Abstract
Sociologists have yet to theorize interactions with sonic materiality. In this article I introduce an analytical concept for the observation of interactions with sound. Sound has material effects in all situations. But the audibility of sonic objects is a relation of situated actors to material arrangements. Sonic object settings are dynamic material arrangements in which sonic qualities emerge for interpretation. The concept synthesizes research on sonic materiality, audibility, and interaction. After outlining the concept, I present an empirical illustration from an audio firm’s R&D laboratory arranged to support a new technology called object-based audio. I observed engineers conducting two concurrent but contrasting experiments; results indicate how settings both enable and constrain the interpretation of sound.
Sonic objects—objects that emit sounds—can be found scattered throughout sociological accounts of social life, and they appear more systematically in interdisciplinary scholarship in the field of sound studies. Yet the material effects of sound, as developed in the latter, have yet to be fully appreciated by the former. Sound is vibrating matter with audible qualities. These qualities are available only through the relation of situated actors to material arrangements. This article provides an analytical concept—the sonic object setting—to locate and explain these interactions with sonic materiality.
The concept synthesizes sociological theories of interaction with insights on sonic materiality from sound studies. 1 Sound studies scholars recognize that all sounds occur in environments of acoustic properties and epistemology (Thompson 2004), or “acoustemology” (Feld 1996). No space is silent and no sound is perceived without a cultural frame. 2 A sonic object setting, be it a classroom, a parking lot, or a meadow, externalizes meaning in its material and practical extensions as audible. Much as McDonnell (2010) uses “object setting” to explain the efficacy of visual artifacts in public health campaigns, the sonic object setting is an observational tool for explaining sonic interactions with material arrangements. I argue that the sonic object setting is never fully mutable, even in the most deliberate manipulations of an environment.
To demonstrate the consequentiality of sonic object setting, I provide an illustration of different situations within a single setting: engineers working on two concurrent projects in the research and development (R&D) laboratory of a large audio firm. Modern audio engineers experiment with digital technologies and scientific theories to enhance sonic reproduction and perceptual experience. How does the setting affect these interactions? Just as nurseries are materially arranged to maintain a hush, and sports arenas a roar, this audio lab is arranged with fewer barriers to sound in order to prioritize a new mode of experiment meant to reproduce the everyday experience of unmediated listening. This arrangement, however, proves incompatible with the more conventional audio experiments that also occur in the lab. The example shows setting is both a constraining and enabling aspect of sonic materiality.
The scope of this argument is not limited to situations with an overt sonic goal (e.g., audio reproduction). Rather, I use an example so sonically self-aware to approach a logical limiting case for the social control of sonic object settings in general. Even in a setting of deliberate sonic manipulation, audibility varies greatly. The material properties of sound impose particular requirements for listener perception. The acoustic environments of sonic objects and listeners cannot be ignored for analytical convenience without sacrificing significant—sometimes wholly significant—explanatory data.
Sonic Materiality
Sociological ethnographies present readers with a variety of sonic objects: elements of speech and related affect in education (Calarco 2011; Morris 2007; Pascoe 2011), conspicuous quiet and deafening soundtracks in urban spaces (Goffman 2009; Hunter 2010), and, of course, music as a medium for group activity (Grazian 2005). These descriptive works accompany anthropological studies that have “certainly produced more ‘utterances’” of sonic material but have yet to theorize interactions with the materiality of sound (Erlmann 2004:1-2). 3 When it comes to academic explanation, just those sounds that resolve into language have been accorded value. We are quick to acknowledge that talk can do things but only to the extent it is reducible to spoken or written meaning (Classen 1997; Lizardo 2012).
Loudness, pitch, timbre—the qualities of sonic objects—have been largely written out of sociological accounts, and the study of culture is at fault. Following the progression from the linguistic to the cultural turn, an “amodal” focus on the textuality of symbolic performances has meant the dissociation of embodied sensations from cognitive processes of meaning making (Ignatow 2007:116). 4 By extension, music as a quasi-linguistic system is recognized to entrain actions through rhythm, tempo, and other quantified properties (DeNora 2000). The rest, as they say, is noise. The sharp clack of cars driving over a scrap of metal in the street might be a nice bit of ethnographic description, but most assume it serves as mere set dressing.
Yet how things are said—the sound of speech—may matter as much as what is said. As we learn from anthropologists of the senses, vocalizations and other sensory objects provide significant affective meaning for actors (cf. Howes 2005, 2013; Ingold 2000; Samuels et al. 2010). Chuengsatiansup (1999:297), for example, identifies the sound of newly leased motorbikes as a trigger for illness in a community of women. Along with other sounds of the changing local economy (e.g., drunken revelry, domestic arguments, and tractor-trailers), these acoustic events are “embodied symbols of human relations” that act directly upon listeners. Similarly, that clack on the street is full of information—about the rate and nature of traffic, the relative safety of the road—and as material culture, it is substantial in its own right. A clack can break a train of thought, encroach on a conversation, or clear out a neighboring stoop. Our reactions suggest that sonic objects—and this includes sounds called “noise”—have social power of their own.
Sound studies argue for the study of sound as sound (Back and Bull 2003; Pinch and Bijsterveld 2012; Sterne 2012). The work of acoustic ecologists, media theorists, historians, and human geographers—among others—addresses the social construction of sounds: the familiar clack of a derelict neighborhood, the satisfying thud of a car door, or the hard contact of marble suggesting preserved wealth. Sounds become iconic as mass-mediated utterances in broadcasting and recorded media (Urban 2010). This rule also applies to the sonic properties of ubiquitous technologies, for example, the widespread adoption of analog synthesizers to produce sound effects (Pinch 2008) or the circulation of ringtones in the public sphere (Gopinath 2013). As theorists of science and technology studies (STS) demonstrate, it is through materiality that we experience solidarity with an object: Moral relationships (the sense of “oughtness”) emerge from an intimate knowledge of that thing (Knorr Cetina 1997).
Heavily influenced by STS scholarship, sound studies scholars do not divide sonic experience along the lines of nature versus culture but, rather, prioritize sounds and perception over symbolic abstraction (e.g., as mediated versus unmediated sound). 5 In part, this is required by the emergence of meaning through new technologies. For example, the relatively recent advent of audio technologies has meant an influx of empirical sound objects without a robust symbolic index (Chanan 1994). Still, sound studies does not reject or oppose the systematizing of meaning through these new technologies. A recent focus on the engineering of signal processing technology has created space for the study of audio as “concretized abstraction, material-semiotic objects” (Mills 2011:81). Through their algorithms and schematics, processors materialize a cultural logic, evoking classic distinctions between “raw” and “cooked” sounds (Sterne and Rodgers 2011:47). 6 These are not iconic sounds per se but classifications made durable in recurring functions. Ethnographers can locate these functions as they impact situations—the basic unit of analysis in the study of interactions (Collins 2005).
As I will argue, ethnographers produce better explanations of situations by attending to the audibility of culture in interaction (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003), that is, actors interpreting sonic objects in acoustic environments. Because it makes no sense to hear a sound with no apparent qualities, I next detail some basic behaviors of sound and materiality that make sonic objects audible.
Audibility
Material interactions determine the audible qualities of sound. What we hear as a sonic object is the “loose coupling” of causal source and perceptual event (Handel 1995:427; see also Cox 2011). For example, that clack is associated with a small strip of metal lying just there in the road, yet what we hear is the sum of sonic energy bouncing off nearby surfaces, such as the car’s undercarriage, the curb, and neighboring alleyways. Arriving from several angles, this sensory information is then “bundled” by the listener into an object (i.e., the clack) through a process of matching and relating recognizable qualities (Lizardo 2009:723). The qualities of a sonic object are inseparable from the transitive matter from which the sound arrives. 7
Sound is a waveform vibrating through matter—most often air, but potentially all substances. The material expression of this waveform is convoluted through interaction with other materials in the setting. Nonporous surfaces (e.g., stone, tile, and glass) reflect sound; porous materials (e.g., fabrics, moss, and soft woods) absorb sound. Inert objects between sound and receiver, such as a wall, can simply obstruct sound. These basic behaviors of sound occur in nearly all settings but vary in volume.
We see more complex behaviors when volumes are great enough for sounds to interact. When sonic energy is trapped in spaces with many reflective surfaces, reverberation occurs, effectively covering over or masking lower-intensity sounds. Conversely, a sound is amplified when it meets vibrations of the same frequency, leading to an increase in loudness. Concave structures, like amphitheaters, exploit this behavior, whereas tapestries and rugs reduce the effect. When only partly absorbed, sound is refracted, such that humidity will refract sonic energy in the air and lessen its intensity for the receiver.
As Bregman (1990:11) asserts, sonic “[p]roperties have to belong to something.” But so must some things and their properties be available as qualities to be perceived. The relations among sounds and receivers should draw our attention to the arrangement of both in actual space and time. To hear is to register changes in air pressure through the ear. Ears must be in range of sound, although this range differs from the forward perspective of vision: In their insulated, air- and audio-conditioned vehicles, drivers who help generate the clack are less likely to register it than are those ambling down the sidewalk or resting quietly within earshot (Bijsterveld 2010; Bull 2004). But how should sociologists go about studying audibility in particular environments? The concept of sonic object settings could help them do so.
Sonic Object Settings
Sonic object settings determine our perception of sounds in real places. The consequence of this spatially bounded audibility are the possible interactions afforded within particular situations. 8 Setting delimits the scope of the situation, with more dynamic settings providing more situational variation. In this respect, what we call a “sense of place” includes the “pre-perceptual activity” of matching sensory experience with schemes of action (Martin 2011:221). Setting (singular material arrangements) and situation (shared cognitive constructs), however, have relative autonomy (Alexander 2003), such that neither strictly determines action. 9 Encounters with materiality are never “ideal” (Appadurai 1986; Larkin 2008; Miller 2005); rather, materiality affords a certain range of interpretations based on qualities that emerge in relation to the perceiver (McDonnell 2010). 10 Perceptions of sound in sonic object settings may vary based on actors’ presence, orientation, and attention.
Presence
The basic question in any setting is, what sonic objects are available to the actor? How do these objects relate to the situation? What is their relevance? This may seem obvious. But in light of the qualifications for audibility above, and given the variation within situations, deducing the interaction of actors and sonic objects is not the same as registering the reactions of actors to objects. Action in the lifeworld is a response to differentiated stimuli; the ethnographic analysis of this action requires not only the differentiated product but the greater process of differentiating sonic objects from a general field of audible sounds. From more to less constructed, settings require an initial negotiation of abstract meaning, however tentative that meaning may be (Jansen 2008). The continuity of settings suggests that recognition should come rather easily. However, there are always jarring examples, like the “quiet before a storm” or going to the office on a Sunday. Presence may be a process; that is, it emerges through time. This is especially true of settings organized by routines of work and play (like an institution) or occupancy and vacancy (like a public space). How do sounds vary in the setting? Sociological observers should remain aware of their own experiences to this point, as movement between sonic object settings has a relative effect from one setting to another (e.g., moving from the monotonous sounds of a shop floor to the polyphonic activity of the break room). Furthermore, in all settings, sonic resonance affords tacit knowledge of one’s own presence and informs how one’s audible actions will carry to others, modifying behavior. The bounds of each setting are the limits of audibility, as determined by the observer. 11
Orientation
Where are the actors in the setting? How are they positioned? How are they moving? The social organization of space is aided by the architecture of the built environment, which constrains orientation. Depending on the strength and rigidity of an organized space, the setting will appear more uniformly to each respective position—though there may be serious contrast between these positions. Although structures are often made to produce uniform acoustics throughout, many also feature areas of both high resonance, where acoustic energy pools, and “dead spaces,” where acoustic energy will not venture. In all settings, proximity, position, and movement will shift perception, if only subtly. Most people hear binaurally, that is, through two ears in a fixed relationship. 12 We localize sounds by triangulating sources with the first and then second ear; the lobes and folds of the outer ears (the pinnae) further specify direction. 13 The direction of one’s head will emphasize different objects in the setting—hence the “cocktail party effect,” according to which listeners may distinguish specific sounds (like a speaking voice) despite a noisy background. Listeners are rarely passive: When tilting the head fails, a cupped hand behind one’s ear may amplify sound using the reflective surface of the palm. Not passive, but not always successful.
Attention
Finally, how is the actor’s attention? Engrossed? Distracted? Overwhelmed? Many of the sounds we hear pass without conscious attention in our daily routines. But this does not mean all sounds heard are selected for attention, as though we enjoy a resting state of respite from sound. It is not the presence of sound energy, but the dynamic variation of that energy that draws our attention to sound objects, as we register changes in air pressure. Thus, to hear sound is to perceive a physical difference (Evens 2005). 14 And despite the presence of audible changes in air pressure, individuals may still cognitively “zone out” in situations, for example, allowing them to maintain focus on work in the presence of a braying alarm. 15 The regular appearance of particular sounds is worth noting not only for their impact on subjects in their routines but also for the interactions that these sounds trigger between individuals. These variations in differentiation generate disjuncture within interactions, indicating the value in analyzing sociologically the organization of differentiation. The individual’s attention to detail should be a central focus of the ethnographer’s attention to detail. Visual clues, such as turn taking or fidgeting, are invaluable for situating perceivers in a setting and indicate the fallacy of trying to understand interaction through sound alone. 16 Furthermore, although difficult to discern by observation alone, analysts should be aware of different states of perception (e.g., hearing loss or impairment) and the mediation of perception (e.g., by audio devices, like hearing aids). Beyond hearing damage caused by exposure (sociocusis), there is the common issue of hearing loss due to age (presbycusis). 17
These dimensions of variation are meant not to be exhaustive but to indicate some of the qualities of interaction to which sociologists should attend when analyzing sonic object settings.
My argument so far has been rather abstract. Let me now concretize the concept with an empirical example.
The Sonic Object Setting of an R&D Laboratory
I present my illustrative example using conventions from the STS genre of the laboratory study. Concerned with the situation of people working in fields of technoscience (Knorr Cetina 1999; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Suchman 2007), laboratory studies reveal the contingencies of work in supposedly sterile settings and supposedly objective systematic practices. More recent work explores the expanding bounds of the settings of knowledge production (Gieryn 2006; Kohler 2002). Sound studies scholars sometimes work in this genre, and previous research here emphasizes the effects of sound on practices that do not otherwise include narratives of sound (Borg 2007; Mody 2005; Pinch and Bijsterveld 2004). 18 I work in the other direction. I use a case that ultimately trades in sound to demonstrate for sociologists how sound affects interaction.
I observed an R&D laboratory at Mantle. 19 Mantle is a large audio firm that produces a variety of technologies, from $20 headsets for MP3 players to industrial paging systems used in museums. Mantle R&D is one of several freestanding labs within the firm to be opened in the past decade. During the course of observation, the lab employed from 10 to 15 full-time workers, consisting of nine salaried staff, up to four interns, and two temporary contractors. Except for the director, all employees were men between 20 and 35 years old. All but one employee held a bachelor’s degree (not counting the undergraduate interns); the majority held master’s degrees in electrical engineering, acoustics, sound design, or a related field.
During my time at Mantle R&D (May 2011 to August 2011), I shadowed various employees as they worked on several projects—testing experimental equipment, modeling data, and theorizing processor algorithms—at times assisting as an extra pair of hands and, more than once, an extra pair of ears. The small size and uniform architecture of the lab allowed general observation from just a few positions in the space; observations of specific projects meant I would stand, sit, or move with employees as they worked. Field notes were written to paper during or immediately after observation. In these notes, I recorded sonic events as elements of interaction, either through the direct engagement of engineers, as conflicts in work being done, or as seemingly ignored but present in my empirical register. I regularly noted ambient sound during interactions. I used a variety of terms and associations familiar to nonexperts to describe events, so as to not reify these sounds as already categorized or as the effect of some presumed cause. Subjects’ references and reactions to sounds were similarly noted during work on the two projects described below.
The sonic object setting of Mantle’s R&D lab is mostly contained within a single room about 30 feet by 50 feet, constructed at the end of a narrow concrete building set back from a six-lane stretch of commercial highway. The room is made of three walls of windows and a fourth wall of cabinets. Above and below, narrow strips of fabric paneling absorb some of the sound that the windows and doors fail to reflect. The ceiling is built from semi-absorbent tiles at a similar height to most offices. When the doors and windows are closed, they keep most outside sounds out; when they are open, one can hear the steady whoosh of traffic throughout the working day.
The situation inside the lab is further defined by its relation to listeners on the periphery of the setting. Outside the lab, the highway sound masks the sounds from within the lab before they reach the neighbors. This allows the engineers within the setting to work loudly without concern for others beyond the lab. This in turn gives the lab a sense of experimental stability, which is not subject to outside listeners. It is within this ordered environment that multiple Mantle projects are undertaken simultaneously, subject only to the internal management of interactions within the sonic object setting, such as staggering projects that require loudspeakers and dedicating particular times for conversation and correspondence.
Despite its insulation and organization, Mantle R&D does not strike the ear as a particularly silent place. Like many labs in the audio industry, this building was not constructed with an audio firm in mind. When the director shows me around, she gives a snort at the suggestion the building might have an “anechoic rating” (a measure of its capacity to absorb sound). 20 Instead, quiet is requested with an engineer’s hard SHHH! and the momentary closing of the door; cranking shut the windows “would be a plus.” The lab is not partitioned, although each desk is a discrete area lining a common workspace.
The open organization of the workspace is meant to reflect the flattened organization of R&D labor, what Stark (2009) calls “heterarchy.” Senior staff are each responsible for one or more research projects, with the authority to involve other employees as needed. Engineers move frequently through the lab, but they work mainly in a digital domain of schematics, graphic interfaces, and software code.
The lab is not silent, but the setting does not command the other senses. Whites and grays mute the visual appearance of the walls, cabinets, and carpets. Desks are pushed against the walls so engineers face away from the center. When low in visual stimuli, settings emphasize what can be heard over what can be seen (Rice 2003). Without facing one another, the engineers grab attention with a simple hey, and conversation invites engagement by all within earshot.
The engineers use ad hoc means to manage this unobstructed setting. Throughout the day, music acts as a sonic partition. As DeNora (2000) suggests, music provides a practical way to shift routines and coordinate among individuals. Additionally, the very material of musical sound (and its absence) signals changes of situation. When audible activity is low, the clacking of keys reflects around the space to signal workers are disengaged, in front of their screens and within their headphones. Conversely, ambient music played aloud helps mask these smaller sounds when everyone is at their computers.
The minimal material regulation of this sonic object setting is largely intentional. In general, labs are arranged to benefit new relations between research engineers and the objects of their work (Merz 2006). Mantle R&D is arranged for experiments with object-based audio, a playback system where sound is reproduced to imitate various acoustic environments (Geier, Spors, and Weinzierl 2010). Object-based audio achieves its effect by modeling sound as it interacts with features of the room and the user’s body. This includes interactions with ambient sounds that prior approaches to audio would try to reduce as “noise.” As one of the engineers at Mantle R&D describes it, listening never actually occurs in silence, and even anechoic chambers are not “perfect,” so why pursue the myth? The best office space would replicate the “real” listening conditions of actual environments. However, object-based audio is not the only form of audio developed in the lab, and where one project thrives, another struggles. 21
AURA: Gathering Data on Hearing in Space
For object-based audio to work, engineers need data to model sonic behavior as a function of the processor. These data would represent how sound arrives to a listener in actual space. AURA is a floor-to-ceiling device used to collect these data. It consists of 12 speakers in two horizontal rings—six on stands about 4 feet high, six suspended about 10 feet high—all oriented toward a body sitting in the center wearing in-ear microphones. These speakers are set to play the same tone to produce an even sonic impression of the space between the speakers and the listener.
Stefan arranges AURA in the center of the lab a few feet from his desk. When recording data, the speakers play a sonic burst that fills the frequency spectrum with a shrill beeeyiuuu! Because he is trying to model the acoustic space that surrounds the body (i.e., as opposed to the abbreviated space between an ear and a headphone speaker), these “sweeps” are audible throughout the room. 22 “The room” in this sense is not simply a static architecture that reflects, but a setting that interacts.
With AURA, the act of recording data localizes the sonic object setting, qua laboratory, within the material workspace (Knorr Cetina 1999). The experimental conditions of AURA are measured not to the zero-sum ideal of silence but through a normative assessment of which sounds are desirable and which are not. The project manager reminds Stefan that they want everyday ambient sounds—“good noise,” such as the office printer, birdsong, and steady traffic. These sounds of the setting are ideal for AURA because they are periodic, meaning they repeat as a pattern. In this sense, the lab provides audible “noise” for this experiment. But the appearance of these desirable sounds is contingent on the time of day (e.g., as it affects the volume of traffic), the weather (as it affects outdoor activity and the use of windows or heaters), and the activity of others in the lab.
One busy morning, an intern is banging on something in the corner and Philip is blasting sounds from the loudspeaker on his desk in erratic increments, accompanied by giggles from Russell. There are too many unfamiliar objects for the sweeps to encounter. Just as Stefan registers a lull of activity in which to record a sweep, there comes an unusually loud, crashing sound through the window—it might be a garbage truck in the lot next door. Russell asks, “Do you want me to close this window?” Stefan replies, “Eh, yes,” pauses, and scans the rest of the setting. He worries out loud about the printer, which has been audibly collating papers in close range, then recalls that “the printer . . . no, that’s good noise.” He takes a second look as if it might cease its task while he records.
Greater variation of the setting requires more negotiations of available sounds. After a week of concurrent experiments in the lab, I ask Stefan if he has had trouble making recordings with the recent spike in activity. 23 He answers, “Yes . . . I’ve been thinking of coming in on a Saturday to make some more recordings.” By recording on a weekend, he could avoid obstructing others’ work, but he is uncertain how it might change AURA’s experimental conditions. Because AURA relies on a constant level of expected sounds, suppression of the setting wrecks an experiment as much as the “bad noise” of erratic activity. On the afternoon of garbage day, the director pops in for an impromptu chat with Russell. The intern quickly stops hammering. Stefan and I sit a few yards away, scrutinizing the latest recordings. Halting the next sweep, he says under his breath, “We must wait ’til the area is clear,” indicating the director. Not only are other work sounds missing, but a shrill burst in this moment of “official business” would surely earn him some harsh words. He waits over an hour to make another recording, when the regular din of the workday resumes.
Balance: Chasing an Echo in the Processor
Whereas AURA needs the input of ambient sounds, Balance is determined to eradicate them. Balance is a headset with “active” noise cancellation to reduce sound from a listener’s environment. 24 Active noise cancellation is found in several headsets already on the market. What makes Balance unique is the addition of a boom microphone that lets the user “talk through” the system to someone on the other end, for example, a dispatcher. This creates an engineering dilemma, as the wrong mix of spoken and ambient sounds fed through the processor adds latency to the signal, or what sounds to users like an echo when they speak. Field testers claim the current model is producing an echo; as Philip reports, “they don’t know how, but they insist on it.”
Philip worked on Balance in another lab, so he will tackle the processor issue here at R&D. As before, he arranges the components at his corner desk—the headset, cabling, and a router—which he connects to his computer. Also on his desk is a loudspeaker that will play a recording of a small airplane engine. This, he says, provides a more “accurate” portrayal of Balance as it is used “in the field.” Industrial machinery is ideal for active noise cancellation because the sound is dangerously loud but periodic. But this leads to a second, more immediate dilemma for experimenting with Balance in this lab: The setting that provides the “everyday” listening situations desired for AURA does not replicate the industrial environments where Balance is used. 25
Like AURA, the experimental interaction for Balance must occur audibly in the room. However, where AURA’s interactions are producing data, Balance is processing sound for a human interpreter. With the headphones on his head, the boom at his mouth, and a finger on the pause button, Philip cranes toward the speaker to capture the right level of engine drone without disturbing others by turning it up too loud. He murmurs, “One, two . . . one, two . . .” into the mic. The room fills with a deep rumble as if emanating from the walls. Conscious of the volume, he keeps these blasts discrete, playing the track and repeating his count in 10-second increments. With each blast from the speaker, nervous laughter comes from the room. It is rare to hear such sustained volumes in the lab. 26
After a couple of hours adjusting settings, Philip cannot produce the echo. He decides he must record longer and louder than is reasonable when others are in the lab. He thus pounces when he returns early from lunch to an empty lab—a rather different setting from the one he left. With the doors and windows sealed, he sighs with relief to record in the hush. However, a muted setting is not a sonic vacuum, and it can lead to unseen consequences: After only a sound check, there comes the pounding of feet on stairs as someone leaves the measurement room above. Dave soon appears and urges they coordinate tests, as it seems they are sharing the same patch of ceiling/floor through which the lowest frequencies of Philip’s recording have been rumbling. 27
With little control over the arrangement of the setting, Philip must induce some sort of difference in the processor that might sound like an echo. During the next week, he records himself over several variations of activity in the room. These variations are dubious “experimental controls,” but they provide a sample of technical behaviors of the setting across the week. Reviewing these recordings, his voice sounds much worse in one sample; it sounds murky and without body. Has he found the source of latency? He alights for only a moment at the difference. He is hearing something else in this recording. He learns that yesterday was warmer, so someone turned on a fan, inaudible among the recorded bursts and out of his line of vision. He discards the tampered recording, and after re-recording, he no longer hears a difference. The benefits of the lab arrangement—an open workspace for informal sharing, experimental flexibility, and in the case of AURA, a “real” listening environment—must be weighed against the detriments, not always seen, but heard.
Discussion
This article proposes the sonic object setting as the material arrangements in which we interact with sound. Sociological observation has much to gain from the study of sonic materiality in the construction and contingency of sonic object settings, even in a devoted sonic practice, like audio engineering. The engineers at Mantle R&D are not passive in this setting: Substantially, but not totally, they control the sonic content of the workplace. The setting maintained in the laboratory—constructed from scientific paradigms and finite organizational resources—is equally constraining and enabling. But a practical distinction can be made between projects that struggle in the setting and those that thrive. Balance required experimental conditions that were not prioritized in the lab. Instead, the setting supported object-based audio in an almost tautological relationship to the work being done there. One might have predicted Balance would function poorly here.
The underexplored role of the “aesthetic” in experience suggests qualitative research should take a more rigorous approach to the perception of qualities (Martin 2011:237). One implication of sonic object settings for perception is the relative durations of materiality. McDonnell (2010) addresses the “decay” of billboards, which alters their meaning over time, whereas the decay of sonic objects is almost constant. Although existing on the same physical plane, these materials are perceived as very different experiences of objectivity, but objectivity nonetheless. Ethnographic sensitivity to sonic materiality on its own terms reveals explanatory details that are otherwise lost. For example, without considering the auditory situation of Balance, an amodal observer could not comprehend the sonic dynamic leading to Philip’s withdrawal from group activity. Conversely, Stefan’s presence vis-à-vis AURA’s sweeps, and his dependence on the audible activity of his officemates, might lead a soundless analysis to decide Stefan is better at rallying support for his project. The incompatibility of AURA’s “good noise” with Balance’s processor is literally invisible. By considering interaction in terms of sonic objects and their setting, it is evident how sounds are immanently meaningful and materially effective.
I do not mean to offer a purely material explanation for the interactions in this laboratory study. The lab setting is structured pre-perceptually by the paradigm of object-based audio. What is underdetermined is the emergence of audible sounds “on the scene” in the course of producing desired sonic effects. When engineers try to anticipate the limits of “purely” scientific knowledge, such real-world conditions are preferred for their complications, which abstract models do not afford (Downer 2011).
This project complements others that have used laboratory studies to locate the bridging of abstract concepts and sensory knowledge. Sensual concepts, like “good noise,” emerge first in theory but seek the substrate of experience to become meaningful. Pagis (2010), for example, presents the symbolic other to noise in her study of silence in meditation, where silence too is a mode of communication, in the right setting. Silence as a process is defined by its lack of content and, in this way, diverges from noise, often defined by its excess of content. With noise, the interaction to be described is the sorting of sound materials as wanted and unwanted based on their audible appearance.
Sonic object setting provides a needed idiom for research on sonic materiality (Rice 2003). To locate the concept elsewhere, ethnographers might consider sonic object settings as ritual formations within the greater cultural soundscape. For example, Calarco (2011) demonstrates the correlation of social class with verbal requests for help in classrooms, indicating the importance of what is audible to both the teacher seeking to help and the researcher seeking data. Future research on stratification might consider the acoustic differences with which sonic object settings vary across and within classrooms, producing differences in sonic access as well as habitus. In a very different mode of interaction, DeLand’s (2012) study of narratives during pickup basketball games features varieties of spoken—mostly shouted—assertions that factor heavily in how players understand the game. Additional details on setting would suggest how ambient sound affects engagement in gameplay and narrative conflicts. Does the sonic object setting of the court change throughout the day? Does play avoid or engage this variation? Finally, sonic object settings affect engagement in the public sphere, defined by Adut (2012:243) as “all virtual or real spaces, the contents of which obtain general visibility or audibility.” Studies of social performance and civic participation would certainly benefit from a perspective on interaction that emphasizes not just the content but the form of expression and how this differently impacts the situations of actual actors with variable access to materiality.
The sonic object setting is a concept that grounds listeners in their environments. The audible is a dimension of experience different from the visible with consequences that are not sensible to visual analysis. Sound is not the secondary property of some more concrete thing but an object in itself that is directly perceived and interpreted. The differentiated qualities of sounds vary dramatically within single settings, and the recognition of this fact opens the study of culture to new modalities of conflict (such as “misophonia,” the selective sensitivity to particular sounds) and harmony in interactions with sound.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Claudio Benzecry, Mike Degani, Alison Gerber, Jeff Guhin, Matt Mahler, and Ben Snyder for their generous commentary, with extra gratitude to Tom Crosbie for his care and attention. I also thank the reviewers for their diligent work. Finally, my thanks to the employees of Mantle for their hospitality and participation in this research.
Funding
This research received financial support from the National Science Foundation (SES-1128288).