Sound Moments

Sound Technology, WFAE 2009, and Mexico City

2010-04-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

My partner and I arrived in Mexico City on March 20^th from Montreal, Canada. Three days early for the conference, we went straight from the airport to Zocalo station, the downtown core of Mexico City, where we would stay for the duration of our trip. From the perspective of a Canadian, the general bustle of Mexico City is more than what we’re used to up North. But aside from the general increase in urban noise that one would expect from a city with the population of our entire country, one feature of the soundscape stood out above all the rest: the proliferation of amplified sound in public spaces, cranked to the point of distortion at decibel levels that regularly prompted me to cover my ears. I’m a city guy and enjoy urban living, so I’m not one to harp on urban noise pollution too readily. But the attitude towards public address in this particular city gave me some food for thought about the nature of cities much larger than any of the ones I have lived in.

Zocalo Square itself is home to a large variety of vendors and performers. While the sound of acoustic drumming from a circle of Aztec Dancers nicely complemented the activities of the square, the over-amplified musical cues from Friday night’s acrobatic comedy troupe were less enjoyable.

You might think that Sunday morning would be quieter that a Friday night. Yet as we strolled through the square on our way to the metro we were greeted by a set of giant crane-mounted speakers blaring sustained test patterns for several minutes at a time.

The square is home to regular organized gatherings, and this speaker array was part of a demonstration by La Revolucion Blanca. Without knowing anything about their cause, it would seem that part of their revolutionary strategy is to blast innocent passers-by with white noise. Kidding aside, this level of sound projection (whether test patterns or the latest in Mexican pop) was found similarly in all the squares and parks we visited, a myriad of stalls blaring their own music forced from sound systems strained to the point of absolute breaking.

The metro provided a similar sound environment with its dozens of vendors wandering through with goods of various kinds. The most prevalent of these were people selling CDs and DVDs, advertising the content of their product by blasting it through speaker systems strapped to their bodies in specialized backpacks and harnesses.

The effect of the music played by these vendors was rather startling: the entire metro car would fill with music so completely that at times it seemed to replace the soundscape entirely rather than simply adding to it. This would often make it very difficult to tell where the sound was emanating from. The first time I heard it I thought it was the official PA system of the transit authority, and was surprised to discover this volume of sound coming from a single point source within the car - a schizophonic experience par excellence.

When we arrived at our Sunday morning destination, the Museum of Anthropology, we were greeted by another brand of hawker, this time using megaphone technology to scream information about museum tours and the like. And as we later discovered, the use of megaphones isn’t restricted to the big city. The day after the conference, while riding a chartered bus through a series of small towns on our way to Malinalco, we encountered a “public address mobile,” a truck with roof-mounted megaphones that snakes its way slowly through these rural areas making announcements of various kinds.

I’m not an anthropologist or a sociologist and I don’t know the history of public address in Mexico. But from the perspective of acoustic ecology, it would be interesting to study the rise of both decibel levels and equipment distortion in the use of sound systems in public spaces around the country. It would also be interesting to study the effects of this rise on the inhabitants of these soundscpaes. I suspect that the levels of both amplitude and distortion that we encountered have reached their current point through the principal of the frog in the saucepan: heat the water up gradually and the frog will acclimatize accordingly, not realizing the danger until it’s already boiling to death. Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of cultural difference, with those native to the area experiencing no particularly ill effects from these public address practices.

With three days of such experiences under our belts we set off for the first day of the conference while pondering some of these issues. Here we discovered that the conference venue itself – Fonoteca Nacional – provided a variety of sound experiences that extended quite naturally from the questions I had about Mexico’s amplified soundscapes. Initially beset with a few technical problems, it was not uncommon to hear the PA system in the main lecture room (Hall Murray Schafer) blast out feedback noise at random points before, during and after the lectures. My intention here is in no way to denigrate the conference organizers or technical staff, all of whom did an amazing job and put together one of the best conferences I’ve yet attended. The truth of the matter is that these kinds of technical difficulties are ubiquitous at such events, a function of the technology itself rather than the competency of its operators. This is one reason why R. Murray Schafer himself has made a career out of avoiding the use of such technology wherever possible (as he demonstrated by refusing the microphone during the discussion session following the opening soundwalk with Hildegard Westerkamp). So it was with no small measure of irony that the question period after Schafer’s own keynote address on Wednesday morning ended with a particularly nasty burst of electronic buzzing. He chose to take that as a sign that the session had officially come to an end. It was both humorous and telling.

Another unavoidable technological problem that one encounters at international conferences is the sound leakage from the headsets delivering simultaneous translation of the conference proceedings. When there are enough of these receiver units in the room, a surface of unintelligible mid-range babble coats the soundscape in such a way that it becomes hard to focus on the signal of the main speaker. This, along with the sound of the technical crew sorting out various problems from the back of the room, made it difficult to follow Derrick de Kerckhove’s opening keynote on Monday morning. However, I stuck out the less than perfect conditions to hear him regale us with tales of going up the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan with only a few words of Spanish under his belt, and coming back down a fluent speaker...if only for a week or so. I tried this myself on Tuesday afternoon, but didn't have the same results...

Interestingly, however, the most difficult environmental quality of Hall Murray Schafer on the first day of the conference didn’t have anything to do with sound. The intense frontal lighting that provided fill for the video recording was almost intolerable. The conference organizers apologized for the discomfort they created and assured us that it would only be for the first day. Though I had my sunglasses with me, I was glad that I didn’t have to use them the rest of the week.

For the rest of the first day, I opted to take in the proceedings from the lovely overflow room where an audiovisual feed from Hall Murray Schafer was presented through a plasma screen and smaller PA system. The seats were less comfortable, but overall I found the experience to be more enjoyable. The light attendance made for a nice break from the capacity crowds in the big room, and this made for less disturbance from the headsets. The down side was the room’s disconnection from the live speakers in the main hall, providing its own set of drawbacks. The first panel I listened to here started with Andrea Polli’s talk on “Antarctica: soundscape, geosonification and the social geography of global climate change.” Her presentation included excerpts of audio works containing interviews in which her own voice was present alongside those of her interview subjects, and she would sometimes speak live while playing soundscape recordings in the background. Because the screen presented a direct feed of her PowerPoint presentation with no visualization of the panelists on the stage, Polli’s strategy made for an interestingly disorienting experience. While clearly schizophonic, here I actually found the experience intriguing instead of alienating. From this room Polli’s talk was turned into a kind of sound composition in its own right instead of a lecture with supporting audio materials. Interesting content, combined with the less oppressive audiovisual environment of the overflow room, allowed me to enjoy this panel very much. This was an important reminder that the environmental setting for conference presentations is often as important as the content of the presentations themselves, an ecological message if ever there was one.

A less enjoyable technological reality in the overflow room was that clean reception on the wireless translation units was sometimes difficult to establish, and I would occasionally find myself wandering the courtyard just outside trying to get a better feed.

On a more positive technological note, the crowning achievement of the conference was certainly the lovely sound garden of the Fonoteca. The garden itself provides an oasis of gentleness just one block from two major traffic thoroughfares. With its high walls and ample tree coverage, the garden provides a measure of quietude as well as a zone of temperate respite from the blazing afternoon sun.

Furthermore, the entire compound of the Fonoteca is wired for sound with speakers positioned strategically throughout the garden areas.

Each evening the conference featured concert presentations in the garden, and for these the main grass area was equipped with a multi-channel array. The opening concert summed up the facilities perfectly. As we sat listening to Antonio Russek’s 8-channel electroacoustic piece Music of the desert, created from sound recordings made in the desert of Chihuahua, the highly immersive piece melded with the ambient soundscape of the outdoor venue to wonderful effect. The technology for the presentation of the piece was impressive and the concert was carried off without any obvious hitches. Here was an example of how electroacoustic transmission worked in tasteful co-operation with its surrounding environment, a welcome contrast from the less ecologically balanced onslaught found on the streets of Mexico City. All in all the Fonoteca proved to be a jewel of sonic exploration in a sea of aural competition driven by the commerce of the streets. A better environment for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology I could scarcely imagine.

Finally, my most personal engagement with work presented at the conference came from Eric Powell’s interactive installation Sound.garden.scape: Gastown. In the René Villaneuva gallery space upstairs at the Fonoteca, the installation consisted of a series of headphone listening stations equipped with interactive objects that trigger various different sonic perspectives on the historic Gastown neighbourhood in my hometown of Vancouver, BC, Canada. The use of headphones well suited the compartmentalized nature of the sound environments, each listening station providing an all-encompassing immersion into a small portion of the Gastown soundscape. For me, the presentation of this piece here in Mexico City highlighted the distance between my place of birth and where I stood now, calling attention to the road I’ve traveled in between. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered representations of Vancouver whilst traveling abroad, and it is always an interesting experience: finding one’s home anew as a result of leaving it far behind. Here the schizophonic properties of sound reproduction technology work in a positive way, re-engaging me with an environment I have become disconnected from. It reminded me of a crucial turning point in my graduate studies in Montreal: I had never heard of acoustic ecology until I discovered the original World Soundscape Project recordings of Vancouver – AFTER I had left home and moved to Montreal at the age of 26. Those original recordings made in 1973 (the year of my birth), along with the updates made in 1996 (shortly before my departure), encapsulated my quarter-century out West. Hearing them from a perspective outside of the soundscape they represented made me think about the life I had in Vancouver in a whole new way. It was this experience, in part, that prompted me to dive into the world of acoustic ecology as part of my graduate research, and I’ve never looked back.

Whatever problems arise with the increasing use of sound technologies, and however schizophonic an experience they might create, the reality is that I would never have begun to engage in soundscape research if it weren’t for my geographical separation from the place of my birth, and my reconnection to it through technologies of sound representation. And on this trip I was able to bring that experience full circle: on the last session of the last day of the conference I presented my soundscape composition Winlaw Watersheds, recorded in BC and then transplanted here to Mexcio City. So my reconnection to BC through the WSP recordings I heard abroad has allowed for a new level of engagement on my part, and I now share my own recordings of BC with the world beyond.

* Note: These reflections were first published in the WFAE Newsletter.

The Delian Mode

2010-03-06T08:24:00.001-08:00

Concordia alumnus Kara Blake’s expertly crafted The Delian Mode examines the life and work of Delia Derbyshire, most well known as the electronic music pioneer responsible for realizing that most iconic of all TV theme songs: Dr. Who. This is one of those rare documentaries that is at once informational, aesthetically satisfying, and emotionally stirring – all in the space of 25 minutes! As a portrait of an eccentric genius, the film delves into the heart and mind of Derbyshire, a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1960s.

Consisting mostly of interviews with a range of people who either knew Derbyshire or who recognize the importance of her work, the film also boasts excerpts from a 1990s telephone interview with Derbyshire herself along with some choice archival footage of her in situ.

One of the things I like best about the film is that throughout its length Blake maintains an aesthetic that is lovingly committed to the visual details of the sound technologies that Derbyshire was so passionate about. A recurring motif suggests the similarity between phone lines and magnetic tape as we listen to Derbyshire’s voice on the telephone talking about her tape music process. Blake also skillfully blends archival material with newly shot inserts that help illustrate key points about Derbyshire’s work discussed by the various interviewees.

Included in this archival footage is a first-rate introduction to the tape-music process in the days before synthesizers and samplers. Derbyshire demonstrates how sounds are recorded on tape which can then be cut, looped, and speed adjusted to create new material. And since multi-tracking had yet to be invented, she illustrates how manipulated bits of tape can be layered by synchronizing a bank of individual tape players (praying that they remain in synch for the duration of the piece).

In the telephone interviews, conducted by Peter Kember of Sonic Boom, Derbyshire reflects upon her time at the BBC which, in retrospect, made up her golden years before departing in the 1970s to become something of a recluse. The film breaks up these interview segments with musical interludes in which we trace the evolution of her work while at the BBC, eventually leading to a recent collaboration with Kember that marked her return to musical productivity just prior to her untimely death early in the 21st century.

Amoung my favourite little details in the film is when Derbyshire describes her experience of the air raid sirens in London during the Blitz as “electronic music,” pure abstract sound whose source is unattainable to a child.

The film also raises an important issue in the world of electronic music that continues to be debated today: that of authorship associated with electronic instrumentation. Ron Grainer composed the Dr. Who theme on paper, but every sound you hear in the piece was created from scratch by Derbyshire. Grainer’s input consisted of notes on paper, but the profound effect of the piece is largely to do with Derbyshire’s inventiveness in the studio. Lord knows the piece would not have had the same effect if played through conventional symphonic instrumentation. In fact, one can hardly even imagine it that way. And Grainer himself recognized the value of Derbyshire’s contribution to the success of the piece, and was so pleased with the result he wanted Derbyshire to share credit as composer. However, the BBC rules stipulated that employees of their sound department could not receive credit any higher than “assistant”. Apparently the rules have since been changed, but too late for Derbyshire who could have made a substantial amount of money from her pioneering work.

The film doesn’t dwell too long on what the emotional fall-out that this system of accreditation might have had on Derbyshire, but one can’t help but get the sense that her clear joy at work in the studio was stifled by the realities of the BBC’s bureaucracy, something she seemed unable to get over once she left the broadcaster. But the film ends on a high note. Derbyshire is in good spirits during her phone interviews, and along with news of her collaboration with Kember the film also points to the myriad ways in which Derbyshire’s work envisioned the technological realities that music producers are working with today. The last musical interlude presents a track that might be the earliest example of electronic dance music, and leaves us with a clear impression of Derbyshire’s pioneering spirit as it lives on today.

The film is packaged in a very refined presentation that I would describe as “BBC ready,” and I have no doubt this film will be picked up for television distribution in short order. And I also suspect that it will become canonical viewing in the classrooms of electroacoustic and electronic music programs around the world. This is easily the most well rounded documentary in the festival this year. My hat is off to Blake and her team.

Note: This review was originally published in Offscreen (Vol. 13, No. 12) as part of my report on the Festival Nouveau Cinema Nouveau Media 2009.

Blue Harvest and the Acoustics of the Soul

2008-01-28T10:11:00.000-08:00

In his entry to the special sound issue of Offscreen that I recently edited, Randy Thom argues that the term "diegetic" is effectively irrelevant to considerations of the ways that sound functions in relation to images on screen. His main point is that regardless of whether or not a piece of music accompanying a scene might be heard by a character, it can be said to reflect the emotional content of the scene, perhaps even suggesting the resonance of a character's soul. This is a basic commentary on the function of much "non-diegetic" music in the cinema: it is an integral part of the scene even if not emanating from a tangible source within the story world. Though I still find the categories of diegetic and non-diegetic sound to be useful, I am more often interested in examples that blur these categories. Ultimately Thom's point is that ALL examples blur these boundaries in one way or another, but I'm still ever listening for great moments in which the lines disappear. And thanks to Family Guy's recent Blue Harvest parody of the original 1977 Star Wars film, we now have a doozy that, to the best of my knowledge, illustrates Thom's notion of the "acoustics of the soul" as good as can be imagined.

When fleeing the Death Star, Han and Luke have to shoot down a few pursuing Tie Fighters. Just as the battle gets going, a great moment in John Williams' now legendary score kicks in. In the original film, this is a moment that illustrates the use of non-diegetic score to reflect the urgency of the situation as experienced by the characters on screen. Only this time, Han starts singing along immediately, as though the score is an externalization of the music playing away in his head that provides him with the adrenaline necessary to carry out the task at hand:

It's a great moment, and opens doors for ways of thinking about the style of film scoring that Williams is so renowned for. Film history has shown that parody and satire provide fertile ground for exposing the cinematic apparatus; there are many fine examples of plays and puns on the artificiality of the distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic sound from Warner Brothers cartoons through Mel Brooks and on into almost two decades of The Simpsons. Indeed, Blue Harvest itself re-hashes some more traditional sound gags - as when Luke is staring out at the Tattoine sunset, pining for a life of adventure to a mournful Williams orchestration, and then turns to the camera and introduces the musicians revealed to be just offscreen:

This gag suggests that music we assume is non-diegetic is actually stemming from a source within the world of the story and can be heard by the characters that live in it. The gag depends on the element of surprise, for when the music is first heard it contains no spatial markers that would suggest it is being played in the environment we see on the screen. So we are tricked into thinking the music is non-diegetic in order to get us to laugh when the diegetic reveal is made.

A related gag occurs later in the film when Han, Luke and Chewie take an elevator ride on the Death Star to the strains of the Imperial Theme rendered as Musak:

Here the gag doesn't lie in the revelation of environmental source for music thought to come from outside the diegesis. Rather, we understand from the beginning that the music is playing in the elevator, made clear by its rendering as Muzak, combined with an appropriate frequency modulation to suggest lo-fi reproduction in the elevator's sound system (what Michel Chion calls an "on-the-air" quality), along with a touch of what Altman calls "spatial signature" appropriate for the reverberant quality of the Death Star's metal construction. If we laugh it is likely because we recognize the music as part of Williams' original non-diegetic score, now turned into a cheesy Casio offering to fill dead space. When compared with the previous example, this is a different kind of movement from the outside of the diegesis to the inside. Yet both of these gags depend upon crossing the line separating the inside and the outside of the diegesis for their functioning.

The Tie Fighter attack example functions differently. The two enunciations of the music, one from Han, one from the score, mirror each other without one disappearing one into the other. On the one hand, Han's singing could imply that he can hear the Williams score and is familiar enough with it to sing along, as though it were a favourite track on the Millenium Falcon's sound system that he uses to set the mood for such events. However, we don't see an orchestra revealed, nor does the music bear an on-the-air quality or include marks of spatial signature that would suggest it is coming from within Han's environment. Rather, the music's treatment maintains its non-diegetic position, while Han's singing creates a bridge to the diegetic world. It is crucial that he starts singing at the exact moment that the familiar Williams theme begins: if he were to start singing slightly after the entrance of the theme, it might suggest that he's picking up on it somehow and begins to sing along - as when someone hears a familiar song on the radio. On the other hand, if Han started singing slightly before the theme's entrance, it might suggest a more conventional approach to scoring whereby diegetic sound is used as a base from which a full-blown score can bloom. Here, though, the theme and the singing begin together, suggesting a connection between the two that could not be rendered any other way. It is as though this is the music of Han's soul at that moment. His singing brings forth his interior consciousness to the external world of the diegesis; and the score brings that consciousness through to the world outside the diegesis. And so a thread is created between these three levels of potential cinematic expression, all of which are presented as one and the same plane of existence as Han challenges the pursuing agents of the Empire in a battle to the death.

For these reasons I find the Tie Fighter attack gag to be a particularly unusual approach to blurring the line between the inside and outside of the diegesis, as it manages to keep both planes in tact while suggesting their mutual dependence. As such I think this scene is well-suited to considering Randy Thom's suggestion that the non-diegetic realm so often reflects an interior acoustics that can't help but resonate through the diegetic world in which the characters live, thereby rendering the distinction between these planes rather redundant. Yet the humour here depends upon our knowledge of the distinction between source and score. So if the idea of the acoustics of the soul renders this distinction moot, then this type of humour would be impossible.