Schizophonia & Schismogenesis (pt I): Schizophonia

Stephen Feld's appropriation & juxtaposition of Schafer's notion of Schizophonia with Gregory Bateson's notion of Schismogenesis is a useful point of reference here, in terms of articulating the inherent dislocation present in environmental recordings, and the success of artists such as Westerkamp etc, in terms of using this dislocation or schism productively.

Schizophonia:


"The Greek prefix schizo means split, seperated, and phone is Greek for voice. Schizophonia refers to the split between an original sound and its electroacoustical transmission or reproduction." - R. Murray Schafer (1)


Schafer (who is in a sense the father of the acoustic ecology movement) in his foundational text The Soundscape: The Tuning of the World seems to hold an almost fundamental distrust for modern technology, and the process of psychological and sociological fragmentation that he attributes to it. This sort of bias against industrial/post-industrial society and technology seems to inhabit much of his work, implicit in such notions of "hi-fi" and "lo-fi" (2) environments, and his dismissal of the acoustic milieu of urban space as mere "noise", as well as the aforementioned notion of schizophonia.

"Since the invention of electroacoustical equipment, for the transmission and storage of sound, any sound, no matter how tiny, can be blown up and shot around the world, or packaged on tape or record for the generations of the future. We have split the sound from the maker of the amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape. In the same instant it may issue from millions, of holes in millions of public and private places around the world, or it may be stored to be reproduced at a later date, perhaps eventually hundreds of years after it was originally uttered. A record or tape collection may contain items from widely diverse cultures and historical periods in what would seem to a person from any century but our own, a meaningless and surrealistic juxtaposition." (3)

Schafer's concern is not only the schism, and resulting "meaningless juxtaposition" that is created, but also the role of the "synthetic soundscape" that is produced through this process, as a further element of obscuration of the natural "hi-fi" sound world. While Schafer's inherent biases make much of work useless here-in as anything other but a point of critique and contrast, the above notion of schizophonia does serve as a useful descriptive term, when it comes to articulating the sense of dislocation that seems implicit in environmental recordings (i.e within the current sound map frame). While the emphasis in Schafer's work is very much negative,  Feld's juxtaposition and extension of the concept vis a vis the notion of schizmogenesis provides something useful here, in that it articulates the sought of productive engagement with the space made by the dislocation/schism as seen in the work of such artists as Westerkamp etc. In part II of this blog-entry we will explore Feld's use of schizmogenesis, it's relationship to & embodiment in the work of Hildegard Westerkamp, and look at what can be drawn from this in terms of sound map practice.

1) Schafer, R. Murray, The Soundscape; the tuning of the world, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, 1977, pg 90
2) Ibid, pg 43
3) Ibid, pg 90