Author Archives: Jason Milan

Reading Response – Sir James Jeans

I have to say that, while I occasionally found Sir James Jeans’s Science & Music intriguing in the conceptual connections which it drew between scientific findings and musicality, I did not really enjoy his analysis and interpretation of  these findings. His discussion of evolution, while interesting in many ways, fell short of meaningfulness for me because of its decisively quantitative approach to tracing the creation of our contemporary aural faculties. I did find his points on our awareness of our own modes of hearing (Michel Chion being a pioneer in this field) to be much more elucidating of overarching and applicable concepts. At one point, Jeans declares, “we obtain more pleasure through our eyes than through our ears,” which seems, to me, to be a bold claim made with very little evidence to back it up. If he was to propose that there were a neurological proof to such an assertion, I would find it more compelling, but it seemed to me that he was just spurting out subjective opinion as some sort of universal truth. I often feel that I would lose just as much, if not more pleasure in the loss of my hearing than I would in the loss of my eyesight (although, to be fair, my eyesight is already imperfect, and so I have a very real sense of how that feels, and am more comfortable with it).

The approach that this author takes is, in and of itself, too literal and scientific for me to personally engage and connect with. Song and music is an artistic realm, in my humble student opinion, and while I agree that connections can and should be drawn between the fundaments of the arts and the sciences, approaching either realm with the methodology of the other seems to be quite a mistake. I appreciate what Sir James Jeans is attempting to convey here, but believe that he also belies his own certain biases in his writing, and does not maintain a perspective which I find holistically convincing. Regardless, though, the scientific phenomena which he describes are extremely interesting to consider when we analyze our reactions and appreciation toward certain types of music and song.

Reading Response – Jonathan Lethem

I thoroughly enjoyed Jonathan Lethem’s The Ecstasy of Influence because of how directly pertinent his theories and assertions are to all of my various creative processes. I particularly appreciated his specific tracings of re-interpretation/re-appropriation across genre and medium over time, and how various forms of artistry (verbal, visual, aural) had their meanings changed and transformed by new and emerging artists. I also found Lethem’s constant self-awareness – he himself being an artist – to be refreshing, as it demonstrated that this reflective essay had personal significance for him, as well as academic and intellectual merit.

Lethem’s writing was particularly relevant to my process in our remix/re-appropriation project this semester. After becoming so steeped in contextual knowledge of the Flanders Collection’s original intent at cultural reclamation/assertion, it was difficult to pick a contemporary song whose meaning could fuse with this intent in a way that created something greater than the sum of their two parts. Although I found Lethem’s opinions to be at times polarizing, his explicit terming of such things as the “usemonopoly” were elegantly helpful for me to use to find my own voice in the combination of two other voices. In fact, this element lasted into my Final Project composition as well – I felt, in many ways, as though the harmonics and pitch variations of my Final were reminiscent of other aural compositions that I have heard and appreciated. In finding this, however, I was not disappointed at my subconscious, but rather I was able to appreciate the originality of this accidental appropriation in the greater context of artistic “plagiarism” in all of history.

Final Project – Jason Milan

This vocal sound composition, my Final Project for Sound Aesthetics & Production, was reflective of the life I have lead in the past two years: it has taken place in increments of 3-4 months, in many different places and with many different people. My aural piece was intended to capture some of the thematic emotion of arriving in a new place – the excitement, the nervousness, and building attachment. Then, the frantic energy of the climax serves as an emotional catharsis equivalent to the sudden realization of the approach of an imminent ending. Where the first half of the piece dealt in novelty and thrill, the second half is meant to be a sort of reconciliation; a looking forward while appreciating the present and the past. The piece, while not completely encapsulating my experience of each individual place, is meant to evoke this sort of cyclical series of experiences, the emotion that accompanies rapid-fire and short-lived social and spatial settings.

Reading Response 2 – Seven Metaphors for (Music) Listening: Dramatic

In his essay, Seven Metaphors for (Music) Listening: Dramatic, Joshua Banks Mailman endeavors to analyze humanity’s various modes of listening through metaphor. Creating a taxonomy of seven metaphoric “natures”, Mailman describes his conception of lateral extrapolation as the closest means by which to accurately convey musical/sonic understanding. Rather than view metaphor as counter-rhetorical and illegitimate (Plato’s conception of pure thought as the only inherent subjective “truth”) and subscribe to the mind as a mirror axiom, Mailman points to contemporary philosophical theories that subvert this “notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation.” In essence, Mailman points to works problematizing the very concept of true representation, using physical phenomena (cephalopod camouflage) to demonstrate his point that a singular version of “truth” is nonexistent, and should be viewed as more of an abstraction than a tangible touchstone.

Mailman, after his assessment of the utility of metaphor, moves on to discuss his categories for the various modes of listening: Listening as Recording, Adaptation, Improvisation, Computing, Digestion, Meditation, and Transport. He discusses varying shortcomings and strengths of each approach, explaining their contextual relevance and use in aiding our understanding of noise and listening as a whole (and the relationship between them!). I enjoyed his employment of the well-explained concept of metaphor in order to more abstractly, and therefore more accurately, present contrasting but complementary perspectives.