Importance of sound
Life is made meaningful through the five senses present in human beings. The experiences that people go through are facilitated through the senses that enable people to decipher the messages contained in the sounds that they hear. Seeing and hearing are touted as the most fundamental and can only be compared to food and water, the most basic human need.
The sonic impressions created by hearing do to a greater extent help in determining visual impressions that are created by sight. Sounds, together with images have been developed and they form the basis of the creative arts sector in many countries. Just as hearing comes top among the senses, music is ranked above all other arts. Art uses both visual and sound impressions. However, sound has proven to be more powerful over visual images in the world of art.
From birth, human beings use sound qualities and later on during gradual maturity use the expressive qualities found in speech and music to familiarize themselves with the qualities of life. The invaluable experiences offered by music and other sound qualities help in human development and self-discovery through communication.
In the long history of human development, one of the most important factors that have characterized that development is the concept of sound. Is has been one of the crucial deciding factors in the development and advancement of society as well as its sustenance in the dynamic world. Many cultures including Indian and Vedic have myths that seek to explain the mysterious nature of sound.
These myths explore the existence of the soul before the existence of the earth and how sound developed after the universe came to exists. In Indian culture, for instance sound was regarded highly that it is classified as one of the characteristics of ether, one of the elements of nature. They ancient Indians believed that sound pervaded everything. The existence of sound in the world is crucial to the creation of perception and presence that determine the shape of the world. Sound according to Thompson creates perception, emotional, spiritual, and psychological spaces (50).
Through the above elements, understanding within ourselves, the environment and between human beings is enhanced. Communication too is enhanced through sound and space. On the same note, the importance of sonic space and the experience that it creates in everyday human life comes to the fore. In the middle of the sonic experience is the space and human beings. This presents a complicated relationship that intensely involves the audible domain and the visceral involvement with architects of sonics that work on structures to transform space to a sonic experience.
There is a unique articulation of space and place in the interactive sound environment that are helpful to human brings in their efforts in engaging with the immediate environment. In the experiment for instance, a subtly performative medium done in an immersive environment will help transform the space to a sonic experience effectively casting the listener as a creator and performative agent.
An important point to note is the characterization of interactive environments like walled rooms by an interface that aids in triggering sonic material from the axial coordinate location of an interactive agent within an architectural space. The triggering may be done by direct triggers like objects including wall boxes, floor pads and light beams.
The sound is generated and recorded and plays itself out regardless of the morphology of the person interacting with them. This is possible because the sonic content of objects installed with fixed morphological structures that are acquired when samples of the sound are generated and recorded.
There is a variance on interactive input because of the collage of objects that are used in the experiment and they provide a direct relationship between the qualities of the interactive gestures and the sonic outcomes. Perhaps the most important role that sound plays in the development of human beings as well as the day-to-day lives is the nurturing of emotion. Through sound, human beings are able to learn and feel emotions while attaching meaning to them.
Emotions help transform human beings to social beings capable of feeling. After learning emotions, human beings use the sonic arts to communicate the emotions to fellow human beings in their quest to have corresponding real life experiences. An emotional being through socialization is transformed to a social being. The preservation of quality sounds reinforces sound integrity to ensure human beings get the best of the sounds that we use and those that we get through music and other sonic arts. The social being is developed through the sounds he/ she hears.
It’s important to note that there exists a wide variety of sounds that help human beings to develop full social beings. It’s also important to add that it helps when human beings are exposed to various sounds because it helps the above said development.
To ensure that quality sound is made and is available for human social development, recording was introduced. Recording was a big step in the development and storage of music and quality sounds that help human beings develop. Through recording relationship between sound and space and there are numerous sonic transformations that can be achieved.
There is more to the projection of sound into space than meets the eye. Space is more than a container for sound. Sound has the ability to define space through the creation of metaphorical walls. When sound happens in space, there is a regular process that helps waves traverse the distance between the source and the ear.
An important element in this relationship between sound and space is the existence of a common structural design that can be referred to as architectonics. This experiment will address the behavior of sonic qualities of space as well as the spatial characteristics of sound. It’s helped that through the experiment, the important role that sound and/ or silence plays in giving space its sonic qualities will be brought out.
Throughout time, there have been sonic and spatial constructions that have been useful in defining places in time. They will also be looked at albeit briefly to underscore the importance they played in the transformation of space to a sonic experience. The literature and experiment will be dedicated to the explanation of sound and space applications that include architectural creation of sonic spaces, landscapes and sculptures.
Sonic space
The acoustic coloration can be described as the sonic space. The sonic space is crucial in how people hear and perceive interact with sound in their environment. Particularly important especially in the experiment is the human interaction aspect with sonic space.
Human interaction with space can be primitive or cultural and emotional. Human beings primitively gather raw sonic data for instance reverberation and echo. Additionally, cultural and emotional sonic interaction with space evokes higher cognitive processes in human beings.
It’s important to recognize the importance of sonic space in the virtual worlds. In games, for instance there is realistic sound simulation that brings the Foley effects, atmospheric sound and sound effects. Additionally, sonic space enhances the emotional aspects of a scene through narration and music. Sonic space in games brings out the realistic sound simulation that includes dialogue. The experiment’s main objective of transforming space to a sonic experience can be used to enhance information communication and education.
According to Wade, the interaction between human beings and sonic space is more than just a primitive reaction to the environment. The process involves the use of raw data gathering abilities which are largely primitive, perception which are also primitive characteristics of higher cognition and high impact listening that are also part of higher cognition. The illustrations that follow will demonstrate this in a room environment that will form the wider context of the experiment (46).
Source: Landy, Leigh. What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music?: Organized Sound too Rarely Heard. Chur, Reading: Harwood Academic Press, 1991. Print.
This is primitive raw data gathering in a room environment. There is also perception which is primitive raw data gathering and higher cognition in a room environment as illustrated below.
Source: Landy, Leigh. What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music?: Organized Sound too Rarely Heard. Chur, Reading: Harwood Academic Press, 1991. Print.
Finally, there is high-impact listening that involves higher cognition in a room environment. Sonification mainly deals with the use of non-speech sound. It’s important to look at some of the difficulties that are experienced in the use of non-speech sound to convey information. Interference between different dimensions of sonic space and the cognitive overload are some of them.
Some of these problems can be alleviated incorporating some of the background functions into sonic space. For instance, the problem may be solved through association of data size with sonic space instead of dimensions like pitch or loudness. A particular importance of the experiment will be a demonstration of the potential that exists in using sonic space to help in the learning processes in visually impaired learners.
Sound and space
According to LaBelle and Roden sound cannot exist on its own without space (34). Additionally for sound to exist, it needs architecture and sight. The examination of the relationship between sound and space was first mooted by the ancient Greeks. The experiments conducted by the Greeks sought to investigate the behaviors of sound in different space settings.
The unique behaviours that sound exhibited in these different space settings was the main content of the investigations they carried. These early researchers came up with the premise that the relationship between sound and space was utterly dependent on architecture. This relationship was vividly captured in the ideas and works of Vitruvius when he sought to control sound in theatres. A concrete conclusion that was reached by these researchers was that sound and music had an explicit linkage to architecture underlain through the harmony of the universe.
Of special importance however was the relationship that exists between sound space and place and their linkage to transforming space to a sonic experience. Presence of bodies and movement aids in the realization of the existence of space. In the experiment, one will discover that sound is a temporary medium that needs careful analysis to uncover its properties.
Through the use of psychoacoustics, reverberation is analyzed to bring out the information on size of the sonic environment. The presence and active participation of the human mind in this experiment brings to the fore the ability to envision and discover the source of excitation while determining the fine qualities of the materials used in case boxes.
The above is possible when one considers reverberation together with timbre and attack. The concept of morphology is brought back through its entrenchment in the sonic recording of the audio sample.
It’s important to note that the recording that will be involved in the sonic transformation of a space is interactive in nature and does little to condition the response hence the exact nature of the interaction is produced at the external reference. It therefore does not reflect the participants’ experience and cognition rather that of natural rules of sonics. The need to mould the environment therefore through the use of architecture in order to condition the interactive experience arises.
Sound and space could not be understood without the use of architecture that was crucial in developing harmonic properties of sound as well as the mathematical impressions of sound and music. The ancient researchers also did conclude that site and sound existed simultaneously and that the relationship could be examined through the listening experience. Their joint existence can fall within the social presence context or private experience context.
In terms of acoustics and resonance, site and sound do determine their development where one of them is characterized as a receiver while the other is characterized as a transmitter. The above explanation by the Greek researchers of sound and space concluded that space is crucial in the controlling, deadening, reflection, and destruction of sound.
There is a lot of architecture that goes to designing and developing areas where people live for instance in cities and quiet parks. That therefore means there can be a deliberate generation of sound to alter space. Similarly, one can shape space to manipulate sound to a negative or positive effect instead of reducing or deadening or eliminating it.
Besides the perception capabilities that human beings display toward sound, they can also create and destroy both sound and space. When designing space, architects are mostly concerned about the acoustic factors that will affect the spaces they design.
Acoustics
One of the concepts that come out prominently in the relationship between sound and space and sonic is acoustics. According to Ripley et al, every room has a sound. In any room, sound waves experience reflection, absorption, and dispersion (45). This is done by the boundaries the physical contents like furniture and the people present. It’s important to note that different rooms have different sounding formats. The sounding is determined by the size, geometry and the materials that are used. More importantly, their acoustic behaviour is more critical to the sounding of the room.
A connection between acoustics and sonic transformation will be necessary in the experiment in its quest to transform space to a sonic experience. No doubt there is a lot of architecture and other fine details that go into transforming space to fit acoustics. While this experiment has little to do with acoustics, the sonic gestalt that is involved considers sound as a unique media that is an internal artifact.
According to Thompson sound penetrates the body and it’s very difficult for anyone to use it in a concrete way to come up with anything far from appeasing emotional experiences. According to Smalley, this “slippery” nature of sound is referred to as surrogacy.
The sonic transformation of space in this experiment is will operate on the principle of remote surrogacy with the assumption that when the listeners will be hearing the sound from the materials on the wall, they will involve their cultural and environmental experiences to find meaning. In other words, the experiment will mainly concentrate on the production of sound in a room space with different materials.
The materials in a room or space will be crucial in the transformation of space to a sonic experience and a good understanding of the dynamics involved in acoustics will help shed some light on the concept and help in explaining the effect of space and sound. Size, geometry, diffusion, and absorption describe acoustics in the most basic terms. Acoustics is all about eliminating resonances by ensuring reflections of sound disappear through absorption and diffusion.
In their quest to improve sound quality, acousticians try to modify rooms through architectural designs that greatly alter sound in rooms especially theatres to fit the purpose. However, it is imperative to highlight that the sound source is also a factor in determining the quality of the sound experiences in a room.
More often than not, acoustic engineers and architects try to dampen the rooms in order to improve the sound of the reflection. Sometimes it is successful while at times it flops badly. Sound quality in a room is mainly determined by the material used. Every material possesses a vibration character. This is more critical in the reflection of sound waves, perhaps more critical than the absorption and dispersion coefficients.
To achieve the best reflection, engineers struggle to match the mother of tone to the character of the reflecting material. The mother of tone is ideal because it is the same benchmark that is used by the human body in its regulation of vibration of ears and generally, bodies. It’s against these that all sounds that are meant for any human being are evaluated.
Size
Resonant frequencies are mainly affected by the size of the room. These cavity models of the room signify that a few of frequencies will be higher or louder than all other frequencies available. For instance, a sub hoofer that normally has low frequencies is designed to activate and excite the cavity modes present in rooms.
The cavity modes or frequencies of a room can only be changed through alteration of the size or its volume that is more or less the size. The objects that will be used in the experiment will be of different sizes to fulfil the intentional purpose of producing several sounds.
Geometry
Direction of sound reflections in a room is determined by the geometry of the room. On the other hand, the geometry of the room is determined by the angles and the positioning of the walls as well as the floor, ceiling, furniture and any other physical object in the room. Any new entry into a room changes the acoustics of that particular room. It is important to note that the commonest reflection happens between parallel rather than perpendicular walls.
Materials
The materials that make up the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room as well as the materials of the furniture and any other physical objects greatly determine the acoustics. Understanding into these individual material properties will need a macro understanding of the individual materials on the physical features of a room.
Concisely, the acoustic properties of a material in a room are determined through the amount of sound that is reflected by that particular object. The amount of sound is determined by the absorption coefficient. Also determining the acoustic properties of a material is the direction the reflection takes which is determined by the dispersion or diffusion coefficient.
The physical objects that are capable of creating and sometimes destroying sound and the acoustic energy that fills the air are some of the major aspects of sound. Both scientific and aesthetic ways, the relationship with the environment and the circumstances that surround someone determine who gets to hear what.
Perhaps the relationship between space and sound is better captured through the demonstration of an empty house and that is already furnished. An empty house demonstrates acoustic harshness that is not pleasant to the ear at all. Sound in occupied houses is more soft and accommodating than the former.
The different surfaces from different objects that are present in the house help in the refraction and softening of the sound giving a soothing acoustic. According to Pallasmaa, different spaces and buildings display varied characteristics of attractiveness, feelings, intimacy, monumentality, harshness, invitation, or rejection (58). The above characteristics signify either hospitality
The features described above come in hand in the achievement of acoustics of a room. They are also important in the transformation of space to a sonic experience. The different objects that will be used in the experiment will spot various measurements of the features that will directly impact on the sound they will produce. Of importance is the morphology and timbre of the objects that will be placed to act as the sources of the sounds that will aid in the transformation of the space to a sonic experience.
Acoustic engineers
Given the importance of space in this transformation, it’s only important to understand how the human element through architecture influences electro-acoustics that are directly linked to the space-sonic transformation experience.
The human effect on sound and space is mainly captured through the architectural element that is directly related to sound and space. People have come up with designs that manipulate sound to achieve the sound qualities that they want. The creation of Symphony Hall marked the beginning of an acoustic era dominated by technology.
This technology enabled architects and acousticians to have greater control of over sound. The Symphony hall is still regarded as the first ever, modern science inspired creation that clearly captured the effect of human beings and space on sound. It’s important to note that there are many symphony halls and their workings are basically the same.
One critical factor that comes up in the human effect on sound on space and the incorporation of architecture into the study and understanding of sound is the materiality of the objects used. Reverberation is determined by the frequency dependency of the powers of sound absorbing by the materials used in architecture. Within the materiality concept, the barriers that aid in minimizing noise pollution in buildings and construction came up.
According to Wade, human beings have largely been responsible for the manipulation of architecture and space in the cities to introduce a completely new concept of soundscape (56). The use of space has ensured the resonation of the cities, echoing, muffling, and the isolation of all the urban sounds creating a new dimension of soundscape.
Urban designers and planners have responded by planning every building in the cities in specialized and differentiated ways. Determination of the openness of the streets, planting of trees and the specification of materials for different surfaces has been carefully considered in the use of space to control sound. Due to the relative easiness through which architects can make predictions on the reverberations, the acoustics of the inside of buildings have been easily controlled and their spaces only reflect the acoustic qualities that their owners prefer.
Wade says that human beings are perceptive creatures as well as active creators of sound and space. The acoustic space that is designed by architects is the primary concern when designing structures. Human beings are increasingly capable of manipulating the soundscapes of buildings through advanced architectural designs. In this advanced manipulation of sound contexts, architects have sought to understand the effect of spatial sound. With the advancement in technology brought about by the industrial revolution, people started modifying and measuring sound.
Scientific study of sound enabled acoustic engineers and acousticians to manipulate microphones and amplifiers and loudspeakers together with the electrical signals that sound devices used. The discovery of sound production through electronics redefined acoustical phenomena using electronics rather than architecture. Acousticians could easily study and understand the behaviours of sound thanks to the advanced technology.
According to Labelle and Roden, the sounds that are present today are because of technological mediation that is as a direct result of the manipulation by engineers and architects. Control of the behaviors of sound is no longer the mystery it used to be (132). Many more materials used in the generation of sound have been developed together with numerous electro-acoustic devices that have helped greatly in the understanding of acoustics.
The development of the electro-acoustic and other techniques of manipulating sound have led to the production of both intended and unintended consequences. These noises include radio broadcasts, music concerts, and motion pictures with soundtracks that have become popular with people. It’s important to note that it is the need to control sound behavior and a culture for listening that have driven both the architectural and technological developments in acoustics.
New worries about noise that is as a direct result of human being manipulation of the sound space led to the desire by acousticians to control the sound in specific rooms where performances were held and that were important in producing acoustically correct music. Furthermore, the desire to eliminate all unnecessary sound was informed by the need to achieve efficiency in acoustics.
According to Ripley et al control of acoustics by architects and engineers was seen as a way of enabling these musicians exercise choice in a world filled with all kind of aural commodities (89). This developments helped producers and other acoustically interested people to determine what constitutes good and acceptable sound and to determine how and what it took to achieve it.
The gradual development of the relationship between sound and space led to the reformation of the principles that define it. There was gradual dissociation of sound from space to an extent that the relationship became non-existent. The development of sound absorbing structures and the instruments that produced their own authentic acoustic sounds diminished the relationship between sound and space.
It is safe to conclude that the architectural bit has became a little differentiated and now concentrated on the development of either good structures or instruments that produce acoustic sounds according to the preference of the listeners. Reverberation was a direct creation of architecture that necessitated its creation. It was always a function of the room size, geometry and the materials of the surfaces of the objects in the room. These factors together controlled the production of acoustic sound for long periods.
It is therefore with relief that products that can produce acoustic sounds can be made and reverberation is just a form of noise that does not need to be controlled to produce acoustic sound. Directly related to architecture and human effect is the phenomenon of the sound transformation. The experiment on the transformation of space to a sonic experience can be said to be a miniature of electroacoustics that has been necessitated through architecture. Through the objects in a room is the creation of timbre development from basic one basic sound texture to another.
The fundamental concept here is the timbral metamorphosis which is more or less the transformation that space goes through to become a sonic experience. Though there may be numerous transformations that take place to form one sonorous gesture, an analysis of one is enough to illustrate the point since the process is repetitive. It’s important to note that there is considerable manipulation of the sound source which in this case will be the objects placed in the room to generate the morphology of the source to create a sound transformation to a sonic experience.
Conclusion
Throughout the paper both direct and indirect literature and details of transforming space to a sonic experience have been dealt with. The explanations have sought to explain the settings that this particular experiment will use to transform space to a sonic experience and how concepts like acoustics relate to the sonic concept.
In so doing the paper has in significant proportions concentrated on architecture and the role it plays in acoustics and sonic transformation. Additionally, there is substantial information relating to the projection of sound into a space and the cognitive characteristics of human beings that are necessary for a sonic transformation to be complete.
In so doing, a number of scholars and their works on sonic transformation and the metamorphic process involved in the process have been used and cited. The process and the finer aspects involving transformation of space to a sonic experience have been explicitly examined. It’s therefore hoped that the information presented in the paper adequately explains the experiment that seeks to transform space to a sonic experience.
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