Locative Media & The City

I would like to expand upon the initial ideas I mentioned in class regarding a critique of the Sonic City project described in Anne Galloway's Ubiquitous Computing essay. Essentially, my comments centered around the fact that a 'categorically similar' experience would pervade a person's use of this device (this was prompted, of course, by another comment questioning the 'sameness' of the experience). By 'categorically similar' I was referring to the use of electronica (-like), dance, and similar pop music styles (as illustrated in the video documentation presented in class) for "real-time, personal audio creation" (Galloway p.13). What is the significance of the use of electronica (even pop music in general), an over-coded, populistic sound source, in the context of a spatial mapping of the city? Does this sound source act as a sonic 'mask' (referring to the acoustical phenomenon of masking), in effect removing the participant from the sonic reality of the city rather than allowing the user to more fully confront their surroundings?

The observations of the noted composer and theorist R Murray Schafer prove to be relevant with regard to Sonic City's use of components that derive from pop music. This is taken from a section entitled "Increased Bass Response in Music and the Soundscape**" from Schafer’s “The Tuning of the World”.

"The boost in bass effects in contemporary popular music has its parallel and has perhaps received a stimulus from the greater increase in low-frequency environmental sounds."

Schafer goes on to cite an article that appeared in New Paterns of Musical Behaviour by the French composer Michel P. Philippot:

"It is recorded, for instance, that in the 17th century the noise in Paris was literally unbearable. The same reports inform us about the nature of this noise: shouting, carts and carriages, horses, bells, artisans at work, etc. From this we may infer that the average sound level must have shown fluctuations, that its envelope must have had peaks and lows so that it was actually "cut up." Besides, the spectrum must have been very poor in low frequencies, as all the noises enumerated above belong to the medium and medium high frequency ranges. In the mechanical age and--if we talk of the noise in big cities--with the invention of the automobile, the noise became more continuous and the lower frequencies were strongly increasing (the deep rumbling of urban traffic, the continuous noise of cars that are driving by, the broad spectrum and long envelope of approaching and departing planes). The "modern" ambient noise might be briefly characterised as heavy and continuous, with slow fluctuations that are difficult to identify and to locate, as this kind of noise tends to encompass us. "I stop talking," said the aged d'Alembert, "when a car drives by." ... This means that he could still enjoy moments of silence between two cars, a blessing of which the victims of the low and continuous noise in big towns have meanwhile been deprived."

Schafer proceeds:

"In stressing low frequency sound popular music seeks blend and diffusion rather than clarity and focus, which had been the aim of previous music and was achieved by separating performers and listeners in counterpoised groups, usually facing one another. As may be suspected, this type of music tends to stress higher frequency sounds to make its directionality clear."

Schafer points out an interesting connection between the shifting spectral content of the environmental soundscape of the city and the frequency characteristics of popular music and ostensibly compares this with the earlier concert music of Western composers. In accordance with the shifting intensity of the sounds of everyday life popular music accommodates. In this mode popular music serves the utility of a mask or a tool of abatement. (Additionally, popular music itself can be analyzed as a branch of a 'culture industry' which has been examined by Critical Theory as the following quotation from Horkheimer and Adorno illustrates: "The paradise offered by the culture industry is the same old drudgery." (Bull) Let us also mention Marx, Debord, Lukacs, Jameson, Deleuze, Beaudrillard and all the trimmins'.)

In Michael Bull's "Sounding out the City" chapter from "The Management of Everyday Life" the author provides a critical examination of the use of "personal stereos" (the walkman, the iPod, the home stereo, etc.). In part Bull's description speaks to the use of personal stereos as a form of escapism or a way of territorializing a seemingly (though clearly not) autonomous "sanctuary" that enables the user's control over the temporal and the spatial.

"...it is precisely this silence that personal-stereo users fear. They tend to feel isolated with no sound. Their home has to have sound, not the sound of the street, the chaos of urban sounds but their own controlled, predictable technological sounds. Their own technologically mediated sound constitutes their 'inhabited space' which correspondingly transcends the sounds of 'geographical space' ."(Bull p. 159)

It would appear as though personal-stereo users can 'battle' the "sound of the street, the chaos of urban sounds" with their own "controlled, predictable technological sounds". How can a listener win this battle but with the LOUDER, more bass responsive music (with the “blend” and “diffusion” suited for such a battle) that has been served to us through popular music. As I write this I sit inside a coffee house typing on my laptop, battling the LOUD espresso machine and LOUD people and LOUD classic rock with my own playlists of loud hip-hop music. What kind of information can I possibly obtain from the soundscape in which I am situated when the music I am listening to masks so much of the experience? What kind of information can a participant of Sonic City obtain about a city when she is bombarded with the "controlled, predictable technological sounds" of electronica and popular music?