Hearing in Particular: From Auraltypical to Auraldiverse Practice
- Submitting institution
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Goldsmiths' College
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 3451
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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-
- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Journal article, book chapter, site-specific installation, live work for six performers
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2021
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- The book chapter in this portfolio (item 2) is the final author’s version of the text. The book of which it forms part was due to be published in 2020, but was delayed by Covid-19. The contributing author agreement is dated 10 March 2017. The text was also presented as a keynote lecture at The First Aural Diversity Conference, University of Leicester, 1 December 2019. http://auraldiversity.org/conferences.html
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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M - Music
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- 60 years since Pierre Schaeffer’s call for ‘primacy of the ear’ (Schaeffer 1957) in music theory and composition, this research asks an ostensibly simple question: whose ear / aural perception is this now deeply embedded doctrine predicated on? The findings of this research, which are explored in full in two papers contained in this portfolio, demonstrate a tendency for tacit, and in some cases stipulated – such as in the field of acoustics (BS ISO 226:2003) – adherence to a specific audiometric profile. The research refers to this dominant episteme as auraltypical. Bringing audiology into the sphere of sound and music, Drever points to a growing agenda on hearing concerns in contemporary culture and argues for a new paradigm acknowledging hearing as a spectrum, freed from a singular, idealized and symmetrical model. Spearheading the concept of auraldiversity, he promotes openness to diverse forms of human hearing through creativity, whilst emphasizing the requirements of people with comparatively sensitive hearing (e.g. hyperacusis, tinnitus, misophonia, phonophobia). Steps are made to achieve this challenging proposition by developing participatory and inclusive practice that places the performers’ hearing, albeit diverse and for some, volatile, at the centre of the process. Here, two contrasting methods that share a theme on hand dryer noise are presented: Sanitary Tones: Ayre #2[Dan Dryer], a site-specific installation, and Ayre #3, a live work for six performers. Problematizing Alfred Tomatis’ concept of the audio-phonation loop (1963), in Ayre #2, ninety-eight different voices phonate recordings of Denmark’s Dan Dryer, projected via a multichannel generative spatial sound system in a cloakroom at a Danish nightclub. Ayre #3 was presented in the First Auraldiverse Concert, where aurally diverse performers phonated the sonic emission of a range of anechoically recorded hand dryer models and mimicked each other’s phonations, whilst moving round the performance space.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -