Sound Research WIKINDX
Sound Research WIKINDX |
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 Parameters |
| Lastra, J. (2000). Sound technology and the American cinema: Perception, representation, modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. |
  
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 13/03/2006, 09:16 | |
| "Rather than records of perceptually specific events, sounds here are signifiers of an absent, but inferred, narrative." | |
| Discussing Hollywood sound technician George Lewin writing in 1931, technicians recorded characteristic effects for stock sound to be used for dubbing purposes. For Lastra, this is symptomatic of the move from the fidelity of the original to a constucted representation of reality. "Sound space, no longer theoretically defined by the passive perceptions of a securely located (and physically real observer), is now shot through with the hierarchies of "dramatic" relationships." | |
| "Decades of tin-sheet thunder and coconut shell hooves prove ... that fidelity to source is not a property of film sound, but an effect of synchronization." | |
| In a section discussing the idea of sound representation, the 'original sound' and the theories of Williams, Leven and Altman as opposed to those of Baudry, Metz et. al., Lastra states: "...given a particular "original," [sic] it is impossible to predict what any copy will sound like..." and uses this as a justification for the theoretical worthlessness of the "original". Lastra takes Edison's view on the function of the original: it's not meant to be heard by anyone, it is "one stage of a multistage representational process." p.128 | |
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"...not only are technological form and development intimately related to reigning aesthetic norms, they are at times in conflict with them as well." Discussing a dialectic between technology and aesthetic and/or practical context. This chapter is about "the heterogeneous nature of technology and the local and contingent nature of ideological determination." -- they are symbiotic. |
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| "Vision and hearing are the senses that, as a consequence of nineteenth century innovations, have been most fully penetrated by technology and that have, reciprocally, shaped sensory technologies to the greatest degree." | |
| Semiotic signs (indexical signs apparently) can be used to trick and hoax people. | |
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As an example of the heterogeneous nature of, or the dialectic relationship between, technology and aesthetics, Thomas Edison's choice of recording artists is presented. Where other companies chose artists of public reknown (e.g. Victor had Caruso), Edison chose unknown singers whom, he claimed, had voices better suited to (the characteristics of) his phonograph. This meant no tremolo, enunciative clarity, pure unadulterated tone. Performers wishing to be recorded came to realize that, in some cases, they must adapt to the technology. Lastra decries the equation of the microphone's passive listening to the notion of the camera's click -- an absolute duplication -- and argues for the term 'representation' rather than 'recording' when dealing with both image and sound. It is impossible to separate process from performance -- hence the dialectic between technology and aesthetics. See notions of phonogeny (Chion 1994, pp.101–104) |
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| A digression into the "illustrated song" popular from the 1880's (still images - slideshow) to the 1890's/1900's (still + moving images) where the image was subordinate to the sound yet audiences still expected a good match (Lastra refers to this as a form of synchronization) between image and sound. Also, "travelogues"/lectures with spoken voice over scenic images. | |
| Points out that many early attempts at synchronizing image + sound required the image/performance to be fit to a pre-recorded soundtrack. | |
| Discussing trends in sonic accompaniment to 'silent' films: instead of picking out every single visual cue and rendering it as a sound effect (as some did), performers were increasingly encouraged to foreground just one or two visual cues within a hierarchical visual space that itself was dominated by a conception of narrative. Thus, in cinema, did sound become subjugated to image through the teens and 1920's. | |
| Discussing the development of sound recording in Hollywood 1926-34, describes the notion of the 'invisible auditor' with an experience similar to that of a listener in a concert hall (able to discriminate every nuance of sound) -- hence close boom miking (to provide this discrimination but seemingly incompatible with the concert goer in the middle of the audience). | |
| With the development of talkies, sound engineers were forced to discard their goal of duplication sound on a shot by shot basis in favour of narrative continuity over several shots/scenes (e.g. unchanging background noise) and adopt a role as representors or constructors of sound/reality. Very different to music recording (at the time). | |
| As sound engineers adapted to the aesthetic demands of Hollywood, the concept of 'invisible auditor' (based on a concert hall listener) gave way to the 'ideal auditor' and a jettisoning of any attempt to faithfully capture the original sound. | |
| Lastra, J. (1992). Reading, writing, and representing sound. In R. Altman (Ed), Sound Theory Sound Practice. (pp. 65–86). New York: Routledge. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 03/03/2006, 13:09 | |
| Discussing the notion of an 'original' sound prior to recording and reproduction: "...the primary ideological effect of sound recording might be creation of the effect that there is an "original" independent of its representation." | |
| "Those aspects of a sound which mark it as authentic are never simply self-evident "attributes" of that sound. Only their inscription within a system allowing or requiring them to become perceptible gives them a semiotic import within that system. Thus, the supposed unique attributes of an original sound become significant and, to a certain degree, perceptible as such only through their constitution as signs -- precisely that which is not unique." | |
| ""real" space is simply not an issue for most images on screen -- their scale and angle are functions of narrative emphasis, not of more or less precise perception." | |
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Developing Altman's description of 1930s sound recording/representation development (spatial fidelity giving way to intelligibility): "A recording with a high degree of reflected sound, or some other indication of spatial signature, is linked to sound considered as an event, while closely-miked sound, with a relatively "contextless" spatial signature, is linked to sound considered as an intelligible structure -- as a signifying element with a larger structure." Although this is usually aplied to speech, Lastra points out that it also applies to sound FX. |
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| Here, Lastra is paraphrasing Chrstian Metz to whom what is important is the functional or narrative use of sound in film rather than whether a sound is authentic or not. "...what matters is the ability to identify the source of the sound. ...the sound event must be legible -- it must be recongnizable across a series of different contexts as a culturally defined signifying unit. Against the definition of sound as an essentially unrepeatable event, Metz describes sound as an eminently repeatable and intelligible structure." | |
| Makes the interesting point that, when discussing a recording of sound, much of our understanding of what that sound will be like is derived from assumptions (culturally and technologically derived) as to how that sound was recorded. The sound is therefore pre-structured for us before we get to even hear it. |