byron j. scullin

In this article from The Age today. David Hockney, “Britain’s best-loved living painter” reckons that iPods are to blame for us not living “..in a very visual age.”

“I think it’s all about sound. People plug in their ears and don’t look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure.

“You notice that on buses. People don’t look out of the window; they are plugged in and listening to something.

“I think we are not in a very visual age and it’s producing badly dressed people. They have no interest in mass or line or things like that.”

I think people are wearing their iPod’s for a number of different reasons, some of them complex, some not:

• we like music
• we like to listen to podcasts & we like to feel as if we’re learning or getting something done when we’re in transit
• we like not having to occupy ourselves with our own thoughts when we are in transit, or waiting for something/someone
• we like to pretend we’re in a movie with our own custom soundtrack
• we like to feel like we’re not jammed into some form of public transport next to lots of other people who are in our personal space
• we like the way it can help us retreat into our internal world
• we like to get away from the sound of the city
• we like people to know that we own a neat gadget
• we like people to know what we are not interested in talking to them without having to be rude and say so
• we like the advertised images of iPod people, we we’d like to see ourselves as one of them
• we make decisions about wether we want to be overloaded with visual information or not

I’m sure there are more reasons, but one thing that seems pretty clear to me is that aside from our personal valuing of music, the iPod is more symptomatic our anti-social tendencies and the aural ugliness of our cities. I think we’re nowhere near an “aural age” as Hockney is implying.Unplug the iPod and just have a listen to what’s happening on any major street corner and I’d say that you’ll pretty quickly come to the realization that David didn’t really think too hard about what he was saying.

Our cities sound terrible. If we we’re living in some kind of aural age then wouldn’t we be living in a better, or at least different aural environment? Our cities develop and change visually far more rapidly that they do aurally. It’s a commonly held piece of folk wisdom amongst many sound practitioners that if we could see the sounds that our cities make, most of us would be pretty horrified how full of aural clutter the urban sound world is. Hence the need to retreat into the sonic eco-bubble of the iPod. One huge and massive benefit of us heading into an era with less and less petrol driven machines will be that our urban soundscape will become quieter. What we live with now is the aural equivalent of the airborne pollution 1800’s London. The effect that this will have upon people that live in cities will be enormous. Subjected to the constant high sound levels that our cities currently generate is more than enough to make people stressed and anxious. Can you imagine trying to get to sleep listening to a recording of a city street corner at midday? Is it no surprise that the most sought out areas of our suburbs are ones that have quiet streets? How many of you have had at some time in your life a visit from the police due to a noise complaint? Sound may not be the first thing we think about, but it’s among the first we perceive. It’s not the only factor that makes us city people anxious by any means, but we can’t underestimate it’s subconscious effect.

Much of what I’m saying here doesn’t go to a response regarding the vast amount of visual clutter that also covers our urban environment. One thing that is clear is that we consider how something looks as a higher priority that how it sounds (or affects sound) in it’s design and creation - opinions about particular architecture, urban planning models and advertising aside. The design of the iPod itself should indicate that how something looks is still very important to us, more important than the fact that most of us are listening to highly un-dynamic low resolution audio on them. If anything however the iPod is a retreat from both the considered visual cutter and unconsidered aural soundscape that our urban environments create.