#soundscool

Welcome to all, thank you for coming back to my page. 

We are now over the hill in terms of this quarter. “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present,” a quote from the great Master Oogway. Yes, the same Master Oogway from the original Kung Fu Panda movie - but don’t let that take away from the meaning of the quote. Week 6 was so kind to gift me with being ill. 

Class update: This week was mostly work days in preparation for the week 7 project presentations. Consequently, the lectures I typically enjoy weren’t as thorough as previous weeks. 

This week’s readings were both from Douglas Kahn’s Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts. The first was about Alvin Lucier, an American composer, and his quest to make music with brain waves. A task that was beyond Lucier’s sole capability. To overcome this, the help of Edmond Dewan, a physicist and colleague to Lucier at Brandeis University, was employed. The impact of this duo on Lucier was near monumental as discussing Music for Solo Performer would not be complete without giving credit to Dewan. Their collaboration also facilitated the maturation of Lucier as a mature composure. The book provides an informative diagram of the venue set up which was helpful when trying to understand the nature and delivery of the composition. 

The second and final reading for the week was about the studies of Thomas Ashcraft. Being both an artist and a scientist, Ashcroft was fluent in the nuances of electroreception and frequency behaviors. Confirming the relationship between sound composition and science as the official theme of the week. Monitoring atmospheric activities with different frequency communications, Ashcroft must have been one of the few who could properly testify to the importance of sound (as well as other forms of frequency communication) in understanding our environment. This has been a running theme throughout the progression of this course. As we, humans, are innately biased due to our predisposition to use sight as our primary mode of world interpretation. Truthfully, there is so much yet to be done in the world of electroreception and frequency interpretation (both brain and radio). The more versersed I become in this field the more I see room for improvement and potential. And as a result, the more able I become to appreciate and admire the free thinkers who strived for this improvement.