Really Hearing the Thing: an Investigation of the Creative Possibilities of Trompe L’oreille and the Fabrication of Aural Landscapes

This article considers the fabrication of aural landscapes and in particular the notion of trompe l’oreille —fabricated landscapes that are indistinguishable from reality. It involves the comparison of a number of sonic illusion types which clarify the latter concept and discusses technical and logistical issues relevant to its successful implementation before exploring the creative/compositional possibilities that it affords and its relevance within existing acousmatic theory and practice. I am especially interested in its possibilities as a means of subtly directing the reality into which it is incorporated and encouraging deeper environmental listening by the casual observer, which has obvious ramifications in terms of acoustic ecology. As such it is perhaps worth considering as a means of allying soundscape and acousmatic approaches to sound and sound design. These issues will be discussed with reference to examples from my own and others’ work, and in particular with an emphasis on multichannel presentation environments which accommodate this practice. INTRODUCTION This article is an investigation of the creative use of trompe l’oreille and related areas of sonic illusion in electroacoustic—most particularly installation—contexts. My interest in this subject has been prompted by my attempts to expand my own compositional practice involving electroacoustic media to presentation situations outside the concert hall, presenting in new listening contexts (including large-scale public spaces) and exploring the relationship between compositional and environmental space. It seems there are a number of issues that arise with the fabrication of aural landscapes which are highly pertinent to acousmatic compositional thought and soundscape studies but which are discussed minimally in existing literature pertaining to either subject, and this has prompted me to explore the matter further. Trompe l’oreille, a rather nebulous term, could be used to refer to any sonic discourse that, quite literally, ‘fools the ear’ in some way. For the purposes of this text, however, a more specific definition is sought. Katharine Norman describes trompe l’oreille rather elegantly as ‘the experience of, not “hearing the real thing,” but of “really hearing the thing”’ (Norman 2000, 220). We might therefore define the practice as involving the presentation of recognisable (or referential) sounds in a manner sufficiently indistinguishable in spatial and sonic behaviour from reality as to allow the listener to believe s/he is truly ‘hearing the thing’, if only (and in many cases explicitly) for a limited period. In the same way as its visual equivalent, the trompe l’oeil, it seeks to present a plausible landscape, often through the apparent extension of an existing one, from which it may be indistinguishable. In view of this definition, the following discussion involves the comparison of a number of sonic illusion types in order to clarify the term and will establish criteria relevant to its successful implementation. Typological, technical and logistical issues will therefore be discussed (including, for example, ethical implications of its use), in addition to its possible applications, including creative/compositional possibilities that it affords and the way in which it fits into existing acousmatic theory and practice. I am especially interested in its possibilities as a means of subtly directing the reality into which it is incorporated and encouraging deeper environmental listening by the casual observer, which has obvious ramifications in terms of acoustic ecology. As such it is perhaps worth considering as a means of allying soundscape and acousmatic approaches to sound and sound design. These issues will be discussed with reference to examples from my own and others’ work, and in particular with an emphasis on multichannel presentation environments, partly because this is an area in which I have some experience, and partly because such contexts tend to lend themselves well to (and are perhaps indispensable to the successful achievement of) trompe l’oreille, which, I will argue, relies heavily upon space and spatial behaviour to appear EMS : Electroacoustic Music Studies Network – De Montfort/Leicester 2007 ‘real’. It is with this in mind that the discussion begins with an examination of spatial illusion in electroacoustic media. ILLUSORY AURAL LANDSCAPES Spatial illusion is almost universally practiced in any medium which makes use of the loudspeaker. So much so that instances are no longer perceived as illusory phenomena (if indeed they ever were). But illusions they remain; the centre of the stereo speaker space is empty, and there is nothing behind. By separating sounds horizontally between speakers, and mimicking the ways in which sound-emitting objects are perceived at different distances from the listener, we create the illusion of aural perspective—reverberation, attenuation and the reduction of high frequencies are tactics used to lend depth perception, and simulate the increasing distance of a given source. Movement within these planes enhances the illusion. Francis Dhomont’s Espace Escape (1989) is a comprehensive study in such techniques, allying convincing simulations of spatial movement with anecdotal fragments which convey a sense of space or of escape. Sound can be used to alter the character and volume of a space as perceived when listening, albeit impressionistically. Kurt Blaukopf compares the ‘clear space’ associated with the wooden interiors of Baroque cathedrals, due to their augmentation of reverberation in the upper frequency ranges, with more ‘obscure space’ characteristic of Gothic cathedrals which favour longer reverberation time in the lower frequencies (Blaukopf, 1971 Space in Electronic Music, cited in Minard 2006, 77). The emulation of these qualities through the application of processing to captured sounds will place them, seemingly, within such spaces. The space itself can be contrived to mislead the ear in its interpretation of a sound and sound placement. A reflected sound from a building, for example, can mask the true direction of origin of that sound if the origin is masked. And sound can be amplified or attenuated, made to seem closer or further away, by the physical properties of a space. Michael Asher’s installation at Pomona College, 1970 (LaBelle 2006, 90-1) presented an hourglass-like configuration of two rooms, joined by a narrow corridor. One of the rooms was open to the outside, allowing environmental sound to enter and permeate the spaces. The funnelling of sound from one room to the other served to amplify the sound reaching the inner space, distorting the perception of space and proximity in the process. More generally, psychoacoustic strategies can be used to alter the perception of an acoustic reality, for example by using drone-like or wide-bandwidth sounds to mask mid-volume, intrusive sounds and thereby through consistency imply a relative silence, or at least static-ness, which does not exist. (Minard 2003, 77-8). Bill Fontana’s Sound Island (1994), which involved the relocation of sounds from the Normandy coast to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, was designed to mask the sounds of the traffic on the roundabout that surrounds it in such a way: “The sound of the sea is natural white sound, and has the psycho-acoustic ability to mask other sounds, not by virtue of being louder, but because of the sheer harmonic complexity of the sea sound.” (Fontana 2002b). FABRICATING AURAL LANDSCAPES These latter are predominantly illusions which subvert our perceptions of the existing landscape. But what of fabricating illusory landscapes? Wishart discusses two processes in the creation of a plausible sonic landscape when composing for an acousmatic listening context. The first is the generation of a sound-stage, or backdrop, in which to place events. This stage might include a variety of sounds which set a notional scene within which something might happen. The second is the placing of events on (or within) this stage so that they fit the contrived scene (Wishart 1996, 139-155). In the electroacoustic concert environment, the entire constructed landscape (the stage and the things that occupy it) is superimposed on the existing concert space landscape (i.e. the concert hall), which will have its own resonant characteristics EMS : Electroacoustic Music Studies Network – De Montfort/Leicester 2007 and formant structures. The composed landscape ‘reality’ exists within and is framed by the concert hall reality and the listener must necessarily enter a kind of spatio-contextual contract with the composer in order to engage with any presented real-world content that exists in the compositional narrative. This is rather like subscribing to the narrative in film; allowing oneself to become immersed in the presented storyline though with a latent knowledge of its artificiality. The Fontana work discussed above exemplifies the spatial displacement of sound—the use of ‘musical information networks’ (Fontana 2002a) to send soundscapes over long distances (this is an idea common to several Fontana works). But the fabrication of sonic ‘elsewheres’ can be used more functionally to engender a sense of emplacement or ‘being there’ when presenting otherwise inaccessible soundscapes for, for example, educational purposes. Nigel Frayne discusses the construction of ‘naturalistic habitat environments’ appropriate to the exhibited animals at the Singapore Zoological Gardens: ‘visitors respond more emotionally to an exhibit, they learn more about animal-environment interactions and have increased awareness of the natural environment when ambient soundscapes are introduced’ (Frayne 2004, 16). Akin to this is temporal displacement via the fabrication (or resurrection) of extinct soundscapes, as regularly occurs in museums and historical re-enactments. The reintroduction of machine sounds originally heard in the ‘sonic oxymorons’ (Tixier & Houdemont 2004) of now-decommissioned factories is a common example of such a practice, often occurring during the current vogue of city regeneration programmes and eliciting interesting collective memory experiences from former workers who return to hear it. Nye Parry’s work Living Steam (1999) at the Kew Bridge Steam Museum involved the presentation of recorded steam engine sounds in such a way as to recreate a sense of those machines (which, though resident in the space, were often not actually ‘in steam’) actually being in motion (Parry 2000, 96-98). In this case, the recordings were essentially indistinguishable from the real things. Generally, however, historical/natural habitat facsimiles, while often highly convincing and consistent with how things are/were elsewhere/elsewhen, nevertheless remain at one remove from trompe l’oreille since as listeners we are aware of the contextual displacement; it still requires some suspension of disbelief—another listener contract—in order to accommodate the illusion. In instances of trompe l’oreille, the whole point is to avoid any such contracts. We become part of the fictional landscape whether we choose to or not. The illusion of a sonic reality is total, the divide between the real and simulated entirely transparent. Issues of simulation and simulacrum are clearly relevant here (though I do not propose to elucidate the connection in full): we are simply ‘substituting the signs of the real for the real’ (Baudrillard 1994, 2) such that it is impossible to tell the difference, and even to the extent that the unreal may ‘precede’ and direct the real. Creating such illusion certainly has practical applications: the (recorded) sound of a barking dog behind a locked door is a powerful deterrent to any would-be burglar. Conversely, the imitation of bird and animal calls used as a lure is well documented. Christina Kubisch (cited in Gerke 2003, 48) talks of a ‘concert of frogs that she once heard in a landscape as dry as dust. It turned out that the sounds were hunters trying to lure waterfowl with the recorded croaking of