Individual and collective listening, embracing dissonance, manifesting our humanity, imagining alternative futures.

#skillshare #listeningexercises #dissonance #soundasgrowing

AGF's manual for individual and collective listening introduces several exercises, activities and short texts of varying difficulty and complexity. While primarily concerned with listening, our perception, and our openness and ability to hear, they also beautifully incorporate elements of individual and collective practice and imagination, thus going beyond what comes to mind when someone mentions “listening exercises.” 

A central idea here is that humans constitute the cells of one body, that we are all part of the same human body. These exercises aim to help us discover what this means for each of us individually, and for all of us collectively. We are all confronted with questions such as: What is collective listening? Does it even exist? If it does, can it help us overcome feelings of separation that seem to assault every single one of us (especially during the pandemic)? With AGF's guidance, we explore how our listening connects us to a deeper sense of self, to others, to our environment, and to our community. 

Drawing on the writings of Susan Bickford, AGF also links the practice of listening to an attitude of “openness,” to a state of mind which consists in “being open to” things. Feeling safe is a prerequisite for attaining this state of mind, and that's one of the goals of these exercises, especially the earlier ones. They are short in duration, not dependent on location, and help us to view our environment from a different, perhaps less confrontational, perspective.

Ultimately though, a big part of AGF's practice is concerned with imagining alternative futures. Here, things are no different: through the later sonic meditations and spatial home listening exercises, we are encouraged to confront and embrace the surrounding dissonance, to bear and hold on to the unacceptable. By embracing the #sonicwilderness and analyzing its potential, we might be able to start perceiving sound as a growing entity, initiating connections, growing into decentralized networks operating outside the gender binary. #soundasgrowing is about initiating collaborative practice, about exploring sonic realities and creating feminist technologies. 

Another dimension of letting the dissonance wash over us is letting go of our preconceived notions of what sounds good and - by extension - what is expected of us. The possibilities in this world are endless, but we are often restricted by the limits of our own imaginations. Creating, imagining, dreaming; those are fundamentally human attributes… In this era of mass corporations spoon-feeding us content they think we want while they exploit our physical and mental labor/existence, stifling our individual and collective imaginations is not just a random side-effect, it is one of their fundamental goals. If we are able to imagine alternatives, if we can dream of futures that seem outside the realm of possibility today, if we can create technologies and methods that don't conform to the status quo - these are actions that not only create possible positive futures for all of us (which in itself is a beautiful thing), but they also nurture the human in each and every one of us.

Adam Badí Donoval

#SONICWILDERNESS – MANUAL FOR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE LISTENING EXERCISES

Shadow listening

 … is the sun out

can you see your shadow?

can you sense the ghosts

hunting your edges

configuration of a nano swarm

time is the greatest of all warriors

listen to your shadows

how quiet it is throwing shade.

INTRODUCTION

This collection is a series of exercises, thoughts, drawings and animations to inspire experimentation and make for challenging listening. Enjoy!

“… when I reflect on the actual practice of listening, I cannot escape the concept of openness. I cannot describe what I am doing when I am listening without coming back to some version of “being open to”, just as “closedness” seems the invariable characteristic of not-listening.”

(Susan Bickford: The Dissonance of Democracy - Listening, Conflict, and Citizenship)

Openness is risky and scary and requires safety. This blog is about finding spaces of safety and exercising your listening alone and with others. 

1. Simple listening exercise, alone or together

find a safe spot

find a position to stay/sit/be still

close eyes

count to 36 

stop counting

listen

identify all sounds around you

consider all dimensions

360 ° {perception}

below/above

open your eyes

pick one of these questions and answer them:

what is the quietest sound?

what is the loudest?

which sound is closest, which furthest away?

what is your favourite sound of all of them?

is there rhythm?

is there a sound that scares you?

is there a sound which you can’t tell what it is?

{next level – for advanced music producers}

imagine all sounds with a reverb on

imagine a high pass filter

filter certain frequencies

check the pan effect

2. Two ears and two hands, alone

stay still and try to close your ears without moving 

just with your mind

most likely it is not possible

take your hands and close your ears, strongly

open, close them many times

now make a rhythm with opening/closing

this will work better in a loud environment

(if you are inside, play some music very loud noise music is best)

3. Inner listening and frequency massage, alone

4. Taking a walk, with others

walk

take small portable devices of your choice

analogue or battery-powered

carry small speakers, synthesizers, bells, tablets, phones

(see list below)

walk, discover

listen and search for objects

spaces to "play with"

gather around...

start exploring sonically

touch, stroke, hit, drum

hum, use your body

listen to each other

list of gadgets, technology and techniques to use:

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/sonicwildcode 

…

add ether pad of apps here:

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/soundapps

"…for Fanon, the listening practices of everyday life permit the subject not simply to resist massification but to construct a collective politics that manages to retain room for the individual's uniqueness.”

5. {sonic} TREEing 

a sonic meditation, listening exercise

sonification process

alone or together

the sonic meditation (treeing) on frequencies (in Hz), 

derived from Binti by @Nnedi 

and also tree-breathing by @real_mkk

find a safe space in a forest, park, backyard, playground

lean onto a tree

listen

imagine the roots, the stem and the sky connected

breathe with the tree

imagine the roots are a very low frequency

imagine the tree crown is a high frequency

singing, sounding, moving

make a mathematical assessment 

of the tree’s frequencies in Hz

where are the low, mid and high frequencies 

potentially flowing, where is the sound?

listen, imagine and 

meditate on the frequency

6. Spatial surround sound home listening exercise 

#soundasgrowing

if the score is the potential

of what can happen

a future possibility

think about sound GROWING

initiating connections

growing into decentralized networks

intersectional trans-corporeal-feminist

#sonicwilderness

collaborative practice

exploring sonic realities

and feminist technologies

BIO