Schizophonia

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Rinnakkaistallenteet Filosofinen tiedekunta

2019

Schizophonia

Uimonen, Heikki

Artikkelit tieteellisissä kokoomateoksissa

https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-sage-international-encyclopedia-of-music-and-culture/book243395

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Schizophonia

Sound reproduction has transformed music cultures and the discipline of ethnomusicology irrevocably. Canadian composer and pedagogue R. Murray Schafer introduced the concept of schizophonia to characterize not only the detachment of sound from a given place but also to describe its effects in changing sonic environments. The concept has raised different opinions and criticism among researchers but, so far, it has not been contextualized historically as part of the environmental awareness movement of the 1970s.

Schafer launched the concept of schizophonia first in his book The New Soundscape (1969) and later included it in a glossary of soundscape terms in The Tuning of the World (1977). The concept is composed of the Greek words schizo (split) and phone (voice, sound), referring “to the split between an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction.” According to Schafer, original sounds are part of the mechanisms that produce them, unlike their electroacoustically reproduced copies, which can be “restated at other times and places.” Schafer introduced the concept to dramatize this effect of 20^th-century technological developments.

Drawing from Schafer’s ideas, the demarcation line between an original sound and its electroacoustical reproduction is seemingly in the moment when the sound is being detached and finally, when it is being played or when energy is increased to sound by means of electrical amplification. If this is considered to be the yardstick for schizophonia, it leaves out mechanical sound-reproducing technologies, such as phonograms and gramophones. Furthermore,

electronically-created sounds should be excluded, since they do not exist in acoustic environments.

Schafer was inspired by communication theorist Marshall McLuhan, whose maxim “the medium is the message,” refers to media that affects society not only by the disseminated content, but also by the characteristics of the medium, and how media can be understood as an extension of a man. McLuhan described a literate man as schizophrenic due to the invention of the phonetic alphabet with its ability to abstract meaning from sound and to translate sound into a visual code.

Accordingly, Schafer reasoned that, originally, all sounds were unique and occurred at one time in one place, only being tied to the mechanisms that produced them. With transmission and storage of sound, any sound or combined sounds can be moved, amplified, packaged or recorded for the future generations, giving sound an existence that is independent from its source. With recording technology, any sound can be detached from its source and attached to any number of new contexts, thus, any sonic environment can become any other sonic environment. Schafer’s somewhat disillusioned conclusion implies that even if a record or tape collection contains items of diverse cultures and historical periods they might seem meaningless to a person from any century but our own. However, this notion contradicts his actions in the World Soundscape Project (WSP), founded to research, document and archive diverse sonic environments with appropriate indexing and contextual metadata.

Schizophonia should be evaluated in historical, political and pedagogical contexts.

Environmental consciousness, including noise problems, has been on the rise since the 1960s, and when Schafer invented the concept, the time was ripe to criticize the then popular, commercial background music, or ‘moozak,’ as characterized by Schafer. The word was most likely inspired by the American company Muzak, distributing background music for different commercial purposes.

Also, rock music and its allegedly loud performances were unsuitable for Schafer’s notions of aesthetically-pleasing or healthy sonic environments.

So, the concept of schizophonia can also be understood as a commentary on restating sounds at other times and places per se, but more likely as a critique of the reckless use of electroacoustic sounds in different environments and public places. Schafer aspired to advocate awareness and create principles for improving the quality of sonic environments. Educators can use intentionally provocative and polemic schizophonia for pedagogical purposes in reaching these goals.

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Technologies have an effect on people’s perceptual abilities within a given society.

Schafer’s thinking resembles philosopher Walter Benjamin’s ideas of how a reproduction of a work of art lacks a presence in time and space. However, Schafer does not share the optimism of

Benjamin, for whom the reproduction makes it possible for anyone to encounter a work of art anywhere and anyplace.

Schafer’s notions of reproduction, removing sound from its original context, carries

questionable assumptions about the nature of sound, communication and experience as criticized by Jonathan Sterne. If human, face-to-face communication and bodily presence are the evaluation criteria of communicative activity, then sound reproduction lacks some of the qualities of

interpersonal interaction. Because of this, sound-reproducing technologies have a disorienting effect on the senses, which are grounded in bodily experience, while before the invention of sound-

reproduction technologies, the body was whole and undamaged. Furthermore, this implies that modern life is disorienting and that a subject is whole only when it is unmediated by technology.

Sterne also criticizes the assumption that that sound-reproduction technologies function as

instrumental in, but not as substantive parts of, social relationships. Thus, focusing on differences between sources and copies moves the attention from ‘processed’ to ‘products.’

Ethnomusicologist Steven Feld evaluates schizophonia in relation to discourses and practices of World Music, and links it to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the reproduced work of art becoming the work of art designed for reproducibility. Music technology has empowered

traditionally powerless people and strengthened local music practices. However, the transformation from representation to reproduction creates a new network for social organization. This new context helps focus critical awareness on the process of splitting, as well as the status of the ‘copy’ and

‘authenticity.’ Schizophonia cannot be understood as a major transformation in the history of technology, but as practice. Thus, Feld introduces the concept of schismogenesis in order to

describe “progressive mutual differentiation” that can be found in issues such as musical ownership, fandom and musical styles.

Another concept inspired by Schafer’s term, but differentiating itself from the scholarly legacy and connotations of schizophonia, is ‘transphonia.’ It describes the processual nature of restated sounds, particularly when studying the reception of music. Transphonia refers to

mechanical, electroacoustic and digital storing, moulding, reproducing and transmitting of sounds, and most of all to past and current music performance practices in light of multiple individual and social meanings compared to the original contexts of the sounds. Thus, compared to the pre- phonographic era, music today can have multiple meanings depending on where one listens to it.

Heikki Uimonen

Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki

See Also: Acoustemology; Acoustic Ecology and Soundscape.

Further Readings

Breitsameter, Sabine. “Schafer’s and McLuhan’s Listening Paths – Convergences, Crossings &

Diversions.” Soundscape. The Journal of Acoustic Ecology. Crossing Listening Paths, v.11/1 (2011). http://wfae.proscenia.net/journal/scape_16.pdf (Accessed November 2014).

Feld, Steven. “From Schizophonia to Schismogenesis: The Discourses and Practices of World Music and World Beat.” In George E. Marcus and Fred R. Meyers (eds.), The Traffic in Culture:

Refiguring Art and Anthropology. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995.

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McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962

Schafer R. Murray. The New Soundscape: A Handbook for the Modern Music Teacher.

Scarborough, Ontario: Berandol Music Limited, 1969.

Schafer R. Murray. The Tuning of the World. Toronto: McCelland and Stewart Limited, 1977.

Sterne, Jonathan. The Audible Past. Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham and London:

Duke University Press, 2003.

Uimonen, Heikki. Ääntä kohti. Ääniympäristön kuuntelu, muutos ja merkitys [Towards the Sound.

Listening, change and the meaning in the sonic environment]. Väitöskirja [Dissertation]. Series:

Acta Universitatis Tamperensis, 1110. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2005.