Beyond Unwanted Sound Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism
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! Beyond Unwanted Sound Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism Marie Suzanne Thompson Submitted in fulfilment of the degree Doctor of Philosophy International Centre for Music Studies Newcastle University February 2014 Abstract This thesis uses Baruch Spinoza’s notion of affect to critically rethink the correlation between noise, ‘unwantedness’ and ‘badness’. Against subject-oriented definitions, which understand noise to be constituted by a listener; and object-oriented definitions, which define noise as a type of sound; I focus on what it is that noise does. Using the relational philosophy of Michel Serres in combination with Spinoza’s philosophy of affects, I posit noise as a productive, transformative force and a necessary component of material relations. I consider the implications of this affective and relational model for two lineages: what I identify as a ‘conservative’ politics of silence, and a ‘transgressive’ politics of noise. The former is inherent to R. Murray Schafer’s ‘aesthetic moralism’, where noise is construed as ‘bad’ to silence’s ‘good’. Instead, I argue that noise’s ‘badness’ is secondary, relational and contingent. This ethico-affective understanding thus allows for silence that is felt to be destructive and noise that is pleasantly serendipitous. Noise’s positively productive capacity can be readily exemplified by the use of noise within music, whereby noise is used to create new sonic sensations. An ethico- affective approach also allows for an affirmative (re)conceptualization of noise music, which moves away from rhetoric of failure, taboo and contradiction. In developing a relational, ethico-affective approach to noise, this thesis facilitates a number of key conceptual shifts. Firstly, it serves to de-centre the listening subject. According to this definition, noise does not need to be heard as unwanted in order to exist; indeed, it need not be heard at all. Secondly, this definition no longer constitutes noise according to a series of hierarchical dualisms. Consequently, the structural oppositions of noise/signal, noise/silence and noise/music are disrupted. Finally, noise is understood to be ubiquitous and foundational, rather than secondary and contingent: it is inescapable, unavoidable and necessary. i Acknowledgements There are a number of people to whom I owe a great deal of thanks for their support whilst I have been working on this thesis. I would like to thank my peers and colleagues (past and present) at the International Centre for Music Studies for making me a better thinker, a better writer and a better musician. I am especially thankful for the help, support and brainpower of Charlie Bramley, Caroline Pugh, Danielle Sirek, Ali Gillies, Daniel Dixon, Dr. Will Edmondes, and Professor Agustín Fernández. Thankyou, also, to my noise buddies (past and present) based in Culture Lab. It has been great working, playing and talking with you. My thanks goes to the organizers of the ‘Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures: Noise, Affect, Politics’ conference that took place at the University of Salford in July 2010. This was a formative experience for me – in those three days I learnt a great deal and met so many brilliant, fascinating people. Thankyou, also, to those who have afforded me the opportunity to publish my work as journal articles and book chapters in edited collections, as well as to the contributors of Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). I have gained a lot from these experiences. I am hugely grateful to my supervisors, Dr. Carolyn Pedwell and Professor David Clarke, for taking the time and having the patience to carefully engage with my work, as well as for their excellent advice and words of encouragement. I have learnt so much from both of them. Extra special thanks goes to Helen for her support and solidarity, right from the offset; to my parents and sister, Adrian, Christine and Claire; and to David for his love, kindness and proofreading skills. Thankyou for believing I could do this, even when I wasn’t so sure. ii Table of Contents Abstract i Acknowledgements ii Table of Contents iii List of Figures v Introduction 1 Beyond Unwanted Sound 5 The Parasite, The Middle, The Milieu, The Medium 9 The (Re)turn To Affect 11 Affects Versus Effects 16 An Alternative Framework 18 Chapter One. What Noise Has Been: Subject-Oriented and Object-Oriented Definitions 20 Subject-Oriented Noise 21 Object-Oriented Noise 28 Noise Sources: The Unnatural and The ‘Other’ 32 Noise-as-Loudness 38 Conclusion: Incompatibilities, Insufficiencies, Impasses 45 Chapter Two. The Parasite and its Milieu 47 Noise Beyond the Binary 49 From Noun to Verb: What Does Noise Do? 54 Parasitic Encounters 65 The Excluded Middle Included: Noise as Necessary 72 The Noise Before The Noise 76 The Vibrational Medium 80 Conclusion: From The Parasitic To The Transcendental 86 Chapter Three. Thinking Noise as Affect 91 ‘The Ordinary and Its Extra-’ 93 Non-Anthropocentric Affects 102 Deleuze’s Spinoza: Affectus, Affectio and Mind-Body Parallelism 104 What Can a Body Do? 110 The Affective Parasite 113 Microdisruptions: Cassettes, Bitrot and Wounded CDs 116 Conclusion: Affective Connections 130 Chapter Four. Acoustic Ecology, Aesthetic Moralism and The Politics of Silence 132 The Loss of Silence 134 Silence’s ‘Goodness’ 140 The Ideal Channel 144 The Universal and The Particular 148 The Noise of Belonging 153 Undermining Aesthetic Moralism 164 Conclusion: From Aesthetic Moralism to an Ethics of Noise 174 iii Chapter Five. Exposure, Sensation and the Transgressive Politics of Noise Music 176 The Art of Noise (and The Noise of Art) 178 Crossing The Line 188 Noise Music, Taboo and Transgression 193 Noise Music as Exposure 201 ‘Hidden Delights’ 213 Conclusion: Evading The Generic 223 Conclusion 226 Thematic Connections 231 Future Directions: A Parasitic Politics 235 What Noise Might Do? 239 Bibliography 241 iv List of Figures Figure 1: Claude Shannon’s schematic diagram of a general 56 communication system. Figure 2: The parasitic relation to relations. 68 Figure 3: ‘The guest becomes the interrupter; the noise becomes the 70 interlocutor, part of the channel becomes the obstacle, and vice-versa.’ Figure 4: Yasunao Tone’s prepared compact disc. Photo by Gary 123 McGraw. Figure 5: Emilio Leopoldo Tafani, ‘Ruislip for the quiet English 157 countryside [1916].’ © TfL from the London Transport Museum collection. Figure 6: Excerpt from ‘Bombardment’, the final section of Filippo 182 Tommaso Marinetti’s Zang Tumb Tumb. Figure 7: Sachiko M at Raum Bologna, 2005. 199 v Introduction Ideally, for me the word noise (bruit) is one that we ought to be able to do without […] Acoustically as well as aesthetically, it is a word that promotes false ideas. Michel Chion, ‘Let’s have done with the notion of “Noise”’, 245. In his essay ‘Let’s have done with the notion of “Noise”’, the composer Michel Chion asserts that ‘noise’ (or rather, its French counterpart, ‘bruit’) is no longer a useful concept.1 On the one hand, it is unclear what ‘noise’ refers to – the term lacks specificity. Chion points to two, often overlapping, meanings: noise in the sense of unwanted sound, such as music played too loud or too late in the evening; and noise in the sense of non-musical or non-linguistic sound, such as that produced by animals. Yet what constitutes unwanted or non-musical sound can vary drastically according to context. On the other hand, noise relies on a separation of the sonic universe into binary categories of the meaningful and non-meaningful; the desirable and undesirable; and the musical and non-musical. Noise, then, is simultaneously too vague and too ‘segregationist’2 – it is too ambiguous with regard to what it signifies, and too rigid in the distinctions it requires. Consequently, for Chion, noise is only useful for referring specifically to environmental noise pollution. Beyond this, however, he argues that the word should be disposed of and replaced with the more neutral ‘son’ (‘sound’). This would serve to liberate sounds from the stigma of noise, insofar as ‘son’ does not share the former’s derogative connotations. To call a sound ‘noise’ (‘bruit’) is to ascribe to it certain negative values (for example, of ‘unwantedness’ or ‘extraneousness’); whilst referring to sounds as ‘son’ allows the communicator to ‘designate what is heard without immediately placing it within an !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Noise is not a precise translation of the French term ‘bruit’; indeed, this might be described as a ‘noisy’ translation. However, many of the problems Chion identifies with the notion of ‘bruit’ can still be applied to noise. For more on the translation of ‘bruit’ in Chion’s work see James A. Steintrager, ‘Speaking of noise: from murderous loudness to the crackle of silk’, Differences, vol. 22/2 (2011), 249-275. 2 Michel Chion, ‘Let’s have done with the notion of “Noise”’, trans. James A. Steintrager, Differences, vol. 22/2 (2011), 240-248, 242. 1 aesthetic, ethical or affective category.’3 A segregationist and prejudiced conceptualization of the sonic universe (which rests on a division between ‘good’ meaningful sounds and ‘bad’ meaningless noise) can thus be averted. Though I ultimately argue against his wholesale dismissal of ‘noise’, Chion’s frustration with the term is understandable. Noise is both obvious and evasive. It is something that many of us regularly encounter and yet, as is often claimed, remains stubbornly resistant to theorization.4 Noise slips between different disciplinary fields: it carries through the walls that separate science, acoustics, economics, politics, art, information theory, and law. What constitutes noise, moreover, can vary considerably between these fields. Noise abatement legislation, for example, primarily defines noise with reference to decibel levels, whilst acoustics ordinarily defines it in terms of non-periodic vibration. It could be said, then, that noise is a ‘noisy’ concept: it is messy, complex, fleeting, fuzzy-edged and, at times, infuriating.