Aural and Visual Cultures

"Unter dem viel beschworenen Stichwort des iconic turn galt die wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit der jüngsten Zeit verstärkt den Bildwelten und visuellen Wandlungsprozessen von Kultur. Über diese einseitige Tendenz hinausgehend fragen die Autoren dieses Bandes nach dem kulturprägenden Potential akustischer Phänomene. Exemplarisch widmen sich die Beiträge dabei einer Figur, deren interdisziplinäre Bedeutung bislang wenig Beachtung fand: der Resonanz.
In der Physik wird Resonanz als Mitschwingen eines Systems verstanden, wenn dessen Eigenfrequenz mit der Anregungsfrequenz einer äußeren Kraft annähernd übereinstimmt. Von ihrer Erforschung in Akustik, Instrumentenbau und Kompositionslehre ausgehend, schlägt die Resonanz aber auch in anderen Disziplinen Wellen. Das Potential der akustischen Figur eröffnet vielfältige modellhafte, metaphorische und methodologische Dimensionen. Der Band verfolgt, wie die Resonanz in Wahrnehmungs- und Körpertheorie, Ästhetik, künstlerischer Praxis sowie naturwissenschaftlicher Evidenzproduktion zwischen Eigen- und Fremddynamik changiert. Ein Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der durch den New Historicism angeregten Debatte um Kultur- und Resonanzräume, in der sich die Frage nach der Architektonik synchroner wie diachroner Entwicklungen in Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik stellt. Das Ziel des Buches ist, entfernte Kulturfelder und bislang unbeachtete historische Bezüge in Resonanz zu versetzen."

essay-poem / performative text presented as part of the conference #FOMO at ICA in London, may 31st, 2015 (with accompanying audiovisual media)....sci-fi reflections on club cosmologies, mutations, trans-formation, speciation, ontological speculation, multinatural perspectivism, machinic enslavement, and altered states ---2nd instalment of the sci-fi corporate realism project "MOUNTGROVE"

"Representations", N. 129, Winter 2015.

The essay analyzes the project of maintaining the body of V. I. Lenin in the Mausoleum in Moscow for the past ninety years, focusing on the unique biological science that developed around this project, and the unexpected political role this body has performed.

Recent years have seen not just a revival, but a rebirth of the analogue record. More than merely a nostalgic craze, vinyl has become a cultural icon. As music consumption migrated to digital and online, this seemingly obsolete medium became the fastest-growing format in music sales. Whilst vinyl never ceased to be the favorite amongst many music lovers and DJs, from the late 1980s the recording industry regarded it as an outdated relic, consigned to dusty domestic corners and obscure record shops. So why is vinyl now experiencing a 'rebirth of its cool'?

Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward explore this question by combining a cultural sociological approach with insights from material culture studies. Presenting vinyl as a multifaceted cultural object, they investigate the reasons behind its persistence within our technologically accelerated culture. Informed by media analysis, urban ethnography and the authors' interviews with musicians, DJs, sound engineers, record store owners, collectors and cutting-edge label chiefs from a range of metropolitan centres renowned for thriving music scenes including London, New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, and especially Berlin, what emerges is a story of a modern icon.

Endorsements & Reviews:

“Vinyl is a state-of-the-art treatment of an unforgettable object and medium that raises many of the issues central to contemporary anthropology. Its subject-matter should make it appealing to students and general audiences, while its theoretical sophistication makes it relevant to scholars of music, technology, popular culture, and cultural objects.” –  Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database

“Bartmanski and Woodward have created a masterpiece that any record lover should have on their shelves” –  Record Collector magazine

“Bartmanski and Woodward … provide meticulous detail as to how materiality matters … Bartmanski and Woodward divide their book into chapters that fervently trace various aspects of vinyl: its history, its functionality and use as a medium, its production and physical properties, and its consumption. In each chapter, they attend to the materially mediated cultural meanings within which vinyl is entangled.” –  Robin Bartram, Northwestern University, Qualitative Sociology

“Vinyl culture is back, and it’s even more vibrant than it was in its heyday, before digitalization. Bartmanski and Woodward take us to the epicentres of this revolution, and let those who are behind it tell us about their passions for this iconic medium. This is an exemplary study of the social and sensory life of things." - David Howes, Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

“In the age of the digital, with the ubiquitous smart phone and MP3 technologies providing consumers with instant access to global sounds irrespective of where they are, Vinyl explores the persistence of an old technology within the production and consumption of music. In doing so it demonstrates the complex ways in which material objects form a meaningful part of our everyday lives – not just through the sounds of vinyl but by how it feels and looks. The text is beautifully written, impassioned, yet critical. Welcome to the world of the post-digital.” –  Michael Bull, Professor of Sound Studies, University of Sussex, UK.

“A passionate ode to the analogue record, and testament to how vinyl embodies the content it mediates, with each record's unique journey etched into the material” –  Hillegonda C. Rietveld, The Times Higher Education

While place-based pilgrimage is an embodied practice, can it be experienced in its fullness through built environments,
assemblages of souvenirs, and music? Imaging Pilgrimage explores contemporary art that is created after a pilgrimage and intended to act as a catalyst for the embodied experience of others. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another-from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The close attention to context and experience allows for popular practices like the making of third-class or "contact" relics to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the “original” in hierarchic terms.

Imaging Pilgrimage brings various fields into conversation by offering a number of lenses and theoretical approaches (materialist, kinesthetic, haptic, synesthetic) that engage objects as radical sites of encounter, activated through religious and ritual praxis, and negotiated with not just the eyes, but a multiplicity of senses.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Plates
List of Figures

Introduction: Art as Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage as Art

I. Vashon Island – Spain: A Backyard Camino
II. S. Africa – Lourdes: Souvenirs as Sites
III. England – Jerusalem: Rewilding through Pilgrimage Song and Chant
IV. Oakland – Ecuador: Haciendo marcas otra vez-Making marks, again
V. Los Altos (Labyrinth) – Beyond: "The end is where we start from"

Towards a Conclusion: "As Far as the Eye Can Travel"
Bibliography

S’interrogeant sur la capacité de la photographie à figurer ce qui n’est pas visible et qui se situe au-delà de l’« ici-et-maintenant », cet ouvrage s’intéresse au projet de la photographie contemporaine, qui ambitionne de se libérer des contraintes de sa propre genèse pour réfléchir visuellement sur la transcendance religieuse ou laïque. Ces analyses sémiotiques font ainsi émerger de véritables argumentations figurales développées par les images. Certaines séries photographiques proposent des références intertextuelles à l’iconographie religieuse picturale, dont elles rénovent les modes de signification du sacré. D’autres séries d’images traitent des fondements des valeurs de notre vie : la dignité, la maladie, la mort, le destin. L’ouvrage développe ces problématiques à travers l’analyse détaillée des œuvres des plus célèbres photographes contemporains (Witkin, Michals, Pierre et Gilles, etc.). Il discute aussi les principales théories (sémiotiques, sociologiques, esthétiques et philosophiques) relatives au médium photographique, à la sacralisation de l’objet-photo et à l’iconographie du sacré.

Come e da chi è stato pubblicato il Vangelo secondo Giovanni? Una domanda di straordinario interesse a cui è difficile dare una risposta semplice. Cosa significa infatti esattamente “pubblicare” quando parliamo di un testo antico? Con l’enorme recente sviluppo del cosiddetto biblical media criticism appare sempre più chiaro agli studiosi che la vita e la circolazione dei testi nel mondo antico - e particolarmente dei testi biblici - era legata alla loro lettura pubblica. Nella linea dell’interesse per le dinamiche orali rintracciabili nei testi antichi a noi pervenuti, molti studiosi hanno iniziato a prendere in esame in questa prospettiva anche i testi del Nuovo Testamento. La presente ricerca, discussa come tesi di Dottorato in Teologia Biblica presso la Pontificia Università della Santa Croce,  cerca di gettare luce sulla nozione di testo aurale, inteso come testo che vive in un’epoca in cui i libri vengono soprattutto ascoltati. Dopo un’impostazione generale della questione, utilizzando principalmente gli strumenti dell’analisi narrativa, ci si immerge nell’esame di alcuni indizi del quarto Vangelo che rivelano un testo che ha raggiunto la sua forma definitiva maturando attraverso un periodo di lettura pubblica. L’analisi degli indizi, che si pone in dialogo con i più autorevoli commentatori giovannei, vuole offrire spunti che aprano prospettive nuove sugli studi della storia editoriale del quarto Vangelo. In questa nuova luce il Vangelo di Giovanni si mostra con una tridimensionalità nuova, che permette di riconoscere una voce viva in azione tra le righe del racconto, e aiuta il lettore a riscoprire il quarto Vangelo, come una storia da ascoltare.

En un interesante artículo Jean-François Augoyard se pregunta si acaso el lazo social es independiente de los canales sensoriales por medio de los cuales una colectividad percibe y actua. El objetivo de este trabajo es aventurar una respuesta a través del análisis del paisaje sonoro y cultural de la ciudad de Cholula (México).

The phrase "stream of consciousness" to indicate the flow of inner experience was first used by William James in Principles of Psychology (1890) yet writers throughout the ages have described the altered states of consciousness which arise when this stream is diverted from its normal courses: from the visions and dreams described by mystics in the earliest religious texts, to the modern accounts written by neuroscientists. This chapter highlights the importance of literature for the study of consciousness and describes how the development of writing affected a shift in human experience second only to the development of language itself by extending our capacity to think beyond the here and now. It then goes on to explore how authors throughout the ages have explored altered states of consciousness in their personal lives and in their literary work with particular emphasis on religious experience, drug use, hypnosis and dissociative states.

Halk müziğinde bağlama ile yapılan açış icrası günümüzde önemini korumaktadır. Gelenekte usta-çırak ilişkisi çerçevesinde gözleme dayalı olarak yapılan bu icra türünün nasıl bir değişime uğradığının analizi ve nasıl bir öğrenim yöntemi gerektirdiği bir problem olarak devam etmektedir. Günümüzde şehirleşmenin ve teknolojide gelişmenin bir sonucu olarak, farklı enstrümanlar ile bulunulan ortak icra performanslarında, çeşitli icra üsluplarının birbirini etkilediği ve bu etkinin bağlama açışlarında da kendini göstererek üslup değişimlerine yol açtığı gözlemlenmiştir. Kendisinden sonra seslendirilecek olan eseri hissettirmek amacıyla yapılan bir icra türü olan yol gösterme, zamanla yol göstermek istenilen eserin makam, dizi ve ritim gibi belli kalıplarını bünyesinde barındıran, daha serbest bir müzik formuna dönüşmüştür. Bu doğrultuda, açışlar hakkında yazılan tez, makale, bildiri, kitap ve dergiler araştırılmış ve usta icracılarla görüşmeler yapılarak, incelenmek üzere belirlenen açış icra kayıtları notaya aktarılmıştır. Sonuç olarak; bağlama sazıyla yapılan açışların üslubu, özgünlüğü, taklit edilerek yeniden üretilmesi dikkate alındığında müzik terminolojisinde yeni kavramlara ihtiyaç duyulduğu, bağlamada yeni bir icra anlayışının oluştuğu ve buna bağlı olarak yeni öğrenim biçimlerinin geliştirilmesi gerektiği tespit edilmiştir. Bu tespitlerle, kültür değerlerimizden biri olan açış geleneğinin devamlılığını sağlayabilmek ve geleceğe aktarımda bir köprü olabilmek için, analizlerden elde edilen bulgular yoluyla açış konusu inceleme altına alınmıştır.

While place-based pilgrimage is an embodied practice, can it be experienced in its fullness through built environments,
assemblages of souvenirs, and music? Imaging Pilgrimage explores contemporary art that is created after a pilgrimage and intended to act as a catalyst for the embodied experience of others. Each chapter focuses on a contemporary artwork that links one landscape to another-from the Spanish Camino to a backyard in the Pacific Northwest, from Lourdes to South Africa, from Jerusalem to England, and from Ecuador to California. The close attention to context and experience allows for popular practices like the making of third-class or "contact" relics to augment conversations about the authenticity or perceived power of a replica or copy; it also challenges the tendency to think of the “original” in hierarchic terms.

Imaging Pilgrimage brings various fields into conversation by offering a number of lenses and theoretical approaches (materialist, kinesthetic, haptic, synesthetic) that engage objects as radical sites of encounter, activated through religious and ritual praxis, and negotiated with not just the eyes, but a multiplicity of senses.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Plates
List of Figures

Introduction: Art as Pilgrimage, Pilgrimage as Art

I. Vashon Island – Spain: A Backyard Camino
II. S. Africa – Lourdes: Souvenirs as Sites
III. England – Jerusalem: Rewilding through Pilgrimage Song and Chant
IV. Oakland – Ecuador: Haciendo marcas otra vez-Making marks, again
V. Los Altos (Labyrinth) – Beyond: "The end is where we start from"

Towards a Conclusion: "As Far as the Eye Can Travel"
Bibliography

Las sensaciones auditivas están implicadas, desde antes de nuestro nacimiento y a lo largo de la vida, en los mecanismos mediante los cuales adquirimos conciencia de nosotros mismos y nos vinculamos con los demás. De esta forma, el sonido participa activamente del juego de la identidad y la diferencia, al configurar un sistema de oposiciones de origen espacial con fundamento en la distinción entre el adentro y el afuera. Es justo en los intersticios de los territorios sonoros que actúa la fuerza vinculante del sonido, ya sea bajo la modalidad de comunión o de conflicto

Resumo: Nunca será excessivo lembrar que o tema da experiência é um dos conceitos nucleares no pensamento de Benjamin, estando subjacente à análise da história e à sua teoria crítico-literária e desenvolvendo-se em complexas ramificações que têm o seu lugar, sobretudo, a partir da década de 30. Se o texto "A Imagem de Proust", publicado em 1929 na revista “Literatische Welt”, desenvolve o conceito de memória involuntária para explicar a questão da imagem aurática em Proust, obtida a partir da rememoração, a contribuição dos estudos de Freud sobre a teoria do choque e as suas consequências nas condições de percepção do homem contemporâneo não foram menos importantes, tendo levado Walter Benjamin a aprofundar a sua reflexão sobre o modo como o choque e a rememoração se podem articular para uma nova visão da história, tanto individual quanto colectiva. Examinamos aqui, tanto nas artes, como na literatura e na história, a forma como esse entrosamento define uma nova concepção de experiência, bem como essa experiência torna, ou não, possível a transmissão da cultura, num mundo em que, como disse Kafka, “a tradição adoeceu”. Será a rememoração, essa teia de Penélope, capaz de operar um resgate da tradição histórica? De que tradição falamos aqui? E em que consiste a rememoração?

This essay assesses the interpretative consequence of the now wide and uncontrollable dissemination of an error, identifying three variants in an early poem by Sylvia Plath entitled "Black Rook in Rainy Weather" (1957). The first of these variants is a sophistication introduced in the Pulitzer Prize-winning edition of her COLLECTED POEMS, which is used as the copy-text for most contemporary anthologies that include the poem. In order to isolate and characterize the additional variants, the two extant audio recordings of Plath reading the poem have been collated with the typescripts and printed versions. The essay asserts the textuality of the tape recordings in terms of a phenomenon the I call “aural sophistication,” concluding that the recorded voice is less valuable as an index of authority than as a witness of how subtle textual variations irrevocably affect interpretation. The effect of these three variants reveals a self-possession and resilience Plath rarely embodies in her poems, an uncharacteristic posture that manifests the poem’s relation to Emily Dickinson’s poetics of witness.

Immanuel Kant said that the character of art consists in making people think. But what thoughts are aroused by works such as Brillo Box or Duchamp’s urinal? The aim of the present essay is to analyse art, and conceptual art in particular, in the light of new realism and documentality, arguing for the contemporary prevalence of works of aura over works of art and for the mainly legal nature of conceptual art. The rejection of beauty, I will claim, is due to the separation of art from matter and perception, and of aesthetics from its original meaning of aisthesis.

57] Domingo de sol, por volta de meio dia. Estamos na simpática Praça São Salvador, na zona sul da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Como ocorre toda semana, um grupo de cerca de duas dezenas de músicos se reúne em torno de um pequeno coreto no extremo da praça para tocar um repertório instrumental de choros. Em volta do círculo de flautas, cavaquinhos, violões, pandeiros e vários outros instrumentos musicais, o ambiente fica lotado de pessoas que se juntam para ouvir a música, beber cerveja e jogar conversa fora. O restante do lugar fica ocupado por dezenas de barracas de uma feira de artesanato e comidas, crianças brincando no parquinho localizado no outro extremo da praça e de um clima amigável de confraternização entre vizinhos, amigos e admiradores do choro, gênero musical de alta legitimidade na cidade. Nesse dia, a praça é ocupada pela música e pelo contexto simbólico que a cerca. Se voltarmos à mesma praça em qualquer noite de sábado, veremos uma configuração diferente. As barracas de artesanato são substituídas por dezenas de ambulantes vendendo cerveja e outras bebidas em isopores improvisados. A praça fica quase integralmente ocupada por grupos que, em pé, ouvem o som de uma animada roda de samba que ocorre também ao lado do coreto. A mureta que circunda o parquinho infantil é ocupada por jovens namorados e pequenos grupos. Há uma intensa circulação de pessoas, que lotam também os cinco bares de seu entorno. Apesar da presença de duplas de agentes da Guarda Municipal que supervisionam o movimento, o clima é [58] de uma noitada predominantemente jovem, igualmente amigável e tranquila. Porém, é impossível não

En la última literatura hispánica hay varias para posibilidades dirigidas a construir objetos ontológicos. En las actuales narrativa y poesía no es difícil establecer dos categorías de fundación ontológica: las cosas auráticas y las proyectadas, con diferentes significados y consecuencias, que serán discutidas en el texto.

""In 1958, for a international conference titled Man and the Atom, physicist Werner Heisenberg argued that modern physics and its applications have overcome and renewed philosophy from Antiquity to Kant in the dispute over the formation of matter. He even asserted that the arts themselves, should consider the changes that occurred in the scientific view of nature. While few years earlier, in The Question Concerning Technology, Martin Heidegger defined the essence of modern technology as an ‘enframing,’ a limitation, when humans are challenged by themselves and nature more than the other way around, and saw in art a ‘saving power’ against this enframing of technology.
This paper will consequently consider the interaction between the three fields: modern science, philosophy and the arts, and will show how, in spite of all appearances, these fields are not as distant and autonomous as usually assumed. My argument is that they jointly participated (willingly or not) to the western project of modernity, and that it becomes necessary to reconsider this joint project in our global and contemporary context.""

After World War II, the technical perfection of radio technology increased and its popularity grew. This period was characterized by the arrival of a massmedia toolkit: the transmission of information in the form of electromagnetic signals from broadcaster to receiver allowed private homes to connect with the outside world at the push of a button: private space became the venue for public presentations. Radio was just the beginning of this transfer.

The essay departs from the exhibition EAR APPEAL with EAR APPEAL ONAIR at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, 2006. Curator: Doreen Mende. Artists: Rashad Becker (DE), Justin Bennett (GB/NL), Benjamin Bergmann (DE), Elisabeth Grübl (A), Arthur Köpcke (DE/DK), Genesis P-Orridge (USA), Ultra-red (USA), Ruszka Roskalnikowa (PL), Paula Roush/msdm (PT/GB), Mika Taanila (FIN), Annette Weisser (D). Co-produced by Ö1 Kunstradio / Austrian Radio (ORF). http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/ear-appeal/

pecqueux, Anthony (a cura di) Les bruits de la ville «Communications» [numero monografico], 90 paris, Seuil, 2012, 232 pp. il rapporto tra la città e la dimensione percettiva sensoriale è un tema ampio che suscita sempre più interesse tra gli studiosi. Attraverso il prisma della dimensione sensoriale («estetica» in senso letterale) è infatti possibile scomporre e ricomporre tutte le tensioni culturali che caratterizzano la modernità. Si consideri ad esempio la tensione tra l'anestesia e l'iperestesia urbana. Da un lato, il processo di civilizzazione teorizzato da Norbert elias (1939) dovrebbe condurre logicamente a una tendenziale e progressiva anestetizzazione, o se si vuole sterilizzazione, degli spazi urbani, epurati da tutte le manifestazioni sensoriali «eccessive» -tendenza accompagnata inoltre da un progressivo abbassamento delle soglie percepite come eccessive (basti pensare solo alla intolleranza verso il fumo nei luoghi pubblici). Dall'altro lato, tuttavia, una spinta verso l'eccesso sensoriale, o iperestesia, sembra connaturato all'esperienza urbana stessa: come analizzato classicamente da Georg Simmel (1903), l'abitante urbano compie un costante lavoro «intellettuale» volto a creare delle protezioni contro gli eccessi sensoriali dell'ambiente metropolitano, definito non semplicemente dalla quantità degli stimoli sensoriali bensì dal loro ritmo e dalla loro imprevedibilità che corrispondono a un «consumo di consapevolezza» del singolo ben superiore a quello richiesto all'abitante rurale.

In this chapter, I discuss how theories of the disembodied voice call for a cultural understanding of our listening attitudes in music and musical theatre, which goes beyond genre restrictions. I contend that the enhanced interest in vocality on the postmodern stage, which lies at the basis of the newly emerging forms of music theatre since the 1950s (with an increase in the 1980s), has given rise to  a general re-‘enchantment’ of the disembodied voice, which re-enacts, challenges, substitutes communicative properties of orality, as much as it pushes and expands the discursive realm of aurality. Therefore, I wish to focus on the principle of acousmatization, which is most inherently part of our aural cultures and technologies, to the extent that this concept is useful to explain the effects of disembodied voices on the listener. Taking various examples of acousmatized voices in contemporary music and musical theatre, I will attempt to uncover the processes of how we perceive bodies in voices, particularly by means of our modes of listening.

During the first two decades of new millennium Serbian frula playing has been transformed from traditional to neotraditional practice, grew from aural to digitally mediated musical expression and shifted from a relative continuity with the past to specific revivalistic tendencies. The mode of learning of the music has also transformed from aural transmission and memorization without a teacher to combined tutoring and learning via listening to digitally available sources. This paper traces the modes of learning of folk aerophone frula throughout the twentieth century and up to the present, and moreover analyzes how the relation of the teacher and the pupil, although being a recent invention in frula practice, serves as a counterbalance to the mediatized way of learning (of) music.

Que el ruido se convierta en un objeto legal se considera un logro importantísimo en el camino hacia la construcción de una ciudadanía sana; sin embargo, también supone la solución de los problemas por la vía de la vigilancia y la sanción. Es aquí donde la Ley se convierte en un arma de doble filo, particularmente en un país como México, donde el ruido está relacionado con diversas prácticas sociales fuertemente arraigadas en la cultura. En la búsqueda de soluciones a un problema real, que se ha tornado grave y requiere acciones urgentes, ¿cuál es el camino a seguir con miras a crear un entorno acústicamente sano, socialmente respetuoso de las diferencias y acorde con nuestro contexto?

Pieter Verstraete’s chapter examines how the interactions between the visual and acoustic elements in contemporary musical theatre create a critical distance that allows audiences to reflect on the effects of theatre itself as a medium. Verstraete extends the existing concept of “auditory imagination” to show how the use of minimalist settings and contrasting juxtapositions between textual and visual elements can draw the audience’s attention to their own interpretative acts of listening and reveal how theatrical events actually occur within the mind of the spectator-auditor.

Greek religious festivals were multi-sensory social practices involving the whole of the human senses beyond the visual cues of place and action. The festivals at the sanctuary of Apollo of Delos were distinguished by a rich aural environment of ritual performances including song and music and of linguistic affluence. The Delia included musical contests of rhapsodic recitation and dancing, paeans and music accompanied the processions sent by the city-states, choruses sang of gods and men. Other local Delian cults also relied on hymns, dance and music. Who then were the performers and the public of such musical and lyric rituals? Delos was considered the ethnic sanctuary of Ionian Greeks, but literary and archaeological data rather reconstruct the profile of a regional Cycladic sanctuary, in fact an ethnically permeable religious hub for the Aegean. The cultic community at Delos should be understood in its diversity of dialects and cultures since the archaic age, when the Delian maidens were praised for imitating the tongues of all men and their clattering speech (h.Hom. h.Ap. 162f.). What perception did these participants have of the aural environment of Delian festivals? The songs addressed the centrality of Delian Apollinean cult, but the paeans of the city-state’s theoriai added unique expressions of self-identification; and, beyond words, the linguistic, stylistic, and musical features of the performances did evoke diverse cultural messages in their own. From the perspective of auditive sensory experience, the Delian festivals are a statement of pan-Hellenism, not so much in purporting a common Hellenic ethnic identity, but rather expressing the communion and communication among the multiple intra-Hellenic ethnic and cultural identities of the Greeks who shared into the cult of Delian Apollo.

Séminaire interlaboratoire soutenu par la Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l'homme d'Aix-en-Provence.

Les sources historiques fourmillent d’indications sonores. On y découvre les voix du collectif, les différents textures sonores ainsi que les mécanismes pensés pour installer, optimiser voire forcer l’écoute de certains individus. Les voix de Dieu, du pouvoir, du collectif, de la nature ou de la guerre résonnent dans les sources parce qu’elles ont été entendues et parce que l’auteur veut les faire entendre au lecteur.
Cependant, un son n’existe que par l’expérience auditive : l’écoute implique un engagement du corps pour entendre, comprendre, analyser et donner sens aux sonorités. Restituer seulement un son ne permet pas de savoir comment celui-ci était perçu, esthétisé, compris ou ressenti : la recherche d’une société sonore impose donc de retrouver son régime d’écoute particulier. Par l’expérience du corps, l’oralité (ce qui est dit) peut alors devenir auralité (ce qui est entendu). Si l’oralité est performance, l’auralité est expérience ; cette expérience modulant le récit historique, la création artistique ou encore le récit de l’Autre. De fait, l’écoute apparaît à la fois comme un objet historique, un moyen d’écriture du social et un outil pour l’historien.
Il convient de réfléchir aux méthodologies possibles pour retrouver, reconstruire et exploiter cette écoute historique tout en observant ce qu’elle peut apporter à la recherche historique. Dans cette optique, l’observation des méthodes employées par les spécialistes du sonore « audible » peut être riche en enseignements. Par ces réflexions croisées, on espère ouvrir un laboratoire expérimental des méthodologies possibles, qui servira aux chercheurs et étudiants désireux d’intégrer et/ou d’exploiter l’auralité dans leur recherche.

Responsables scientifiques :
Emmanuèle Caire (TDMAM), Véronique Ginouvès (Phonothèque), Marie-Emmanuelle Torres (LA3M), Laure Verdon (TELEMME)


Organisation :
un vendredi par mois en salle Germain Tillion
=> 10 décembre, 21 janvier, 25 février, 25 mars, 22 mai, 20 mai (14-17h30)
=> journée conclusive 10 juin (9h30-17h30)

Nuclear-related artworks provide a favorable terrain for investigation of our contemporary epoch, for they relate to a science whose applications are highly political and that is spreading beyond the Western world. In times of global warming, indeed, the prospect of nuclear energy reappears as the latest sought-after modern technology. But after Hiroshima and Chernobyl, and given the dualistic civilian and military use of the atom, how do artists react to nuclear activities and their inherent politics? Can art provide an effective counterpractice to global nuclear politics? The author argues that art and science share the same project—the modernist project—and that art, like science, has to question its modern heritage.

Proposes that the sense of the past in Renaissance England was conditioned as much by the sense of hearing as by visual perception, noting in particular the contemporary preference for conceiving of history as an aural, performative genre rather than (as in the 17th century and later) a visual and silently read one.

In this article, Pieter Verstraete focuses on ‘auditory distress’ as a constitutive aspect of listening to the extent that it bears a new perspective on sound experiences in contemporary performance practice. As a departure point, he contends that sound is always distressing, however pleasurable the experience may be. He finds subsequent support for this claim in R. Murray Schafer’s Tuning of the World, and in Roland Barthes and Roland Havas’s chapter “Écoute”, which both appeared in 1977. Despite their different angles and objectives, both texts claim for an understanding of sound as spatially transgressing certain acoustic horizons, hearing thresholds and subjective boundaries, as the ear cannot be closed off at will. Therefore, we have produced psychological and cognitive mechanisms to deal with the continuous intervention of sound. In a rather throw-away remark in his book The Concept of Music (1990), Robin Maconie suggests in a similar vein that the activity of listening and hearing consists of keeping unwanted intensities at bay. Such drastic explanations of the workings of the ear made Hillel Schwartz to conclude in her chapter “The Indefensible Ear: A History” (2003) that the ear’s accumulative susceptibility and its lingering breakdown are the epitomes of our modern hearing culture. As such, our increasingly noisy soundscapes in the theatre and outside call for an awareness of our listening competences.

By bringing together such novel perspectives on sound and by contextualizing the historical validity of these claims, Verstraete maps out a conceptual framework to discuss the performative role of sound in relation to present-day cultures and politics of listening. He discusses the ramifications of this framework by means of a case study: The Wooster Group’s recent music drama interpretation of Francesco Cavalli’s La Didone (2007-2009). In this performance, the musical spaces of Cavalli’s original dramma per musica are complemented by the sound-effects of blips and beeps and disembodied voices from Mario Bava’s science-fiction film Terrore Nello Spazio (aka Planet of the Vampires from 1965). The continuous juxtaposition of these two diegetic worlds and respective narratives creates a schizophonic perspective that urges the listener to create new connections, a new synthesis between the sounds, texts and images in an attempt to ‘perceive it all’: a global or evenly hovering attention. Yet the auditory distress constantly disrupts the evident mechanisms that would compensate the auditory distress. As such, the constant split in looking and listening (acousmatization) stresses the unframeability of sound and the necessity of the spectator to position oneself through her or his modes of listening, constantly shifting the attention. In this way, La Didone highlights the effects of auditory distress, causing awareness for the attitudes and regimes in listening that give salience, coherence, meaning and relative ‘closure’ to our fragmented experiences, ultimately filtered by our auditory imagination as the basis of these mechanisms. This awareness, in turn, gives rise to a mode of relating and positioning of the spectator as listening subject.

Hence, the proposed conceptual framework aims to offer a new perspective on the listener in contemporary theatre performances. In particular, it explains how the spectator as listener feels a desire to relate to sounds or music within the context of theatre’s hypermedial mechanisms, offering him occasional flashes of awareness about his responsibility as a listening subject. The spectator’s urge to respond to the auditory distress and the theatre’s promise to provide resolution in this desire precisely constitute the performative power of sound in the theatre. Ultimately, with the help of the case study, the conceptual framework aims to anchor the discussion of sound in contemporary (music) theatre within the comprehensive though much contested space of aurality. Verstraete concludes with a proposal to relate the still ill-defined notion of aurality to an understanding of listening as a foremost discursive practice.

Jorge De La Barre (2021) Sound, image, silence: Art and the aural imagination in the Atlantic world, Visual Studies,

DOI: 10.1080/1472586X.2020.1827022

LINK: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/REUZIMGYYMCYBVREZZGX/full?target=10.1080/1472586X.2020.1827022

During the first two decades of new millennium Serbian frula playing has been transformed from traditional to neotraditional practice, grew from aural to digitally mediated musical expression and shifted from a relative continuity with the past to specific revivalistic tendencies. The mode of learning of the music has also transformed from aural transmission and memorization without a teacher to combined tutoring and learning via listening to digitally available sources. This paper traces the modes of learning of folk aerophone frula throughout the twentieth century and up to the present, and moreover analyzes how the relation of the teacher and the pupil, although being a recent invention in frula practice, serves as a counterbalance to the mediatized way of learning (of) music.

The space of the architectural imagination resides within the discourses of line. This space defines the boundaries of a practice of conceptualising the laws of the place, whereby through an array of ordinances, the architectural line constitutes “the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically and to analyse objectively”. This definition, which speaks only of the discipline of architecture, as opposed to any other related discipline, reads architecture as an ensemble of mnemonically coded lines, situated upon and within the space of the picture plane, and no more.
Therefore, although a thorough understanding of the material, technological, environmental, ethical and heritage aspects related to each proposal is vital, we place our principle mode of enquiry upon and within the discrete lines that make architecture in the first instance, possible. Believing therefore, that a passionate engagement with the language of linear representation is the first step each of us must take if we are to move from employing the art of architectural representation as a mere tool, to meet a particular historically contingent need, to exploring Architecture, as a discrete unique graphic language, in and of itself.

In der Einleitung zum Sammelband „Auditive Wissenskulturen – Das Wissen klanglicher Praxis“ stellen die Autoren zuerst die Diskrepanzen der jeweiligen Beziehungen des Visuellen und des Auditiven zu Wissen anhand einiger Beispiele vor. Sie exemplifizieren auch, wie sowohl auditive Praxis als auch die Hervorbringung und Vermittlung von Wissen in soziale Prozesse eingebunden sind, und damit einhergehend mit Machtverhältnissen in Verbindung stehen. Die Erforschung von Klang durch Sound Studies und anthropologische Studien werden genauer behandelt, ebenso Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede in den Herangehensweisen an Klänge seitens der Wissenschaften und der Künste. Schließlich schlagen sie vor, den Begriff der Wissenskulturen als Forschungsstrategie zum Verstehen von auditivem Wissen zu benutzen, um explizites und implizites Wissen, wissenschaftliche und künstlerische, sowie klangproduzierende Prozesse und Hörverständnis gleichermaßen innerhalb sozialer und kollektiver Felder beschreib- und analysierbar zu machen. Diese Forschungsstrategie wird anhand einer Übersicht über die Beiträge im vorliegenden Band im Detail vorgestellt.

Three Five-Part Inventions

A graphic score for two hands and one piano. Gordon Shrigley and John Snijders, 2017.

I was first introduced to the idea of experimental graphic scores during my stay at Academy Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart in 1998, where I first met the composers Marc Sabat, Chiyoko Slavnics and Krystyna Bobrowski, whilst working on an artists’ book on the nature of the graphic line.

During my stay, Christian Wolff also held an open performance workshop and invited artists and musicians to work with him to realise his graphic score ‘Burdocks’. I volunteered as a percussionist, and although I make no claim to any performing expertise, this experience allowed me valuable time to think about the nature of the graphic score that Wolff had invented to realise his work.

Sometime after this, I began to wonder what would it mean for an artist and not a composer to create a score from linear relationships alone, inspired only by the dynamic equilibrium of the drawing, without any thought to the resulting soundscape?

Importantly though, so as to be more than a pretty picture for a performer to react to, such a experiment would also need to mediate between its very ‘pictureness’, and its role as ‘instruction’, so as to inhabit the space somewhere between an aesthetic graphic artefact that is explored in and of itself, and a distinct set of visual codes that could be read by any performer.

It was with such questions in mind that the collaboration between the pianist John Snijders and I began in 2015, which finally resulted, after two year’s work, in the composition ‘Three Five-Part Inventions’.