The Wall of Quotes 

"The Listening Post"

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa

21 Luglio - 10 Settembre 2023

I membri del centro studi SSH sono stati invitati da Stefano Coletto a partecipare a un'opera collettiva commissionata dalla Fondazione Bevilacqua la Masa per la mostra “The listening post”. Ciascuno dei membri ha quindi contribuito con alcune citazioni da autori diversi e da contesti anche molto differenti, dai sound studies fino alla filosofia. Per esigenze di allestimento sono state selezionate solo alcune di queste citazioni, visibili durante la mostra e nell'immagine in copertina a cura di Studio Tapiro. L'elenco originale delle citazioni e degli autori è però riportato qui di seguito.

The size of a room, the nearness of a wall, the vastness of an open plain in the evening, they may be revealed to our ears by the reflections of sounds. Mostly we tend to forget that we are hearing space, overwhelmed as we are by our visual impressions. It is simply a matter of attention.

Hess F., “Three Ways of Listening”, 1999. In Light as Air. Kehrer, Heidelberg, 2001

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A composer explained that all his tone-poems and symphonic sketches had been conceived and written within a few miles of his birthplace in one of the least populous quarters of the plains. He was trying to find the musical equivalent of the characteristic sound of his districts. Strangers commented on the utter silence of the place, but the composer spoke of a subtle blend of sounds that most people habitually failed to hear.

Murnane G., The Plains. The Text Publishing Company, Melbourne, 2017 

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To listen like a sandstone, which does not listen from its sculpted ears but rather from its pores when the wind of time passes through them…Embodied listening enlarges with time like filigree in sandstone. It swallows sunlight as it decays, porous sandstone entwines with temporal viscosity. The momentous difference between listening and hearing becomes clear and escapes again.

Vinit A., “The book is drenched”. In  Nida Ghouse, edited by, An Archaeology of Listening—A Slightly Curving Place, Archive Books, Berlin, 2021

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“I will not say, my friends, what listening is before I know who the listener is”. 

El-Wardany H., How To Disappear. Kayfa-ta, Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2018

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Should we design synthetic sounds as they appear to the senses, by manipulating their proximal characteristics? Or should we look at potential sources, physical systems that produce sound as a side effect of distal interactions? Can our body help establish bridges between distal (source-related) and proximal (sensory-related) representations? Choosing appropriate sound models and preparing a set of effective sound synthesis tools can be informed by research findings in perception, production, and articulation of sounds.

Delle Monache S., Rocchesso D., Bevilacqua F., Lemaitre, G., Baldan, S., & Cera, A, Embodied sound design. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2018 

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Like light, sound exists neither on the inner nor on the outer side of an interface between mind and world. It is rather generated as the experiential quality of an ongoing engagement between the perceiver and his or her environment. Sound is the underside of hearing just as light is the underside of vision; we hear in one as we see in the other. 

Ingold T., The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London and New York: Routledge, 2021

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Traditionally composers have located the elements of a composition in time. One idea which I am interested in is locating them, instead, in space, and letting the listener place them in his own time.

Neuhaus M., Max Neuhaus: inscription, sound works vol. 1. Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 1994

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There are no spaces fastened to either side of the ear just as there is no absolute sonic-spatiality that needs to be defined, but rather heterogeneous and intermittent contextually constituted materialisations of sound, wherein each instance spawns a slightly divergent take on the spatial characteristics therein. To materialise sound is to make corporeal artifacts from durational flux.

Ganchrow R., “Here and there notes on the materiality of sound Oase: Immersed - Sound & Architecture”. In OASE #78, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2009

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Sound makes thinkable the possibilities of this world, not as metaphor and parable or in relation to a textual universe, but as a portal into real possibility, and shows us the world through its variants: the slices of a timespace geology that holds the cavernous simultaneity of all the possible possibilities of this world
Voegelin S., The Political Possibility of Sound. Fragments of Listening. Bloomsbury, London and New York, 2018

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This is what captures my imagination: the hearing that is the basis for an insurrectionary activity, a coming community.

LaBelle B., Sonic Agency. Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. Goldsmith Press, London, 2018 

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An aesthetic mismatch exists between the rich, complex, and informative soundscapes in which mammals have evolved and the poor and annoying sounds of contemporary life in today’s information society. As computers with multimedia capabilities are becoming ubiquitous and embedded in everyday objects, it’s time to consider how we should design auditory displays to improve our quality of life.

Rocchesso D., Bresin R., & Fernström M, Sounding objects. IEEE Multimedia, 10(2), 2003

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Sound, devoid of meaning, would not matter to us. It is the information sound conveys that helps the brain to understand its environment. Sound and its underlying meaning are always associated with time and space. There is no sound without spatial properties [...].

Blauert, J., & Braasch, J., The technology of binaural understanding. Springer, 2020

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Diffraction has to do with the way waves combine when they overlap and the apparent bending and spreading of waves that occur when waves encounter an obstruction. Diffraction can occur with any kind of wave: for example, water waves, sound waves, and light waves all exhibit diffraction under the right conditions.

Barad K., Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics And the Entanglement of Matter And Meaning, Duke University Press, 2007

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But the sound, what is it? It is not just one event, it might be the whole music, a Beethoven symphony; for me, it's "the sound." The tiniest sound is already a complicated, complex—could be—complex thing that necessitates all sorts of operations to produce it.

Xenakis, Reynolds, Lansky and Mache discuss computer music, Moderated by Thanassis Rikakis, Delphi Computer Music Conference/Festival, 4 July 1992