On 2010-05-01, at 6:47 AM, Niomi Anna Cherney wrote: > Apologies for the delayed response. I don't know if this is helpful or interesting, and I hope I'm not just regurgitating what others have said.>> The following is built on scribblings and jottings immediately following the experiment coupled with some additions.>>> The space (somehow empty and full simultaneously) seems to suck sound from my body as I move through it. I spend time feeling the walls, hearing my footfalls, testing velocities of motion that create different sounds of my footfalls on the floor. I am "oriented" in a manner so to speak, to the room's particular response to my body's movement through it - or more precisely, the way I perceive the sound of my footfalls or the time it takes me to run from wall to wall, which must happen at a specific velocity in order to make certain patterns of sound.
>> I put on the same get-up as Shiloh and Andrew - reversed channels but without a delay at first (although later I played with the wireless headphones plus a delay). I did't wear them for long, but I similarly got the hang of it fairly quickly and never experienced the kind of own-body-strangeness that Shiloh describes. I could figure where sound was "really" coming from in two steps. First, I could create a tactile sense of orientation in the space (bumping in a wall - gently! - certainly gave me information about my place in space and therefore what was behind and in front of me). Second, I could do the cognitive task of understanding that what I heard as "in front of me" was actually "behind me", but only because I had already understood and created notions of the space in front or behind (both auditory and dimensional). This raises a few interesting questions:
>> 1) Resonance and limit
> As Andrew and I both experienced when exploring the space with unaltered hearing-scapes, as you approach a wall with eyes closed, you can tell that you are getting close because the echo or resonance of your footfalls changes very slightly. It is hard to separate the auditory perception from the darkening of light on closed eyelids or the sensation against the skin of the body that happens when one draws near to a wall or limit space (obviously our attention could be re-focused by amplifying the sound of footfalls or diminishing the play of light on closed eyelids). But I'm not sure it's actually interesting to do this experiment without being able to see (sensory deprivation) because you lose some interesting things about limits, edges and orientations.
>> 2) Time and Distance
> If you stand on one side of the black box and look at the opposite wall, if you are accustomed to looking at distance and gaging time, you might instinctually know how long it should take you to cross the room at your regular pace (I do). Likewise, if you are accustomed to variations in movement tempo, you might kinesthetically know when you begin moving at a certain velocity, how long it will take you to reach the other side of the space.>> The important point here is to note that one must have an orientation (ie., a habituation to the equation of velocity of motion vs. time "taken" or "covered" from point A to point B) in order to have expectations of what approaching and edge or limit of space will sound and feel like (I am here only talking about motion inside a delimited space, but theoretically it applies to any kind of expectation about a place). The expectations of edged-ness, or the finitude have to do with feeling oriented. I am reminded of the experience of having a leg lowered slowly to the floor by someone else while lying on my back. There's that moment when the leg feels as if it is literally "going through the floor". This is because the floor acts as a limit or edge to the motion of our leg and something about not engaging or controlling the speed of its movement towards the floor disrupts our ability to proprioceptively orient our limb's relation the the surface. Likewise, if we were able to create a similar disruption through altering the relation of hearing-footfalls-approaching-wall to expectations-of-footfalls-approaching-wall we might hear ourselves "going through the wall". Clearly echoscapes must have to do with limitations or edgeness (as is even suggested by a soundwave's reverberation). Is an echoscape an expectation or is expectation created through the experience of an echoscape?
>> The wall and footfall sound altering scenario is too large a scale (especially because as we discovered, the curious sense of detached-ness from place doesn't happen without the noise canceling headphones). What I would suggest instead, is that we treat movement in the near space of the body (or as David suggested, set-ups that invite movement in the near-space of the body), where the body itself serves as the orientation limit space (like the wall when walking across the room or the floor with the leg). In other words, is it possible to actually disorient the sense of where the body begins and ends? Shiloh already experienced dimensions of this (possibly) with the altered feeling of depth in her body.>> I think the key is to set up this habitual movement environment (perhaps the kitchen as David suggests) so that it postures or suggests movement expectations (in terms of velocity, force and direction) to the body, that make sounds. I think the most interesting would be to come up with movement activities that require the body to move through small, mid and extended kinespheres so that we can have some room to play with delays, etc... relative to how long it takes a body to get from one sound-making position of activity to another.>> In response to the background sound/ emotional tone idea: if we're setting up some kind of environment that solicits movement, there is always going to be more than one possibility for moving the particular object or performing the task or whatever. So we might want to consider that there are many possibilities which will not be chosen, multiple sounds that won't be sounded. These too are suggestive and evocative and hang around in the air just like "background noise" or echo. They're kind of like elephants in the room. Which is why the experiment might be more fun (or interesting in terms of creating mood and and emotional timbre) if we selected tools, instruments or objects that have fairly ambiguous uses or could solicit different ways of moving-posturing the body, depending on the task/ expectation the participant chose.
>> Looking forward to our next meeting, whenever the magic of schedule alignment takes place.
>> I put on the same get-up as Shiloh and Andrew - reversed channels but without a delay at first (although later I played with the wireless headphones plus a delay). I did't wear them for long, but I similarly got the hang of it fairly quickly and never experienced the kind of own-body-strangeness that Shiloh describes. I could figure where sound was "really" coming from in two steps. First, I could create a tactile sense of orientation in the space (bumping in a wall - gently! - certainly gave me information about my place in space and therefore what was behind and in front of me). Second, I could do the cognitive task of understanding that what I heard as "in front of me" was actually "behind me", but only because I had already understood and created notions of the space in front or behind (both auditory and dimensional). This raises a few interesting questions:
>> 1) Resonance and limit
> As Andrew and I both experienced when exploring the space with unaltered hearing-scapes, as you approach a wall with eyes closed, you can tell that you are getting close because the echo or resonance of your footfalls changes very slightly. It is hard to separate the auditory perception from the darkening of light on closed eyelids or the sensation against the skin of the body that happens when one draws near to a wall or limit space (obviously our attention could be re-focused by amplifying the sound of footfalls or diminishing the play of light on closed eyelids). But I'm not sure it's actually interesting to do this experiment without being able to see (sensory deprivation) because you lose some interesting things about limits, edges and orientations.
>> 2) Time and Distance
> If you stand on one side of the black box and look at the opposite wall, if you are accustomed to looking at distance and gaging time, you might instinctually know how long it should take you to cross the room at your regular pace (I do). Likewise, if you are accustomed to variations in movement tempo, you might kinesthetically know when you begin moving at a certain velocity, how long it will take you to reach the other side of the space.>> The important point here is to note that one must have an orientation (ie., a habituation to the equation of velocity of motion vs. time "taken" or "covered" from point A to point B) in order to have expectations of what approaching and edge or limit of space will sound and feel like (I am here only talking about motion inside a delimited space, but theoretically it applies to any kind of expectation about a place). The expectations of edged-ness, or the finitude have to do with feeling oriented. I am reminded of the experience of having a leg lowered slowly to the floor by someone else while lying on my back. There's that moment when the leg feels as if it is literally "going through the floor". This is because the floor acts as a limit or edge to the motion of our leg and something about not engaging or controlling the speed of its movement towards the floor disrupts our ability to proprioceptively orient our limb's relation the the surface. Likewise, if we were able to create a similar disruption through altering the relation of hearing-footfalls-approaching-wall to expectations-of-footfalls-approaching-wall we might hear ourselves "going through the wall". Clearly echoscapes must have to do with limitations or edgeness (as is even suggested by a soundwave's reverberation). Is an echoscape an expectation or is expectation created through the experience of an echoscape?
>> The wall and footfall sound altering scenario is too large a scale (especially because as we discovered, the curious sense of detached-ness from place doesn't happen without the noise canceling headphones). What I would suggest instead, is that we treat movement in the near space of the body (or as David suggested, set-ups that invite movement in the near-space of the body), where the body itself serves as the orientation limit space (like the wall when walking across the room or the floor with the leg). In other words, is it possible to actually disorient the sense of where the body begins and ends? Shiloh already experienced dimensions of this (possibly) with the altered feeling of depth in her body.>> I think the key is to set up this habitual movement environment (perhaps the kitchen as David suggests) so that it postures or suggests movement expectations (in terms of velocity, force and direction) to the body, that make sounds. I think the most interesting would be to come up with movement activities that require the body to move through small, mid and extended kinespheres so that we can have some room to play with delays, etc... relative to how long it takes a body to get from one sound-making position of activity to another.>> In response to the background sound/ emotional tone idea: if we're setting up some kind of environment that solicits movement, there is always going to be more than one possibility for moving the particular object or performing the task or whatever. So we might want to consider that there are many possibilities which will not be chosen, multiple sounds that won't be sounded. These too are suggestive and evocative and hang around in the air just like "background noise" or echo. They're kind of like elephants in the room. Which is why the experiment might be more fun (or interesting in terms of creating mood and and emotional timbre) if we selected tools, instruments or objects that have fairly ambiguous uses or could solicit different ways of moving-posturing the body, depending on the task/ expectation the participant chose.
>> Looking forward to our next meeting, whenever the magic of schedule alignment takes place.