1.) In Sterne’s introduction, “Hello!” he claims that “modern ways of hearing prefigured modern ways of seeing” (3), which seems logical to me. Nevertheless, it makes me question: How does seeing what is spoken affect our hearing/listening? Does it?
Sterne’s discussion of headsets in the beginning of Ch. 2 made me think about my experience wearing headsets. When listening to music through a headset, for example, I definitely feel set off from the world - more private and more focused. Additionally, I notice that I pick up on more details of the music, like some of the background instrumental sounds. These sounds add depth, texture and more feeling to the music. Listening through headphones seems like the best way to hear sound because of the focus it allows. It’s sad that we sometimes miss so much without them. I think I can pick up on these intricacies even more when my eyes are shut and my sense of hearing is primary.
Likewise, I think visuals can sometimes take away from sound because we receive information from multiple senses at once and cannot concentrate on simply sound (as we can do more successfully using a headset). During week two, I brought up this idea because I found myself focusing on words rather than sound while listening to the Tennyson recording, but I think we can take this question to a different level when we think of ways of hearing influencing ways of seeing. Is Sterne talking about seeing literally? Or seeing as in understanding? These different interpretations of “seeing” could potentially yield very different answers. In terms of understanding, hearing can prove beneficial. I’m not so certain, though, that hearing can help us see visually, unless perhaps we are connecting music, sounds, and words in a musical to comprehend the events being performed. Then again, comprehension would be the goal and outcome, not merely seeing.
2.) In Ch. 1, Sterne discusses Francis Bacon, automata, and the capabilities of machines simulating human/animal behavior (72). Sterne states that these imitations were “meant to suggest a level of understanding of and mastery over nature” (72). Evidently, human vie for an understanding of nature and try to control or manipulate some aspects of it (with science, for example). Sterne shows that we can indeed understand and imitate sound, but can we ever have a mastery over nature? I’m doubtful because nature seems so powerful and uncontrollable. I ask this question because I think we can imitate nature, including the sounds we find in nature, and we can influence nature through our actions (like how we can build structures on the earth, dam waterways, and affect air quality), but mastery over it seems like a far stretch to me.
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Hi Mary. I'm fascinated by your discussion of listening on headsets. This shows the importance the context of listening. I think you're also pointing to a phenomenon related to the coordination and/or separation of the senses that Sterne talks about. Certainly, when you're listening on the headphones, there's a kind of separation of sight and hearing that may lead to effects of disorientation or perhaps overlap. Your discussion seeing as understanding vs. seeing as visual input is pertinent here, since understanding always involves a combination of senses (not necessarily a synthesis). One thing that technologies of sound - such as print - allow us to do is isolate and intensify particular senses, and in doing so to modify understanding.
ReplyDeleteQ2. Of course you're right. I think Sterne is careful to emphasize that imitations suggest mastery over nature, not that they actually give such mastery. I'd say that there is not real meaning to the term mastery over nature except in terms of such imitations. The imitation, whether automata or image or whatever is a picture of nature, of a certain concept of nature, and that picture/concept can be mastered.