Oct./Nov. 1982 RAIN Page 27 vyis;.- / • isWi ■ Ir ■A' • I II l-ij. p impulses are speeded up beyond 20 occurrences of cycles per I second, they are fused together and are perceived as a continuous contour. Increased efficiency in manufacturing, transporta- tion and communication systems fused the impulses of older * sounds into new sound energies offlatline pitched noise. Man's I foot sped up to produce the automobile drone; horses hooves '' sped up to produce the railway and aircraft whine; the quill pen sped up to produce the radio carrier wave, and the abacus sped up to produce the whirr of computer peripherals. As the agricultural base changed the cities grew, drawing people in for employment, creating strangers and a place where communication was difficult. Nowhere was this more poignant than in the development of the working class, melded to the new machinery. Whereas before the sounds of people working was a blending of machin- i ery (hand tools), natural sounds and human sounds, in the industrial revolution the sounds of people were increasingly lost. As Lewis Mumford notes in Technics and Civilization: "Labor was orchestrated by the number of revolutions per minute, rather than the rhythm of song or chant or tattoo." The keynote sound of the church bell, and the visual symbol of unity in town and countryside, the church steeple, were replaced by the sound of machinery and the factory. Loud noises, associated in the past with the power of the universe (thunder, volcanic eruptions, etc.), could now be produced by factory owners. It is interesting to speculate whether the development of a working class and the imperialistic spread of the western industrial political power would have been possible without such noise. By control of the soundscape a few people were able to control workers; unity among workers was difficult to achieve. Working 16 or more hours a day, swallowed up in the sounds of industry, workers were isolated from one another and, in effect, frightened into submission by control of what Schafer calls "sacred sounds" — sounds that previously had only been manifested in war or through awesome natural events. THE MODERN SOUNDSCAPE One keynote of the modem soundscape can be heard in the internal combustion engine. Other keynotes, more subtle but equally pervasive, sound forth from electric current and electronic media. Although the sounds of industrialization continue, the modem soundscape is as much characterized by the random actions of millions of individuals as it is by the sounds of industry. Since about the time of the invention of the automobile we have, as individuals, been granted more and more noise-producing devices that have increased our ability to intmde on one another's private space. With the invention of the telephone, radio and televi- ...................... Natural Sounds Human Sounds The Sounds of Tools and Technology Primitive Cultures 68% 26% 5% Medieval, Renaissance and Pre-Industrial Cultures 34% 52% 14% Post-Industrial Cultures 9% 25% 66% Today 6% 26% 68% From: THE MUSIC OF THE ENVIRONMENT sion, sound was no longer tied to its original point in space, and with that change came industrial societies' increased capacity to dominate local cultures. We can now instantaneously create prepackaged mobile sound environments as well as electronically reproduced sounds. Indigenous cultures and their soundscapes are swallowed up by the displaced realities of "I Love Lucy" remns or recorded reminders of the current musical fads of western cultural centers. It forces one to wonder about the wisdom of Marshall McLuhan's concept of the "global village." The bombardment of "meaningless" sounds (i.e., sounds unrelated to us personally) is masked by adding new layers of noise. In modem architectural design, this new layer — called "white" noise — is considered essential, and the drone of radio and television serves as the poor-man's version of the same phenomenon. Rather than seeking new definitions of acoustic space rights, we have trapped ourselves in comers, isolated from each other, by manufacturing our soundscape without regard for the harmony of our actions. However much the din of a modem city is representative of the sorry state of the modem soundscape, it is at the edges of the city that the sound is most painful to endure. On the front line of growth and development one faces the incongruous blending of natural, mral and city soundscapes. The roar of the city has not evolved completely in such environments, so, while sounds are still distinguishable, they are often lacking in meaning and difficult to filter out. There is probably no more appropriate illustration of our modem soundscape than the person whizzing down an interstate glideway in an intemi-combustion-powered vehicle wearing earphones and enveloped in a soundscape that has been lifted and transported electronically, freeing him from any specific sense of the place he happens to be passing through.
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