Last week, I took part in an excellent series of workshops and events at the London Science Museum, which brought together specialists from many sound-related fields, including performers, engineers, historians, composers, experts in sound studies, and acousticians. A few years ago, I attended an EU COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) meeting about soundscaping, with a similarly wide range of specialisms.
Both events were very successful in terms of exchanging information and experiences from a range of perspectives, and the work of many of the attendees benefitted. However, one thing I learned from both meetings is just how chasm-like the distinctions between different approaches can be. As soon as any topic is explained in any depth, technical terms proliferate, and many are properly understood only within the field. Worse, the same term may have very different meanings in different disciplines (interference, post-processing, mitigation, noise, reluctance, sharpness ...).
But there are other, more general distinctions too, between analytic, reductive approaches and holistic, synthesizing ones, between fields in which the need for political perspective and motivation is taken for granted and those in which such any such thing is deplored, between criticism and calls for action, between art and science.
None of this is surprising, nor is it unique to the field of sound; television, for example, is the subject of a similarly vast and partially mutually incomprehensible range of approaches. But in sound, this "out of scope" issue really matters, because there are numerous problems which many specialists could potentially work together to solve, and some problems which cannot be solved by any one approach alone.
Soundscaping is one such example. Faced with the challenge of modifying a small urban park surrounded by busy roads, one might start by gathering a meeting of people with relevant interests. Who should be there? Town planners and local residents, clearly. And environmental noise experts. And sound artists. And then, how about social psychologists? Anthropologists? Architects? Landscape gardeners? Legal experts? Local politicians? Government bodies? Local historians? The Highways Agency, DEFRA, the AA.... and so on.
The problem here is not really that of bridge-building; in my (albeit limited) experience, experts in different fields do trust the expertise of those in others and there seems a general appreciation that even very unfamiliar approaches have their own unique advantages, and should be taken seriously. In most cases too there is a lot of pleasure to be had in explaining the fundamentals of one's subject or of learning the basics of a new one. The difficulty is in actually working together across fields.
Yet surely true collaboration across barriers must be possible? After all, grappling with sound - however one does it - is rarely an esoteric pursuit in the sense that, say, string theory is. So no approach to it is likely to be impenetrable to someone from another field. Secondly, the point and purpose of any practitioner is usually easy both to grasp and to empathise with : it may not be clear why proving the Riemann hypothesis or reaching Pluto matters, but we can all appreciate the hazards of noise and the benefits of music.
Two experiences may have some bearing on possible solutions. Part of the COST meeting was a series of visits to locations with noise problems, but where interventions could be made: a very small green area with a fantastic view (in the heart of a busy estate), ancient monuments in a leafy setting (in the middle of a gyratory system), a school playground (surrounded by residential buildings). We were asked to discuss and propose ways in which the soundscape of each amenity could be improved. And, at the Science Museum, we were provided with sets of instructions and some electronic components and tasked with building and playing a musical instrument. In both cases, the challenge of a well-defined yet broad task, with a set timescale and specific set of deliverables, led immediately to enthusiastic collaboration, augmentation of approaches and formulation of novel solutions.
Perhaps these successes happened because the problems which any particular sound specialists wishes to solve are usually recognised as important by others too. Secondly, those problems can usually be explained quite precisely in non-technical language. And thirdly it is usually clear to all when a satisfactory solution has been reached. This trio of characteristics is absent from many other fields, like sociology, advanced mathematics, economics, education, political theory, robotics, clothes design, genetic engineering...
If there's a moral it might be: if you're planning a cross-disciplinary meeting in the field of sound, build a problem-solving activity into its heart.
Both events were very successful in terms of exchanging information and experiences from a range of perspectives, and the work of many of the attendees benefitted. However, one thing I learned from both meetings is just how chasm-like the distinctions between different approaches can be. As soon as any topic is explained in any depth, technical terms proliferate, and many are properly understood only within the field. Worse, the same term may have very different meanings in different disciplines (interference, post-processing, mitigation, noise, reluctance, sharpness ...).
But there are other, more general distinctions too, between analytic, reductive approaches and holistic, synthesizing ones, between fields in which the need for political perspective and motivation is taken for granted and those in which such any such thing is deplored, between criticism and calls for action, between art and science.
None of this is surprising, nor is it unique to the field of sound; television, for example, is the subject of a similarly vast and partially mutually incomprehensible range of approaches. But in sound, this "out of scope" issue really matters, because there are numerous problems which many specialists could potentially work together to solve, and some problems which cannot be solved by any one approach alone.
Soundscaping is one such example. Faced with the challenge of modifying a small urban park surrounded by busy roads, one might start by gathering a meeting of people with relevant interests. Who should be there? Town planners and local residents, clearly. And environmental noise experts. And sound artists. And then, how about social psychologists? Anthropologists? Architects? Landscape gardeners? Legal experts? Local politicians? Government bodies? Local historians? The Highways Agency, DEFRA, the AA.... and so on.
The problem here is not really that of bridge-building; in my (albeit limited) experience, experts in different fields do trust the expertise of those in others and there seems a general appreciation that even very unfamiliar approaches have their own unique advantages, and should be taken seriously. In most cases too there is a lot of pleasure to be had in explaining the fundamentals of one's subject or of learning the basics of a new one. The difficulty is in actually working together across fields.
Yet surely true collaboration across barriers must be possible? After all, grappling with sound - however one does it - is rarely an esoteric pursuit in the sense that, say, string theory is. So no approach to it is likely to be impenetrable to someone from another field. Secondly, the point and purpose of any practitioner is usually easy both to grasp and to empathise with : it may not be clear why proving the Riemann hypothesis or reaching Pluto matters, but we can all appreciate the hazards of noise and the benefits of music.
Two experiences may have some bearing on possible solutions. Part of the COST meeting was a series of visits to locations with noise problems, but where interventions could be made: a very small green area with a fantastic view (in the heart of a busy estate), ancient monuments in a leafy setting (in the middle of a gyratory system), a school playground (surrounded by residential buildings). We were asked to discuss and propose ways in which the soundscape of each amenity could be improved. And, at the Science Museum, we were provided with sets of instructions and some electronic components and tasked with building and playing a musical instrument. In both cases, the challenge of a well-defined yet broad task, with a set timescale and specific set of deliverables, led immediately to enthusiastic collaboration, augmentation of approaches and formulation of novel solutions.
Perhaps these successes happened because the problems which any particular sound specialists wishes to solve are usually recognised as important by others too. Secondly, those problems can usually be explained quite precisely in non-technical language. And thirdly it is usually clear to all when a satisfactory solution has been reached. This trio of characteristics is absent from many other fields, like sociology, advanced mathematics, economics, education, political theory, robotics, clothes design, genetic engineering...
If there's a moral it might be: if you're planning a cross-disciplinary meeting in the field of sound, build a problem-solving activity into its heart.