{"id":15024,"date":"2021-02-25T23:17:18","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T04:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/?p=15024"},"modified":"2021-10-04T11:38:15","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T15:38:15","slug":"beyond-hearing-notation-expanding-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/beyond-hearing-notation-expanding-senses\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond hearing: Perception, notation, and expanding our senses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Illustration:<\/strong> Islenia Milien<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1877 is credited as<\/strong><\/a> \u201cthe foundation of modern sound recording culture.\u201d<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Using Thomas Edison\u2019s phonograph, sound waveforms etched into grooves on a record plate could be played back audibly using those same vibrations that went into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edison’s extraordinary invention launched our ability to document countless hours of audio and to communicate the beauty of multicultural music globally. However, this approach becomes quite monotone once you consider all the ways sound can be<\/em> and has been<\/em> documented over time. Not just on records, CDs, and mp3s, but on vases, sooted glass, and even chip bags and plants \u2013 with and without standardized systems, in ways that extend beyond a singular sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brief lesson on how an ear hears<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To understand the different ways sound can be captured, it\u2019s helpful to take a brief look at the physiology of the ear and how a human actually hears \u2013 a hotly contested debate among 17th and 18th-century otologists. Today, we know that the basics of human hearing involve waves that travel from the outer ear into the inner ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To explain without getting too deep into oto-anatomy, a tiny little piston, called the stape, allows these vibrations to enter the cochlea (in the inner ear), as it pushes liquid into the cochlea so sound can move in. The cochlea splits these sounds into its various frequencies of high, low, and mid-range. Signals to the brain tell us that we are hearing something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans are only able to hear sounds in the range of 20 Hz and 20 kHz. Understandably, there is much wonder, and disagreement, surrounding how humans actually receive sounds. This field of scientific study is known as psychoacoustics.<\/a> As Paul Oomen wrote for the Red Bull Music Academy,<\/a> \u201cUltimately, all sound that we perceive is psychoacoustic. As soon as sound passes through the ears, it stops being a physical phenomenon and becomes a matter of perception.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From physical sound to perception: The first visual documentation of sound<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

How does<\/em> the perception of sound become as or more important than the sounds themselves? In the rest of this article, I provide examples of how humans have documented sound using mechanics directly related to the ear, and then those that stretch beyond the realms of anatomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I think about Antonio Scarpa\u2019s contribution to the research of oto-anatomy, specifically the inner ear organs. His book Anatomical Observations of the Round Window<\/em> (1772) gave the first in-depth description of this part of the ear of the same name,<\/a> which indicates that we may be able to see through hearing and therefore engage with sound beyond one sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were it not for the exploration of the ear’s anatomy, “humanity\u2019s first recordings of its own voice\u201d<\/a> would not have been captured. I don\u2019t mean audibly like Edison\u2019s machine, but a visual representation of the voice \u2013 of sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 1853, Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville’s invention of the phonautogram<\/a> was a model based on the mechanics of the human ear. It used \u201ca funnel to concentrate sound waves onto an eardrum-like membrane with a stylus attached to its underside that trailed against a moving surface blackened with soot from an oil lamp [called lampback],\u201d leaving a visible trace behind (as pictured below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"beyond-hearing-in-post-01\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

[Source<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott was \u201crecording” music before recordings even existed. Following photography\u2019s ability to capture a visual image in 1826, Scott postulated<\/a> that if we could capture an image, why not be able to capture a word with an instrument that captures the voice\u2019s \u201ctonality, its intensity, its timbre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1877, for those who are hearing impaired, Alexander Graham Bell worked on the ear phonautograph<\/a> (a preceding invention of the telephone) \u2013 \u201ca second-generation Visible Speech machine that used an actual eardrum, attached to a stylus, to inscribe speech waves on a plate of sooted glass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten years prior, Graham Bell\u2019s father, Melville Bell, developed a system called Visible Speech<\/a> \u2013 \u201ca system of phonetic symbols\u2026 to represent the position of the speech organs in articulating sounds.\u201d At this time, \u201cgraphic inscription was known as the \u2018universal language of science’\u2026 for its ability to visualize the waveforms of which all the world\u2019s motions and sensory phenomena seemingly consisted,\u201d as told in David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny\u2019s Keywords in Sound.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to 2014 to an invention inspired by the physiology of the ear that recorded sound using a chip bag. As we mentioned before, sound is literally vibrations. Measuring soundwaves, MIT researchers extracted information from vibrations on a bag of chips,<\/a> treating it as a visual microphone and using a high-speed video camera to document the resulting movements through soundproof glass. And yes, these could be extended to other objects in the room such as a plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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