Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:31:01.864Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Context-based Sound and the Ecological Theory of Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2017

David Chapman
David Chapman*
Affiliation:
University of East London, Docklands Campus, 4–16 University Way, London E16 2RD
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the ways in which context-based sonic art is capable of furthering a knowledge and understanding of place based on the initial perceptual encounter. How might this perceptual encounter operate in terms of a sound work’s affective dimension? To explore these issues I draw upon James J. Gibson’s ecological theory of perception and Gernot Böhme’s concept of an ‘aesthetic of atmospheres’.

Within the ecological model of perception, an individual can be regarded as a ‘perceptual system’: a mobile organism that seeks information from a coherent environment. I relate this concept to notions of the spatial address of environmental sound work in order to explore (a) how the human perceptual apparatus relates to the sonic environment in its mediated form and (b) how this impacts on individuals’ ability to experience such work as complex sonic ‘environments’. Can the ecological theory of perception aid the understanding of how the listener engages with context-based work? In proposing answers to this question, this article advances a coherent analytical framework that may lead us to a more systematic grasp of the ways in which individuals engage aesthetically with sonic space and environment. I illustrate this methodology through an examination of some of the recorded work of sound artist Chris Watson.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 22 , Special Issue 1: Context-based Composition , April 2017 , pp. 42 - 50
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Augé, Marc 1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Barthes, R. 1979. The Grain of the Voice. In S. Heath (ed. and trans.) Image, Music, Text, 2nd edn. London: Fontana.Google Scholar
Blumstein, T. D., Davitian, R. and Kaye, P. D. 2010. Do Film Soundtracks Contain Nonlinear Analogues to Influence Emotion? Biology Letters 6(6): 751–754.Google Scholar
Böhme, G. 2000. Acoustic Atmospheres: A Contribution to the Study of Ecological Aesthetics. Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 1(1): 14–19.Google Scholar
Clarke, E. 2005. Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cox, C. 2011. Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism. Journal of Visual Culture 10(2): 145–161.Google Scholar
Crary, J. 1999. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. 1982. Notes on Affordances. In E. Reed and R. Jones (eds.) Reasons for Realism: Selected Essays of James J. Gibson. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hecker, F. 2009. Sound Out of Line: In Conversation with Florian Hecker: Urbonomic. www.urbanomic.com/document/sound-out-of-line/ (accessed 30 August 2016).Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2007. Against Soundscape. In A. Carlyle (ed.) Autumn Leaves: Sounds and the Environment in Artistic Practice. Paris: Double Entendre.Google Scholar
Katz, B. 2014. Mastering Audio. The Art and the Science, 3rd edn. Oxford: Focal Press.Google Scholar
Kwon, M. 2004. One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Risset, J. C. 1996. Real-World Sounds and Simulacra in my Computer Music. Contemporary Music Review 15(1): 29–47.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1977. The Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf; reprinted as The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and The Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994.Google Scholar
Sterne, J. 2006. The mp3 as Cultural Object. New Media and Society 8(15): 825–842.Google Scholar
Toop, D. 2004. Haunted Weather. London: Serpent’s Tail.Google Scholar
Truax, B. 2002. Genres and Techniques of Soundscape Composition as Developed at Simon Fraser University. Organised Sound 7(1): 5–14.Google Scholar
Truax, B. 2012. Sound, Listening and Place: The Aesthetic Dilemma. Organised Sound 17(3): 193–201.Google Scholar
Varela, F., Thompson, J. and Rosch, E. 1991. The Embodied Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar

Discography

Cardiff, J. (1999) The Missing Voice (Case Study B) [Installation/Audiowalk], Whitechapel Gallery and environs: www.artangel.org.uk/project/the-missing-voice-case-study-b/.Google Scholar
Watson, C. 1996. Stepping into the Dark. London: Touch Music, TO:27–CD.Google Scholar
Watson, C. 1998. Outside the Circle of Fire. London: Touch Music, TO:37–CD.Google Scholar
Watson, C. 2003. Weather Report. London: Touch Music, TO:47–CD.Google Scholar
Watson, C. 2011. El Tren Fantasma. London: Touch Music, TO:42–CD.Google Scholar