Sam Auinger
Sam began his talk by talking about his origins. He was born in 1956 in upper Austria. As a child he recognised that sound was basically information and music was social. This means that people needed the help of auditory information to function in their daily lives, Auinger gives the example of running a farmhouse. He recalls that his grandfather was famous for a practice of listening to the sound of hay in the summer to determine the weather. Sam later realised that he was listening to the moisture levels in the material, and with knowledge of the interdependencies between air pressure, materiality and weather was able to deduce the change of the weather. Sam provides another example of auditory information as a warning of people approaching, before CCTV he says they would rely on the sound of the geese. Auinger says that listening to the environment in any field was a daily practice, the sounds ‘talk’ to you. Bringing the same concept to the city, he says that the sounds are talking, but without any meaning for you.
Auinger describes a game he would play with his friends in his youth, one person would hide in a wooden hut to obscure their sight, and they would have to guess what type of car or truck passed by relying solely on sound. He says that each machine had a distinct sound, and this is the crux of his talk. He believes that it is getting harder and harder for people to rely on their ears.
Auinger talks about the catholic influence on his childhood, he recalls the mass being a huge event, and that the churches were built with the intention to enhance your experience, especially the architecture interacting with the sound of the organ. Certain types of cathedrals are even taking advantage of geographical location, making sure the sun hits a stain glass window at the time of the mass. They have used the ability of design to underline their message. But you can take this concept and apply it to all architecture, all buildings influence peoples psychology.
After studying economics and mathematics, Auinger studied composition and computer music in the 80s. There are many properties of sound we take as a given, Sam says, during in this study he learned how to describe the many different qualities that make up a sound and actually talk about it meaningfully. He would have to talk about an imagined sound in order to try to replicate it with computers. Here, he notes, he would quite often get stuck using sounds he already knew from traditional instruments. Sam equates this to trying to imagine a deep sea creature, and the fact that nothing we imagine can be weirder than what is actually in the sea. Certain principles of sound reoccur all over the soundscape, in different practices and sources. Much like evolution in sea creatures, there are structures and systems that form the way sound works. Through this line of enquiry he found psychoacoustics, realising that his body and listening apparatus reacts very differently than a microphone.
Through learning to program sounds Sam became interested in public spaces, because he realised how much daily life was influencing the way he perceived music. He provides the example of his mother hating the Rolling Stones with a passion when he was younger describing it as just noise, and later on in life, as his mothers life had changed, she grew to like it. Now she was able to decode the song structure, in the sixties when these songs were released, it was impossible for her to enjoy the music due to her upbringing on upper Austrian folk music. Auinger raises the question, how many systems are in play that influence our perception of sound?
An example of a system would be the shape of our ears, the shape enhances a certain type of frequency spectrum. A young healthy human has a listening range from 20 Hz to 20000Hz, so when Sam hits a pen against a glass almost all people will hear it, but his grandson will hear more overtones than him. Over time our ability to hear high frequency decreases, this produces a problem for our language centred society, language is constructed with vowels and consonants, our ability to hear consonants decrease as they are mostly found at 8-10 kilohertz. Auinger realises that he is missing quite a lot of his higher range of hearing, and he gives an example of how this effects his perception. If you were to imagine somewhere with a very lively nightlife, lots of people and talking, a lot going on, for a young person with healthy hearing they can perceive this as energy, something that enhances you. If an elder person listens to the same thing, there is a lot less frequency response in their hearing, so for them they perceive the same situation as stress. Another system that influences us, and for Auinger is the most important, is our personal history or context. He gives the example of some people skating in the parking lot of an office. If you are the skateboarder the sound means success or failure of a trick, or seeing a friend. If you are working in the office and have nothing to do with skateboarding you will perceive this sound as annoying. It is almost completely impossible to hear a sound in the same way as someone else. Another interesting point that Auinger brings up is that loudness steals space, for example walking in London on a busy road, you will perceive the other side of the road as a silent movie, the road acts as a border in space.
Auinger stresses the importance of learning how we listen, that it will give rise to many different avenues of research and will deepen your listening experience of the world.