Sonic Walden

For those seeking their personal Waldens in sound and solitude

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Hearing The Front Porch


Photo from EarthPlay Projects
(Cornell University)

The wind chimes on my porch are a conscious effort to avoid silence – when they stop, the world seems to open up into a larger space. I can hear the cars swishing down the street, the bird songs are given prominence, and I hear the thicknesss of the rushing wind and the swirling of the fallen leaves – all actors in my nostalgic scripting of my sonic space….It is the difference between silence and solitude that fascinates me – along with many sound artists and writers…Silence, in reality, can never be accomplished (Cage gave evidence of that). Thoreau pointed out that solitude can be a state of mind. Margaret Fuller let us hear silence through women. As a society, we can silence individuals…and in reality that means not listening to them, not hearing them, ignoring their contributions – and that is essentially what Fuller was concerned with – silenced women in the midst of a vastness of untamed aurality. She sought silence and sound in the solitude of wilderness.

We all have our own personal sound spaces – and these combine to create nostalgic sonic spheres – personal and social (the latter being a sort of sound culture). So just listen. Close your eyes. What do you remember as you hear your surroundings? The sound of a flag pole can trigger powerful memories to many individuals. Can you hear the clanging on the pole? What sounds come to your mind – as you listen in your own personal sonic space? What is your daily soundscape? What are the soundscapes in your life?


Modernity in Walden


3. Modernity” Sounds of Walden

Thoreau’s cabin was nestled among the woods less than one quarter mile away from the Fitchburg Railroad stop. The train crossed near the southern tip of the pond, and its morning arrival was often cloaked by its own billowing clouds of smoke and the woods that stood between society and Thoreau: “I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular” (Thoreau, 1854, “Sounds”).

Thoreau was influenced by the philosophical convergence of spiritually and materiality, which for him began with his Unitarian upbringing and prospered through time spent with mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau’s Walden was a spiritual journey through sound and silence and his means toward greater introspection (Lambdin, 1969; Sherman, 1950). The aural passage of Thoreau’s “train” travels between an inner and outer sanctuary called Walden, a proximity juxtaposed by the sounds of modernity and nature with a revelatory translation into a Divine language, which he exclaims with words of praise, fear, and wonder through his writings. The railroad (in all its word forms) is mentioned 55 times by Thoreau in Walden, and the majority of these references are found in the first three chapters. The train whistle glides through the acoustical realm on one occasion; another time it is a crude iron beast that dominates the soundscape.

Perhaps it is the change in atmospheric pressure that accentuates the whistle for Thoreau, for that is a common meteorological phenomenon. Or perhaps, it is Thoreau’s perspective that evolves and devolves as he contemplates meaning from his observations. So it is not surprising that sound has the potential to promote both assimilation and alienation to a listener in a moment. The tumultuous expansion of the railways around Europe and the U.S. set the stage for mass efficiencies in production. Thoreau foreshadowed the significance of this second industrial age that would begin around 1870.

For two years, Thoreau lived near Walden Pond, a 62-acre pond with partly wooded shores. The area stretches into nearby Concord, Massachusetts, and it is approximately 15 miles west of Boston. Thoreau sensed not the absolute liberation that Walden might ideally provide him. There was a power that emanated from the “iron horse” that raced swiftly across towns and countryside, with little consideration to sonic boundaries. It announced its presence as a fearless and untamed beast unaware of any allegiance to its creator:

When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion- or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve - with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light - as if this traveling demigod, this cloud- compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the bills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils… (Thoreau, 1856, “Sounds”)

It is interesting that Thoreau’s discussion of the Fitchburg train is heavily concentrated in the chapter, Sound. Nature and machine inevitably became part of one sonicscape.

Experience the Train - photo (above) and sounds from:

http://www.cyberbee.com/henryhikes/movies/fitchburg.mov

http://www.cyberbee.com/henryhikes/movies/trainsound.mov


Next in series - "Crossing the Boundaries of Noise...."

Online resources are available regarding the works of Thoreau, Fuller, and a host of new environmental artists and researchers through
"The Walden Woods Project" (founded
in 1990 by Don Henley).

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Women of the New Walden


Hildegard and The Other Women of the New Walden....

This Saturday (11.12.05), I will present "Women of the New Walden" at the Women in the Arts Conference (St. Louis University). Thanks to Kimberly and Jonathan Pluskota - owners of Alchemy Sound Recording Studio and The Mix Art Gallery (Carterville, IL - www.moonvibemedia.com) - for letting me use their "sweet" Protools suite (as well as wandering with me through the leaves, wind, and mire to record the sound piece that accompanies my paper). But the presentation isn't about me - it's about the emergence of women sound artists. So - I thought I'd pass along a few links of interest regarding some key women soundscape composers...

Hildegard Westerkamp

Ghosttowns in British Columbia (September 8-16, 2000)
http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/installations/edgewilderness/edgewild.html

Moments of Laughter
http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/programnotes/laughter.html

Andra McCartney
Soundwalking in Queen Elizabeth Park With Hildegard Westerkamp
http://www.emf.org/artists/mccartney00/walk.html

Also great material to inspire a walk in your hometown is a recent read by Janet Cardiff - The Walk Book (2005). She documents audio walks in London, New York and Paris.


Thoreau and Fuller


2. Contributions to Early Industrial Sound Culture


Industrialization, particularly 1890-1930, produced a new type of modern noise that challenged prior ways of interpreting life through one’s sonic environment.
The rhythmic and dissonant sounds of industrialization began to initiate reinterpretations on personal and urban spaces (Sterne, 2003). What is introduced as noise is soon assimilated into the soundscape of society (Attali, 1985; Keil & Feld, 1994; Thompson, 2002). Fuller was dismayed at the new immigrants’ inability or unwillingness to hear and see the beauty of nature, and rather they readily embraced and accepted the materialization of their new frontier as truth:


"It grieved me to hear these immigrants who were to be the fathers of a new race, all, from the old man down to the little girl, talking not of what they should do, but of what they should get in the new scene. It was to them a prospect, not of the unfolding nobler energies, but of more ease, and larger accumulation. It wearied me, too, to hear Trinity and Unity discussed in the poor, narrow doctrinal way on these free waters; but that will soon cease, there is not time for this clash of opinions in the West,
where the clash of material interests is so noisy [Italics added]. They will need the spirit of religion more than ever to guide them, but will find less time than before for its doctrine. This change was to me, who am tired of the war of words on these subjects, and believe it only sows the wind to reap the whirlwind, refreshing, but I argue nothing from it; there is nothing real in the freedom of thought at the West" (Fuller, 1844, p. 18).

Modernity and mysticism were captured through the observations of Transcendentalists like Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). Although it might be easily argued that Fuller became one of the movements’ most ardent critics. Through the writings of Fuller and Thoreau, we begin to hear nature’s voice and a sonic identity emerges through their narratives and aural descriptions. The Transcendental movement heightened a sense of environmental nostalgia, as urban and rural spaces collided with modernity. Conventional religion, namely Puritanism, failed to capture the divine organization and spiritual expression within one’s life that might be otherwise revealed, according to transcendentalists, through introspection. The coming industrial age is symbolically represented through Fuller’s steamships and Thoreau’s locomotives, as evidenced by their respective writings on nature of the upper Midwest and New England. Fuller’s 1844 edition of Summer on the Lakes logs her travels through Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, and some of the sounds that she heard:


"I used to hear the girls singing and laughing as they were cutting down boughs at Mackinaw; this part of their employment, though laborious, gives them the pleasure being a great deal in the free woods"
(Fuller, 1844, p. 245).


She saw her experiences as conversations, and much of her writings involve her aural interactions with people of various ethnicities and cultures. In contrast, Thoreau blended into his landscape; he noted his observations and interactions with his environment introspectively.
In 1845, he would begin to write about an 1839 canoe trip on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers three years after his brother died. He spent two years in Walden Woods. He had retreated into the solitude of the woods, although he could not completely escape the occasional visitor or sound of the locomotive that signaled the arrival of goods to the merchants gathered in the center of town. The sound of nature and roar of machine, intertwined into one composition, had inevitably become part of the same sonicscape. Fuller and Thoreau were compelled to appreciate and document their spirituality – and that of others - during these transitional years from naturalism toward industrialism. The Transcendental movement heightened a sense of environmental nostalgia, as culture and urban and rural spaces collided with modernity.

Stay tuned - Next in Series, "Modernity Sounds of Walden"

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Sonic Cafe - A Taste of Acoustic Ecology

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World Forum of Acoustic Ecology

American Society of Acoustic Ecology

Sonic Interventions

Hildegard Westerkamp

Steven Feld


R. Murray Schafer

The Walden Woods Project

EarthEar

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Personal Waldens of the Stereo Forest

 

This series
explores the nostalgic space between
technology and nature, as remembered and experienced by listeners.
The natural is unfortunately often interpreted as the mundane
until it is digitally recorded, reinterpreted and repackaged.
Sonic multiplicity of the natural becomes potentially
minimized and artificial. Yet, the stereo forest emerges
from this convergence of natural and modernization as a
space of negotiation and fluidity between urbanity and
rurality. Located in this undefined space, sound is
expressed within and as culture, and perhaps as echno-culture.

1. Introduction....

David Harvey has specifically addressed the disappearance of clearly defined urban and rural geographies – physical and social. The authors attempt to elaborate on his discussion, after establishing what we shall refer to as “sonic transdifference” - the nostalgic and cultural space between technology and nature, as remembered and experienced by listeners. The snapping of a twig, the hoot of an owl, and rustle of a leaf compete for a hearer’s attention against what we define as the “stereo forest.” With the advent of mobile and digital technologies, such as traditional transistor radios, miniCD players, and iPods, the natural has become inundated by sonic strife. Moreover, the natural is unfortunately often interpreted as the mundane until it is digitally recorded, reinterpreted and repackaged. Sonic multiplicity of the natural becomes potentially minimized and artificial. Yet, the stereo forest emerges from this convergence of natural and modernization as a space of negotiation and fluidity between urbanity and rurality. Located in this undefined space, sound is expressed within and as culture, and perhaps as echno-culture which metaphorically constructs a postmodern version of Walden. We perceive the phenomena as an evolutionary “stereo forest” - the technological reverberation of industrialization that is increasingly inseparable from a listener’s perception of the natural.

Consider the rhythmic and dissonant sounds of industrialization that initiated reinterpretations on personal and urban spaces (Sterne, 2003). More than a century later, individuals are still impacted by their sonic environment, which ultimately has been only minimally investigated for its influence on one’s world view. Mediated voices and sounds, for instance, contribute toward a personal sonic sphere. Sound – as words, music, ambience, physical vibrations, or subconscious impressions as it exists in rural and industrial spaces – is rarely studied for its cultural significance. Sonicity, as a theoretical concept, reclaims sound as a viable cultural influence within the socialization of the individual. One’s identification of preference toward music genre, orality, and urban or rural spaces, as well as one’s emotive and physical aurality, are examples of the breadth of sonicity.

Important to this discussion is the process of sonic negotiation among individuals and societies during momentary lapses of cultural stability, at which point identity space may be reinterpreted contextually and temporally. Noise, or sonic strife, among various constituencies might be theorized as the “space between cultures” (Breinig & Lösch, 2002, p. 26). As a cultural phenomena, sound offers definition and elaboration to self and societal identities. I draw upon the work of transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, sound historians Emily Thompson (2002) and Jonathan Sterne (2003) and postmodern anthropologist David Harvey (2001) to explore the intersections of sonic spheres of convergent and divergent influence within a larger framework of cultural re/formation.

In the days ahead.....I also share perspectives from an ongoing journaling project that asks participants (and the presenter) to locate and describe listening space (personal Waldens). As technology attempts to magnify sonic identity, it appears relevant to consider the presence or absence of a sound culture against traditional conceptions of culture, such as ethnicity, for example, and more recently definitions of gender. Perspectives of those traveling to and from rural and urban spaces help to illustrate indistinguishable sonic boundaries that began during the early industrialization of America.

Thoreau’s chapter on “Sound” in Walden sets the stage for our discussion; in coping with modernization (and now post-), listeners seek the nostalgic. The stereo forest is a metaphor like that of Thoreau’s train which dissects and unites Walden.


Next in series: "Thoreau and Fuller"