Theatre and Aural Attention

Stretching Ourselves

George Home-Cook

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137393692
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Historia y crítica teatrales

Theatre and Aural Attention investigates what it is to attend theatre by means of listening. Focusing on four core aural phenomena in theatre – noise, designed sound, silence, and immersion - George Home-Cook concludes that theatrical listening involves paying attention to atmospheres.

1

Paying Attention to (Theatre) Noise

We tend to assume that we pay attention to sound(s) whilst doing our best to ignore noise. Yet, this familiar distinction between listening as a straightforward attentive ‘act’ and hearing as the passive sensation of sound necessarily shrouds the phenomenal nuances of aural attention as process. For example, as I write I hear the heard-yet-unseen sound of children playing next door. Whilst I am aware of the level of sound that these children are producing, I do not, or rather try not to, attend to this sound as such. I try to force myself to attend only to the task of writing. Yet, although my intention is to block out the sound altogether (to listen, if you will, to the sound of nothing), such an act of complete dis-attention proves to be a near-impossibility when the sound field is so ubiquitously shot through with the sounds of children at play. In fact, when I reflect further, what I am actually trying to do, considering how difficult I am finding it ‘to hear myself think’, is to listen out intently for my thoughts as they momentarily and haphazardly pop into view within this sonic barrage. Whilst I experience this sound as ‘noise’, in the typical sense of a loud, disturbing sound, I nevertheless attend to this sound event as it clamours for my attention. The phenomenon of ‘noise’ thus provides an effective, if surprising, means of investigating the embodied dynamics of (aural) attention.

The aims and foci of this chapter are inherently interwoven. In the broadest of terms, this chapter pays particular attention to the phenomenon of ‘noise’, both in the sense of sound of any kind, as well as ‘the sounds we have learned to ignore’ (Schafer 2004: 34). Moreover, in subjecting the phenomenon of noise to phenomenological scrutiny, I demonstrate that the commonly held distinctions of listening versus hearing, attention versus distraction, and signal versus noise, are less certain than we might otherwise assume. Our central concern here, however, is with the phenomenology of theatre noise. The phenomenon of ‘noise’ not only offers a useful means of initially exploring the nuances of aural attention, but serves as a vector for constructing a theory of theatrical attending. By paying attention to (theatre) noise, this chapter not only invites us to reconsider theatre’s ‘aural phenomenology’ (Brown 2010a: 138), but also begins to construct an initial theoretical framework for an analysis of theatrical attention, thus laying the theoretical, critical and methodological foundations of this book.

‘Perhaps the time is right to entertain noise rather than exclude it in, to listen to what it has to say’ (Brown 2005: 119; sic). Inspired by this proclamation, I will listen a little more closely to that much maligned, though omnipresent, sonic attention seeker – the mobile phone. Whilst it is perhaps far-fetched to state that the sound of a mobile phone is a noise par excellence, it is equally an oversimplification to describe the ringtone, at least in perceptual terms, as pure signal: a ringtone may be wanted in some situations and very much unwanted in others. Perception is always contextual and whether or not we perceive a sound as being a disturbance or interruption depends on a complex range of factors, including the degree of congruity between the incursive sound event and the phenomenal particularities of the existing sonic environment. There is, as we shall see, a great deal more to the sound of mobile phones than meets the ear.

The purpose of this chapter, however, is not to provide an in-depth investigation of the status of mobile phones in the theatre auditorium; rather, it uses the anecdote of the mobile telephone as a central point of reference for an initial consideration of theatre and aural attention. Paying attention to the seemingly irrelevant, unintended ‘noise’ of mobile phones in theatre not only enables us to sound out the phonic, but also to consider the role of (aural) attention in the manifestation of theatrical experience. The title of this chapter, Paying Attention to (Theatre) Noise also refers to the practice of listening ‘phenomenologically’ (Ihde 2007: 43). By listening phenomenologically we can learn much about the specific ways in which listening as a mode of attention phenomenally shapes perceptual content.

Listening to listening

We tend to think of ‘listening’ as being straightforwardly and diametrically distinct from ‘hearing’. The phenomenon of attention, moreover, would appear to lie at the very heart of this distinction.¹ Nevertheless, and as this chapter’s opening example makes clear, whilst listening undeniably entails a sense of attentiveness, the distinction between listening and hearing is not as dichotomous as we might readily assume:

Is listening more attentive than hearing, or is it the other way around? Both possess an active sense; neither can be consigned entirely to passivity. (Toop 2010: x–xi)

As an initial means of exploring the nuances of aural attention, I now take a closer look at three theories which especially shed light on the relationship between listening and attention, namely, those of Roland Barthes, Michel Chion and Barry Truax.

Roland Barthes proposes ‘three types of listening’:

According to the first, a living being orients its hearing (the exercise of its physiological faculty of hearing) to certain indices [...] This first listening might be called an alert. The second is a deciphering; what the ear tries to intercept are certain signs [...] Finally, the third listening [...] does not aim at [...] what is said or emitted, but who speaks, who emits: such listening is supposed to develop an inter-subjective space where ‘I am listening’ also means ‘listen to me’. (1986: 245–246)

Taxonomies of listening inevitably overlap. For example, Barthes’s notion of ‘first listening’, namely, ‘that preliminary attention which permits intercepting whatever might disturb the territorial system’ (1986: 247; emphasis added), closely corresponds with Michel Chion’s notion of ‘causal listening’, namely, ‘listening to a sound in order to gather information about its cause (or source)’ (1994: 25). In turn, Chion’s concept of ‘causal listening’ closely resembles Barry Truax’s concept of ‘listening-in-search’ (2001: 21). Similarly, Barthes’s notion of ‘deciphering’ is synonymous with Chion’s ‘semantic listening’ in which, as he explains, listening ‘is purely differential’ (1994: 28). Chion’s third category, ‘reduced listening’, is, however, more distinct: reduced listening ‘focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning’ and ‘takes the sound – verbal, played on an instrument, noises, or whatever – as itself the object to be observed instead of as a vehicle for something else’ (1994: 29). Furthermore, Chion’s concept of ‘reduced listening’ in many ways corresponds closely with what Don Ihde has described as the practice of listening ‘phenomenologically’, that is, to carry out ‘a “reduction” to listening’ (2007: 49, 42).

To listen phenomenologically is to adopt a particular mode of attention that ‘singles out’ the sonorousness of a particular sound or sonic percept. I shall return to the practice of conducting a phenomenology of listening at the end of this chapter. For now, let one thing be clear: attentiveness and the act of listening are inseparably interwoven – whether we ‘focus’, ‘grasp’, ‘ignore’, ‘zoom in on’, or attend phenomenologically to the sound(s) that we perceive, to listen is to pay attention. One of the most important attempts to arrive at a theory of listening-as-attention is that advanced by Barry Truax.

‘The traditional assumption,’ writes Truax, is ‘that listening involves full attention’ (Truax 2001: 22).² Yet, as he goes on to point out, ‘whilst this defintion may apply to foreground listening, it ignores the subtler process [of listening]’ (2001: 22; emphasis added). In an attempt to address this, Truax proposes ‘three “levels” of listening attention’ (2001: 21 ff.). First, there is ‘listening-in-search’, whereby the listener engages in an acute mode of attentiveness in order to single out an aural percept within a wider sonic context (see Truax 2001: 21). Then, there is ‘listening-in-readiness’, an intermediate mode of listening in which ‘attention is in readiness to receive significant information, but where the focus of one’s attention is probably elsewhere’ (Truax 2001: 22). Lastly, there is ‘background listening’, where ‘sound usually remains in the background of our attention’ (Truax 2001: 24).³ Sounds that lie in the background ‘may be singled out for our attention if the need should arise, but normally they aren’t specifically noticed’ (Truax 2001: 25).

Truax’s model of aural attention, however, only goes so far. What, for instance, are the perceptual and attentional nuances engendered by different modes or ‘levels’ of listening? Martin Welton has suggested that ‘[w]hat distinguishes the activity of “listening” from the generic faculty of “hearing” is not simple sensitivity but the assumption of an active relation to its object, or at least a readiness for this’ (2010: 50). Yet, what does this ‘active relation’ or ‘readiness’ toward sound consist of, how is the ‘activity’ of listening motivated by the world within which we are phenomenally enmeshed, and what role does the act of listening play in the process of shaping perceptual content? Answers to these questions remain sorely lacking. In an attempt to redress this and to bypass the semantic potholes engendered by the listening/hearing binary, I suggest that we begin to reconsider (aural) attention in dynamic terms. In proposing this, I draw from the groundbreaking work of P. Sven Arvidson, to whom I am indebted.

[T]he fun begins in the moment that we realize attention is essentially dynamic [...] Although there is always thematic attention, contextual consciousness, and marginal consciousness, the shape of each of these dimensions and the connections between their contents can change substantially and radically in the process of attending. (Arvidson 2006: 56; emphasis added)

What happens when we begin to describe the attentional dynamics of listening as ‘process’ and what might we learn about the phenomenology of theatrical attention by examining the dynamics (or ‘process’) of attending theatrical sound? What precisely is ‘noise’ and what is it to experience, or ‘to pay attention to’, noise in the theatre? To this I now turn.

Paying attention to noise

‘Noise’, as David Hendy has recently pointed out, is typically defined as sound that is ‘out of place’: noise ‘is usually unwanted, inappropriate, interfering, distracting, irritating’ (2013: viii). More explicitly, we tend to think of the notion of ‘noise’ as being in diametric opposition to that of ‘sound’: noise is ‘not sound, not music, not intelligible signal’ (see Kendrick and Roesner 2011: xv). This negative association is not only ancient but etymological, ‘noise’ stemming from the Latin nausea, meaning ‘a feeling of sickness’ or ‘sea-sickness’.⁴ Nevertheless, and as the philosopher Michael Serres suggests in the following passage, whether defined in its material incarnation as a phenomenon of sound, or, metaphorically, as interference, noise is inescapable:

There is noise in the subject, there is noise in the object. There is noise in the observed, there is noise in the observer [...] There is noise in being and in appearing. It crosses the most prominent divisions of philosophy and makes a mockery of its criteria [...] It is in the real, and in the sign, already. (1995: 61)

There is thus ‘noise’ even in noise. In sonic terms, for example, the notion of noise is tinged with contradiction. Noise can be experienced both negatively (noise as annoyance) and neutrally (noise as sound of any kind). Moreover, whilst noise may well be the ‘evil twin’ of sound, these siblings often look so alike that we can get them mixed up (see Brown 2011: 2). ‘[A]ll of the meanings ascribed to sound [...] might be also noise in certain circumstances: that annoying department in theatre (the “noise boys”); the hell of “fun” ringtones; the anodyne blandness of Miles Davis cloying your ears whilst you’re trying to think; mobile phones “going off” in the theatre’ (Brown 2011: 2). Thus, to some extent, noise is relative: one person’s noise is another’s music. Whilst noise tends to clamour for our attention, it is paradoxically a phenomenon that also remains, unnoticed, in the background.⁵ Yet, in today’s extraordinarily noisy world the distinction between ‘signal’ and ‘noise’ is eroding and, as a consequence, ‘noise’ is increasingly becoming more meaningful, indeed, significant:

The air around us, it seems, is no longer a reliably transparent medium for sonic signals. It has become saturated with noise to such an extent that the distinction between ‘ground’ and ‘figure’ has become uncertain [...] Music can be part of the subjective experience of noisy, environmental randomness; and that same everyday randomness can itself be taken as music [...] This mashed up soundscape of possibility is the liquid atmosphere in which the human post-industrial subject is immersed. (Brown 2010a: 1–3)

In this passage Ross Brown draws our attention to the interconnection between ‘soundscape’, immersion and the notion of ‘atmosphere’. These broader concepts concerning the phenomenology of aural experience are not only highly complex, but require substantial reconsideration, and will be critically explored in Chapter 4. For now, however, I want to focus on the notion of sound as ‘possibility’: as opposed to attempting to quell, exclude or ignore noise, we must begin to explore its possibilities. How does noise capture our attention and what might we learn about the phenomenology of listening-as-attention by paying attention to ‘noise’? There is perhaps no better place to find answers to these questions than in the theatre.

Paying attention to theatre noise

Despite its etymological association with the act of ‘seeing’, theatre has always been an art of sound-ing: no theatre without noise.⁶ Recently, the notion of ‘theatre noise’ has been used to develop a broader model of sound in performance.⁷ This trend, in many respects, reflects the ways in which the distinction between ‘sound’ and ‘noise’ is increasingly being called into question. ‘Theatre noise’, nevertheless, might be said to refer to two seemingly distinct, yet phenomenally interwoven, aspects of theatrical sound as experienced. On the one hand, and in the more technical sense, it refers to theatre sound design, that is to say, the intended or designed sonic component of any given theatrical presentation, or what is often, and somewhat problematically, referred to as the theatre ‘soundscape’.⁸ On the other hand, theatre ‘noise’ might be said to refer to the totality of aural affordances (whether designed or otherwise) that exist, or rather that are sensed, within any given theatrical environment. This chapter is centrally concerned with this latter conception.

The question of noise in theatre

As the bustling theatres of Shakespeare’s day strikingly attest, theatre has not always been a hallowed place of silent attendance. Indeed, ‘[t]he notion of noise in theatre as interference is relatively new’ (Kendrick...