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Copyright statement This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without the author's prior consent. LISTENING PATTERNS From Music to Perception and Cognition by MASSIMILIANO VIEL A thesis submitted to Plymouth University in partial fulfilment for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2017 Abstract Massimiliano Viel Listening Patterns. From music to perception and cognition. The research aims to propose a narrative of the experience of listening and to provide some first examples of its possible application. This is done in three parts. Part One, “Words”, aims to methodologically frame the narrative by discussing the limits and requirements of a theory of listening. After discussing the difficulties of building an objective characterization of the listening experience, the research proposes that any theorization on listening can only express a point of view that is implied by descriptions of listening both in linguistic terms and in the data they involve. The analysis of theories about listening is therefore conducted through a grammatical path that unfolds by following the syntactic roles of the words involved in theoretical claims about listening. Starting from the problem of synonymy, the analysis moves around the subject, the object, adjectives and adverbs to finally discuss the status of the references of the discourses on listening. The Part One ends by claiming the need to reintroduce the subject in theories about listening and proposes to attribute the epistemological status of the narrative to any discourse about the listening experience. This implies that any proposed narrative must substitute its truth-value with the instrumental value that is expressed by the idea of “viability”. The Part Two, “Patterns”, is devoted to introducing a narrative of listening. This is first informally introduced in terms of the experience of a distinction within the sonic flow. After an intermission dedicated to connecting the idea of distinction to Gaston Bachelard’s metaphysics of time, the narrative is finally presented as a dialectics among three ways of organizing perceptive distinctions. Three perceptive modes of distinctions are presented as a basic mechanism that is responsible for articulating the sonic continuum in a complex structure of expectations and reactions, in terms of patterns, that is constantly renewed under the direction of statistical learning. The final chapter of the Part Two aims to briefly apply the narrative of pattern structures to dealing with the experience of noise. Part Three aims to show the “viability” of the proposed narrative of listening. First, a method for analysing music by listening is discussed. Then, a second chapter puts the idea of pattern structures in contact with music composition, as a framework that can be applied to data sonification, installations, music production and to the didactics of composition. Finally, the last chapter is devoted to the discussion of the idea of “soundscape” and “identity formation”, in order to show the potential of applying the proposed narrative to the context of cultural and social studies. List of contents 1. INTRODUCTION 3 P A R T 1 - W O R D S 25 2. IN SEARCH FOR OBJECTIVITY 27 2.1 What it is like to be a listener? 27 2.2 From data to experience and back 31 2.3 Here comes the natural language 36 2.4 Observing the cognitive actor 43 2.5 The language of science 47 2.6 Points of view 50 3. WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK 59 ABOUT LISTENING 3.1 Hearing, listening and other dangerous things 59 3.2 Modes of listening 71 3.3 The ontology of listening 82 3.4 Describing 88 3.5 References 99 3.6 The Object 103 3.7 The Subject 107 3.8 Erasing the subject 112 3.8 Intransitive Listening 117 4. NARRATIVES 121 P A R T 2 - P A T T E R N S 129 5. IN THE ISOLATION TANK 131 5.1 Through our headphones 131 5.2 The music of noise 133 5.3 Segments 141 5.4 How to end a sonata 147 5.5 Changes 154 5.6 Extreme music 160 5.7 Qualities 163 6. INTERLUDE: INSTANT AND DURATION 167 7. OUR LOST DIMENSIONS 173 7.1 Distinctions 173 7.2 Dimensions 176 7.3 Regions 192 7.4 Expectations 200 8. STRUCTURAL LISTENING 211 8.1 In the name of the pattern 211 8.2 A matter of resemblance 218 8.3 Pattern structures 226 8.4 Regions at higher levels of pattern structure 230 8.5 Statistical dimensions 236 8.6 Learning 241 8.7 Misattribution 247 8.8 Objects 252 8.9 Meaning and emotion in listening 262 9. CODA: NOISE PATTERNS 273 P A R T 3 - M U S I C 283 10. ANALYSIS 285 10.1 Esthesic analysis 285 10.2 Ligeti’s “Lontano” 295 10.3 Romitelli’s “Nell’alto dei giorni immobili” 302 11. COMPOSITION 311 11.1 Sonifying Perseus 311 11.2 Pattern Composition 316 11.3 Presences 323 11.4 Cluster 329 12. WHAT DO WE TAKE FOR GRANTED IN THE 343 SOUNDS AROUND US BIBLIOGRAPHY 361 List of illustrations FIGURE 1 table of the listening’s functions (Schaeffer, 1966, p.119). 65 FIGURE 2 regional modes of distinction, reproduced from a graph in 193 Jones, 1976. FIGURE 3 the simplest composite pattern unit with dimensional 227 generators. FIGURE 4 a simple pattern structure with time generators. 228 FIGURE 5 a more complicated pattern structure. 228 FIGURE 6 generators of a simple pattern structure as points in the 229 space of the modes of distinctions. The surface level falls in the CR, the higher level falls in the SIR and the highest level, which is immediately under the total level falls in the PRR. FIGURE 7 succession of instances that fall in the CR in the 230 dimension P. FIGURE 8 succession of instances that fall in the CR at the surface 231 level, but fall in the SIR at a higher level. FIGURE 9 a randomic succession of instances that fall in the SIR. 237 FIGURE 10 a randomic succession of instances with a duration of 238 250 msec, that fall in the SIR, changing their range of intervals every 4 seconds. FIGURE 11 the dimension of probability. 247 FIGURE 12 the analyses of macro-formal discontinuities in György 297 Ligeti’s “Lontano”. FIGURE 13 four analytical schemes of bars 21-33 of Fausto 304 Romitelli’s “Nell’alto dei giorni immobili”. FIGURE 14 bars 21-64 analysed in terms of the repetition of a 307 pattern. FIGURE 15 entire pattern structure of the whole piece. 308 FIGURE 16 the pattern machine I have realized for my courses. 320 FIGURE 17 the user interface for the live realization of “Presenze”. 325 FIGURE 18 the three scales of “Cluster”. 338 FIGURE 19 the general scheme of pitches connected to main and 338 secondary roles. Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to thank the former Director of Studies of Planetary Collegium M-Node, Antonio Caronia, for his commitment, his openness and patience in following my research. Words cannot possibly express the extent of his loss as a friend and as a truly genuine and honest eclectic thinker. I also want to thank him together with Amos Bianchi for having realized in collaboration with the M-Node, the seminar on “Michel Foucault, per una genealogia del soggetto”, which had an important impact on driving my research towards topics that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise encountered. I thank all the artists, professors and researchers of Planetary Collegium and its nodes for their invaluable contribution to my research, through update sessions, joint conferences and composite sessions. Not to mention the informal meetings and social occasions that often provided the best environment for discussing the most uncomfortable details of research. I would like to especially thank Derrick De Kerckhove and Giovanni Leghissa for their positive and deep suggestions on where to direct my research. A big thank also to Matias Guerra for having helped to manage the difficulties of the English language. Last but not least, I would like to thank Francesco Monico and Pier Luigi Capucci, for having made real, in spite of all the contingent difficulties, the M- Node and T-Node of the Planetary Collegium. 1 Author’s declaration Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Plymouth University has been composed by the author, and has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification. The research conducted herein is the work of the author and has not formed part of any other research degree programme either at Plymouth University or at any other establishment. At no time during the registration for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Plymouth University has the author registered the research for any other University award without prior agreement of the Graduate Committee. The research was partially financed as a “doctoral leave” granted by the Ministry of Education, University and Research of the Republic of Italy. The research works have been presented at the following conferences: Logic Lane: Giornate di Studi Antonio Caronia (Milano, 2015); Soundscape and Sound Identities - FKL (Castelbeseno Rovereto, 2015); Sound Studies: Mapping the Field 2014 (Copenhagen, 2014); Pattern: Forma, Formação, Informação. Encontro Internacional de Pesquisadores Em Design (San Paulo, 2013); #12.ART, 12 Encontro Internacional de Arte e Tecnologia (Brasilia, 2013); Tracce Sonore (Milano, 2013); Technoetic Telos: Art Myth and Media Consciousness Reframed International Conference Series (Kefalonia, April 2012); iStream eText: Words in Motion, International Research Conference (Milano, 2012); Presence in the Mindfield: Art, Identity and the Technology of Transformation, 12th Consciousness Reframed International Conference (Lisbon, 2011); Always Already New: Thinking Media, Subversing Feeling, Scaffolding Knowledge: Art and Education in the Praxis of Transformation (Milano, 2010).
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