*A FIELD GUIDE TO DISTRIBUTED SOUND*
This project charts multiple trajectories of the ear in a series of short essays. Collected together, this combination of text, image and sound is meant not simply to describe the experiences of the author, but to function instead as a kind of field guide – inviting and perhaps re-orienting future listening adventures.
Like most things in Las Vegas, the production of constructed sound is exaggerated and amplified. It is not formed from the passive acoustics of noise regulations mixed with the murmur of the contemporary metropolis. Instead, it is formed from speakers and wires. The sound of Las Vegas is an electro- acoustic one, it is built and programmed. Assembled from an endless playlist of songs and an equally endless sound system.
In this sense, Las Vegas represents an alternate approach to the history of sound and cities. Here, the distributed sound systems are woven into the fabric of the buildings and streetscape. In her thoughtful book The Soundscape of Modernity, Emily Thompson demonstrated how the acoustics of modernism were a search for a ‘perfect’ sound. This was a sound that isolated and reduced environmental sounds pushing in from the outside while it simultaneously predicted and controlled any unwanted resonances of the interiors. Perhaps it is in this acoustic calm, that the rowdy, yet still controlled sounds of programmed music and distributed sound systems were encouraged to flourish.
SLEIGHT OF VOICE
??Voices Without Bodies, Moving In Space??
A THRESHOLD LOGIC
??Monte Carlo Stereo And Sonic Doorways??
HALLWAYS IN MONO
??The Beginnings And Endings Of The Distributed Sound System??
MAZES AND FEEDBACK
??Circular Spaces And Repeated Listening??
MARGARITAVILLE, AGAIN
??Songs Become Places For Songs??
SOUND, FLOATING IN SPACE
??An Experiment In Listening??
A SPATIALIZED SOUNDTRACK
??The Cinematic Experience Of Listening In Motion??
SILENCE OF EGYPT
??The Quiet Of The Desert And The Imagined Voice Of History??
SHRUBBERY AND DAZZLE
??Hearing Camouflaged Sounds??
SONIC ORNAMENTATION
??Sound As Decoration??
ELEVATOR MUSIC
??Moving Boxes Of Sound, Heard From The Outside??
CONTINUOUS SOUND
??Is Sound The Glue For A Fragmented Metropolis???
PHANTOMS OF FREMONT STREET
??The Split Voice Of Stereo??
MASK AND RELEASE
??Washing Away Noise In The Sound Of Fountains??
VENETIAN VOICES
??The Divided Sound Of Venice??
PARKING THE CAR
??A Brief History Of Walking Through Sound??
SKIES AND HIGH SOUND
??Sounds From Above And Sounds From Below??
TORCH SONGS
??Walking Through The Voice Of The Sparrow??
REPETITION AND NAUSEA
??How To Stop Worrying About Distributed Sound??
ERUPTIONS
??Massive Shifts In The Auditory Landscape??
THE LOVE BROTHERS
??The Shocking Sound Of The Amateur??
LOGIC OF LIGHTING
??Trails Of Sonic Projections??
MOVING WALKWAYS
??Listening Regulated In Speakers Per Minute??
THE SPECIAL CASE OF THE BELLAGIO FOUNTAIN
??A Sensorial Gesamtkunstwerk???
SOUND OF CRYSTALS
??Acoustics Of Contemporary Architecture??
LANGUAGE TAPES AND GLACIER BREAKS
??Signs Of Sound And Sounds As Signs??
SONGS OF LONGING AND CHANCE
??Secret Messages Of Distributed Voices??
GUITARS IN AIR
??Unheard Music In The Images Of Sound??
SILENT SINS
??Sound Outside The Law??
CONCLUSION
??A Fade Out, A Fade In??
© 2019 Douglas Moffat
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