Don Ihde's "Listening and Voice"

(above: Portrait of "Kevin")

**Warning: Very long post.

I read the book “Listening and Voice,” by Don Ihde. Good book. Interesting. Cuts right into the phenomenon of sound, listening, and voice. A book about listening phenomenologically, and about phenomenological voice. The listening part was germane to my project; very applicable. The voice part more theoretical and less practical in relation to the elements I will be working with. I will quote various passages I found useful. And after each quote, I will comment on how I saw it relate to my photographic/sound-art project “Our House.”

“… But the latent reduction TO vision became complicated within the history of thought by a second reduction, a reduction OF vision.”

(Comment: Author points out the historical emphasis on our vision sense, relegating the aural sense to a secondary or neglected status. But, later, author notes a renewed focusing on the this neglected dimension-)

“This deliberate change of emphasis from the visual to the auditory dimension at first symbolizes a hope to find material for a recovery of the richness of primary experience which is now forgotten or covered over in the too tightly interpreted visualist traditions.”

(Comment: Particularly relevant to visual arts. Visual=Visualist=overlooking the richness of the auditory dimension.)

“… there is an old and deeply held tradition that vision “objectifies,” and, contrarily but not so widely noted, there is also a tradition which holds that sound “personifies.”

(Comment: Seems true when applied to my project “Our House.” The individual portraits, as much as I try to present it in a human scales, the portraits nonetheless are objects of portraiture. It is the stories of the subjects, when heard, gives us the human side of the various images. The stories told of them and their lives gives the work the “human feeling.” Conversely, it puts the viewer/listener into this wider “human landscape.”)

“… In this sense a “pure” auditory experience in phenomenology is impossible, but, as a focal dimension of global experience, a concern with listening is possible. Auditory experience can be thematized relatively, in relation to its contextual appearance within global experience. But just as no “pure” auditory experience can be found, neither could a “pure” auditory “world” be constructed. Were it so constructed it would remain an abstract world.”

(Comment: This, in a way, confirms my feeling that my work is not so much a combination of photography and sound sculpture, but that it is one whole piece of multi-media work. The question has been asked as to my reason to add the auditory element to my photography, and I have responded with a myriad of good reasons, but ultimately, the visual and aural elements was meant to be one work from the beginning—even though I had not known it at first. Perhaps that is why I had conducted the interviews even before I had begun the photographic collection of the imagery. Sound/voice does not exist in itself in a human landscape, nor does the visual/imagery. More of this below:)

“The mute object stands “beyond” the horizon of sound. Silence is the horizon of sound, yet the mute object is silently present. Silence seems revealed at first through a visual category. But with the fly and the introduction of motion there is the presentation of a buzzing, and Zeno’s arrow whizzes in spite of the paradox. Of both animate and inanimate beings, motion and sound, when paired, belong together. “Visualistically” sound “overlaps” with moving beings… With a sound a certain liveliness also makes its richer appearance. I walk into the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris for the first time. Its emptiness and high arching dark interior are awesome, but it bespeaks a certain monumentality. It is a ghostly reminder of a civilization long past, its muted walls echoing only the shuffle of countless tourist feet. Later I return, and a high mass is being sung: suddenly the mute walls echo and reecho and the singing fills the cathedral. Its soul has momentarily returned, and the mute testimony of the past has once again returned to live it the moment of the ritual. Here the paired “regions” of sight and sound “synthesize” in dramatic richness.

(Comment: … The aural adding richness to the visual.)

“I cannot see the wind, the invisible is the horizon of sight. An inquiry into the auditory is also an inquiry into the invisible. Listening makes the invisible present in a way similar to the presence of the mute in vision.”

(Comment: Paraphrasing… “I cannot see their lives, the invisible is the horizon of what I see in their eyes. An inquiry into their stories is also an inquiry into their interior landscape. Listening to the sound of their voices is similar to being present in “the lanscape.”)

“It is with a third spatial signification that this “richness” begins to appear, for stronger than shapes and more distinct than surfaces, I hear interiors. Moreover, it is with the hearing of interiors that the possibilities of listening begin to open the way to those aspects which lie at the horizon of all visualist thinking, because with the hearing of interiors the auditory capacity of making present the invisible begins to stand out dramatically. To vision in its ordinary contexts and particularly within the confines of the vicinity of mute and opaque objects, things present themselves with their interiors hidden. To see the interior I may have to break up the thing, do violence to it. Yet even these ordinary things often reveal something of their interior being through sound.”

(Comment: The author was referring mostly to geometric/inanimate objects. But we can succinctly extrapolate this to human subject. That the voice and stories told allow us to glimpse at one’s interior condition the way no visual image can allow.)

“The city dweller hears the clink of the coin on the subway platform even as the train approaches, and the jungle dweller hears the whisper of the adder in spite of the chatter of the monkeys and parrots. I can select a focal phenomena such that other phenomena become background or fringe phenomena without their disappearing… Moreover, this attention is keyed into the personal-social structures of daily life in such a way that there are habitual and constant patterns of appearance to those things which normally remain fringe phenomena and those which may be focal. I go to the auditorium, and , without apparent effort, I hear the speaker while I barely notice the scuffling of feet, the coughing, the scraping noises. My tape recorder, not having the same intentionality as I, records all these auditory stimuli without distinction, and so when I return to it to hear the speech re-presented I find I cannot even hear the words due to the presence of what for me had been fringe phenomena. The tape recorder’s “sense data” intentionality has changed the phenomena.”

(Comment: Our mind is amazing efficient, it focuses on what is necessary and the rest—the fringe phenomena—is filtered out without us being even conscious of it. This filtering takes a lot of the richness out of our auditory environment. One way to restore the richness is to be aware and listen. The other way is to produce sound in such a way that is so out-of-the-ordinary that the mind has no choice but to pay attention. This is the mode I have to follow as I sculpture the sound for my show. It is to short-circuit the habitual mind, and to restore listening in its original, full potential.)

“Here an enigma of the auditory field emerges from these two dimensions of field spatiality; for the global, encompassing surroundability of sound, which is most dramatic and fully present in overwhelming sounds and the often quite precise and definite directionality of sound presence which is noted in our daily “location” of sounds, are both constantly co-present. For the description to be accurate, both surroundability and directionality must be noted as co-present. This “double” dimensionality of auditory field characteristics is at once the source of much ambiguity and of a specific richness which subtly pervades the auditory dimension of existence… The contrast of the musical experience with everyday listening points to two such variations of focal attention. Quite ordinarily, sounds are taken directionally. The hammering from next door is heard as from next door. The sparrow’s song in the garden presents itself from the garden. But if I put myself in the “musical attitude” and listen to the sound as if it were music, I may suddenly find that its ordinary and strong sense of directionality, while not disappearing, recedes to such a degree that I can concentrate upon its surrounding presence.”

(Comment: In other words, our habitual listening automatically assigns surroundability and directionality to specific sounds we are used to hearing. If we can sculpt normal sounds in a way that is different from the norm, our intentions may be altered to allow a different kind of listening to happen. Hence one of the goals of the sound in my project will be to present the organic sounds of humanity in a new “artistic” way as to create a new listening intention and, hence, a new phenomenological listening.)

“Both these qualities of sound are used simultaneously in what is a most normal human activity, face-to-face speech. The other speaks to me in the “singing” of the human voice with its consonantal click-like sounds and its vowel tonalities. It is a singing which is both directional and encompassing, such that I may be (auditorily and attentionally) immersed in the other’s speech. Yet the other stands before me. Speech in the human voice is between the dramatic surroundability of music and the precise directionality of the sounds of the things in the environment.”

(… Taking it another step further, looking at the “words” that are spoken in speech:)

“Words do not draw attention to themselves but to the intended things in referring. This extends ordinarily even to the form of embodiment in which the language is found. Thus in speaking, what is ordinarily focal is “what I am talking about” rather than the singing of the speech as a textured auditory appearance. This is not to say that the singing of speech is absent; it is present but as background which does not ordinarily call attention to itself.”

(Comment: The above passages define the component characteristics of human speech. Having now found a handle on the respective components, I can consciously manipulate sound/speech ever so slightly as to alter the listener’s perceptual habit, to put the listener’s intention just that much off kilter. The objective being to create a new awareness of sound/speech experience. [Up until now, I had only been playing with sound/speech intuitively, not really know exactly what I was manipulating.])

“The purity of music in its ecstatic surrounding presence overwhelms my ordinary connection with things so that I do not even primarily hear the symphony as the sounds of the instruments… This ecstacy is also the occasion for an illusory phenomenon, the temptation toward the notion of a pure or disembodied sound. In the penetrating totality of he musical synthesis it is easy to forget the sound as the sound of the orchestra and the music floats through experience. Part of its enchantment is in obliteration of things… the experience of musical ecstasy and the way in which musical sound does from a gestalt.”

(Comment: This describes more clearly one of the original goals I had in mind. The goal of creating a sound sculpture with similar effect of white noise. Whereby the chronological sequence of storytelling need not be followed; whereby the voice is collaged very much like my photographic pieces are collaged. Whereby the final gestalt comes to more than the sum of the individual pieces put together.)

“It is in the ordinary babbling traffic which we have with others where the ambiguous richness of sound is both directional and encompassing that there is revealed a special kind of “shape.” This is what may be call an auditory “halo” or the auditory aura. The other, when speaking in sonorous speech, presents himself as “more” than something fixed, “more” than a outline-body, as a “presence” who is most strongly present when standing face to face. It is here the auditory aura is most heightened.

(Comment: In “Our House,” the life-sized portraits are photographed with eyes looking back at the viewer: This is the face-to-face auditory aura, the visual heightening the aural…)

“The experience of an auditory aura is “like” the experience of music in which intentionality though keenly aware, “lets be” the musical presence so that the sound rushes over and through one. But it is not like music in that the temptation to become disembodied, to allow oneself to float away beyond the instrumentation is absent. Rather, in the face-to-face speaking the other is there, embodied, while exceeding his outline-body, but the other is in my focus as there before me face to face. It si in his speaking that he fills the space between us and by it I am auditorily immersed and penetrated as sound “physically” invades my own body.”

(Comment: As the sound sculpture penetrates and invades the viewer/listener, the aural heightens the effect of the visual portrait imagery. A synergy of the aural and visual.)

“Conversely, the sudden absence of sound can disembody a scene. In the movie The Battle of Britain, a Technicolor reenactment of the air battles over England during World War II, at the height of the decisive battle Spitfires and Hurricanes dance in the air in combat with Messerschmitts and Junkers. Amidst the loud chatter of the machine guns and the roar and sputter of the airplanes and sound track is suddenly and deliberately silenced. At the instant of the disappearance of animating sound, he scene becomes eerie, a moving tableau which becomes more abstract and distant. This momentary irreality of the disengagement of sound allows the battle to be seen as a strange dance without music. Emptiness which can be uncanny is silence in the auditory dimension.”

(Comment: Interestingly, in my first experiment with sound for my show, I did not even consider the use of any silent moments. I feel, now, that silence can be a valuable element to be experimented with to see if it will add to the sound sculpture.)

“There is a leap made by metaphysics. When the limits of sense are reached, it posits an un-sensed sense; when the limits of consciousness are reached, it posits an unconscious-consciousness; when the chain of causes threatens to proceed to infinity, it posits an uncaused-cause.”

(Comment: This is the gestalt of the viewer/listener, how it forms, where it goes… extends to infinity…)

“The horizon is that most extreme and implicit fringe of experience which stands in constant ratio to the “easy presence” of central focusing. There is also a resistance offered by the horizon. It continually recedes from me, and if I seek for sounds and the voices of things, I cannot force them into presence in the way in which I may fix them within the region of central presence. I must await their coming, for sounds are given. But when they are given they penetrate my awareness such that if I wish to escape them I must retreat “into myself” by psychically attempting to “close them out.”

(Comment: I noted this passage because of the way it describes so well the nature of sound. The way it moves from presence to fringe. to perceptual horizon. How sound is given. How it penetrates and pervades. This passage give me a new vocabulary and a new way to envision the sounds I am manipulating.)

“There is a “depth” of things which is revealed secretly in all ordinary experience, but which often remains covered over in the ease with which we take something for granted.”

(Comment: For my first sound experiment, I edited together a 7-minute piece with sections of interviews I consider significant. With more thought, however, I now feel that the human condition is revealed by the significant as well as the insignificant. The “big” and “small” are equal, and all things are equally important, and equally unimportant. I think I will rescan and relisten to the interviews, now with an ear to the mundane as well as exceptional. And include all to use in counterpoints and contrasts.)

“Auditorily this hidden depth is silence. In its relative horizonal features silence lies hidden along with the sounding which presents itself… Silence is the “other side” of sound. Relative “absences” of sound have often enough been understood to belong properly to “meaningful” auditory experience. The pauses, or rests, in musical phrasing add to rather than subtract from the totality of the music. In speech silence often indicates either the stopping of a line of thought or a transition, but silences can also be filled with their own significations… Such adherences within relative silence enrich with auditory depth things and others. Even mute things may “speak” in a silence which carries the adumbrated adherence of sound to presence.”

(Comments: Passage elaborate more on said depth and silence.)

“I look at the postcard which arrived recently from Japan. It depicts four peasants running from a sudden rainstorm. They hunch under grass hats and mats as they seek shelter from the wet coldness of the rain. And if I look intently at the picture, perhaps mindful of the dictates of a Zen passage read long ago, I detect the adherence of a certain auditory presence to the picture. I “hear” the rain and “listen” to the peasants running and to the rustling of the mats. The muteness of the picture “sounds” in its relative silence.”

(Comments: I always felt the people in my portraits “spoke” in some way when they stared back at me. Having spoke to them, I could hear the “auditory adherences” the author talked about. But for the viewer/listener who had not the benefit of being in the conversation, this auditory experience is absent. This is where the sound sculpture can help create the adherence and construct the environment of the human landscape. Here we are speaking of the visual giving the aural cues, but I have to add here that I see a converse effect at work as well. That the aural can give visual clues. I believe the ‘thinking’ process works in two steps: One is that we hear our thought verbally, and the second is that we then envision the thoughts we hear visually. If that is so, then the envisioning we experience internally could possibly be triggered by a verbal and aural stimulation that is external in nature. Hence the addition of a vocal and verbal sound element to the photographic portraits can add an extra visual (internal envisioning) experience to the viewing of the artwork. This visualization/envisioning is spoken of—in the auditory equivalent—by the author as the “imaginative mode.” Below, quoting:)

“With the introduction of a secondary modality of experience—the Imaginative Mode, in addition to what has been the predominantly perceptualist emphasis, listening becomes polyphonic. I hear not only the voices of the World, in some sense I “hear” myself or from myself. There is in polyphony a duet of voices in the doubled modalities of perceptual and imaginative modes. A new review of the field of possible auditory experience is called for in which attention would be focused upon the co-presence of the imaginative.”

Comment: (See previous comment.)

“Existentially things “speak.” Heidegger has pointed out, “Much closer to us than all sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds. In order to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly.” The things of the world sound in their own way. Things, others, the gods, each have their voices to which we may listen. Within auditory experience there is this primacy of listening.”

(Comment: Just as visual art is about new ways of seeing. Sound art is about new ways of listening… And how to bring about these new ways.)

“My “self” is a correlate of the World, and its way of being-in that World is a way filled with voice and language. Moreover, this being in the midst of word is such that it permeates the most hidden recesses of my “self.”… Language also lies in the interior. Inner speech as the hidden monologue of thinking-in-a-language accompanies the daily activities of humans even when they are not speaking to each other. The voices of others whom I hear immerse me in a language which has already penetrated my innermost being in that I “hear” the speech which I stand within. The other and myself are co-implicated in the presence of sounding word… Phenomenologically I already always stand in this center. The voices of language surround me wherever I turn, and I cannot escape the immersion in language. The voices of language have already penetrated all my experience, and this experience is already always “intersubjective.” And if this experience of the omnipresence of language which comes from others and which settles even into the recesses of myself is “like” the experience of surrounding, penetrating, pervasive sound, it is because its ordinary embodiment lies in the listening and speaking which embodies the voices of language. Voice is the spirit of language.”

(Comment: The sound sculpture part of the human landscape is about all the organic sounds made by humanity. They are whispers, mumblings, cries, squeals, speech, and even silence. But, mostly, it is about voice, the story the voices tells, and the spirit behind the stories. The listeners will have never heard the stories before, but everything will be familiar, for we are necessarily already in the landscape. As the images attempt to present a new way of seeing to the viewer, the sound sculpture a new way of listening, the entire work will attempt to present a new way of experiencing the human landscape.)