schizophonia

The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer coined the term "schizophonia" to describe a peculiar aspect of the 20th century (and after) experience of sound. In the real world sound is encountered in relation to the specific physical mechanisms that produce it. Modern electro-acoustic techniques produce sound in a different way - by separating it from its original sources and rendering it capable of coming from both everywhere and nowhere. We can uncouple the experience of sound from the direct experience of the bodies that produce it.

In a way, this is what all media do - allow us to gain knowledge or perception independent of the particular experience with respect to which information or perceptible phenomena are produced.

Schizophonia is, in the world of electro-acoustics, a purely physical phenomenon. Barry Truax notes, however, that this is a "nervous" word - that it resonates in some way with internal states as well as external conditions. I wonder if there are any particular social or psychological expressions of schizophonia? Or whether the experience of sound in the digital age points us away from the physical world of sounds towards the technically-mediated manipulation of noises.....

shuffle

In the 1950s, music radio operated on the basis of the '45 rpm single as the essential medium of musical recording. By extension, the basic unit of both musical production (what identified popular musical artists) and consumption (what defined the tastes of the listener) was the SONG.

In the 1960s, the wider availability of home stereos and the new platform of the 33 1/3 long playing record changed the way in which music was produced and consumed and made the basic unit of musical production and consumption the RECORD. As far as musical expression is concerned, the record matured with the Beatles, the Kinks and the Beach Boys, who really honed the idea of what a record was (a set of relations between songs as much as a bunch of individuated songs).

The apotheosis of the record in the 1970s, and the child of "concept" or "studio" albums like Pet Sounds, Sgt Peppers or The Village Green Preservation Society, was the aesthetic nightmare of progressive rock. Given the pedantic, pseudo-mystical and sophomoric-philosophical nature of prog, it is perhaps a good thing that contemporary transformations in the media of recorded music are pulling us away from the record and back towards the song.

In contemporary music, the MP3 reduces the unit of musical consumption to the song, and this transforms the nature of the music we listen to, as well as the relations of production that underlie it. No longer do musicians need to think very much about how songs fit together, but only how little to repeat the hook in order to incite repetitive listening. And once again the producer is repositioned from a technician assisting the musicians art to being the real artist and craftsperson moving the strings behind the faces that we mistakenly identify with the creative demiurge.

At the level of listening, nothing speaks to the transformed nature of music listening than the "shuffle songs" feature which is not only a key technical feature provided with MP3 players of all kinds, but the standard mode of listening as an individuated cultural phenomenon. We are less interested in listening to "artists" (as people who labour to create integrated works of art) than in listening to "songs" and responding to the jolt that comes with expectation of what the next track the computer will deliver to us will be. In this, more than anything, perhaps, we have allowed active listening to devolve into passivity in the face of technical manipulation. Or maybe I'm just in a bad mood this evening thinking about the dishes....

new media old pope

I can't help but think this is the best photo ever - not because I'm a sucker for celebrity, but because I'm a sucker for those people in the background who are having the time of their lives and (like me) documenting it.

In the ancient world, there were some statues of gods and goddesses that were perpetually hidden from view, or revealed only at particular times. In our world, everything is open to scrutiny through one screen or another. And then when we are confronted with a notable or extraordinary encounter with reality (like being 10 feet away from the pope) what happens - we look at him in miniature through our little screens because the moment of seeing him is defined by our ability to see him in virtual form later.....weird!

In the 19th century, upper middle class ladies kept journals. In the early 21st century everyone is a documentarian - or at least is constantly prepared to be one. Is there some sense in which this kind of moment - a chance encounter between a personal memory (a visit to the Vatican) and historical memory (the present leader of the Catholic Church) - is illustrative of the way that the means of making history - great and small - have never been so diverse or available. Does history, then, become populist? Or does it, as Kierkegaard might argue, become mundane.

By the way, what this photo doesn't capture is my mum standing to the right screaming blasphemies at the top of her lungs....we're never going to be invited back.

the language of new media

Is there a sense in which the language we use to describe our relationship with information and to IT tells us a lot about our attitudes towards both?

Surfing - skimming along across a surface towards some unknown destination
Browsing - picking up and putting down, considering briefly and moving on
Hypertext - a form of text that is extremely agitated and unsettled - perhaps even psychologically disturbed?
Web Portal - a doorway that moves us from one space into another
Googling - What?

All of these suggest that perhaps our ideal imagined relationship with and experience of information is one of constant flux, movement, change, displacement. What does this tell us about the experiential dimensions of networked ICTs that might differentiate them from the ways that earlier media structured our relationships with knowledge and information?

welcome to cmns 253

Hello and welcome to cmns 253 - Society and new media.

I hope you've all managed to get your blogs up and running - if you're here, most likely you have. In any case, I'm going to be keeping a blog along with you this semester, and using it for much the same purposes. I'll also be posting useful links - some are there already - to good online sources for various themes and issues in this course. Feel free to use these as a research base for your assignments.

I should note that, as you may have gathered from the first class, this course is a lot of work - but it's not so bad if you keep on top of it. And a lot of it is not the usual kind of work you'd be doing in other academic courses, so at the very least it may be a change from the usual. I do hope you enjoy it.

It's also a particularly exciting semester for me, since I am expecting the arrival of my first child towards the end of November...a crazy time. We're not sure if it's boy or girl, but we have several names to cover both ends, just in case. You can decide for yourself which you like best

Boys names
1. Ephraim Noah
2. Silas Avery Isaac
3. Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus

Girls names
1. Clytemnestra
2. Frances Augustine
3. Noelle Olivia

I'll tally the votes, though the winning name will not necessarily end up on the birth certificate.....

In any case, I'm looking forward to engaging with your blogs over the course of the semester - in the meantime, good luck.