Episode 5

1. At the beginning of this episode, Krukowski asserts, “the marginal-the rejected-the repressed-is whatever the powerful have decided is of no use at the moment.” What does he mean by this statement? He goes on to ask, “But might it [the marginal-the rejected-the repressed] not be a key to alternate approaches-to art, to society-to power itself?” (“Marginalized” is an adjective that describes a person, group, or concept that is treated as insignificant or peripheral.)

What is he trying to get at with this question? How does music indicate the differences between the powerful and the marginalized?

• The author here was talking about when he entered the record store where he finds those album and records are left for a long time and nobody is using it until they are expired. Nowadays, people prefer downloading music from the internet or upload the music apps as Spotify, Soundcloud or YouTube rather than going to the music store wasting time picking up CD’s. But music records store is a type of art and there are some people who use it. Krukowski mentioned that by visiting the record store, he discovered a lot of information there. He gave an example such as workers over there can provide you with information about years ago that you didn’t know. What’s more, they can advise you if you’re struggling in finding a specific song or a type of song.

2. How are the music listening experiences enabled by Forced Exposure different from those that Paul Lamere is working on with platforms like Spotify?

• Forced exposure started as a scene in the 80s. They listened to all the music they could get their hands on and told the rest of us what they thought was worth hunting down and back before the Internet, it really was a hunt. You had to write a letter with the self-address stamped on the envelope. You are taking for months or even years just to track someone down. Paul Lamere’s ultimate goal is the magic music player that automatically knows what you want to listen to. Instead of having to scroll through millions of songs to figure out what you want to play, you just hit the play button and it plays the right song for you. Around 2005, the way people thought about music recommendation was very similar to the way they thought about movie recommendations, if you liked Jurassic Park, you might like The Matrix. It turns out when you do that with music recommendation, you get assertive of funny problems. First you get that real popularity by music releases, two singers released album in the same week. People would listen to them as they are released at the same week although they are different types of music. People would get recommendation if you like this singer or the other one which is a poor recommendation. Those were a real struggle that people faced before Paul Lamere invented the magic play button

3. What distinctions does Krukowski draw between being “surprised” by music and “discovering” music? What are the differences between these experiences and according to Krukowski, why are they important?

• Suspired is not the same as discovered. Surprise in not really a helpful thing. He used a good example saying, “Does google want to surprise us when we use it to search for something?” “Does Facebook wang to surprise us when we are looking for our friends? They want us to find what we are already comfortable with.” Google give us the right answers. Facebook connects us to the people we already know. Same as music recommendation services, wants to give us the music we would like. On the other hand, discovering means that you enter another world. It may be confusing at first, even overwhelming. Spotify provides music without your participation. The algorithm will know what you want. All of the apps or websites’ data are collected about you and are trying to shape the world of information that you find inside their programs. You find the answers you want to the question you wanted to ask. You find the opinions of those who already agree with yours. You find the news that reinforces the opinions and the others too.

Episode 6

1. According to Krukowski, what is noise? What is signal? Why are these distinctions important?

• “Noise is the signal that you’re not interested in” says Alicia Quinel of Harvard Medical School. To doctor Alicia, signal is whatever sound we are trying to pay attention to. A good example was mentioned, if you’re in a crowded restaurant with your partner who’s trying to say something across the table that you’re trying to hear, that’s a signal and everything else in the restaurant is noise. On the other hand, if somebody on the other table says something that has interest to you, as your ears drop, that voice becomes the signal and whatever is being said at your table is now the noise. We are very skilled at shifting our attention from signal to signal focusing and refocusing on different sounds in the environment. All of this are considered to be noise until we decided to focus on what’s trying to be said, which is considered to be signal.

2. What central idea about noise does this episode convey? Why is it significant?

• Making any of signal or noise is an example of noise which result in the production of different sounds. Noise is described as any unwanted sound or a sound which is added to the original signal that is judged as loud voice and disruptive to hear where it begs for your attention to get the information. The difference between sound and noise depends upon the listener and the circumstances. If somebody got a music without any physical instrument, it would sound good, but if this person started combining too many music together it would be annoying. it can be hazardous to a person’s hearing.

3. How does this episode relate to other episodes? 

• This episode gives us the best invention ever which is the magic music play button. This button is used to play the song you need without even trying to search for it and waste a lot of time. What’s more, noise has been reduced in the present time. For example, for now anybody who doesn’t like a conversation or something can put on the headphones and listen to whatever they are excited in and ignore the outer environment and distractions.

Episode 3

1. According to Krukowski, what are the main differences between a microphone and a cellphone and why is this difference important?

• All microphones if you speak closely to them, exaggerate the base ear, chest your tone in your voices. And if you back away from them, they highlight the brass ear clearer tones. On the other hand, the sounds of the voices have gotten worse with the switch to digital. We don’t hear each other clearly despite that the miniature mics in our cellphones are sensitive. No matter how close we hold into our mouths, there is no proximity effect in the cell phones. Everyone hears just as near or just as far as everyone else. Cellphones don’t transmit the whole full range of sounds picked up by their mics. Instead, the digitally process that sound compressing it to remove whatever engineers have decided is unnecessary data. Cellphones can transform recordings into mp3, films into YouTube videos. Cellphones are engineered to communicate our words. Roman Mars tried to show the difference between cell phones and microphones. He wanted people to hear what that sound like a difference. He said that the cell phone is a designed quality and so much worse. When calling your being interrupted by something which is sound problem and why lose a chance to sit with somebody and have great moments together because of the cell phone?

2. What do Krukowski and Gary Tomlinson, the professor he interviews, assert about the “musical” qualities of the voice and how are these changed by digital transmission?
   • Garry Tomlinson believes in our ability to communicate with the nonverbal parts of our voices goes so deep, not only in our memories from childhood, but it’s coded in the genetic makeup of our species. Before we had language, we had utterances with musical qualities that communicated with our ability to survive making social organizations and love. We should encode our language, set it over the internet and make it perceivable. What’s more, what is absent from what gets produced across these technological systems which we have so many these days. Moreover, the miraculous ways in which human beings fill in what is left out. Human beings fill in what is left out hearing you across FaceTime. There’s a lot that is captured from what you’re saying and how you say it. There is a lot of stuff that aren’t there and yet we’re projecting into it, we’re hearing it and instructing you in a way as you are can instruct me, this is an extraordinary capacity. We are always able to recognize voices almost instantaneously even though we are getting a small portion of what these voices would give us if we are standing face to face and hearing them.

3. What is the significance of Krukowski’s comments on the voice to ideas about community and interpersonal connection?
   • Krukowski’s comments that the digital tools make it possible to share our words across great distances, but he thinks that they fail us in so many ways as we try to communicate one to one. Not often are we often left hanging, speaking into the air on one end and listening to nothing in the other. When it works as it should, the voice of our voice across the digital line is limited. He mentioned that our voices are tripped to the minimum we need so we cannot cross the limits to recognize the voice of the caller and what exactly they are saying.

Episode 4

4. Krukowski begins by discussing the issue of music file sharing. What is your opinion of this issue? Should music be freely available or should one have to pay? 
   • No one ever had to pay for recorded music, it was always “free” on the radio and the home taping of LPs, the copying of cassettes and CDs made buying music optional. Now, Spotify, SoundCloud and YouTube make music instantly accessible on demand. I don’t think this is fair for the musicians. Musicians invest time, sweat and tears into their music. A chef or a doctor could do the same, yet they are paid for their services. Some people tend to think that being an artist or musician is a hobby not a job. No, it’s a job and every musician or artist should be paid for their work they do. They have a family to take care of so, taking money away from them is like taking their job that they put their whole life into making. I don’t support file sharing at all as artists and musicians take a lot of time and resources to create albums to put out for people to listen to and enjoy and by sharing it online, you’re basically stealing money right out of their pockets. People don’t think about smaller bands who are just getting out there, who don’t have the same money and resources as most big-name artists. These bands must be paid for everything and Traditional musicians, scholars, lawyers, and cultural organizations should work together to change copyright laws.
5. How does this episode represent the relationships between music, community, and culture?

• Music helps define who we are, creating our communal self-identity. There are many cultural beliefs and that there are many performance practices and standards. Every community or culture has a way of music and dancing. This diversity enriches our lives, broadens our understanding of the world we live in and deepens our appreciation for the music of our own cultures. Each culture has its own traditions, standards and music. There are many reasons for singing. Some cultures use music as a way of meditation, as a way for diagnosing and healing illnesses. Other cultures don’t use music at all. People should understand the differences between each and every country. These differences between each culture make the world a beautiful place where we should be treated equally.

6. Does charging money for music impede the formation of communities around this music or does it help support the circulation of music?

• I think charging money for music helps support the circulation of music. Not paying for something automatically people won’t value it anymore. What’s more, where you spend money shows who you really are. Saying that you love something but not spending money on it is like saying you want a certain candidate to win without voting for them.

Episode 1

1. What is Krukowski’s main point about how we experience time in the “real” world versus are experiences with “digital” time? Why are these differences significant?

• Krukowski is a writer musician which examines how the switch from analog to digital audio changed our perceptions of time, space, love, money and power. Time” is full of fascinating observations about how digital technology has altered our relationship to time: “if you’ve ever wanted to hit Undo on something in real life, you understand.” Real time is lived time. Time that we experienced in the analog time. On the other hand, digital time is designed for machines. When we trade broadcast for podcast, or analog for digital in the recording studio, we give up the opportunity to perceive time together through our media. Digital time can allow for other kind of variability in ways that can mess up your head. He talked about podcast listening speed, speeding himself up to 1.25x, “like I’m manic”, and slowing down to 0.75x, “like I’m drunk”. The lag between real time and computer process time messed with us too.

2. What does Krukowski mean when he says that listening has a lot to do with how we navigate space?

• Listening has a lot to do with how we navigate space. Krukowski means that sound can navigate us where are we. It helps map us from the surroundings. You can detect your way even if you are looking at your screen or doing anything. For New Yorkers, such sound waves are comparable to the usual noise of rain in inclement weather.

Episode 2

• In the interview at the beginning of the episode, Jeremiah Moss argues that developers in Astor Place are “privatizing public space in a very stealth way.” What does he mean by this? What does Moss say about the distinction between public and private space, and why is it important?
• This episode shows the way that digital media allows us to control signals we hear in public. Whatever we hear through our headphones and/or earbuds commands our attention, “Cocooning each of us in signal even as we occupy shared space.” The personalized soundscapes coming through earbuds create an interior space as a refuge even while extending that interior space into the street. “Through audio we’re privatizing our public spaces,” Said Kurkowski. When your listening to a broadcast with earbuds, you’ll find out that you aren’t aware of the space around you or of other people. If you are on the street, you won’t hear their footsteps approaching. You won’t hear their coughs, letting you know they are right behind you. You won’t even hear them yelling at you to get out of the way. Some people walk with screens, they main aim is not to be here, they are opting out of the street life of the city. They are creating a bubble to move in public space.
• What is the significance of Emily Thompson’s idea that the development of concert halls arose from desires to “control interior spaces”? How is this desire, according to Krukowski, related to earbuds and headphones?
• Emily Thompson’s idea that the development of concert halls arose from desires to “control interior spaces” because there were technological developments occurred in that time. There were too many noises around the people by the working engineers and the machines the workers use, motor of the vehicles moving, elevated trains everywhere and subways were simultaneously being built. This period was very hard for people to hear their thoughts or even try to collect them together. According to Krukowski, this desire is related to earbuds and headphones because these tools help people concentrate in whatever they are doing and help them connect their thoughts and ideas. It can avoid the outside distraction. He mentioned, “They create an auditorium without the walls”. It is in a way creating the same refuge as concert hall can create.

3. In your own opinion, what are the key ideas from this episode about the relationship between sound and space? What strikes you as interesting about the ways that sound influences our experience of space

• Damon Krukowski’s Ways of Hearing is an ear-opener. These episodes open the ears through the eyes. Everything changes so quickly, the buildings, fashion, cars, bridges, roads. Yet we don’t. The ways we move through space in crowds, the ways we interact with each other through phone calls, the ways we record, share, and access music. The act of listening, we realize not just in conversation but in our headphones and in the world is significant. How we control sound, how we use it to insulate ourselves, to transport ourselves, to educate ourselves, to provoke thoughts and to distract ourselves from thoughts, to connect, to escape, can have social, even political, ramifications. And listening to podcasts these intimate, sophisticated constructions of sound and ideas can connect us intensely to other people and isolate us from our surroundings at the same time. Hearing involves awareness of surrounding sounds. Listening, paying attention to what we hear, elevates our engagement with those sounds and all they have to offer.

1. According to Berger, how do “publicity”–what we would call advertising–images influence consumers and why is this significant?

• Publicity is the manufacturing process. Publicity persuades us that when we buy something more, it transforms both us and our lives. Publicity or advertising persuades us to spend money by telling people that there would be such a great transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. It offers the buyer a glamourous image of themselves before buying the product. John Berger said: “The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.” The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. Glamour is created in ads by showing people who doesn’t have a specific something that it’s very important and that those people cannot live without it in which its envy is created. Berger also mentioned: “The happiness of being envied is glamour. Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest – if you do, you will become less enviable.” Berger states that personal envy did not exist in old times, therefore glamour did not exist, because status was determined by birth. In the present, personal envy was propagated by models or well-known public figures in publicity images.

2. As he compares oil painting to publicity (advertising) photography, Berger argues that oil painting “showed what the owner was already enjoying among his possessions and way of life;” “it enhanced his view of himself as he already was.”  Whereas publicity pictures, “appeal to a way of life that we aspire to or think we aspire to.” Why are these differences important? What do they reveal to us about the production of images for publicity?
   • “Oil painting, before anything else, was a celebration of private property. As an art-form it derived from the principle that you are what you have.” Berger said. Oil painting and ads share the same visual language. In the video he showed us oil paintings and ads side by side. There are a lot of similarity between them. Berger then states that the point of difference between oil paintings and publicity images or ads. The oil painting showed what its owner was already enjoying among his possessions and his way of life. It consolidated his own sense of his own value. It enhanced his view of himself as he already was. It began with facts of his life. On the other hand, publicity images rely on viewers having a certain reaction. It is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. It convinces the buyer to buy the product to have a better life and gets some people before and after getting this product of whatever they are trying to sell and shows how happy they became after buying this product. Publicity speaks in the future tense and yet the achievement of this future is endlessly deferred.
3. Choose one of the “dreams” he offers or think of your own. How does this dream offered by advertising use imagery to manipulate consumers?
   • Berger says that publicity images always depict one of three dreams. First, the dream of later tonight. You are part of the good life they smile at and they are part of the good life you smile at. Everyone is surrounded by what brings pleasure, but it is you who will bring the greatest pleasure of all and next morning you will feel the same about it. Secondly, the skin dream. The surface you can touch. The skin without a biography. Finally, the dream of a faraway place: Is to lie down on the bed alone, to allow one’s thoughts to pass through the light of the window and to travel elsewhere, conjuring images. Distances without horizons. To be in two worlds at the same times, just where Europe ends. The other world, violent, infidel, full of unknown passions. Wearing your own clothes next to your own skin, you join the nomads or to go north next to the ancient castles, an age of chivalry of romantic love. Publicity pretends to interpret the world around us and to explain everything in its own terms, it adds up to a kind of philosophical system. The things which publicity sells are in themselves neutral, just objects and so they have to be made glamourous by being inserted into contexts which are exotic enough to be arresting, but not close enough to offer us a threat. Publicity abuses the realities of public figures and events and struggles in other parts of the world. This reality and unreality confronts each other and then people are faced by contrast which is incomprehensible.

1. John Berger in “Ways of Seeing”, distinguishes “nakedness” from “nudity” in the European tradition, with nakedness simply being the state of having no cloths on and nudity being a form of artistic representation. Berger mentioned in the video that, “Being naked is just being yourself but being nude in the artistic sense of the word is being without cloths for the purpose of being looked at. A naked body has to become an object of a gaze in order to become a nude representation.” Being naked means being without any costume that you put on but being nude means that you become your own costume. Women are there for men to look at, “men act and women appear.” While men do the looking, women watch themselves being looked at. What’s more, he mentioned that women should take care of every action she does because women’s actions are the ways that indicates the way the girl should be observed. On the other hand, men’s actions are not judged by people as women. He won’t even have a bad reputation as a woman can does.
2. Berger was discussing the difference between male and female presence. A man’s presence dependents on what he is capable of doing to you or for you. It depends on his power. If the promise is large and credible his presence is striking. If it is small or incredible, he is found to have little presence. On the other hand, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in voice, opinions, clothes, friends. John Berger explains the process: To be born a woman is so hard as women are not free to do whatever they want due to the society and how they are going to be in people’s eyes. She has a limited space. She always has to explain everything to everybody if she did something wrong because how she appears to others, and importantly how she appears to men. Society today even creates this image that men have more power over women, and when the roles are reversed, as displayed in the male nude advertisements, it causes public outrage. It’s true that male nudity is getting the new presence in the modern society and is becoming increasingly more normal, however, one can still assume a few reasons as to why there was an opposition to display of the naked men on the posters. Men also don’t want to be seen as having less power and vulnerability. Female nudity is associated with beauty and erotic. It’s meant to be unthreatening. Male nudity is much more challenging. Society in general is uncomfortable with seeing it in public. At the end, nudity is still not totally accepted.
3. The male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world from a masculine perspective that sees women as a sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer. John Berger observed that “men act and women appear.” Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” Mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity. Therefore, you had depicted for your own pleasure. The real function is to make the woman treat herself.