Listen to the Listeners

This brilliantly produced program is a must-listen. 

The Listeners (series 1 and 2) is a BBC radio documentary about people whose profession is based on listening or use sound as a tool. An absolute gem, definitely one of the most fascinating pieces of radio documentary I have listened to in ages.

Is listening important? Are there still doubts?

Listen to this. I rest my case.

World Listening Day 2012

An intimate and humble contribution to the WLD2012: listening to a documentary titled “A Day in Autumn with Dietrich Fischer-Diskau”. I could hardly breath. 

One voice, two ears. 

The whole purpose is discovering music through the musicians, not the musicians through music, he said...

Happy birthday Nelson Mandela. 

Happy birthday Murray. 

Happy WLD2012 everyone.

Teen deterrent

This site recently caught my attention. The company manufactures a product called “The Mosquito”. This product is based on the fact that the youth have a far better hearing acuity than their elders. The device works by emitting a very high-pitched noise that only that fresh, unspoiled organ of Corti can perceive.  They justify the production of The Mosquito because, in their words, “The biggest security concern for construction companies today is liability for injuries to unauthorized persons on building sites. This is often the result of kids gaining access to a compound and using it as a play area after work has finished for the day.” In the end they also claim that the product helps control anti-social behavior. 

This raises several legitimate (I think!) questions. 

Why is there a product targeted at kids as if they were a plague in need of an almost divine intervention? Does the word “education” ever came up in the dictionaries of this product’s developers? What happens when other products and social mores ruin the hearing acuity of the youth? Shouldn’t there be some coordination between environmental authorities, commercial and social institutions in order to assess potentially hazardous products like this? Are we going to see mutual accusations of unfair trade practices...? What about bats, dogs? What about adults with good hearing and no anti-social habits? Are we condemned to having to cope with these mosquitoes? Who’s going to defend us from having to be exposed to products such as this in our daily lives? Plague control companies?

Feeling alive

A friend told me an interesting story about a relative who was in the intensive care unit of a local hospital. He remained connected to all sorts of noisy medical equipment. According to his testimony the different noises of that equipment helped him feel that he was alive, as each specific noise corresponded to a certain organ that was functioning properly. Listening to the noises thus meant that the flame was still on. 

Listen

There's one particular aspect of the creative output of the artists that leads to what I have seen described as perceiving reality through their eyes. Under this principle, when we admire a picture by a certain painter or read a novel by a certain writer we are perceiving reality through this particular painter or writer's sensitivity. Sometimes this might not necessarily be a privilege... 

But what is the reality depicted by a creative musician or a composer? If we can depict the complexity of reality through art (probably one of Art's eternal goals) what is then the "listenable" dimension of reality (this is a book yet to be written...) and how can we portray it? The problem is that what we can perceive of this portray or the "listenable" dimension of reality reaches us through... listening.

We cannot see it.

And in this day and age of easy and carefree listening, of course, we are probably missing not only an important part of our surroundings but also a great deal of what sound artists and composers senses attempt to convey.