Contrast: A Look at Silence

 I know, I've written quite a few entries here on the subject of noise, but I've neglected to comment on its opposite, so please indulge me in one more reading suggestion:

In Pursuit of Silence, Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise , by George Prochnik

This book comes at the noise problem from a different and useful direction, namely by defining noise as any sound that keeps us from hearing what we want to hear, whether it's the voice of the person sitting across the table from us, the birds singing in the spring, or the silence of our own thoughts. Then it explores the sounds and silences beneath the noise, what they mean and why they are important.

Prochnik pays considerable attention to silence, but also takes an interesting look at the meaning behind purposeful noise. He includes a chapter of interviews with "boom car" devotees; you know, those people who soup up car stereos so you can hear them a block away. There's a cadre of serious boomers who push beyond the 160 decibel noise level, loud enough to blow the windshield out of a car. He also covers another favorite noise-maker, Harley motorcycles, with their copyrighted resonance and what's behind that. Purposeful noise is a means by which disempowered people make their presence felt.

To me the most interesting and important part of the book deals with the subject of silence and its spiritual implications. In fact the book focuses on the lives of monks, meditation, and the idea of "quiet mind," which Prochnik suggests is essential to the creative process. Without the respite of silence we lose track of the very depths of our being, which, in a culture as awash in noise as ours, it appears to be just what many of us want to do.

Prochnik mentions research implicating excess noise in cardiovascular problems and as a possible causative factor in autism. It seems that young children brought up in very loud environments take longer than normal to process speech, which is an important aspect of this disorder.

The book ultimately makes the point that efforts have been made for years, even centuries, to address the noise plague. But as one source is eliminated, others have a way of popping up like the marching broom fragments that threatened to inundate the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Rather than campaigning against noisemakers, it turns out to be more useful to educate ourselves about the importance of those sounds and silences we do want to hear. If enough of us come to recognize them, then there's hope that the noise may fall by the wayside of its own accord.

Kevin Jones

Sound Recommendations

I imagine most visitors to this blog have spent at least a little time looking at webcams around the world. There are thousands of them these days, pointed at everything from beautiful ocean or mountain scenes, to private dressing rooms. It can be fun to explore these cameras when one has the urge to vicariously visit exotic spots. Unfortunately, the one thing that all of the ones I've visited lack is the added dimension of sound.

As you may have gathered from reading my previous postings on the subject, sound has been a preoccupation of mine for a long time. I spent the year before Mindport opened building what has become our WaveMusic exhibit, which creates music from the movement of water waves. During that period I also occupied myself recording local ambient sounds, then computer processing them in various ways. This all served to increase my awareness of the power of sound to affect our lives in both positively and negatively.

From time to time I search the web for sources of live "streaming" audio, and I don't mean podcasts or other sources of "canned" audio files, of which there are overwhelmingly many. What interest me is ambient local sound, preferably nature sounds, though almost any would interest me. Considering the fact that sound can be far more emotionally evocative than pictures, it surprises me that there aren't as many live ambient audio sites as there are webcams. . . or at least webcams that broadcast accompanying sound.

It's this evocative power of sound which has sent me on a quest for audio Internet sites, and has inspired me to collect quite a library of ambient sound CDs, featuring mostly nature sounds from various places around the United States and the world. When I want to escape some of the less pleasant sounds that afflict the neighborhood where I live, such as car traffic, chain saws, lawn mowers, aircrart, etc, I put one of these CDs in my player, don my sound-canceling headphones, and travel. . .

During a recent unsuccessful search on the web for live ambient sound, I did come across a wonderful site that was new to me, and which I recommend you visit if you find the subject of sound and "soundscapes" at all interesting. This site is maintained by the University of Utah, J. Willard Marriot Library, and it includes a large selection of animal sounds, ambient natural sounds, and several interviews, many of them downloadable for private use. I found some great recordings, captured in the Canyons of SE Utah, an area where I've spent extended periods hiking and camping over the last 40 years. Listening to these recordings puts me back there in imagination more surely than do the many photographs I've taken during my visits.

In closing, let me recommend the book that originally sparked my interest in sound: R. Murray Schafer's, The Tuning of the World. Schafer is a Canadian author and composer who has written a number of books on the subject of music education, music and sound, any of which is worth a read. He's developed techniques for what he calls "ear cleaning," a process of cultivating one's awareness of sound and exploring the effect it has on our lives and consciousness. Such exercises can help you become aware of ways in which various "soundscapes" may be affecting you adversely without your knowledge, but more important, can be a great source of relaxation and pleasure.

Oh, and if you run across any live streaming "web-ears," please drop me a note and let me know. You'll find my e-mail address on my personal staff page at www.mindport.org.

Kevin Jones

Exhibit updates: Sonoluce, Theremin and Rhythmo

Remember Sonoluce, with the spinning lights dancing to music? Through a chain of associations, it occurred to me that if I added a theremin to the input of Sonoluce, then visitors could control the light patterns directly by moving their bodies.

In case you're not acquainted with the theremin, it's a musical instrument that was invented by a Russian, Leon Theremin, in the 1920s. It's played by spatial movements of the hands; the left hand controlling loudness and the right hand controlling pitch. The first models were made with vacuum tubes, since that's all that was available during that distant dawn of electronic technology. Note that vintage vacuum tube theremins are now valuable collector's items, and some people go to great lengths, even today, to create replicas of the originals. They produce a beautiful tone quality that modern theremins are hard put to emulate.

I toyed with the idea of building a vacuum tube replica of the original theremin, but decided that the time it would take to build one, plus its maintenance demands, would make the project impractical. So I bought a kit theremin, designed by Bob Moog, the inventor of the Moog Synthesizer. It works very well and produces quite a satisfactory tone quality. . . and it only took a couple days to assemble.

Currently I'm building a junction box for the theremin that includes a headphone and speaker amplifier, since this model does not include one. The instrument will be mounted on a swinging arm near Sonoluce, so it can be used either in conjunction with that exhibit, or swung out of the way and used on its own. The junction box/amplifier is still in progress, but should be done before long. We'll post a note here to let you know when everything is together and working.

~~~~

In other exhibit news, visitors have been asking the whereabouts of Rhythmo. She's been off the floor some time for a revamp. We'd been having trouble with the turntable sticking, due to warping of the masonite from which it's fabricated. Also, the plating was wearing off the magnets, graying the scale markings and making them difficult to read. We've replaced the masonite with an aluminum disk, which Bill Lee has painstakingly drilled and re-fitted to the bicycle hub that serves as a bearing. We're hoping to have that project finished in the next couple weeks. We'll let you know when  it's ready again for public view.

Kevin Jones

Organ

The pipe organ I've been working on for a year is finally installed in Mindport's gallery. Like many people who have built organs, I'm not an accomplished keyboard player, so it's really a treat when someone with the requisite musical skill comes in and plays for us, as has happened a time or two now.

If you're interested in a more in-depth account of the organ's construction, please follow this link. You'll need to download Adobe Reader software to access it if you don't have it installed on your machine already.

Kevin Jones

The Inner Life of Cats

This is the part of Lenny's life that ISN'T inner. His exterior carcass is hogging my chair. Some nights there's a cat on BOTH of our favorite chairs. Why do we put up with this? Well, my theory is that we keep cats around to remind us how we should be living ourselves. I probably haven't slept with such reckless abandon since I was four, but at least now I can remember what it must have been like.

The Inner Life of Cats, a Valentine's Day exhibition depicting six years of life with our feline friends, Lenny and Madeleine, goes up in Mindport's Gallery this week. Come and vicariously enjoy the good life.

Kevin Jones

In the Gallery: Recommended Reading Links

I found quite a few interesting articles about letter writing, the postal service, and on-line forms of communication in the process of putting together the mail show currently at Mindport.  All the articles are available to be read here at MP, but I recognize that all that reading usually takes more time than most visitors have during a trip to the museum.  Here are the links, so you can read as you will!

Please, Mr. Postman: Reclaiming the Lost Art of Letter Writing by Elizabeth Ryan

On Practice: Letter to Holly from Cougar Ridge by Brenda Miller

Faux Friendship by William Deresiewicz

Pushing the Envelope by David Henkin

Three Ways to Disconnect from the Internet and Engage the Present by Jeff Severns Guntzel

A Family, a Nation in 200 Years of Letters by Kirk Johnson

Eight or Nine Words About Letter Writing by Lewis Carroll

In the Gallery

The mail show is up!  Write On: Going Postal in the Age of E-mail is on display through February 6.  Come enjoy this varied collection of mail – old and new – and send some of your own.

Envelopes and postcards by Pamela Gerard, Kelly Pocci, Fane Jones, Kevin Jones

For more information about the show, check out this interview in the Bellingham Herald, or this article in the Cascadia Weekly.  If you're local, the latest copy of "What's Up" magazine also features a great piece by Marie Biondililo.