Continued Literature Review of The Order of Sounds by Francios J. Bonnet Chapter 1

In the last section of The Order of Sounds I left off with four main takeaways.

1. The idea and distinction of sound between the sonorous and audible, the sonorous in order to be must leave a trace either on the environment or the listener, and the audible must be sonorous. Giving/ or recognizing the power of sound on the listener and psyche which is then emphasized through sounds relation to the mythical and spiritual, where Bonnet quotes Plato.

2. The Fugacity of sound. As soon as a sound is made it has disappeared, it’s trace can give a sound temporary permanence in memory but not in the physical space. However, representation (through recording) can only reproduce the sound unsuccessfully to its original state, leaving the listener with a shell that exposes the endless cycle of appearance and disappearance. Never giving more than the sound held in memory. This idea is particularly relevant with the apparent since of nostalgia related to field recordings/ sampling.

3. The idea of the legitimate trace left by audio hallucinations.

4. How echo, reverberation, and persistence in memory can double the trace and sound of the original, adding additional emphasis which has in the past given sounds an association with the supernatural through over emphasis. In this process the original trace of the sound is emphasized. And what does this mean for repetition of recorded sounds.

Next in the first chapter of The Order of Sounds Bonnet discusses the idea of the sonorous imprint. This idea build on that of a trace. When a sonorous sound leaves a trace it may also leave an imprint, in which another sound of the same character can thin fill again. Yet, Bonnet states that the trace and imprint can not communicate between each other and that they are indeed two separate phenomena. The trace in my understanding is the meaning left on us by the present sound while the imprint connects us to our past encounters with said sound.

“The trace is a residue, a supplement to that which has sounded, a sort of phenomenal hysteresis. A sound, in order to be audible must leave a trace, A sound that no one hears, that no one perceives, or that no one manages to grasp, is not entirely a sound. Whereas a perceived sound, a sound that leaves a trace, is already somewhat more than a sound.” (pg. 31)

“The trace can be compared to Marcel Duchamp's ‘Infra-Thin’ : ‘ the warmth of a seat (which has just been left)’ says Duchamp ‘Is in infra-thin’… The infra-thin is an absent presence, a residue of presence that marks and actualizes the difference as miniscule as it may be, between what has been and what persists” (pg. 32)

“The imprint is indeed the ‘moulding’, the testimony via contact, of a past presence. In order to exist, therefore, a sonorous imprint must have been in contact with a sound that has since vanished, and must harbour within itself the energetic characteristics of that sound…Strictly speaking, there can be no sonorous imprint, but only imprints of sound- when applied to the imprint, the term ‘sonorous’ does not relate directly to it, but only to the object of which it is an imprint.”(pg. 34)

Then bonnet explores the ideas of reproduction in relation to fidelity discussing how a sound can stand in relation to the original sound and how this will never be exact within the technical limitations we face. Which then leads Bonnet to speak of authenticity and peoples issues with the reproduction of sounds, however these reproductions aren’t supposed to be the original sounds but instead be a reproduction of such. Sound reproduction brings with it a break in the experience and possibilities it offers, he states this reproduction of sounds brings with it “a new mode of listening in which the aura in distorted by sonorous replicas.” Which I felt was similar to how our memory distorts overtime when looking back.

“an uncertainty as to how this new entity, reproduced sound, stands in relation to its original.” (pg. 38) the question that will always come with reproduction “Fidelity”

“This perennial confusion which is still with us today ultimately concerns the distance between what is heard and what is given to be heard, between the sensible phenomenon and its original contextual mode of appearing. Hence the development of procedures of reproduction led to the reinterrogation of the notion of authenticity.” (pg. 38-39)

“And sound reproduction brings about a clear break in the apprehension of sound, or in the possibilities of the experiences that it offers, in so far that it calls for a new mode of listening in which the aura in distorted by sonorous replicas.” (pg. 40)

“ This ambivalence is intrinsic to the phonograph. It is always poised between that which seems to be once more, and that which definitively is no longer, between that which seems ceaselessly to live again and that which is forever lost.” (pg. 45)

Bonnet then goes on to discuss this idea of audio reproduction in relation to radio transmission. Going on to reemphasize how this new mode of mass reproduction brings with it a new use of sounds, making many sounds produced for radio with the intention of radio reproduction in the onset of their creation, which then makes the question of authenticity irrelevant. Then there is the quote by Gregory Whitehead which discusses how radio space, the socio political space is not about the sound at all but instead about the gaps between sending and receiving. It is about the carried perceptions and meaning given to these sounds, instead of the sounds themselves.

“radiophonic devices, diffracted and multiplied the sides where it could manifest itself” (pg. 45)

“when radio retransmits, it reproduces sound and simulates it faithfully, just like a phonograph.” (pg. 47)

“The reproducibility of radio audio implies a new way of using sounds. Most sounds produced and diffused by the radio are destined for reproduction from the outset. Thus, as w. Benjamin remarks of photography, the question of authenticity becomes null and void. For Benjamin, this obsolescence guess have in hand with a change in nice of existence of the work of art, which, ‘instead of being based on ritual, [….] Behind to be based on another practice-politics.’” (pg. 48)

“Radio space is […] a series of cultural social and political relations, to be engaged in dinner way, it seems heretical […] but radio is not about sound. Radio happens in sound, at a perceptual level, but the guts of radio are not done, but rather the gaps between sending and receiving, between transmission and audition.” (A. Alvarado, ‘’An interview with Gregory Whitehead’ https://archive.free-103point.org/2007/07/13.alvarado_whitehead.pdf pg. 50)

Continuing to talk about ones experiences with sound we move to discuss how we communicate sounds. When we communicate between sounds, we do not speak of the sounds themselves but instead the meanings or “markings” found in these sounds, which help distinguish between two sounds. These ideas continue to discuss ones perception of sound and how one can never truly experience silence, even in the most silent of spaces an anechoic chamber the listener becomes overexposed to the sound of their nervous system and heart beat, leaving Cage to come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as true silence, and rather that it is based upon subjectivity. Not only is silence not possible, but even if it were it isn’t perceivable because it is inaudible. Although, there is an audible threshold where sounds become inaudible, or at least not perceptible as we decide subconsciously to ignore these sounds. Although they do exist through our ignorance they exist as silence, which is why such silence is called background noise. However there is the phenomenon that when exposed to a defining amount of noise that one feels so incased in sound that they cannot hear, an interesting contradiction to the experiment of the anechoic chamber. Noise and Silence is then argued to always be linked to a cultural, political, relative, and artistic usage, because of their reflection of realities which have meaning and purpose. This idea of the distinction and blur between noise and silence I think carries a huge weight in the process of field recording and what might matter to a listener.

“One does not communicate one’s perceptions or impressions, one communicates qualities, values. One does not communicate one’s experience of sound. One communicates the markers one has found in it, markers which, in particular, help to distinguish one sound from another, and to formulate this distinction. It is in this way, in the weave of authority and communicability, that markings and territories evolve and flourish.” (pg. 52)

Noises, Silences

“For, when […] one enters an anechoic chamber, as silent as technologically possible in 1951, to discover that one hears two sounds of one’s own unintentional making (nerve’s systematic operation, blood’s circulation), the situation one is clearly in is not objective (sound-silence), but rather subjective (sounds only) […].” (J. Cage, Silence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 13-14.) (pg. 53)

These thoughts usually lead to the idea that there is “no such thing as silence.”

“[N]o one could ever perceive silence; that silence is properly inaudible. WE can never have an experience of the absence of sound. Silence exists but not for anyone.” (pg. 53)

“However, it may, sometimes, be sufficient. In any given sonorous context, there exists a threshold of noise beyond which there is silence- that is to say, beyond which sound becomes inaudible. The ear may be able to hear it, but pays no attention to it. Memory lets it go, it leaves no trace. For the auditor, it never existed as sound, but only as silence. Such silence is sometimes called background noise.” (pg. 54)

“Noises and silences are always relative to a cultural context and to an artistic and/or political usage. They reflect various realities, all of which have a certain validity and pertinence, and carry a certain weight in the process of delimiting the area of sound. And yet noises and silences can sometimes be conflated into an a-perceptual identity. in this case, they describe an accursed territory where noise serves only to engender silence.” (pg. 55-56)

However, right after making these distinction Bonnet claims that sound cannot be centered around these two poles of noise and silence, because of the values, beliefs, conceptions , and history articulated within sound. Then we briefly touch on the idea of a soundscape a coin termed by Murray Shafer, which he used while studying locations and the sounds contained within them, mapping out the sounds of a city for example real or fictional. Then we move to the idea of a soundmark. A sound that is immediately recognizable by the people of the community from which it comes. All sounds when leaving a trace and forming a territory leave a mark, but the phenomenon of a sound mark is something that transcends throughout a culture or area. Such as the summer sound of cicadas.

“But we cannot reduce the area of sound to a space in which sonorous avatars are magnetized around two poles, noise and silence (sometimes fused with one another). It also contains the cluster of values, beliefs, and conceptions that are articulated with sounds.” (pg. 57)

soundscape- an acoustic environment as a field of study (R. Murray Shafer)

“Thus the soundmark is not an innocuous sound. It must be known and recognized by a community. It must have left a trace and must have precisely marked the place, making a territory of its space of appearing. - Each sound, then, once it becomes audible (once it leaves a trace) and forms a territory (makes a mark), can become the soundmark of a more or less virtual, more or less sensible territory.” (pg. 58)

Then Bonnet talks of the Sonorous Matter, discussing the idea of Aristotles pnuema and J. B. Lamarcks’s ethereal fire the idea that sound manifests in its own medium and this medium is what moves the air, sound doesn’t exist in air. That this embodiment of sound can exist outside of many standard conventions and how it represents how the audible is always stretched, when present between two bodies. The body that made it and the body that perceives it. This idea of the connection between the two bodies of audio is what I found the most interesting conceptually about this section and its relation to the perception of sound. We are always aware that something is making the sound we are perceiving even through the representation of the sounds already vanished. Overall, leading Bonnet to the conclusion that sound has its own body, history and marks, and it is through these that sound is recognized, heard and known. Then he states that “hearing is always indexical” a statement which I felt ties up a lot of the ideas throughout the first chapter.

“The embodiment of sound can however manifest itself outside of metaphorical, mythical figures and even outside of audio-corporeal sensation.” (pg. 66)

“The audible is always stretched out between two bodies, the body that generates it and the body that absorbs it. So there is indeed a becoming - body or sound, which is deployed on all of its strata of existence and at all the points of observation that encircle it — ‘a body [being] always ob-jected from without; to “me” or to another.’” (pg. 66)

“Thus, before being the vehicle of signs, signals, or any semantic information whatsoever, sound bares within itself its own body, its own history, its own marks. It is through these, and not through the sound itself, that it is recognized, that one can know it and hear it - for hearing is always indexical.” (pg. 66)