Data-soundscapes: Action-based sound and cognitive capitalism (Lecture)
Lecture presented at Research Networking Day, CTM Festival 2019, Berlin.
Abstract: Murray Schafer, one of the earliest researchers to bring awareness to environmental sounds, claims that the most salient sound in the medieval European city was the church bell. The parish is an acoustic space, circumscribed by the range of the church bell (Outside the parish, we find wilderness). Using his method of soundscapes, I examined the devotional object of our era, the smartphone, as an effective self-monitoring and surveillance artifact. The smartphone notification sound fulfills a similar social function as a church bell. Its sound does not try to affect us in the same way the bell did, with its majestic metallic loudness emerging out of the gigantic presence of the church that rose as an urban nucleus and social center of the city. Instead—in a time where cities are disconnected from their production reality—it is a short, discreet, user-friendly smartphone-alarm that resonates in our highly-networked existence. I want to question how action-based sound (following embodied cognition theories) and digital interfaces are changing the way we hear by operating on the peripheries of our perception, and highlight the importance of awareness in our daily life hearing practices.
Date
January 26, 2019
