Workshop 2
Thursday January 13, 2022
Online-only, hosted by University of Nottingham and University of Leeds
Led by: Prof David Baguley, Dr Alinka Greasley and Prof Andrew Hugill
Videos
- Introductions by network members
- Tanvi Solanki: Listening to difference: the BBC and the British Library's Listening Project
- Coreen McGuire: Resistance and Categorisation Construction of Hearing Loss through Telephony in Inter-War Britain
- Ed Garland: How does reading affect the experience of Aural Diversity?
- Matthew Spring: Digital versus Analog. A lifetime of music making using hearing aids
- Ricardo Huisman: Experience of inclusive tactile sonic sculpture installation: "the bone conductor"
- Concluding discussion
Programme
GMT (London)
10:00-10:30 Tanvi Solanki (Yonsei University)
Listening to difference: the BBC and the British Library's Listening Project
I will develop the concept of "listening to difference" through an analysis of a selection of 70 digitized
audio recordings in The British Library's "The Listening Project" recorded and broadcast by a number of local BBC radio stations. The recordings are of intimate conversations in English between migrants from around the world. Mostly between relatives or close friends, lasting up to an hour, the archive allows the voices of migrants to be heard. This is exceptional given that migrants are frequently only seen from afar rather than heard by the ("native") citizens of the countries to which they migrated. Interaction between them and their new environments is also subjected to dehumanizing stereotyping of their voices based on their accent, pitch, tempo, and volume which differ from the unmarked hegemonic language.
I focus specifically on conversations between asylum seekers and refugees, their varying relations to British English, and how a stark difference in ability to perform the language, in the case of a Syrian father and son, for example, causes rifts in intimacy. I consider moments such as the numerous interruptions by the British BBC recordist in a conversation between two ten-and eleven-year-old Somalian siblings, who fled persecution in Somalia, and had only one year of English. Listeners collectively have the opportunity to hear not only the recordist's biases and prejudices, but their own. In transcribing the conversations using Microsoft's audio transcription software, it was clear that those who do not speak a variation of standard British English exceeded the software's limits. Sighs, laughter, whispers, and the muffled weeping of speakers relating their trauma and happiest moments were lost in transcription. Moving beyond semantics, I analyze patterns of intensity, tempo, intonation, and other phonetic elements to show how our own listening and that of our recording systems is never unbiased, unprejudiced, and unmarked.
10:30-11.15 Introductions / catch up
Attendees are invited to deliver short (maximum 5 min) introductions to themselves and their work. This is an opportunity to identify potential collaborators for future research.
11.15-11.30 Coffee break
11.30- 12.00 Coreen McGuire (University of Durham)
Resistance and Categorisation Construction of Hearing Loss through Telephony in Inter-War Britain
The telephone in inter-war Britain was an important tool for both the identification and categorisation of individual hearing loss. Between 1912 and 1981, the British Post Office had control over a nationalised telephone system and Post Office engineers in the inter-war period had considerable expertise in both telecommunications and hearing assistive devices. This talk will demonstrate how the interwar Post Office categorised different kinds of hearing loss through standardising the capacity of its users to engage effectively with the telephone, and investigate how successful it was in doing so.
To do this, I will first examine how the technological construction of 'normal hearing' was embedded in the Post Office's telephone system through their design of an 'artificial ear' and a telephone adaptor for the Medresco NHS hearing aid. Second, by utilising a variety of archival material including interwar hearing aid advertisements, I will show how users resisted the technological construction of hearing loss and explore the mismatch between objective and subjective experiences of 'normal hearing' in inter-war Britain.
12.00-12.30 Ed Garland (University of Aberystwyth)
How does reading affect the experience of Aural Diversity?
The composer Jay Alan Zimmerman recently argued that our general understanding of sight is better than our general understanding of hearing "because we use clear factual terms that describe the [visual] ability you have. In hearing we are still using sad ambiguous terms to describe the ability you don't have". With this language-based difference in mind, my paper will explore the ways in which the consideration and interpretation of written sounds may affect a person's experience of hearing loss and tinnitus. Drawing upon my own research into written representations of sonic experience in fiction, and my experience of hearing loss and tinnitus, I will argue that attending to written sounds in fiction can alter the way we attend to sound in general. A novelist's use of language may encourage us to notice sonic events that we have not noticed before, and to reconsider the meaningful aspects of those sonic events we regularly encounter. I will end the paper by suggesting that a collaborative research project between literary critics, audiologists and hearing therapists may yield useful insights into how aurally diverse readers respond to written accounts of sonic experience. Because such accounts evoke the significance of sound - the many ways in which sound can be meaningful for different reasons to different people - they may help us to address what Zimmerman identifies as a problem with standard audiograms, which give us "not a picture of hearing, but a picture of loss." Perhaps reading about sound specifically may change a person's attitude towards their aural diversity, by enlivening the connections between imagination and perception.
12.30 - 13.00 General discussion
13.00-14.00 LUNCH BREAK
14:00-14.30 Matthew Spring (Bath Spa University)
Digital versus Analog. A lifetime of music making using hearing aids.
Background: As a working musician, educator, and researcher I have a lifetime of experience using hearing aids for music making. Very recently I was supplied with the newest bone conduction hear aid; one that involved implanting the transducer under the skin and the processor outside the body. Though my hearing was improved in all sorts of ways using this combination set, the one area that was disappointing was in the amplification of music. Indeed, since the onset of digital aids this has been a recurring story. Despite the frequent inclusion of 'music mode' among the settings available on digital aids I have yet to experience one where I cannot detect distortion within a fast-changing musical continuum, and particularly in sound decay. When I need to hear musical sound accurately, as in rehearsal and performance situations, my response is to use one of my dwindling collection of 1980s 'over the ear' analog aids. These simply reproduce the sound without distortion, compression, or any other forms or interference.
Aims: This paper reviews the many generations of aids that I have experience of over five decades, with particular regard to music. It is a personal journey, and the paper does not seek to be based on the wider experience, though I do include experiences of other deaf musicians. This paper considers the areas such as recording studios, use of earphones, placement within ensembles, dealing with loud sounds, etc., in which a musician using hearing aids may be at greatest disadvantage: and how such adverse situations might be improved.
Main Contribution: It is my view that digital sound reproduction in aids is still far from perfect as regards music. As the primary concern of manufacturers is to help those suffering from age-related deafness to hear speech, concern with the complexities of musical reproduction remains a Cinderella area. This paper aims to review the situation both past and present.
Conclusion and Implications: This paper concludes with a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of the various types of hearing aids I have used in the past and present in the context of musical performance. The implication is that in some instances analog aids still have relevance and should not be discontinued as they have been by the NHS.
14.30-15.00 Ricardo Huisman (Sound image artist)
Experience of inclusive tactile sonic sculpture installation: "the bone conductor"
As sound image artist, soundscape composer with artistic research the "multi sensorial hearing perspective" I want to create more awareness about the use of multi senses when we are hearing with our whole body and mind as an embodied listening that is constantly transforming our cultural and personal perspectives. We all sense the sound habitat with personal and cultural "multi sensorial hearing perspectives". We can be open to "bring together" (conduct) and share our personal experienced "different abilities" when sensing (composed) soundscapes.
"The bone conductor" - installation / research project combines a tactile sonic sculpture: the "woollen sound bone" with composed tangible/audible soundscapes and use of bone conducting headphones at the same time. The interactive installation invites people to experiment with and experience these combined sensory hearing perspectives by touching the tactile sculpture, feeling resonating soundscapes, feeding the ears with (reflected) sounds in the space and connecting the inner ear directly by using bone conducting headphones, while listening, feeling, conducting soundscapes with their whole body. The composed "sensescapes": a combination of field recordings, (binaural) soundwalks, mixed (un)musical sounds triggering imaginary associations about time and place, (sensory) reminiscences. By interviewing "different (hearing) abled" people, documenting, personal experiences, stories and sense knowledge we can gain a more inclusive and broader "multi sensorial hearing perspective" of the sound habitat in which we live and work together. At the same time aimed to gain more knowledge about different "multi sensorial hearing perspectives" as part of aural diversity.
I will share my updated ideas about the "multi sensorial hearing perspective", experiences of different hearing abled people with the bone conductor as part of aural diversity, including some implications and possible follow up.
15.00 - 15.15 Coffee break
15:15 - 16.30 Developing funding bids (Spatial Chat)
An opportunity to use the Affinity Agency, our Spatial Chat environment, for discussions about potential funding bids. On hand will be experienced members of the Aural Diversity core team to lead discussions on applying for funding from AHRC, EPSRC, ACE, EU and more. The aim is to develop some cross-disciplinary funding bids from the Aural Diversity network.