listening to the city: vibrating together
27 May 2017the past two days, iāve been a part of the listening to the city conference that was co-hosted betwen colab, the design studio for social intervention, and la listens. similar to my experience at the bridging health & communities conference, i was surprisingly engaged with the content. there were a number of phrases that sort of blew my mind:
- āsonic hegemonyā ā kenny bailey (heretofore called kenny for short)
- āthe racialization of soundā - kenny
- āwhat does utopia sound like?ā - wendy hsu
- āatmosphere politicsā - kenny
- āthe thundering silence of suburbia made me unable to sleep after moving from taipeiā - wendy
- the idea of attunement
- āpracticing the cityā ā jess myers
- āaesthetically uncomfortableā
- āā¦ask very hard questions and take very rude positionsā¦ā - james baldwin in the artistās struggle
iāll probably be reflecting on those and other thoughts/insights shared (or that i had) over the next few days.
something that shaw pong liu said during the opening conference session sort of blew my mind. paraphrasing:
making music together is vibrating together and thatās part of working towards understanding each other.
that string of ideas is amazing. all sound is vibration. making music together is vibrating together. vibrating together is learning how to be together and in sync. learning how to be together is good for our society. for shaw pong, making music together is one way to help our society by supporting people to learn how to be together.
mind. blown.
ps - thereās something here about audio work (radio, audio storytelling), too. podcasting and audio work is blowing up these days. i have a hunch that thereās something about the nature of that communication medium that has something to do with a desire to be more connected. the vibrational nature of audio just literally makes us feel more connected than reading text.
pps - one of the other presenters, daphne carr, in her session called muff the police talked about noise and showing the below chart (well, a different one, but i couldnāt find an easy link). i donāt really understand it, but the fact that this graph is about sound waves and has a line on it labeled āthreshold for hearingā makes me think about sound can literally be a feeling and how that relates to how we understand each otherā¦ hm! maybe for another postā¦
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