SOUNDSCAPE COMPOSITION By
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PROFOUND LISTENING: POETICS, LIVING INQUIRY, ARTS-BASED PRACTICE AND BEING-PRESENCE IN SOUNDWALK - SOUNDSCAPE COMPOSITION by Andrea Anath Dancer B.F.A. The University of British Columbia, 2003 M.F.A. The University of British Columbia, 2005 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2014 © Andrea Anath Dancer Abstract As an artistic practice and a knowledge base, acoustic arts-based research is nascent. An interest in sound is emerging across trans-disciplinary fields ranging from urban geography to bioacoustics to architecture to experimental music. In Education, attention to sound produces barely a whisper. This thesis explores how relationships between listeners and the sound environment (soundscape) evolve and are articulated through arts-based means: a hybrid form of sound art, electroacoustic music and acoustic ecology called soundscape composition. As a soundscape composer, my artistic and professional trajectory is steeped in hybridity: poetry, radio documentary-feature, sound art, visual arts, and arts education spanning twenty plus years. For these reasons, this thesis consists of: writing (scholarship, narrative, and poetics), listening (soundwalking, field recording, and soundscape compositions), processing (artistic, literary, and curatorial practice across genres), documenting (living and poetic inquiry, research, reflection on works), and as a pedagogic and hybrid means of knowledge acquisition. The manuscript explicates, theorizes, tells stories, offers poetry and prose, and opens into a series of listening salons available online at http://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/50784 – all toward the aim of enhancing listener experience in the contemporary world, a place overwhelmed by sound and noise. It also engages the listener-reader in a process of coming-to-know acoustically, intellectually, and experientially through an open-ended process that questions rigorously and answers keenly. This is in keeping with the nature of sound, listener engagement, and how listener-to-sound relationships intersect with Heidegger’s notion of Being in the world – with awareness, rather than certitude. ii The methodology situates in arts-based research as living and poetic inquiry in education. Themes include writing and speaking the experience of sound, listening as Being, soundwalking and soundscape composition as research, listener-to-soundscape relationships, mentors and practitioners, the state and practice of soundscape composition, and a positioning of myself and this work within the field. As I interrogate sound, I ask about who I am in a sensate-mediated world so that a robust future of acoustic awareness, sound environments, sound art practice and scholarship avails itself to yet-to-Be initiated artists, educators, writers, composers as well as the everyday listeners we comprise. All audio is available online at http://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/50784 iii Preface This dissertation is an original intellectual and artistic product of the author, Andrea Anath Dancer. The soundscape composition, Sounds Like Home, is an original work that was commissioned by New Adventures in Sound Art in conjunction with the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) as part of the residency program for the Radio without Boundaries Festival. The composition premiered on the CBC radio program, Living Out Loud and I received appropriate copyright permissions for the final composition and retain copyright over all original audio recordings. The Cloist(au)ral and Walking Sound soundscape compositions are original works that were broadcast by Radio Vltava, Czech Republic for the Radio(a)ustica program. In both cases, the copyright agreement is non-exclusive. The Walking Sound soundscape composition was produced in collaboration with Michal Kindernay and I was the lead producer. I maintain copyright over my own audio recordings that comprise the final composition. I have obtained permission from Michal Kindernay to use the composition as part of this research. The soundscape composition, For the Love of Dead Meat (aka Cowcaphony), is an original work that was part of V černém oblaku. Edukativní program k výstavě decadence now (The Black Cloud Ritual: The Educational Program for the Decadence Now! Exhibition), a collaboration between Uměleckoprůmyslové Museum U(P)M (The Decorative Arts Museum), Galerie Rudolfinum and Univerzita Karlova v Praze (Charles University in Prague, Pedagogic faculty) under the leadership of Dr. Marie Fulková. Subsequent research was designed and conducted under the leadership of Dr. Fulková and several publications, duly referenced, indicate I am a co-author. No texts from those publications are reproduced in this manuscript without due reference. All photographs are original works of art © Andrea Dancer, 2014. iv Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ......................................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... xi Dedication ................................................................................................................................................... xii Pre Amble: The Sound Map .......................................................................................................................... 1 Oeuvre One Dis/ Integrated Listening ......................................................................................................... 7 And without even .............................................................................................................................. 8 Listening salon A: Spokes in long grass ........................................................................................... 10 List: A tilt of the ear ................................................................................................................................. 11 Repre sound ation: In/congruence ..................................................................................................... 14 Intra poetica .................................................................................................................................... 18 Centaur ............................................................................................................................................ 19 Repre sound ation: Intergration .......................................................................................................... 21 Intra poetica .................................................................................................................................... 23 Swimming in treetops ..................................................................................................................... 24 Notional potentiate................................................................................................................................. 25 Phenomenal sound ............................................................................................................................. 26 Listening salon B: Cisterna .............................................................................................................. 31 Sound un kind ......................................................................................................................................... 32 Ur bane ................................................................................................................................................ 32 Nefarious uses of sound ...................................................................................................................... 34 v Intra poetica .................................................................................................................................... 36 St. Elmo’s fire .................................................................................................................................. 37 Silence: The particularity of sound ..................................................................................................... 38 Intra poetica .................................................................................................................................... 40 I am touched ................................................................................................................................... 41 Oeuvre Two Insitu Tropes .......................................................................................................................... 42 Listening salon C: Sounds Like Home – part one ............................................................................ 43 Intra poetica .................................................................................................................................... 44 Transience ......................................................................................................................................