Soundscape an opportunity to open up our ears

By Y. Bintang Prakarsa

JAKARTA (JP): If you were asked to reflect on the sounds of Jakarta, what would you think of? The terrible traffic, the hum that comes from the office wall, the blaring speakers in shopping malls, the haranguing politicians? Is that all?

Many more sounds evade our ears simply because we, who suffer from constant sound harassment, have trained ourselves to desensitize our hearing.

There is, however, an opportunity to relearn about sound and hearing. Visit Soundscape Jabotabek 2001, an extensive, weeklong sound exhibition organized by Dutch radio station NPS and the Goethe Institut Jakarta, in cooperation with Cantus Music Center, electronic composer Otto Sidharta and Erasmus Huis.

It is an umbrella for two parallel programs: a Soundscape Festival and a concert premiering nine pieces by Jakarta's young soundscape creators. While not aimed at problem solving, the entire event will give insight about our attitude toward sound, about how we perceive and project it, use and abuse it, produce and consume it.

What is a soundscape anyway? Coined as an analogy to landscape, in its widest sense a soundscape is a presentation via electronic media of an environmental sound recording. There are two schools of soundscapers.

The first one insists of documentation and purpose. The recorded sound should be kept more or less intact and then used to send a message. A recording made in an early morning at a logging camp, starting just before the loggers begin their activities, would tell much about deforestation and its attendant ecological impact.

The other school conceives soundscape as artistic, even musical. A mere replay is not enough. The recorded sound is only a raw material. Like the (potential) sounds of musical instruments, it must be reordered further -- in other words, composed -- for esthetic purposes.

To achieve the desired sound, the composer splits the tapes that contain the recording into patches, which are then manipulated and rearranged further.

Now, thanks to digital technology, one can carry out the work a lot faster than, say, 50 years ago. Michael Fahres, a soundscape composer who will be present at the festival, said that pioneering electronic composers such as Stockhausen and Boulez spent three to four months to complete an electronic composition because they had to literally cut and paste the tapes! Now, only two days are needed because the computer, with many more possibilities for manipulation, has taken over the chores.

Highlights

Of course, in practice there is no clear-cut boundary between the two. Having less sound layering, Phoenix, the last number of Fahres' Zoophonia leans more to documentation. The piece, along with four others (two of which involve video shows), will be performed on the last day of the festival.

Fahres, with Piet-Hein van de Poel (radio producer and soundscape expert from NPS), will also give lectures on sound and soundscape.

An interesting item is composer Arno Peeters' special project, a sound installation called BlindSide. Those who walk into this installation find intriguing, out of place sounds. One will not find the ordinary, daily sounds, in their original places but in other, unrelated situations. Imagine the sound of a toilet flushing in a dining room, or a door closing on an empty wall.

Throughout the festival there will be daily concerts and Vanished Sounds, an interactive sound exhibition. A computer will be provided, and one can choose from the menu and listen to extinct sounds of outdated appliances, old factories, animals, etc.

A concert of soundscapes by 11 college students coming from various disciplines will conclude the event. After attending a preliminary workshop in January, these students recorded sounds from around the Jabotabek area (Jakarta, Bogor, Tangerang and Bekasi). Assisted by Fahres, van de Poel and Otto, they turned these recordings into compositions.

Audiences will hear different sounds of Jakarta -- an iron workshop, animals, bathroom activities, hockey games, etc. -- in a new way as they are integrated in the compositions (but don't expect any performers on stage).

Schedules

The Soundscape Festival will be held at Galeri Cipta III, Taman Ismail Marzuki (Saturday, April 21 until Thursday, April 26). Lectures start at 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Saturday, April 21: Soundscape (Michael Fahres), Sonic Perception (Piet-Hein van de Poel). Sunday, April 22: Soundwalks (Piet-Hein van de Poel), Sound and Ecology (Michael Fahres).

Special Project starts at 7 p.m, Saturday-Sunday, April 21-22: BlindSide sound installation (Arno Peeters).

Daily concerts start at 8 p.m., Saturday, April 21: Far-West News (Luc Ferrari). Vanished Sounds. Sunday, April 22: Beneath the Forest Floor, Gently Penetrating (Hildegard Westerkamp), Winter Diary (Murray Schafer).

Monday, April 23: CityScapes (Michael Rusenberg, Robert Iolini, Philip Ma). Tuesday, April 24: Aeroson (Arno Peeters). Wednesday, April 25: Addy (Francisco Lopez). Thursday, April 26: Zoophonia, etc. (Michael Fahres). Vanished Sounds: daily, during the concerts. Soundscape Jabotabek 2001 concert: world premier of Jabotabek soundscapes at Erasmus Huis (Friday, April 27, 7:30 p.m.). Free admission to all events. More at Cantus Music Center, (7507334 or 7651156).