Soundscapes and Oration

At first, I did not believe that the sound/recording orientated websites are suitable artifacts for reflection, with regard to the Cindy Selfe piece, “The Moment of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing.” The websites I visited did not deal with oration, as far as speeches and reading, which Selfe explores in her piece. However, after listening and trying very hard to be aware of the thoughts that the sounds evoked, my understanding of the reliance, Selfe and others attribute to language became clearer.
The first website I explored was Earth to Earth, a non-profit enterprise that soundcases natural environments and natural soundscapes through an electronic medium. It provided many recordings of the ambient noises that one might come across in upon visiting a variety of ecosystems. The first link led me to David Monacchi’s “States of Water.” Monacchi’s composition utilized the sounds generated when water reacts to its natural environment. I find it very interesting how a musical composition was developed from a non-composed source. Monacchi analogously replaced notes with water-born sound effects, resulting in an additive rhythmic effect of “recomposed” music. The water was utilized in such a way that composition became the mode and sound was delivery the medium. As I listened to “States of Water,” I found myself asking how Monacchi might translate his work into a reproducible, printable music score. How does one represent water’s natural reaction with a variety of environmental stimuli on paper? Could there be some reproducible esoteric note system developed to represent a natural phenomenon?
The second link led me to Kits Beach, a sound orientated website, where Hildegard Westerkamp narrates what she sees as she walks along the beach. Her oration and the beachscape sounds were juxtaposed, into what I found to be a very irritating recording. Her voice was incredibly invasive, as if she were trying to impose some poetic cliché on what I imagined to be a beautiful beach setting. Although this may not be the case, it made me feel an anxiousness. Was nature not allowed to speak for itself? Was I not allowed to determine what I was listening to on my own? However, upon second reflection, her description does offer truth to the scene. Just as easily, the beachscape sounds could have been recorded near the sight of an industrial disaster. Without Westerkamp’s narration, the listener would be completely reliant on their imagination, which could be more welcomed, but very possibly discordant with the sounds’ origin. Overall, I would rather allow my imagination to fill in the scenic gaps, than be reliant on her oration. I wanted her to stop talking so that I might listen more intently.
The last audio selection from Earth to Earth, was a link that led me to “Song of the Kanai ‘O’.” This website focused on what it termed “suspended sound,” which dealt primarily with the recording of extinct, threatened, or endangered species. I listened to the song of the Kanai ‘O’, an extinct Hawaiian bird. The recording of the extinct animal was layered over a recording of the Hawaiian forest, the bird’s natural habitat. I found the juxtaposition to be eerily fascinating. To be able to listen to an entity’s voice, one that no longer existed, was incredibly sad. As I listened, I thought about the last filmic recording of the Tasmanian Tiger, the last images of it pacing around a tiny enclosure. The recording of the Kanai ‘O’, seemed like a history of denial. The Kanai ‘O’ would never add to the cacophony of the Hawaiian forest. It would never know another sunrise or tropical breeze. It was the vestigial voice of an animal that was gone forever. As a listened further, I imagined what the bird might have looked like, and found that audio, without narrative or accompanying images became highly reliant on language for a complete visceral experience. And yet, I felt any oration would have been intrusive to my overall listening experience.
The last sound orientated website that I visited was Aporee. The website linked maps and user described environments from locations pinpointed on maps. As I listened, I recalled Selfe’s description of orality as communicative mode that embodies meaning through more than just the use of language, but also diction, intonation, pacing, volume, and word choice, among other things. The selection I chose was of a man describing his surroundings. He spoke a very dry, yet effectively descriptive German. It was not prosaic by any means. His terse description, relayed what he saw in his immediate surroundings – the warm sunlight, a sleeping woman, etc. Without the man’s narration, the listener would not be able to determine anything about the scene indicated on the map. The sound recording was much the same as any ambient urban environment, filled with the city noises that one tends to tune out.
What I learned from this reflective exercise, considering that nature of the sounds provided on the various websites, is that there is a good deal of reliance by humans on language, whether internal or external, to fill in the scenic gaps. All of my auditory processing, considering I was to associate the sounds provided with a natural source, were only synthesized through logic, through language dependent thought. I needed language to contextualize the recordings.