, vi i dag samlende ville kalde
6
7
Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (Storbritannien: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), 11f.
Martin Heidegger, Spørgsmålet om teknikken og andre skrifter (København: Samleren, 1999) (original:
Martin Heidegger, Die Frage nach der Technik, Stuttgart: Verlag Günther Neske, 1954).
122
Martin Knakkergaard
‘teknologien’, tager Heidegger afsæt i Aristoteles’ firledede årsagsbegreb,8 dvs. fremstillingen af, hvad der medvirker til, at et givet forhold, et resultat eller produkt, falder
ud – og fremtræder for os – på den måde, det gør. At spørge til medvirkende årsager
– man kunne også sige faktorer – giver som allerede bemærket mening, når det drejer
sig om både at skabe og at frembringe musik, al den stund, at også musikalske artefakter fremkommer som følge af flere samvirkende forhold. Spørgsmålet er endvidere –
og det er det centrale her – om digitalteknologien og dens brug medfører forskydninger i det musikalske arbejde og i givet fald på hvilke måder og i hvilke omfang.
Aristoteles’ årsagsbegreb kan ses forklaret som en “opstilling af fire forskellige synsvinkler, hvorunder noget kan tjene til at forklare noget andet” og det er, som det videre hedder, “bredere end det moderne årsagsbegreb, men til gengæld tættere på dagligsprogets angivelser af “årsager” og “grunde”.”9 Aristoteles opregner således stoffet (den
materielle årsag), ophavsmanden (den virkende årsag), formen (den formale årsag) og
formålet (den finale årsag), som de fire årsager. Idet Heidegger går i rette med opfattelsen af Aristoteles’ doktrin som et spørgsmål om ‘kausalitet’ og i stedet erstatter dette
med ‘skyld’ eller ‘skyldighed’, diskuterer han de fire causa gennem iagttagelsen af et
sølvbæger som eksempel. Han vælger, ligesom det er almindeligt udbredt, alligevel at
anvende de latinske betegnelser trods afvisningen af, at det drejer sig om kausalitet, og
anfører, hvordan sølvets beskaffenhed, som causa materialis, er medbestemmende10
for bægeret, det samme er dets tilstræbte form, causa formalis, og sølvsmeden, der udvirker formen, causa efficiens, og endelig er hensigten med bægeret, dets anvendelse
og brug, causa finalis, medbestemmende for dets fremtrædelse.
Undersøges disse fire causa på klingende, musikalske artefakter, må den hørbare
lyd eller klang anskues som causa materialis, det, der formes og som dermed er medbestemmende som grundvilkår for det tildannede,11 mens tonesystem, stilistik, musikinstrument, produktions- og optageudstyr m.v. alle kan ses som medbestemmende for
artefaktets formelle og normative organisering og fremtrædelse, dvs. som causa formalis. Komponisten, musikeren m.fl. er, som causa efficiens, medbestemmende for
musikkens virkeliggørelse og fremførelse på samme måde som produceren, teknikeren m.fl. er det for det fonografiske produkt og endelig er genren, fremførelsens topos,
produktionens omsætning og anvendelse, osv. medbestemmende som causa finalis.
8
9
10
11
at Heideggers tekst egentlig tilstræber et opgør med den gængse forståelse af Aristoteles’ fire årsager
vil fremgå løbende.
Aristoteles’ opstilling af fire forskellige synsvinkler, hvorunder noget kan tjene til at forklare noget
andet, er bredere end det moderne årsagsbegreb, men til gengæld tættere på dagligsprogets angivelser af “årsager” og “grunde”. If. Aristoteles kan man henvise til stoffet (den materielle årsag, fx til
forklaring af et hus), til ophavsmanden (den virkende årsag: håndværkeren), til tingens form (den
formale årsag: husets struktur i håndværkerens bevidsthed) eller til dens formål (den finale årsag:
husets funktion), jf. fx Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Aristoteles” in Den store danske (http://www.denstoredanske.dk) og Jan Riis Flor, “Årsag” in Den store danske, begge opslag tilgået 17.11.2105.
jeg anvender ‘medbestemmende’ i stedet for ‘medvirkende’, idet Heidegger påpeger, at Aristoteles i
virkeligheden ikke taler om årsagsforhold, men om skyldsforhold. Retteligen burde jeg således anvende begrebet ‘medskyldigt’, men dette har i dag en umiddelbart mere negativ konnotation end
‘medbestemmende’.
idet jeg her afstår fra at diskutere om musik primært skal opfattes som at klingende fænomen, et
spørgsmål som jeg tager op i en senere artikel.
Numeriske tåger
123
I og med at Heidegger henviser til skyld og skyldighed i stedet for ‘virken’ og ‘bevirken’, som Aristoteles’ årsagsmekanismer ofte beskrives som,12 bliver forholdet til et
spørgsmål om, hvad der er eller har skyld i noget (andet) og man kunne måske sige
har del eller andel i noget og ikke blot, hvad der har forårsaget dette. I virkeligheden
sigter Heidegger efter en forståelse, som med Platon indsætter ‘foranledning’ i stedet
for ‘årsag’ eller ‘skyld’, og han betoner derved det processuelle – det man kunne kalde
det virkende i det foranledigende, som i frembringelsen bliver nærværende.13
Hvor “Aristoteles anser formålsårsagen for den vigtigste, og bemærker, at den ofte
i sig omfatter både den formale og den bevirkende årsag [causa efficiens],”14 ændrer
Heidegger, i sin bestræbelse på at afdække teknikkens væren, ‘kæden’, således at den
får følgende forløb: causa materialis, causa formalis, causa finalis og causa efficiens.
Herved pointerer han, hvordan causa finalis – årsagsbestemtheden, anvendelsesmålet
– ikke længere medregnes, “Causa efficiens […] bliver mønster og afgørende bestemmelse for al kausalitet.”15 dvs. at menneskets behov for og brug af artefaktet ikke længere opfattes som del af kæden – eller som kædens mål.
Accenten er for Heidegger mao. sat på causa efficiens – på frembringelsen og
frembringeren – og ikke på hensigten med artefaktet. I stedet for artefaktets anvendelse er det selve processen, forstået som en fremdragen, der finder sted gennem udfoldelsen af teknik – techne, det handler om. Man kunne sige, at formålet med frembringelsen af artefaktet er frembringelsen som en lønnet aktivitet og ikke det frembragtes nytte eller relevans i verden. Det er den tekniske aktivitet, handlingen, der er
det egentlige formål, ikke handlingens frugt.16 Det er derfor ikke spørgsmålet om til
hvilken nytte og med hvilket formål, en handling finder sted, men i stedet til spørgsmålet om handlingen selv som forandringsfremkaldende aktivitet. Der er ikke langt
fra denne opfattelse til Marshal McLuhans pointering af, at “mediet er budskabet”,
en pointe, der blev fremført i Understanding Media, en halv snes år efter Heideggers
tekst,17 og som indebærer, at det ikke er mediets indhold, den særlige information eller det konkrete produkt, som frembringes i eller af mediet, der er det centrale; det er derimod mediet selv, og den forandring, det forårsager i den kontekst, det
introduceres i.
Heidegger fremhæver, at der mellem causa efficiens og causa finalis sker en frembringelse, hvor håndværkeren og kunstneren, gennem anvendelse af bestemte materialer og bestemte, tilstræbte former, frembringer noget, som i princippet er – eller før
har været – skjult. Det bringes således ud i det han benævner det uskjulte, det afdækkes: “Teknik er en af afdækningens måder. Teknikken driver sit væsen i det område,
hvor afdækning og uskjulthed, hvor aletheia, hvor sandhed sker.”18
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Politikens filosofi leksikon, red. Paul Lübcke, 14. udg., “Aristoteles”.
Heidegger, Spørgsmålet om, 41.
Politikens, “Aristoteles”.
Heidegger Spørgsmålet om, 39.
For så vidt er dette på linje med Marx’ kapitallogiske pointe, at bytteværdien har ‘udkonkurreret’
brugsværdien i den moderne økonomiske ‘rationalitet’.
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).
Heidegger, Spørgsmålet om, 43f.
124
Martin Knakkergaard
Ligesom episteme er techne således en afdækken, men med det særlige træk, at
den afdækker det endnu ikke foreliggende, fx noget, der skabes, som et hus, en have,
et stykke musik. “Den afdækken, som hersker i den moderne teknik, er en frem- og
udfordren, som stiller naturen overfor det krav at levere energi, der kan gøres tilgængelig og oplagres som sådan.”19 Naturen bestilles således som det Heidegger kalder
‘bestand’ gennem teknikkens afdækning, hvor bestand forstås, som “[…] den måde,
hvorpå alt det er nærværende, som berøres af den udfordrende afdækken. Hvad der i
bestandens betydning står, står ikke længere over for os som genstand.”20
Med til bestanden hører imidlertid også mennesket, idet mennesket er bestandens
bestiller, som skovfogeden, der “[...] er bestilt af træforarbejdningsindustrien [...] for
bestilbarheden af cellulose, der på sin side er udfordret gennem behovet for papir
[...]” osv.21 Men mennesket er ikke blot bestand, idet det, når det “udøver teknikken,
tager […] del i bestillingen som en af afdækningens måder.”22 jf. frembringelse. Hermed vægtes bestillingens måde eller form, og dermed hvordan bestillingen, som en
måde at afdække et emne på, er med til at forme vores begreb om og forståelse af
det bestilte, af emnet. Dette er et meget afgørende punkt, hvor vi i mine øjne i virkeligheden taler om tilgængeliggørelsens implicitte ordning, og således om den formatering, som udøvelsen af enhver teknik – eller blot enhver handlen – indebærer for
det, der tilgængeliggøres.
Stilladset
Denne implicitte ordning i udøvelsen af teknik, der giver adgang – og anledning –
til en given bestand, opfatter Heidegger som et imperativ, der kan beskrives som et
stillads: “Det udfordrende krav, den tiltale, som forsamler mennesket til at bestille det sig-afdækkende som bestand, kalder vi nu das Ge-stell, stilladset.”23 Stilladset er for Heidegger imidlertid netop ikke i sig selv noget ‘teknisk’, som “stænger
og stempler og støttekonstruktioner”,24 denne manifeste teknik kalder Heidegger
‘montage’, mens stilladset derimod er “den afdækningsmåde, som hersker i den moderne tekniks væsen”,25 altså netop den ordning eller formatering, der finder sted
gennem udøvelsen af den tekniske aktivitet, og dermed den måde hvorpå noget gøres tilgængeligt. Det ‘udfordrede’ bliver dermed tilgængelig på en ganske bestemt
måde og i en ganske bestemt form, som er bestemt af den måde teknikken afdækker,
tilgængeliggør, naturen.
Overføres denne tankegang til musikkens verden eller ‘væren’ er toner, skalaer,
rytmer, harmonik, instrumenter, optageudstyr osv. således at ligne ved ‘montage’,
idet de er konkrete tekniske ‘entiteter’ eller bestanddele, der som sådan “modsvarer
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
ibid.
ibid.
Numeriske tåger
125
still-adsets udfordring, men aldrig selv udgør denne endsige bevirker den”;26 mens
stilladset svarer til de implicitte systemer eller måder, hvorigennem musikalske organiseringer gestaltes, og således “afdækker det virkelige som bestand”,27 som musikstykker. Det er fristende her at parallelisere til moderne neuropsykologiske forklaringsmodeller, der nok synes at have afdækket, at musikalske – og i det hele taget
akustiske – stimuli kan føre til høj hjerneaktivitet og udløsning af neurotransmittere og at dette er en grund til, at mennesket sætter stor pris på og dyrker musik,28
men det forklarer ikke, hvorfor det forholder sig sådan, at gennemstrukturerede trykforskelle i den æteriske materie mennesket befinder sig i, i den grad behager det.
Hvad er meningen? Det kunne måske netop signalere en form for sanset erkendelse af verden, en slags værens uskjulthed; selv om denne tanke ikke skal udvikles i
nærværende tekst, grænser den måske op til den form for indsigt, af-sløring, som
Heidegger stræbte efter.
Søger vi stilladset i den digitale tidsalder, konfronteres vi – som altid, når talen er
på det digitale – med det paradoks, at de redskaber og teknikker, montagens entiteter,
som vi anvender, i virkeligheden ikke er til stede som egentlige eller konkrete redskaber, som fx toner og potentiometre. De optræder alene som symboler og metaforer og
har som sådan ingen substans. Dette indebærer, at den afdækning, der finder sted, i
princippet slet ikke er nogen afdækning i hvert fald ikke i Heideggersk forstand, idet
den bestand, der tilsyneladende står frem, ikke er og ikke kan være nærværende. Der
findes intet nærvær – eller hervær – i det digitale og det digitale giver ikke adgang til
en afdækken af naturen eller virkeligheden, i hvad, der synes at fremtræde som sådan;
den digitale montage beskriver kun et bestemt stadie i det andre teknikker har kaldt
frem og kan ikke, i modsætning til disse, være direkte forbundet med virkeligheden. I
og med at det digitale er substansløst, er den bestand, det kan fremkalde, ingen udfordring, blot en simuleret – oprindelsesløs – reprise: “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, not even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the
real for the real …”29
For at belyse, hvordan denne, den digitale tids definitive simulering, virker ind på
musikalsk handlen og aktivitet, er det i det Heideggerske perspektiv nødvendigt at se på
den ‘frem-stillen’, den afdækken, som 1900-tallets elektriske apparatur har forårsaget.
26
27
28
29
ibid.
ibid. Bemærk at Heidegger gennem den uvante orddeling – “still-ads” (“ge-stell”) – ønsker at understrege, at noget stilles – er stillet – frem gennem be-stilling og frem-stilling, dvs. træder frem i kraft af
– brugen af – teknik eller montage.
se fx Line Gebauer, Morten Kringelbach og Peter Vuust, “Ever-changing Cycles of Musical Pleasure:
The role of anticipation and dopamine” in Psychomusicology, vol 22, nr. 2 (2012), 152-167. For en
mere generel indføring i vedr. Musik og hjerne se fx Lars Ole Bonde, Musik og menneske, (Danmark:
Samfundslitteratur, 2009), 51ff). Se i øvrigt Mark Grimshaw ’A brief argument for, and summary of,
the concept of Sonic Virtuality.’ i dette særnummer p. 97, 102 og 105.
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, (USA: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), (fransk
original Simulacres et simulation, 1981).
126
Martin Knakkergaard
Elektrificeringen
Allerede de akustiske optageteknikker indebærer selvsagt en forskydning i den måde
teknikken sætter sig igennem på inden for det musikalske univers.30 Den, i Heideggersk forstand, afdækken, som det fonogrammatiske artefakt beskriver, fremstiller på
den ene side et bestandsmæssigt forhold, en uskjulthed, der forekommer skræmmende umiddelbar og nærværende, “[an] unimaginable closeness of sound technology
and awareness, a simulacrum of a feedback loop relaying sender and receiver”,31 mens
den på den anden side fremstår indhyllet i produktionens processers mange slørende
og uigennemskuelige lag. Grammofonen og også radiotransmissionen udfordrer koncertsalen og spillestedet og de dertil knyttede behov og forventninger. De er den moderne tids causa finalis og de forskydninger, som de beskriver i anvendelsesformålet
tæller sociale, kulturelle, musikalske og tekniske forandringer, der i sig selv virker tilbage på processen og fører til ændringer i causa efficens og causa formalis.32 Korrespondensen eller analogien mellem det klingende og det registrerede er dog kun så
stor som det aktuelle reproduktionsmedie, causa materialis, formår, og der sker egentlig blot en optimering af outputtet med henblik på at nå et i forhold til den klingende original, den oprindelige lydkilde, acceptabelt niveau; “What all acoustic engineers
were striving for was greater faithfulness to the source.”33
Med elektrificeringen, der tager fart i slutningen af 1920rne, undergår musikproduktionen imidlertid gennemgribende forandringer. Nu er det ikke i så høj grad musikken
i dens akustiske omsætning, fx i koncertsalen, der tilstræbes, men derimod den radiotransmitterede live-musik, som søges fastholdt fonografisk.34 Lydteknikerne bliver med
elektrificeringen opmærksomme på mulighederne for at medforme lyden og tænker i
stigende grad i ‘lydbilleder’, i det for det indre øre allerede hørte ikke-hørte. Henover
de næste årtier optimeres dynamik og støj/signal-forhold og der indføres forskellige
former for filtre, effekter og separationsteknikker alt sammen medvirkende til, at man
kunne begynde at tænke i musik, som blev skabt for mediet – et forhold, der yderligere
får et kraftig skub med indførelsen af båndoptager-teknologi efter Anden Verdenskrig. I
løbet af 1950erne når man inden for populærmusikken til en musikform, som er tænkt
som et lydproduceret artefakt, der næsten er blottet for referencer til performet musik,35
og tidens tekniks Heideggerske ‘montage’, danner et ‘stillads’, som afdækker det virkelige som ‘bestand’ i en form, der grundlæggende bryder med tidligere tiders ‘bestande’.
Allerede elspændingsbaseret – og egentligt også den mekaniske – optagelse fører til
en slags lydformning eller lydskulpering af causa materialis, som i sig selv beskriver en
30
31
32
33
34
35
se fx Michael Chanan, Repeated Takes. A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London:
Verso, 1995), 23ff.
Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (USA: Stanford University Press, 1999), s. 37.
se fx Chanan, Repeated Takes, 59ff og Mark Katz, Capturing Sound. How technology has changed music.
(USA: University of Califonia Press, 2004), 31-36.
Chanan, Repeated Takes, 58.
ibid.
Noget tilsvarende havde længe været på spil inden for den kunstmusikalske tradition, jf. fx Busonis
Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst fra 1907.
Numeriske tåger
127
transformation, hvor materialets traditionelle autenticitet hele tiden udfordres, idet det
stilles frem i montager, som bryder med tidligere former og hvor causa efficiens, den
udvirkende, med skyldig henvisning til causa formalis, de konkrete teknikker og metoder, indtager en mere og mere central og langt hen dominerende rolle. Også inden for
datidens elektroakustiske strømninger betones causa materialis, causa formalis og causa
efficiens stærkt, det gælder fx for både musique concrète og Elektronische Musik.36
Digitaliseringen
Med digitaliseringen er vilkårene for ‘skyldighed’ ændret radikalt. Med causa finalis
som en slags dynamisk horisont fokuseres der intensivt på causa efficiens ud fra en
oplevet forestilling om, at man i historisk uset grad er herre over formningen, fremstillingen, i dens totalitet.
Spørgsmålet er imidlertid i hvilken grad man er herre over tingene og hvad det
egentlig er, man er er herre over. I det digitale værksted, dvs. i alle de processer, der
foregår i computeren, løses opgaver på en radikalt anden måde end uden for. Det er
kendetegnende, at værktøj og materiale i computeren – og helt generelt i det “computerized society”37 – er til stede på samme formel og også på samme niveau og at der
allerede af den grund nødvendigvis vil finde forskydninger sted mellem causa materialis og causa efficiens, der gør det vanskeligt at afgøre, hvem eller hvad, der udvirker
hvad. Det er således vigtigt at holde sig for øje, at “[d]er ikke er nogen invariant grænse mellem program og data”38 og at dette i praksis indebærer, at materialet, causa materialis, dybest set fremstår som elementer i eller af værktøjet. I og med at materialet i
dets digitaliserede form strengt taget må forstås som tabeller, der i det digitale domæne optræder som databaser,39 er der reelt tale om, at disse tabeller formes og bearbejdes af andre tabeller, nemlig i den udstrækning, at de algoritmer, som udgør programmernes funktioner, lader sig begribe som dynamiske tabeller. Af samme grund bliver
spørgsmålet om, hvad der bearbejder hvad, uklart, da ‘værktøjet’, den bearbejdende
tabel, i bearbejdningsøjeblikket – men også i det hele taget – er ét med de data, der
bearbejdes, med hensyn til lokalisering, format og tilstand.
Set i dette lys smelter værktøjet, causa efficiens, sammen med materialet gennem de
grænser, som det digitale format sætter, men det smelter samtidigt og yderligere sammen med formen i kraft af det grundvilkår som interface – tastatur, skærm, controller
osv. – sætter, et vilkår, som langt hen indebærer en ‘sekretarisering’ af enhver proces,
ethvert arbejde, der henlægges til det digitale domæne. Her gælder det endvidere, at
“[a]lgorithms and data structures have a symbiotic relationship. The more complex the
36
37
38
39
Se fx Martin Knakkergaard, IO – om musik, teknologi og musikteknologi (Danmark: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1994), 50f.
Jean Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (England: Manchester University Press,
1984), 3.
Niels Finnemann, “Computeren – et medie for en ny skriftteknologisk revolution,” in Multimedier
Hypermedier Interaktive Medier, edited by Jens F. Jensen (Danmark: Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 1998), 48.
Idet database er defineret som en struktureret samling af data, jf. Lev Manovich, “Database as Symbolic Form” in Convergence, årg. 5, hft. 2, (01-06-1999), 81.
128
Martin Knakkergaard
data structure of a computer program, the simpler the algorithm needs to be, and vice
versa”,40 hvilket indebærer, at de processer der iværksættes i sidste ende begrænses af
datamaterialets egen kompleksitet. Interfacet indrettes derfor så det ikke blot imødekommer, men er fuldstændig baseret på allerede eksisterende principper for og forestillinger om normative montager i Heideggers forstand. Således omfatter interfacet ‘sekretariseringer’ af tonesystem, transskriptionsformer, instrumentdesign osv., alle omtydet fra eksisterende praksisser, ligesom det byder sig til med repræsentationsformer,
der er hentet fra bl.a. fysiklaboratoriets og lydstudiets apparatur, som oscillatorer, filtre
og lignende moduler. Alt fremstilles i grafisk tilforladelige og fascinerende former selv
om ingen af disse normer og værktøjer har egentlig realitet i det digitale domæne.
Causa materialis og causa formalis er dermed i princippet forsvundet. De er indlejret i selve den digitale processering på en sådan måde, at deres tilstedeværelse, deres
skyldighed, udelukkende er repræsentativ og metaforisk. Om de er udtryk for en ekstern ydelse, som er digitaliseret, eller om de optræder som del af det digitales egen bestand, hvilket ikke er usædvanligt længere, er her for så vidt uden betydning: De er registreret i numeriske tabeller, der er hjemfaldne til enhver form for digital manipulation
og uden for rækkevidde af alt andet. I praksis er det derfor vanskeligt at skelne mellem
montage og stillads. Det er kun igennem den medlevende, men strengt taget også forledte iagttagelse, at artefaktet lader sig tyde med hensyn til medbestemmende faktorer.
Idet det digitale er substansløst finder de processer, som den foregiver at udføre,
heller ikke sted reelt. Ved at indskyde formaterende lag, der metaforisk fremstår som
velkendte praksisser og processer, som tidligere fx blev varetaget af elektriske apparater, opstår en forvirrende kausalitet, idet både causa materialis, causa formalis og ikke
mindst causa efficiens er ‘sublimeret’ og fortoner sig forenet i tabeller og numeriske
operationer i det digitale dyb.
Selve det teknologiske element, som medformende del af den kunstneriske proces, er fingeret, simuleret, idet digitalteknologien kan sættes til at medforme på enhver tænkelig måde uden på noget tidspunkt at være og blive en reel del af artefaktet.
Det musikalske artefakt står som sådan uden for det digitale, idet det oversættes eller
konverteres til lyd i den fysiske verden. Først her manifesterer montagen sig i stilladsafdækkende form, men er det virkeligheden, som bestand, stilladset afdækker? Næppe, for den mulige ‘afdækken’ synes forstenet i de metaforiske tabeller, som definerer
og afgrænser handlinger i det digitale domæne.
Afrunding
Vor tids – kulturelle – utryghed ved digitalitetens forflygtigelse af materiale og mangel
på realitet kan bl.a. aflæses i den store opmærksomhed omkring autenticitet generelt,
hvilket fx tydeligt kommer til udtryk blandt musikstuderende. Den har i stigende grad
gjort sig gældende siden slutningen af forrige århundrede og der tvivles tilsyneladende
på både intention og proveniens.
40
Manovich, “Database,” 84.
Numeriske tåger
129
Med Bolter og Grusin41 taler man om remediering, hvor ethvert medies indhold
anses som et andet medie; det er vildledende og strengt taget misvisende, når det drejer sig om digitalteknologi i og med, at der som vist reelt ikke er noget medie, hverken
som indhold eller form. At opfatte digital teknologi som medie er simpelthen uforsigtigt og forkert. Digitalteknologi er et fundamentalt vilkår, en væsensparallelitet uden
væren, et immaterielt parallelunivers, og den i Heideggers forstand virken, som dens
‘re-medier’ udøver, er konstrueret og finder udelukkende sted i algoritmer, scripts osv.
Når noget fremstår som re-mediering er det udelukkende udtryk for, at digitaliteten
møder dets modpart, den, der opfatter sig som digitalitetens bruger, på dennes banehalvdel – som den strengt taget har overtaget.
Når man genkalder sig, hvor næsten umulig en udfordring det tidligere var at fremstille båndsløjfer – loops – i det fysiske medie eller blot sømløse, støjfrie loop i de
tidlige digitale programmer og sammenligner disse med de loop, der på et øjeblik
kan skabes i dag, har man et meget godt billede på, hvor virkelighedsfjern – parallel
– teknologien er. At alt dertil er non-destruktivt understreger blot, hvordan intet længere er, hvad det synes at være. Det har nemlig ikke nogen egentlig eller endelig form
og materialet – causa materialis – er ganske enkelt ophørt med at være en egentlig
medformende faktor.
Der er således ikke tale om noget i Aristotelisk forstand kausalt forhold; kausaliteten er en tilstræbt og fast formet illusion – men alligevel vilkårlig. Det digitale er ikke
noget medie, idet det reelt ikke medierer, men rekonstruerer noget og som vilkår beskriver det en selvstændig, substansløs realitet, der er i verden som et parallelt univers.
Heller ikke Heideggers næsten metafysisk og forventningsfulde måde at spørge til
teknikken rækker langt, når det kommer til den digitale. Den frembringelse, som komponisten, musikeren og produceren stiller frem, finder sted som en kombinatorisk
proces inden for hvilken simuleringer af allerede eksisterende elementer kombineres
inden for faste systemiske vilkår. Disse vilkår er udtryk for bevidste valg, men er alligevel arbitrære og systemeksterne for det digitale domæne. Det digitales egne præmisser
er flygtige og ubestandige. Lydgenerering, syntese, loops, samples, osv. er alle mimetiske montager inden for et med digitaliteten hermetisk – og som sådan grundlæggende uopnåeligt – system. Det har intet virkeligt med virkeligheden at gøre og afdækker
intet andet end det allerede afdækkede.
Den elektriske musikteknologis metaforiske tilstedeværelse i digitaliteten beskriver
således en dobbelt teknologisk binding, idet principperne fra denne optræder som stillads, inden for hvilket det er muligt at foretage montager, som tilsyneladende finder
sted inden for et reelt ontologisk system.42 Men også stilladset er flygtigt og underkastet
det digitales troløse ikke-væren. Stilladsets grundlæggende konstitutive principper er
blot emuleringer, simulacra, som uden videre og omkostningsfrit kan erstattes af andre.
41
42
Jay Bolter & Richard Grusin, Remediation. Understanding New Media (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT
Press, 1998).
Heideggers syn på den ontologiske mulighed som udelukkende til stede som et fænomenlogisk anliggende, jf. Dan Zahavis Indledning til Heidegger “Spørgsmålet om,” 13, har næppe nogensinde været bedre anskueliggjort end med det digitale vilkår.
130
Martin Knakkergaard
Den systemiske determination, som den elektriske musik- og lydteknologi udgør
gennem dens tilstedeværelse som metaforisk repræsentation, er som sådan umiddelbart beskyttet af det digitales selvbærende – og selvlukkende og som sådan kompletterende – simulering. Men hvor længe og hvorfor?: Den er anakronistisk til stede som
“the steak that doesn’t exist” i filmen The Matrix43 hvor “Ignorance is bliss.”
På en underlig akavet måde genindfører digitalteknologien alligevel causa finalis
som mål eller formål og den reducerer i samme bevægelse de tre andre causa til skinmanøvrer. Der arbejdes nu entydigt på artefaktets finale stade – causa finalis – som det
æstetiske mål næsten blottet for poetisk vraggods. Det mimetiske er i den bladrende
praksis, en praksis som bl.a. tiljubles i new-speak-begrebet serendipity og som kendetegner vor tids causa efficiens, helt overladt til digitaliteten; det er den, der i samples,
loops, stereotypier osv. indlærer og gengiver de stilistiske relikter som er vor tids causa
materialis – og som på sin side synes dominerende for tidens æstetiske horisont.
Lydkunsten kan ligne en udvej, en vej omkring – som Hölderlins ord er det for
Heidegger,44 men den udstiller på ingen måde teknikkens bestand, som en udfordrende tilskikkelse, tværtimod. Den fremstår som et givet forhold, som ved hvis brug mennesket selv bliver en del af dens bestand, nu blot i støjende uvidenhed.
43
44
Amerikansk science-fiction film fra 1999 instrueret af A. og L. Wachowski og produceret af Joel Silver.
Heidegger, Spørgsmålet om, 58 og 64.
Numeriske tåger
131
Abstracts
Artiklen beskæftiger sig med vilkårene for skabelse af musikalske artefakter i den digitale teknologis tidsalder. Den søger, bl.a. gennem en diskussion af Heideggers teknologiforståelse, især indsigt i de forandringer som fraværet af egentlig stoflighed, en
konsekvens af digitalteknologiens kategori og format, giver anledning til. I vilkårsafgrænsningen inddrages endvidere en overvejelse af, hvilken betydning nogle af de
teknologiske formater, der historisk går forud for digitalteknologiens indførelse, har på
forståelsen af det musikalske artefakt og dets fremtrædelse som klingende fænomen.
The article discusses the conditions underpinning the creation of musical artefacts
in the digital technology era. Through a discussion of, inter alia, Heidegger’s understanding of technology, it especially seeks an insight into the changes that the absence
of proper texture, a consequence of digital technology’s category and format, causes.
In the attempt to define these conditions, it incorporates considerations of the impact of some of the technological formats that historically precede the digital environment on the understanding of the musical artefact and its manifestation as a
sounding phenomenon.
132
Notes on the contributors
Toivo Burlin. Assistant Professor in Musicology. Department of Culture and Aesthetics.
Stockholm University.
Mads Walther-Hansen. Assistant Professor. Department of Communication and
Psychology, Music and Sound Knowledge Group (MaSK), Aalborg University.
Hållbus Totte Mattsson. Professor in Sound and Music Production. Högskolan Dalarna.
Jan-Olof Gullö. Guest Professor in Music Production. Royal College of Music.
Stockholm.
Ivan Höglund. Stud. mag. Royal College of Music. Stockholm.
Julia Jonas. Stud. mag. Royal College of Music. Stockholm.
Hans Lindetorp. M.F.A. Lecturer in Music and Media Production. Royal College of
Music. Stockholm.
Anton Näslund. Stud. mag. Royal College of Music. Stockholm.
Joakim Persson. Stud. mag. Royal College of Music. Stockholm.
Peter Schyborger. M.F.A. Lecturer in Music and Mediaproduction. Royal College of
Music. Stockholm.
Mark Grimshaw. Obel Professor. Department of Communication and Psychology,
Music and Sound Knowledge Group (MaSK), Aalborg University.
Justin Christensen. Postdoctoral researcher. Department of Communication and
Martin Knakkergaard. Associate Professor. Department of Communication and

dansk musikforskning online / særnummer 2015 danish musicology

Transcription

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