PROJECT ONE: SITUATIONAL LISTENING
IN-CLASS CRITIQUE: JANUARY 28 (WEEK 4)
Your work will exploit one or more of the modes of listening that we will be discussing all term.
Organize a 5-minute exercise for the class to engage in.
The exercise can involve members of the class as participants (activating aspects) as well as listeners.
The exercise can take place in the classroom, or at a location on the York campus selected for its particular acoustic properties and functionalities.
Bring instructions or a score which would enable someone else to perform your work (be as detailed as possible).
EXAMPLES
A distracted listening mode might involve immersing yourself in multiple sonic sources simultaneously (either in a public place or by setting up the sources yourself (e.g. multiple phones, TVs, radios etc.) and attempting to keep track of all of them. Or: listening to something through constant interruption. (Clue: Is distraction always a negative? What might a distracted listening approach make possible that would otherwise not occur?)
A prosthetic listening mode might involve you setting up a variety of filters through which you listen – which could be technological (listening to yourself through a microphone), or not (placing various objects over your ears – jars, bowls etc.) and experimenting listening in a public place.
Experimentation with sonic niching could involve finding a way to have a conversation with someone in a crowded, noisy location, using niching on the level of pitch (frequency), rhythm, acoustics (resonant or not) etc. You can think of this as an extension of your I Am Sitting in a Room exercise: e.g. find a difficult acoustic (noisy, too resonant etc.) and develop ways to make yourself understood in it (by altering the volume of your speech, or pitch, or….). (This may require an accomplice to carry out, to confirm that you’re being understood)
An eavesdropping action should involve more than simply listening in on a conversation. Perhaps it would explore the difference between overhearing and eavesdropping, or how the unintentional becomes intentional. To be clear: I’m not asking anyone to violate someone else’s privacy for the sake of this project. It’s more about what the act reveals about your own listening habits, how you pay attention and what you pay attention to, as all these listening modes demonstrate in one way or another.
An experiment with internal listening could involve reading a detailed description of an auditory situation, leading the members of the class to hear it in their “mind’s ear.” Or the showing of images without sound, in order to experiment with imagining a soundtrack.