Sound jams thesis

_intro

We are surrounded by sound on a daily basis and it is a medium that has a major role in the perception of the world around us - with the exception of people with damaged hearing, it helps us navigate through the spaces we are moving around throughout our days. Our bodies are used to perceiving all sorts of sonic signals while orientating in private and public spaces. We hear other people while having a conversation or attending a meeting. We listen to music to relax, dance or distract ourselves. But as a working medium, it still feels quite unattainable for many practitioners: oftentimes, mainly associated with music, it is a reserved territory for people with musical training and sound artists. In reality, it is far more accessible and there are many ways how sound-making can be open for creators coming from any kind of background. Thus, I am looking at which methods of collective sound-based publication-making can be applied to a group of practitioners from various backgrounds, without the restriction of having experience with sound as a medium in their practice.

For this research, I facilitated various sound jams that I designed, to test the methods in reality and understand what are the important factors when creating a sound-making experience for people from different backgrounds. What brings them together in sound creation and sharing? What elements of the structure and the process are vital for them to find a comfortable and welcoming space for experimentation? What can they take from the sound jams to their artistic and research practice?

By sound jam, I understand any facilitated process of sound-making and publishing that includes more than one person. Its core principle is inclusivity: it is open to people with or without musical training and offers a structure in which everyone is invited to find a suitable role and space for experimentation. The process grants the makers the opportunity to create a sound publication as a group. This paper explores different sound jams as applied methods that provide such processes and a safe space for makers with various practices to open up to a moment of collective sound-making and sharing.

The research followed certain steps to unveil the methods and draw important observations and learning outcomes from the sound jams. It started with designing the sound jams and creating instructions for several methods to be tested with a group of people. In order to do that, I harvested ideas from my facilitation practice over the past 6 years and took inspiration from other handbooks and collections of artistic prompts and assignments. Each sound jam was implemented in a particular time and space context and then reflected upon. I had the opportunity to gather groups of people in several locations in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and implement a facilitated process of producing sonic pieces together. Afterwards, during debrief sessions or in interviews, the participants were invited to share their experiences of the sound jams. The extracted learning outcomes were analysed and transformed into key principles for applying such methods of sound-making and publishing.

The research draws its core inspiration from the work of Pauline Oliveros, a pioneer of experimental music and improvisation who was active after the 1950s. In her practice, she investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concept of deep listening - “a practice that is intended to heighten and expand the consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible” (Oliveros, 2005). With this research, though, I take it further from the meditative sessions and inner listening and explore ways to create a structure for practitioners to apply this in their group sound-making processes.

This paper follows my research process. Firstly, I am warming up the space with the next chapter, containing a glossary with the key terminology. I find it important to make sure that whatever words are used here and understood in the particular context of this research. In the following chapter sound jams, I am describing what methods I managed to design and test. After providing a brief historical context, I am reporting the steps each sound jam proposed and what actually happened in reality. Some key observations are drawn from that particular process and explained. Afterwards, to turn them into the core principles of the sound jam practice, I am analysing the key factors that turned out to be important for most of the sound jams implementation. I focus on five key elements for the sound jams and connect them to examples from the sound jams and other practitioners’ work.