See also The Experience of Driving, Car Cultures: An Academic Survey, and Summaries.
Consequently:
In the apparent refusal of sociability the Walkman act nevertheless reaffirms participation in a shared environment. It directly partakes in the changes in the horizon of perception that characterize the late twentieth century, and which offers a world fragmenting under the mounting media accumulation of intersecting signs, sounds and images. With the Walkman strapped to our bodies we confront what Murray Schafer in his book The Tuning of the World calls a 'soundscape', a soundscape that increasingly represents a mutable collage: sounds are selected, sampled, folded in and cut up both by producers (DJs, rap crews, dub masters, recording engineers) and the consumers (we put together play lists, skip some tracks, repeat others, turn up the volume to block out the external soundtrack or flip between the two). Each listener/ player selects and rearranges the soundtrack or flip soundscape, and, in constructing a dialogue with it, leaves a trace in the network.
Quoted in du Gay, Hall, et al, 141
But as both instrument and activity, the Walkman is not simply an instrument that reveals the enduring truth of technology and being; it is also an immediate reality and activity. As part of the equipment of modern nomadism it contributes to the prosthetic extension of our bodies, perpetually 'on the move', caught up in a decentred diffusion of languages, experiences, identities, idiolects and histories that are distributed in a tendentially global syntax. The Walkman encourages us to think inside this new organization of time and space. Here, for example, the older, geometrical model of the city as the organizer of space has increasingly been replaced by chronometry and the organization of time ...
Quoted in du Gay, Hall, et al, 142
Let's start with Bull's article on the soundscapes in the car.
Bull works from a series of ethnographic interviews to draw some conclusions about the role of soundscapes in cars. He sees people as "rewriting their daily script through the mediation of sound. The aural script of 'driving time' is imposed upon those mundane and routine periods of empty time, thereby reclaiming and transforming them" (Bull 2001, 199).
Personal Stereos
“Catch the bus. I’m listening to the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction which puts me in a better mood. While I’m listening to it I envisage myself in the film. That’s how absorbed the film’s got me. Sometimes I wish I was the bad guy in life with all those witty lines that just shuts people up. So I mentally picture myself in Pulp Fiction except that there would a few more murders and that Ingrid Bergman, Liz Taylor, Deborah Kerr were in it. Then I arrive at work in character repeating all those lines from ages past.” (Jade, in Bull 2000, 93)
Car Stereos
"You have to get it above the noise of the car ... You switch off to the noise of the car because its the same noise you get all the time." (Sharon, in Bull 2001, 187)“It’s my time. I’m at home. I feel that I’m in my own space. More so than I would be in a tube listening with a Walkman. I feel totally at home. I could stop the car in the middle of a lane and eat in my car … A lot of people used to say: Joyce doesn’t have a room, she has a car.” (Jo, in Bull 2001, 193)
“It comes on automatically when I switch the ignition on. Like I never switch the power off, so it automatically comes on as soon as I start the car.” (Alicia, in Bull 2001, 190)
"Well it's on anyway. When the car starts it switches on. So it comes on automatically." (Gale, in Bull 2001, 190)
"I can't even start my car without music being on. It's automatic. Straight away, amplifiers turned on. boom (sic) boom!" (Kerry, in Bull 2001, 190)
"In the mornings I feel relaxed when I get into my car. After rushing around getting ready, it's nice to unwind, put on my music and the heater and get myself ready for the day." (Jonathan, in Bull 2001, 190)
"Privatised Aural Space" (p. 193)
"I always have the radio on when I'm driving on my own and I'm always really annoyed when people in the car with me don't want to turn the radio on. I just really enjoy, especially if I'm doing a drive that I do regularly, that, I can sort of switch off and also if I'm doing it at the same time. I can key into the Radio 4 (David Platt: BBC talk/ drama station) schedule, and I know where I am in reference to whatever's on the radio." (Susan, in Bull 2001, 193)
"It's my time. I'm at home. I feel that I'm in my own space. More so than I would be in a tube listening with a Walkman. I feel totally at home. I could stop my car in the middle of a lane and eat in my car ... A lot of people used to say: Joyce doesn't have a room. She has a car." (Jo, in Bull 2001, 193)
"Sound of the radio voice or music fills up or overlays the contingency of driving, transforming the potential frustration associated with powerlessness into pleasurable, possessed time." (p. 193)
"It's good if you're in a traffic jam cos you can just forget where you are and just listen to it. It's more really background though. I usually sing along." (Gales, in Bull 2001, 193)
"I couldn't drive without music. Driving without music is too boring." (John, in Bull 2001, 193)
"Not only does time pass more pleasurably, it is also potentially more predictable:" (p. 194)
"I always go at a certain time, so I can always listen to the same programme, a dance programme. I look forward to it. The relax programme!" (Sharon, in Bull 2001, 194)
"I have a few favourite sing along tapes. These are for long journeys. I will have them on the side, on the passenger sear, a selection of tapes because you can't rely on the radio for such a long journey." (Lizzy, in Bull 2001, 194)
Music for specific time or driver's mood: (semi-quotation from p. 194)
"I'm more likely to listen to music after work on the way home or when I'm doing something else because its (sic) much more relaxing and it's a different type of music as well. I'll listen to a dance station, such as Kiss or Radio 1 if they've got some good dance music on and that will make me feel good. And then there's tapes. Tapes are reserved for those times when there's nothing on the radio - Then I've got my selection of tapes, and for long ourneys - tapes are a way of recording how far you've got. So you change every 45 minutes. When you're on your own - so you say, That journey will take four tapes." (Sharon, in Bull 2001, 194-5)
"Singing in the car" (p. 195)
“I’m sitting there mouthing off to it. You talk, as you would any time when you’re on your own. If the TV’s on and there’s some news programme, I’d talk, like that’s a load of rubbish, etc., I’d chatter away to it.” (Sharon, Bull 2001, 196)
The collection is part of a series of six books, arguing for a sensual turn in ways of understanding the world and human experience (as apart from the famous literary and visual turns). So far, the argument set out in the introduction goes, people have privileged the visual, leaving out almost entirely the auditory realm in critical analysis. One can point to the almost exclusively visual quality of our high arts but visual metaphors predominate generally. For instance, we talk about "surveillance society" and the "Panopticon" but we need to recognize that auditory plays an important role ("Walls have ears") (see p. 4ff). Hearing is understood (I had to stop myself saying, ".. seen") as a passive activitity (p. 6-7). Yet, sound can also shape the structure of our days -- one of the included authors discusses the effect of church bells in 19th c. French villages.
The book is divided into five parts:
Overall -- useful for Bull's article, a restatement of the importance auditory perception, and a sense of how people use music to articulate their identities.
R. Murray Schafer's "The Tuning of the World"
Schafer, R. Murray (1977) The Tuning of the World. Alfred A. Knopf: New York.
One of the founders (if not the founder) of Vancouver's World Soundscape Project.
The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was established as an educational and research group by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It grew out of Schafer's initial attempt to draw attention to the sonic environment through a course in noise pollution, as well as from his personal distaste for the more raucous aspects of Vancouver's rapidly changing soundscape. This work resulted in two small educational booklets, The New Soundscape and The Book of Noise, plus a compendium of Canadian noise bylaws. However, the negative approach that noise pollution inevitably fosters suggested that a more positive approach had to be found, the first attempt being an extended essay by Schafer (in 1973) called 'The Music of the Environment,' in which he describes examples of acoustic design, good and bad, drawing largely on examples from literature.
Schafer's book isn't really relevant to our project, other than in emphasizing the importance of auditory surroundings (and introducing the term "Soundscapes"). Schafer traces the history of soundscapes from the earliest natural ones, through urbanization, industrialization, to the modern age. He discusses various methods of graphical reprsentation of sounds. Schafer's primary concern is "acoustic design" and the role that it can play in producing more pleasant environments and their effect on "social welfare."
Bull, Michael (2000) Sounding Out the City. Berg: Oxford and New York.
Bull, Michael (2001) "Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Ethnography of Automobile Habitation," in Car Cultures, ed. Daniel Miller. Berg: Oxford and New York.
Bull, Michael and Les Back (eds.) (2003) The Auditory Culture Reader. Berg: Oxford and New York.
Chambers, Iain (1990) "A miniature history of the Walkman," New Formations: a journal of culture/theory/politics, No.11, pp.1-4.
du Gay, Paul, Stuart Hall, Linda Janes, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus (1997) Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. Open University Press: Milton Keynes
Schafer, R. Murray (1977) The Tuning of the World. Knopf: New York.
Serres, M. (1995) Genesis, G. James and J. Nielson (trans.). Michigan: Ann Arbor.