"The Poetics of Environemental Sound" consists of a listening exercise and quotations from about 150 different responses to the exercise. The quotations are arranged as if the sounds and emotional qualities effect a collaborative musical composition.

It was first assigned to students at the University of California at San Diego as part of a liberal arts course known as The Nature of Music. This course encourages students to develop musical perception through group improvisation, graphic notation and tape composition.

Theory students of Alvin Lucier at Brandeis University and Allen Strange at Indiana University also participated.

"I Heard A Boy Singing
Long Long Ago
He Rode With The Reins Loose
And Let The Horse Go."
Robert Duncan

-------------------------------------------

Listen to the environment for 15 minutes or a longer but pre-determined time length.
Use a timer, clock or any adequate method to define this time length.
Describe in detail the sounds you hear(heard) and how you feel(felt) about them.
Include internal as well as external sounds.
You are part of the environment.
Explore the limits of audibility:
(highest, lowest, loudest, softest, simplest, most complex, nearest, most distant, longest, shortest sound)

-------------------------------------------

>Excerpts from responses:

"But Never Silence"

"One thing I noticed right away was the absence of silence. There is always some kind of sound in the air."

"And between the thumps in the silences that grow longer, I am reminded that there is no silence."

"You'd never guess that so much sound could come out of a library which should be so quiet."

"It was like an orchestra with no rests, no silence anywhere." "One instance I particularly remember came after a long period of intense silence."

"If it weren't for these breaks in the monotony, this constant sound would become as a silence."

"I desire silence but there is none."

"I have just been in concert: the continuing concert of environmental sounds. I can hear it still."

"I sit quietly with my alarm clock, close my eyes and open my ears. At this point, the curtain rises and the performance begins. My very surroundings seem to come alive, each sound revealing the personality of its creator. There are several sounds which become fixed in my ear like some 'basso ostinato': the continous whirring of factory machinery in the distance and the hollow sound of plopping water in a nearby fountain. This background of sound is interrupted by the piercing motif of a bird. A sudden breath of air sweeps across the deck. The pages of my book resond with quick snapping sounds. The door at the entrance squeaks and moans on the same pitch like an old rocking chair, then closes with a thud. I can ehaer the drapery from an opened window rustling against the coarse plastered walls, while the drawing cord syncopates against the windowpane."

"Cars smack the air and tires slap the road giving off that highway sound, a low hiss that has no beginning or end, just a peak. The drone is established and only the sharp, high-pitched chirps and tweets of the birds persist in breaking the undertone."

"Only a couple of minutes have passed and things are getting really involved already."

"And then there were sounds that crept up on me, coming out of the drone, sharing the stage with or stealing it from the fountain, and then blending themselves unnoticed back into the drone. Obviously these were sounds without clearly-defined boundaries. A minor example of this type of sound is of a bus on a nearby road. The sound reached a level of only slight prominence and then disappeared leaving the listener unsure of the veracity of its very existence. But the sound of a jet-fighter traversing the breadth of the campus was quite a different matter; first there was the drone, then the jet, and then the jet was all I knew. It did not, however, dominate, so to speak, the sound of the fountain. Actually, for the time that it was at its maximum, it adopted the fountain, so that the splashing seemed to be just another sound of the jet. And then the jet left while the ever-present splashing and droning continued."

"Every once in a while a bad apple would pass that would break the pattern; a poorly tuned car, or one that was going too fast would seem out of place."

"At the moment these background sounds are being heeard, they are linked together by other irregular and random sounds."

"Another car door slams and as if by a conductor, a buzz saw starts in a neighbor's yard. The intensity of the sound is so great now that I feel it rather than hear it. It stopped! The radio, thebuzz saw, and the wind. Now I can hear a spider spinning its web while an innocent fly buzzes around my head."

"Funny, there are more sounds now than when the record player was on. Now I hear a symphony of a different sort."

"I was amazed that I could hear myself blink. It is about the softest sound I ever heard."

"Five minutes have passed - only five minutes! Such a complex of varied sounds in such a short time. Well, onward - the sounds aren't waiting for me but are going on."

"At times I was tense waiting for some noises and then they would come in a large group and I would have difficulty remembering all the sounds."

"It seems that a person hears what he wants to and anything else just doesn't exist."

"Distant voices enter...first a solo: a male-female duet...and then a whole choir. There are never words, only sonorities."

"One of my favorite sounds is the surge of my own heart when my ear is pressed against my pilow. Even as a youngster of five or six, I would listen to this pulse and try to speed it up or slow it down. I would fill the inner part of the beat with my own imaginary sounds. I used to hold balloons against my ear and chew apples or just listen."

"Everything is watery and the sound of someone's voice rides into my ears on rivulets." "One of the dryers is providing an undercurrent of 'La Cucaracha' or something similarly Spanish in light clicky sounds: Chick Chicka Chick Chick, Chick Chicka Chick Chick...then a more relentless Chicka, Chicka, Chicka, Chicka. The Chicka is joined (and nearly drowned out) by a more dynamic washer in the rinsing cycle, slowly going Swish Swash, Swish Swash."

"It's amazing the way the different sounds seem to build up to a climax and then diminish as in a musical composition." "It all sounded very rhythmical and as if it had purposely been put together in a certain way. After this I began to notice groups of sounds at a time. A door slammed and then a turn-stile clicked; at almost the same time another door closed. Then an airplane created a loud-textured noise and a pile of books smashed down this time. I noticed one girl go up the stairs in very even steps and then a boy skipped up. Whispering began, the chair squeaked, the turn-stile clinked and steps getting louder."

"Sounds are very complex now. It is all but impossible to get them down; there seems to be a thousand things going on at once. Twelve minutes have passed."

"Even when I was listening I missed some sounds. The explanation being that part of the sounds are filtered by the mind from consciousness...even when one is paying attention. I did find that soft sounds were lost easier than loud sounds. This is probably because soft sounds tend to lull one while strong and loud sounds which are associated with unpleasant experiences attract one's attention."

"One curious thing I have noted is that the very building I am in has a noise of its own. Perhaps it is caused by the heating system. Wherever I go I can hear a soft hum of noise which seems to come from the ceilings and walls. Usually this noise is covered up by more demanding and raucous sounds, but now in a period of relative quiet, I can peel back the layers of other sounds and listen to this very unobtrusive hum. A shot! What sounded like a gunshot just occurred beneath my window. I'm not sure it was a gunshot (I've never actually heard a real live gunshot), but it sounded like what one would expect from a gun. Perhaps it was a balloon or a cap pistol. Whatever it was, it was loud and short. There was no echo or diminuendo. It immediately grasped my attention, and for a brief second, I could hear no other noise except that."

"I also noticed that my disposition was affected by the type of sounds I heard."

"The climax came when the roar of a motorcycle was met with a very unexpected bang of an object dropped in a nearby room. My nerves jumped as I settled back to the rustling leaves."

"Just outside my window and a couple of floors down hisses some exhaust outlet. It hisses so quietly I can barely hear it unless I lean far out the window. Also through this same outlet emanate clearly but weakly, from the seeming subterranean depths of underground garages, the screeches of cornering tires and the growl of automobile exhausts. Loosing the reins on my imagination, I might describe this last sound like the enraged sounds of a modern-day mechanical dragon. Combining the wind sounds and the automobile sounds late at night, a tableau forms that could send the sanest of men into eerie fits of terror. The wind whistles gently; leaves skitter and scrape across cement; tires screech in such a succession that it would seem that humans could not be driving. In addition, sea gulls' occasional caws intermittently intrude. The high bushes wave back and forth directly across from my window as if there was a human soul imprisoned, silently crying for release. Next door to my apartment building are little tarpaper shacks. At late hours black cats patter about like shades of times long ago. The inhabitants of these tarpaper shacks meanwhile make silent shapes on windowshades, while the tarpaper shacks creak and groan as if they too contained an embodied spirit. Also at this hour small birds flutter as if the air was losing its fabric and culd no longer support them."

"Nearing the end of the fifteen minutes, almost as if it were planned, a girl sitting in the distance let out with a steam kettle, 'shhh' in an effort to restore 'silence' to the library."

"Sounds keep coming and going"

"The fifteen minutes seemed to go like a flash, especially toward the end."

"After listening to life, I feel I can appreciate it a little more. It is a shame a lot of other people do not take the time to do the same."

"It is a fascinating experience to become aware of all the sound companions one may discover in a once-believed quiet place."

"It seems to me that the whole world of sound is given a form like that of a concert piece."

"Sounds have a way of reminding you of something, and I guess most of the time people don't even realize that it was a sound that caused them to think about something because then they get tied up THINKING, and not really HEARING any more"

"After a time the 'earlids' began to close. That is, all sounds assumed a drone quality - the first sign of approaching sleep. Arousing myself somewhat, I noticed that the sounds were displaying an organization - the organization of living things. Each was an instrument within the orchestra. Each was made with its own unique sounds. I was very much entertained, and a smile came to my face. Hunger was getting the best of me. Knowing I could return at most anytime, I left my reserved seat within the 'auditorium'."

"At the end of the concert, I began to feel quite amazed with my surroundings. To think how utterly fantastic the work I just heard was, left me somewhat spellbound. Everything seemed to fall into place. Even though the tones heard may not have been intelligible as those of a manufactured musical instrument, the work certainly seemed to have a structure to it. I have a feeling that Webster really didn't know how much he was covering with his dictionary definition."

"Opening my eyes, I know the piece is over and the normalcy of the situation is astounding. It seems artificial to see dryers and people and carts, and the minute I begin seriously considering them with my eyes, the sounds fly right away."

"I thus depart with a new, an unusual experience: I have heard a composition from the 'Sounds of Silence'."