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.....