Paranoia, from the icon to the ear: a reflection on soundscape, landscape and cityscape

ABSTRACT

“Clinging to the remnants of visual space in this new acoustic age has become a kind of a paranoiac state”, Marshall McLuhan wrote to R. Murray Schafer in 1974. In an analysis of twentieth century transformations of spatial concepts and specifically, of 1960s and 1970s ideas of soundscape, this essay tackles the multiplicity and interdisciplinarity of ideas relating to soundscape. The text is accompanied by recordings from an acoustic camera, where the sounds of hands, voice and piano were traced on the walls, floors and ceilings of different spaces, in an attempt to explore the anxiety and relief inherent in images of soundscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Soundscape
• landscape
• cityscape
• soundsphere
• acoustic camera

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Viktoria Tkaczyk and the “Epistemes of Modern Acoustics” Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin for hosting me as a visiting scholar in March 2017 and in December 2018, as well as Jeffrey Huang, Anton Rey, Andres Bosshard and Matthias Brechbühl for making possible the acoustic visualization workshop at ZHdK in Zürich in 2015, where this research evolved in the framework of the SNF-funded Sinergia project “Towards an alliance between performing arts and scientific research”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Marshall McLuhan to R. Murray Schafer, 16 December 1974, Letter reproduced in: Molinaro, McLuhan, and Toye 1987, 508.

2. Jonathan Sterne criticises both McLuhan’s model of endless connectivity by means of radio waves and Schafer’s belief in the unmediated authentic of a landscape of soundmarks and keynote sounds.

3. In 1889–1890, Appia worked with “the father of light” Hugo Bähr, from whom he learnt techniques such as carbon-arc devices, projections and other lighting effects, which he would later use in his own theatre designs.

4. Carl Williams in his essay preferred the term “auditory space”, relating to perception rather than to the electro-acoustics. Yet, Williams contribution in the fourth edition of the journal Explorations, was not titled “Auditory Space” but “Acoustic Space” (Williams 1955). Disagreements between editors and author went as far as a second publication (Carpenter and McLuhan 1960) without mention of William’s name or original contribution (Geiser 2010, 323–326).

5. Carpenter’s explorations in the Canadian ice desert were a decisive influence.

6. Translation by the author of “Mit einem McLuhanschen Akzent hieße das: Das Medium ist die Gesellschaft, die Gemeinschaft der Stimmen in der ursprünglichen Sonosphäre ist die message selbst” (Sloterdijk 1993, 75).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabine von Fischer

Sabine von Fischer, architectural historian, architect and writer, is affiliated researcher at ETH in Zürich. Her doctoral thesis in architectural history and theory addresses the nexus of architecture and science in twentieth century architectural acoustics. Her writing has been featured in journals, newspapers and academic editions. She has taught and lectured internationally. The topics of her talks have ranged from sound photography to Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP and repeated exile, and the rhetoric surrounding loudspeaker amplification in the competition for the League of Nations headquarters in Geneva, 1927. The latter is also part of her book “Das akustische Argument. Wissenschaft und Hörerfahrung in der Architektur des 20. Jahrhunderts” (von Fisher 2019). In 2018, her essay “A Visual Imprint of Moving Air: Methods, Models, and Media in Architectural Sound Photography, ca. 1930” was awarded the Founders’ JSAH article award.