Doing Research in Sound Design

Michael Filimowicz, Michael Filimowicz

• Publisher: Focal Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000375190
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Acoustical Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Doing Research in Sound Design gathers chapters on the wide range of research methodologies used in sound design. Editor Michael Filimowicz and a diverse group of contributors provide an overview of cross-disciplinary inquiry into sound design that transcends discursive and practical divides.

The book covers Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods inquiry. For those new to sound design research, each chapter covers specific research methods that can be utilized directly in order to begin to integrate the methodology into their practice. More experienced researchers will find the scope of topics comprehensive and rich in ideas for new lines of inquiry.

Students and teachers in sound design graduate programs, industry-based R&D experts and audio professionals will find the volume to be a useful guide in developing their skills of inquiry into sound design for any particular application area.

1 Sound design thinking

Vincent Meelberg

DOI: 10.4324/9780429356360-2

1 Introduction

Sound design is a practice that is as much art as it is science. Sound design involves academic study as well as creativity. Other forms of design also have this mix of art and science, but the obvious difference is that sound design works with sound rather than with other materials. And because of the specific characteristics of sound, such as being both temporal, spatial and vibrational, aspects such as communication, relationality and interaction become perhaps even more important in sound design that in other design disciplines that work with materials other than sound.

It could even be said that sound design is a practice in which such aspects are constantly reflected upon. The practice of sound design involves the thinking and rethinking of the manners in which relations are formed, interactions are stimulated and communication is established. And this thinking is done through working with sound. In this sense, sound design is not primarily a practice that thinks about sound. It does not focus specifically on what sound is, or wat it can be or on how sound should be used in particular situations. Nor is it a practice that only tries to come up with solutions to problems using sound. Instead, sound design can be considered a practice that explores phenomena through sound. Sound is used as a means to reflect on issues related to interaction, communication and relationality. Put differently: sound design is a form of sonic thinking.According to Bernd Herzogenrath (2017), sonic thinking is a thinking with and by means of sound, not a thinking about sound. Herzogenrath asserts that sound is not a knowledge about the world, coming to you only in retrospective reflection, but a thinking of and in the world, a part of the world we live in, intervening in the world directly. And this is exactly sound design’s potential: to examine, reflect on, and intervene in the world by means of sound.

In this chapter I will explore the possibilities of approaching sound design as a form of sonic thinking. First, I will discuss the role design thinking plays in sound design. Design thinking denotes “[…] the ways of framing, approaching and addressing challenges that characterize design” (Dalsgaard 2014, p. 144). According to Nigel Cross (2011), design thinking constitutes a third paradigm of inquiry besides science and the arts. As opposed to other academic disciplines, a problem is not first formulated and then answered. Rather, Peter Dalsgaard (2014) explains, “[t]he design problem is not given, it is developed through the first stages of designerly inquiry” (2014, p. 150). He furthermore adds that, “[a]t its core, design is an interventionist discipline that seeks to bring about change by developing and staging artifacts and environments that alter how we perceive and act in these volatile conditions” (2014, p. 148). This conception of design thinking resembles sonic thinking, in that both are interventionist in nature.

Next, I will focus on sonic thinking and sketch its possibilities. I will address questions such as: How can one think in a sonic manner? What does it mean to think sonically? What kinds of knowledge can sonic thinking generate? I will then relate the outcomes of this inquiry to the practice of sound design that I developed earlier in this chapter in order to conceptualize sound design as a practice of sonic thinking. Finally, I will outline the potentiality of approaching sound design as sonic thinking. I will assert that this approach may provide new possibilities to study those phenomena that sound design generally tends to deal with: interaction, relationality and communication.

2 Design Thinking

Design thinking is a term that refers to the activities specific to the act of designing. As I explained in the introduction, Peter Dalsgaard (2014) uses the term design thinking to denote the ways of framing, approaching and addressing challenges that characterize design. Design thinking thus is not a purely mental activity, but an act in which the entire body is involved. Design thinking is not limited to the planning stages of design, but happens throughout the entire design process, from inception to the completion of a project.

One of the reasons why thinking is incorporated into the entire design process is because, in design, theory-practice and reflection-action are intertwined, Dalsgaard explains:

Designers’ actions yield input for ongoing reflection and their reflections in turn shape ongoing actions to resolve design problems or open up new design opportunities. Designers draw on theories and preconceptions to scaffold their inquiries into design problems and these theories and preconceptions can be transformed, enriched or discarded over the course of time on the basis of how well they scaffold design practice. Theory and practice are thus closely interrelated in design.

(2014, p. 145)

Through practice ideas and design strategies are tested, and during this practice new ideas may emerge. This is why design is also characterized by emergence and interaction: “Throughout the process, the design space—i.e., the arena in which the designer acts—undergoes changes. This ongoing development is influenced by reciprocal interaction between designers, stakeholders and the various components of the design space” (ibid.).

Designers interact with the people who have commissioned the design, with those who will use the design, with the materials the design will consist of and with environment the design is supposed to function in.

It is because of its interaction with the environment that design is situated and systemic, Dalsgaard explains: “The fundamental concern in design is overcoming a ‘hermeneutical gap’ between the existing situation and the product of the design process and between designers’ current understandings and the crystallization of ideas and concepts embodied by the product itself” (ibid.). Each situation calls for its own solution, and it is impossible to apply fixed procedures to a design problem. As a result, design is experimental in that solutions to design problems can only be found during the design process itself, trying out whether certain option will or will not work.

Design thinking is a search for design solutions, which at the same time is “[…] a way of revealing the design situation” (Löwgren and Stolterman 2004, p. 22). By engaging with an environment through design thinking the characteristics of this specific environment will be uncovered, which is necessary in order to find appropriate design solutions. Referring to Donald Schön, Jonas Löwgren and Erik Stolterman (2004) assert that designers ask questions of the situation through actions or “design moves” rather than words. As a consequence, design is simultaneously reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action; the problem and the solution have to evolve in parallel. Design is a conversation with the situation and at the same time a practice of experimentation where designers “[…] have to be good ‘listeners’ and ‘readers’ of the situation” (Löwgren and Stolterman 2004, p. 21). Löwgren and Stolterman therefore conclude that a designer is a researcher “[…] exploring the reality that constitutes the design situation” (2004, p. 30).

Cross (2011) adds that design thinking is abductive, i.e., design thinking suggests that something may be. It is an act of producing proposals or conjectures. Designers make proposals for solutions that cannot be derived directly from the problems, and the particular design that is the result of the process of design thinking is just one of many possible ways to deal with the design problem. Referring to Schön as well, Cross maintains that “[…] design is an interactive process based on posing a problem frame and exploring its implications in ‘moves’ that investigate the arising solution possibilities” (2011, p. 23). There is hardly ever just one “correct” answer to a design problem.

In order to cope with a complex design process, Löwgren and Stolterman (2004) explain, a designer needs to externalize the actual design thinking through representations such as sketches, drafts and models. Cross adds that “[s]ketching provides a temporary, external store for tentative ideas; supports the ‘dialogue’ that the designer has between problem and solution” (2011, p. 12). As design thinking entails an ongoing conversation between designers and the situation, representations function as tools for thinking. Via external representations designers enter into a dialectical process between the design situation and possible solutions.

Designers thus think via the creation of external objects. As a consequence, design thinking is a form of thinking though the materials used to create these objects. In this sense design thinking resembles artistic research, which also is a thinking through the material, as Krien Clevis (2016) asserts. In artistic research, too, situations and states of affairs are questioned and investigated through the creation of artefacts. In doing so, questions concerning what the material does and what it brings about are addressed. Clevis (2016) calls this practice “the making of material arguments.” She points out that art can create worlds by using specific materials, and that a place can be transformed into a new place by using the power of the imagination as well as the performativity of the materials used in the artwork. Again, this is similar to what is done in design thinking, which, as I explained in the Introduction, is an interventionist discipline that creates artefacts in order to incite change and transformation as well.

The parallels between artistic research and design thinking do not stop here. Henk Borgdorff (2012) asserts that knowledge in art is pre-reflective, non-conceptual and non-articulated, other than via the production of art. Schön (1983), for his part, points out that much of our knowing, including design knowledge, is ordinarily tacit. It is implicit in the way we do things. Our knowing is in our action, and often it is very difficult, if not impossible, to put this knowledge into words

Maurice Merleau-Ponty arrives at a similar conclusion in his description of the manner in which an organist plays his instrument:

There is no space for any “memory” of the position of the stops, and it is not in objective space that the organist in fact is playing. In reality his movements during rehearsal are consecratory gestures: they draw affective vectors, discover emotional sources, and create a space of expressiveness as the movements of the augur delimit the templum.

(1962, p. 145–146)

The knowledge the organist has regarding his musical performance is conveyed via this very performance, and this knowledge does not come from memory or the brain, at least not primarily. Rather, the knowledge is in the very gestures that the organist makes. And one of the main aims of artistic research is to make this knowledge explicit, to understand and to communicate the knowledge enclosed in artistic experience and practice.

Again, the similarities between artistic research and design thinking are obvious. Artistic research helps implicit, tacit artistic knowledge to become shared and discussed by others, to make the implicit explicit in a convincing and clear manner. Design thinking, in turn, is reflection-in-action. Designers are “[…] reflective practitioner[s], with the ability to act and the ability to reflect in and on [their] actions” (Löwgren and Stolterman 2004, p. 64). And when someone reflects-in-action, Schön (1983) suggests, they become researchers in a practice context. During the process of design they construct new theories that pertain to the specific case they are working on. In conventional design situations these theories often remain implicit. Design thinking may become actual research when these theories are articulated and communicated in other ways than the resulting design itself.

Sound design practices generally also involve design thinking. Sound design can be regarded as a form of reflection-in-action as well. Sound design includes a mode of thinking that happens though the materials used to create sound designs, and the material sound designers work with is sound. As a result, design thinking in sound design is a thinking that happens through sound.

3 Sonic Thinking

What does it mean to think through sound? It is not merely thinking about sound, what sound is, or can be and what one can do with sound. Yet, this is also what sound designers do. Thinking through sound, however, encompasses more than that. Thinking through sound, or sonic thinking, is a thinking with and by means of sound, not a thinking about sound. Sonic thinking, Bernd Herzogenrath (2017) asserts, is a thinking of and in the world, as sound is a part of the world we live in, intervening in the world directly. Sounds, as events, can cause other events. For instance, sounds can change the character of an environment, the manner in which an environment is experienced by its inhabitants. Also, sounds can create vibrations in other materials, including the bodies of humans.

Sounds are events that have the potentiality to intervene, but they are also themselves effects, Christoph Cox (2017) explains. Sounds are the results of physical causes. Sounds thus have a causal relation with the event that produced them, but are also distinct from these causes. Consequently, sound is at the same a memory, a result of an event that has already happened. But sound is also a memory because it has the capacity to recall the characteristics of the world it has traveled through (Carlyle 2017). Sound changes because of the environment in which the sound is produced, and thus carries traces of that environment.

Furthermore, sound implies a future. To hear a sound, Aden Evens (2017) suggests, is to hear a motion. This motion is full of stories and promises, as it began at a certain point in time and continues to move for an indeterminate period of time. This motion cannot but be interpreted by those who are able to perceive it. The future of sound, Evens (2017) asserts, is heard in its tensions, tensions that never fully resolve but only create more and less sympathetic vibrations and resonances, as well as expectations that will be either met or not. And, as I explained elsewhere (Meelberg 2006; 2019), it is the interplay of tension and resolution that is responsible for the narrative potentiality of sound.

Sonic thinking, Cox (2017) points out, follows this flow of motions, of vibrations, of tensions and resolutions created by what we call sound. This implies that sonic thinking is temporal, as sound is a temporal phenomenon itself, being a flow of motions, a sequence of vibrations. Furthermore, sonic thinking is spatial, because sounds need space in order to exist. Moreover, sound changes the space it sounds in, just as sound carries characteristics of that space and is thus changed by the space in which it sounds.

This suggests that sonic thinking is situated. Just as design thinking, sonic thinking is specific to the particular environment and time in which this thinking takes place. The materiality of the situation in which a specific noise propagates is crucial, Holger Schulze (2017) maintains. Therefore, sonic thinking involves a description and analysis of the specific material and physical situation, which, Schul...