What is the Shape of Sound...
What is the Shape of Sound...
The below drawings are meant to conceptualize the shape of the various spaces encountered within the soundscape. I recommend listening to the soundscape and scrolling through the pictures…. But please interact with this as you like.
The big room with the high ceilings and wooden floors
Transitional space
Various encounters down the stairs chats
Steps of Provoked Soundings
Emerging from the Gallery
Moving Through the Street Fair
Deep Listening
Deep listening, a concept pioneered by composer and musician Pauline Oliveros, emphasizes the intricate act of listening beyond mere auditory perception. This practice distinguishes between ‘hearing’, the passive reception of sound waves, and ‘listening’, an active intentional and immersive engagement with sound. Deep listening extends into the realms of the felt experience, inviting listeners to explore not only the texture and nuances of sound, but also the emotional histories that accompany the sounds we encounter. Through deep listening we open up a space for understanding sound as the complex, multidimensional experience that encompasses physical sensation, emotional resonance, and cognitive recognition. This approach encourages an expansive awareness of the sonic environment, fostering a deeper connection with the present moment and the many ways that sound influences and is entwined with our experiences.
I invite you to listen to the layers of the soundscape above. Jump around from focal to global awareness of the sounds. That is, sound details to soundful unities. You don’t have to necessarily focus on identifying the sounds, perhaps you can think about how they feel, in what part of the body they land, and what color and shape they evoke in your minds eye.
Soundings…
Deep Listening is not just about listening; it is about making the sounder(s) feel heard; it is about awareness and attention; it is about feeling-finding. In deep listening, we are participating, we are exploring, rhythmizing noises to make sense of a greater composition; forefront, background, focal, global, past, future, now. Opening our ears wide to hear the whole(ness) of sounds, a sounding that envelopes us, a sounding that sometimes is the absence of sound. A deep listening that goes beyond the auricular, less about hearing and more about experiencing. A co-experience(ing) that does not wait for sound to tell a story; rather, it stories soundings. Anarchic waves and frequencies canalized into affective patterns, reaching into the past and future for sense-making the feeling of the present, transforming felt(ness) into form, noise-in-formation becomes information.
Retrospective Reflection of Denmark Deep Listenin
This soundscape was recorded during the Occupational Science Europe Conference 2023 in Denmark. I had arrived a day before the conference and decided to explore the city of Odense. I wandered around until I came across a beautiful park with an art gallery and cafe overlooking the canal. After strolling around and taking pictures of groups painting pictures in the park, an elaborate water sculpture of what looked like a warrior mermaid, and a playground that looked like a it was pulled out of a fairytale book, I decided to check out the art gallery. I love an art gallery. I entered into the calm atmosphere of the gallery, noticing its contrast to the noise of the street immediately. I began walking around and entered a large room in which I immediately became aware its acoustics. I love a good reverberation as much as the next gal. I’d suggest that this is typical for neurodiverse people, that is, the embodied experiencing of spaces and places. The reverberations, the pinging, the bouncing of feeling that others may not notice stand out to us. Rather than immediately focusing on a particular aspect of a space, our attention may be dispersed for longer, noticing arrays of sensations and provocations that come from being entangled with a space before bringing ourselves into form within the space. It’s not a deficit in attention, it’s an abundance of attention. It’s not always sensory seeking because we need more, sometimes it’s sensory seeking because it feels so good.
The large empty spaces filled with magnificent echoes and reverberations, intentionally noticing as I made my way from room to room. The sound of the creaking floorboards, the conversations bouncing off corners, a safe fun kind of disorienting – I can hear other people but the room I am in is empty – the layers of sounds culminating into a general hum of curiosity. The emptiness of the room I was in felt like an invitation to participate in the space. I contributed some of my own noise by tapping my feet a little extra when I stepped, slowly shifting my weight back and forth to amplify the creeks of the floorboards under me. I noticed the textures of the different voices, those of the children and of adults, the sharp, soft, and giggly voices.
After some time, I made my way back down the stairs that brought me in, new layers of sounds now meeting the calm of the gallery. A wash of soft amber static from the traffic carried down and across the street. Lured in by a nostalgic feeling that didn’t seem my own. How could I feel nostalgia for a place I had never been? As my attention moved from navigating the street traffic, I found myself emerging within a little world that felt much different that the world of the art gallery. Maybe I would call it vitality or life, but whatever it was it felt lovely. Not calming and reflective like the gallery. No, here in this street world I was called not to wander but instead to meander. Stroll among the different stalls and booths of what I came to see as a local art or street fair. I know i was alone but I felt escorted by the music that was playing. Accompanied from the bottom of the street to the top. The 3-person band was playing a kind of old-timey music that wrapped around me as I walked by, a whirl of good(ness) solidified by the engagement of the onlooking crowd, they seemed to feel what I was feeling too. As I made my way past the various stalls I noticed people chatting, leaning in and out as they passed warm banter and greetings to one another. A man giving an art demonstration of his sand art technique seemed to be glowing. I thought to myself how wonderful it must have been to have a crowd appreciating his work and admiring his process. I side-stepped some of the thicker chunky chants happening in sporadic pockets along the way. I directed my appreciation towards the breeze, making itself noticed as it brushed across my face. Bits of flower petals and pollen had become entangled in a whirlwind that moved across the brick until it wore itself out. As I approached the top of the street, I bid farewell to the music as it faded away in the distance. Taking a deep breath in and out, I tried to somehow lock-in the sensation I was carrying in my body. What a lovely day this had turned out to be. As I made my way back to the hotel I reflected on the fact that I didn’t speak to anyone throughout any of my little journey. I didn’t speak the language, but didn’t need to, I wasn’t listening to any of the words, I was feeling the colors, shapes, and textures, of the sounds.