Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-19T14:36:59.280Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Trevurr: A dialogic composition on dementia, auraldiversity and companion listening

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2021

Chris J. H. Cook
Chris J. H. Cook*
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
*
Email: ccook012@gold.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article details the rationale and creative process behind a collaborative – or more accurately in this case, dialogic – sound composition undertaken as part of research into the acoustic ecologies of people in the early stages of a dementia. Changes in abilities around hearing and listening are among the first symptoms of many types of dementia, making such auditory phenotypes an increasingly common part of lived experiences of sound. Following acoustic ecology practice in doing and presenting research in sound, and more specifically Steven Feld in doing so in dialogic or polyvocal ways, co-composition can be a way of exploring the particularities of others’ hearing, listening and sound practices, which is less reliant on the discursive frames of interlocutors and researchers. The process of making sound art together draws attention to particular sounds and experiences, creating dialogic situations of companion listening, discussion and mutual learning. It also provides a framework for engaging interlocutors in soundscape and ethnographic fieldwork methods. The composition discussed here, Trevurr, documents my time working with Trevor, a keen amateur musician in Cornwall who has mild cognitive impairment, and gradually comes to simulate his experience of hyperacusis in a piece of dialogic, auraldiversity-oriented composition.

Type
Article
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 26 , Issue 2: Socially Engaged Sound Practices , August 2021 , pp. 230 - 239
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Holquist, M., trans. C. Emmerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bell, D. M. 2017. The Politics of Participatory Art. Political Studies Review, 15(1): 73–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishop, C. 2004. Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics. October 110(Fall): 51–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishop, C. 2006. The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents. Artforum 44(6): 178–83.Google Scholar
Bourriaud, N. 2002. Relational Aesthetics, trans. Pleasance, S. and Woods, F.. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel.Google Scholar
Charles, J.-F. 2008. A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter. Computer Music Journal 32(3): 87–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clifford, J. [1986] 2010. Introduction: Partial Truths. In Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. E. (eds.) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, 25th anniversary edn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa Lopes, L., Magaldi, R. M., Gândara, M. E. R., Barros Reis, A. C. and Jacob-Filho, W. 2007. Prevalence of Hearing Impairment in Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment. Dementia and Neuropsychologia 1(3): 253–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, R. and Wright, C. 2012. Blurred Visions: Reflecting Visual Anthropology. In Fardon, R. and Gledhill, J. (eds.) The SAGE Handbook of Social Anthropology. London: Sage, 116–29.Google Scholar
Cox, R., Irving, A. and Wright, C. 2016. Introduction: The Sense of the Senses. In Cox, R., Irving, A. and Wright, C. (eds.) Beyond Text? Critical Practices and Sensory Anthropology. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, L. J. 1995. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Drever, J. L. 2015. Sensitive Hearing in an Auraltypical World. Sound Studies: Art, Experience, Politics. CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 8–10 July.Google Scholar
Drever, J. L. 2019. ‘Primacy of the Ear’ – But Whose Ear?: The Case for Auraldiversity in Sonic Arts Practice and Discourse. Organised Sound 24(1): 85–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drever, J. L. Forthcoming. Sound Art: Hearing in Particular. In Grant, J., Matthias, J. and Prior, D. (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Sound Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ellcessor, E. 2016. Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, S. 1984. Sound Structure as Social Structure. Ethnomusicology 28(3): 383–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, S. 1987. Dialogic Editing: How Kaluli Read Sound and Sentiment. Cultural Anthropology 2(2): 190–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, S. [1982] 2012a. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression, 3rd edn. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Feld, S. 2012b. Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Feld, S. and Brenneis, D. 2004. Doing Anthropology in Sound. American Ethnologist 31(4): 461–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, A. W. 1995. The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golob, E. J., Irimajiri, R. and Starr, A. 2007. Auditory Cortical Activity in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship to Subtype and Conversion to Dementia. Brain 130(3): 740–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gunaratnam, Y. 2008. Where is the Love? Art, Aesthetics and Research. In Chamberlayne, P., and Smith, M. (eds.) Art, Creativity and Imagination in Social Work Practice. Abingdon: Routledge, 13–29.Google Scholar
Hardy, C. J. D., Marshall, C. R., Golden, H. L., Clark, C. N., Mummery, C. J., Griffiths, T. D., et al. 2016. Hearing and Dementia. Journal of Neurology 263(11): 2339–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Holmes, D. R. and Marcus, G. E. 2008. Collaboration Today and the Re-imagination of the Classic Scene of Fieldwork Encounter. Collaborative Anthropologies 1(1): 81–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J. A. 2017. Expert Listening Beyond the Limits of Hearing: Music and Deafness. Journal of the American Musicological Society 70(1): 171–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Idrizbegovic, E., Hederstierna, C., Dahlquist, M., Nordström, C. K., Jelic, V. and Rosenhall, U. 2011. Central Auditory Function in Early Alzheimer’s Disease and in Mild Cognitive Impairment. Age and Ageing 40(20): 249–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Järviluoma, H. and Vikman, N. 2013. On Soundscape Methods and Audiovisual Sensibility. In Richardson, J., Gorbman, C. and Vernallis, C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 645–58.Google Scholar
Kester, G. H. 2011. The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Lassiter, L. E. 2005. The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makagon, D. and Neumann, M. 2009. Recording Culture: Audio Documentary and the Ethnographic Experience. London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Observations in Nature (2019). Sensory Trust and Potager Garden, Falmouth, dir. E. Robinson-Carter, 9 February–3 March (Exhibition).Google Scholar
Pitsillides, S. 2017. Conversation with Christopher Cook, 9 November.Google Scholar
Rouch, J. 2003. Ciné-Ethnography, ed. and trans. Feld, S.. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Rutten, K., van Dienderen, A. and Soetaert, R. 2013. Revisiting the Ethnographic Turn in Contemporary Art. Critical Arts 27(5): 459–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, A. 2013. Contested Grounds: Fieldwork Collaborations with Artists in Corrientes, Argentina. Critical Arts 27(5): 511–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterne, J. 2003. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sterne, J. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sterne, J. 2015. Hearing. In Novak, D. and Sakakeeny, M. (eds.) Keywords in Sound. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 65–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tkaczyk, V., Mills, M. and Hui, A. 2020. Introduction. In Tkaczyk, V., Mills, M., and Hui, A. (eds.) Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1–22.Google Scholar
Trinh, T. M. and Chen, N. N. 1992. ‘Speaking Nearby’: A Conversation with Trinh T. Minh-ha. Visual Anthropology Review 8(1): 82–91.Google Scholar
Vikman, N. 2002. Looking for a ‘Right Method’ – Approaching Beyond. In Järviluoma, H., and Wagstaff, G. (eds.) Soundscape Studies and Methods. Helsinki: Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology (Department of Art, Literature and Music, Series A, 51), 143–70.Google Scholar
Wallace, J., Wright, P. C., McCarthy, J., Green, D. P., Thomas, J. and Olivier, P. 2013. A Design-Led Inquiry into Personhood in Dementia, CHI 2013: Changing perspectives, Paris, 27 April. www.academia.edu/5095724/A_design-led_inquiry_into_personhood_in_dementia (accessed 15 June 2020).Google Scholar

DISCOGRAPHY

Feld, S. [1991] 2011. Voices of the Rainforest: A Day in the Life of the Kaluli People, 2nd edn. CD. Santa Fe: VoxLox.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karel, E. 2010. Heard Laboratories. CD. Seattle: and/OAR.Google Scholar
Ligeti, G. 2002. Lontano (1967). On The Ligeti Project, Vol. 2. Hamburg: Teldec Classics, 8573-88261-2.Google Scholar
Løkkegaard, N. L. 2014. Alto Recorder. On Sound X Sound: Music For 8 Recorders. Copenhagen: Hiatus, 010.Google Scholar
Milligan, S. 2014. The Last Boat Builders of Belfast. https://impulsivehabitat.com/releases/ihab099.htm (accessed 14 November 2019).Google Scholar

Cook supplementary material

Cook supplementary material

Download Cook supplementary material(Audio)
Audio 120.4 MB