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Voice’s ambiances: expression, emotion and meaning. A
radio production
Cristina Palmese, José-Luis Carles
To cite this version:
Cristina Palmese, José-Luis Carles. Voice’s ambiances: expression, emotion and meaning. A radio
pro-duction. Ambiances, tomorrow. Proceedings of 3rd International Congress on Ambiances. Septembre
2016, Volos, Greece, Sep 2016, Volos, Greece. p. 111 - 115. �hal-01414067�
Voice’s ambiances: expression, emotion and
meaning
A radio production
Cristina PALMESE1, José Luis CARLES2 1. Paisaje Sensorial – Architectural Office, cristinapalmese@telefonica.net 2. Department of Music, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autó‐ noma de Madrid, joseluis.carles@uam.esAbstract. The growing interest on the subjective and sensorial aspects all
over the fields of knowledge and the development of the technologies that have changed completely our interpersonal and environmental relationships, the rise of new tools for analysis, recording, conservation and manipulation of data and, last but not least, the democratic setting and global availability of knowledge through Internet, impose another approach to the conception and experience of architecture. Here we present the first results of a work in progress specifically addressed to link various lines of research related to the study of human voice (its resonances, its context…) applied particularly to ‘in situ’ experiences in urban spaces. Our purpose is to analyse the meaning and expressiveness of voice as a way of understanding and apprehending the urban ambiance.
Keywords: walk, body, voice, movement, time, space, view, soundart, radioart
Introduction
This research is integrated into the study of the audiovisual dimension of architec‐ ture, as an intersensorial approach to space apprehension and design. Our aim is to develop new methodologies and tools that could take into account this complexity, as a contribution to the development of a project, by means of putting into evidence the sophistication of the relationship between man and his context and between man and media. The research moves us to the conviction that the quick and relevant changes that characterise these contemporary times all over the social, economic and political environments, involve, unavoidably, new ways of experimenting with and understanding space, and therefore, new trends of research.
Voice’s ambiances: voice and radio
This work is integrated into the Sound and space field of research, and particularly related to the study of the ability of sound to create ‘atmosphere’. In this regard, it should be noted that, although research about sound environment evolves slowly, it is no longer confined to isolated traditional disciplines as acoustics, psychoacousticsand audiology. Now it is merging with new disciplines that integrate art and aesthetics, with social sciences as anthropology, psychology or sociology.
There is a common consense about the need of interdisciplinary or rather, transdisciplinary approach to research but often this agreement does not correspond to a real application of this idea; the criticism of the Western schematic, quantitative and reductionist tradition, is maintained within the criteria of tradition itself, usually limited to a mere disciplinary and methodological juxtaposition that does not address the complexity neither facilitates the construction of a common language nor the achievement of common objectives.
If we consider the conventional division of time and space arts, it seems theoretically overcome but the different disciplines are confined to their own fields of knowledge, defending their own theoretical and methodological approaches and their own disciplinary identity. We need to get out of the traditional forms of knowledge, overcome divisions and conceptual schemes that do not correspond to our contemporary condition, exploring the complexity of its open, broad and varied development.
First of all, for us it is important to stress the importance of gaining access to understanding through our senses, considering our body, not as something defined, but as a flow of relations with the environment in which the human voice is a channel between interior and exterior, between sensory and perceptual‐expressive‐ communicative dimensions.
Our aim is to develop experiences that could provide access to knowledge through the direct experience of embodiment in space, leaving the metric‐quantitative schemes of the Western culture. That is why we want to test new tools of analysis and representation and also to innovatively use existing tools. According to this we propose using radio language as a tool capable of collecting and transmitting sensory experiences surpassing the visual‐aural, visual‐tactile, olfactory‐sound dichotomy… In this line of analysis some authors point out the connections between movement, body and action with knowledge. To Erin Manning, every Act is, in germ, a thought. It is therefore considered that a generative nexus still exists between action, perception and conception. The construction we make of our environment lies not only in our bodies but also in constructing our environment ; we not only house the body, we build modes of embodied experience and thought. So it is important to understand how language, as an element of transition between interior and exterior, qualifies our expression, our mood and is capable of modifying the environment in which it resonates and viceversa. At this point it is important to emphasise the significance of the political analysis and action adapted and connected with advances in the cognitive world. When we assume the existence of a connection between knowledge and body (movement and action), a new vision of approaching the political dimension opens, and with this a reflexion on the position and role of the knowledge in society and, more specifically, in the western society. Already the Situationist movement posed a deeply political analysis in its ‘derives’, openly questioning urbanism, considering it a tool of high class society and capitalist exploitation.
Part of the Situationist critique of modern capitalism involved assailing transfor‐ mation of the older sections of cities into ‘museums’ for tourist consumption (Debord, [1967]1994, #65; Situationist International, 1959). After the ideas of Baudelaire and Benjamin about walking (flâneur), situationism introduce for the first time, the urban walk as an aesthetic and political experience. In a more radical way, Constant, architect initially involved in the Situationist movement, proposed disorientation, not in the negative sense of lost or misplaced but in the positive sense of finding unknown paths. It’s an Interrupted process of creation and destruction, which Constant called the dynamic Labyrinth. Constant describes New Babylon, the anti‐capitalist city, as the point where nomadism and city are united in a unique endless urban labyrinth: ‘New Babylon never ends… The whole earth becomes a housing for its inhabitants. Life is an endless journey through a world that changes so quickly that every moment seems different.’ More recently, we find new proposals of sensory exploration of space. Exercises like walking become either an act of awareness of the sensory‐sound environment (Westerkamp), or a methodo‐ logical process of data collection, analysis, reception and diagnosis of urban space (Thibaud), or collective action with collective meanings of critical analysis of space (Francesco Careri, Walkscape, Adriano Labbucci, Camminare a rivoluzione, Donzelli, 2011).
Our work aims to pool several lines of researching (from acoustics to architecture, through language or the field of installations and actions of urban art) which can collect the complex interaction between man and environment through the human voice. Our approach is to experiment ‘in situ’ in urban spaces, working with aspects related to the meaning and the expressiveness of the voice. Voice and space have always been linked and their complex and fruitful interactions allow us to propose an exploratory process, with an analytical and critical treatment of a projective and dynamic character.
This proposal, builds upon the works done in the field of sensory architecture in recent years based on ‘in situ’ methods (Palmese, 2014; Palmese and Carles, 2016). Such procedures are based on creating cognitive connections between body, space, movement and action, and are not being considered in the actual paradigms and perceptive analysis systems, strongly influenced by the mechanistic tradition emerged in Euclidean geometry and Renaissance perspective.
We start from the hypotesis that the voice finally expresses the feelings and the body connections with the context. In this chain of interconnections around the voice and the word we want to discover the perception related to the prosodic and musical voice characteristics just as much as the communicational aspects and the derived meanings. Another perceptual aspect is one related with the perceived space in which the voice (physical, perceptual and cultural space…) is projected. We try to understand the verbal encoding process of the subjective sensation experienced as actions, perceptions, thoughts… that are, ultimately, generated and verbally expressed. Language, like space, is a form of produced social practice that is historically situated and dialectical to the social context, That is, both socially shaped and socially shaping. Since language is widely perceived as transparent, it is difficult
to see how it products (Blending Spaces: Mediating and Assessing Intercultural Competence in the Classroom. Trends in Applied Linguistics, Berlin, 2016).
A first result of this work in progress involved a Radio production. We propose specifically a research‐production on the nomadic condition of the man, narrated across his voice. We are focusing particularly on the dramatic topic of the refugees, nomadic by force, forced to leave their homes with empty hands. In this wandering around they leave behind their origins, their living spaces, their ancient customs with the risk of losing their identity and the culture’s richness that only remains in their memory. They can only try to survive in an anonymous and hostile environment that does not have memory or, rather, they prefer not having. The Radio production can be useful to interconnect thought and action, to create a documentary project that combines the real and the virtual, the concrete and the imaginary. It is placed in an aesthetic choice near the ‘concrete music’, which transform into sound the vital and subjective experiences, the contradictions and ambiguities both of the refugees and of the populations who receive them. We can access to opinions, memory, and information about the sensory space, using the material obtained from the Mass media. We explore the voice and its resonances, as carriers of ideas and meanings, like a linguistic and sensory culture that defines and constructs a sensory space. The voice, like the expression of abandonment and uprooting of a population forced to emigrate, claim of new manners to understand the nomadism and our relationships with urban space. In short, we work with the voice as the expression of the human condition. We want to listen to those who have a history to tell, perhaps our own history.
The radio format represents a challenge in order to adapt a media and artistic format for a data obtained from scientific procedures (surveys, interviews, case studies and the use of sound and video recordings). The use of the broadcast media is explained by different reasons:
Its capacity for creating imaginary worlds from sounds while allowing to reflect on the significance of this media, the first big media. So it might be useful to reflect upon contents and medium, upon representation and rep‐ resented.
From a historical point of view, it may be recalled Dziga Vertov, who before to be introduced into the image world, developed a sound project called Radio Ear (Radio Pravda). Vertov shows a fascination for a media able to reach to a great many people. This is a pioneering example of publicity (propaganda) through the sounds.
Attempt to integrate the sound and the resonances of the voice with the social practice, centred on social emergence like the migrant populations and in the receiving population. This project emerges from a fascination for the voice and the communica‐ tion across the audio technologies, to recover the historial trajectory of the radio as a place of emergence of the avant‐gardes in the field of concrete and electroacoustic music of the mid‐20th century.
The process of broadcast creation implies:
1) Population surveys in different countries (Spain, Italy, Greece, Sweden…) trying to overcome superficial opinions, escape from the prejudices or ba‐ nal and media overinformation. Trying also to deep on the European val‐ ues and feelings on the topic of emigration, nomadism, refugees, topic that is part of european present and past history, set out in art, music, cin‐ ema, literature…
2) Produce a Radio piece to be presented at the Ambiances Meeting in Volos (Greece)
3) Subsequently, the aim is to organise meetings with other groups and the establishment of a network about the political dimension of ambiance
References
Careri F. (2002), Walkscapes. El andar como práctica estética, Editorial Gustavo Gili Barcelona http://www.citechaillot.fr/fr/auditorium/ecosophies/26137‐ au_tournant_de_lexperience.htmlManning E. (2009), Relationscapes: movement, art, philosophy. MIT PRESS. CAMBRIDGE. 2009
Palmese C. (2014), Recorrido sonoro y multisensorial; con F.Careri, (Universitá Roma Tre), Monica Sand (Arkitektur‐och Designcentrum Stokolm) y Jaime del Val (Reverso , Metabody Proyect) en Congreso internacional Espacios Sonoros y Audiovisuales http://espaciossonoros2014.blogspot.com.es/
Palmese C. (2014), Sobre la identidad de la ciudad . El estudio de la interacción audiovisual en las nuevas herramientas para el proyecto. El caso de Cuenca. (doctoral These. ETSAM‐UPM).
http://oa.upm.es/33939/1/CRISTINA_PALMESE_1.pdf
Palmese C., Carles J.L. (2016), Audiovisual dimension of the architecture, Au tournant de l’expérience Conférence internationale Architecture & Philosophie, Cité de l’architecture & du Patrimoine Paris 11‐12 mars 2016 [9h30 ‐ 18h30] Rodaway P. (1995), Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place, Routledge London Thibaud J‐P. (2012), Ambiances en actions. 2a International Congress on Ambiances, Montreal
Authors
Cristina Palmese Ph D in Architecture (ETSAM. UPM MADRID). Specializing in Urban Project (Universitá Federico II Napoli). Expert in audiovisual architecture. Director of Paisaje Sensorial. (Architectural Office). https://urbanfluxus.blogspot.com.es José Luis Carles. Ph D in Ecology (UAM) Composer. Full Professor at the Interfaculta‐ tive Department of Music. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
