aurelioporfiri (Aurelio Porfiri)
Email: aurelioporfiri@usj.edu.mo
Website: http://www.usj.edu.mo/?faculty&col=5&fid=Aurelio%20Porfiri
THE VOICE AND THE BRAIN How Frank Sinatra appeals the listening brain
Co-authors:
Astri Soemantri
In the past century, Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) was one of the most famous entertainers in USA and we may say, in the whole world. His career as an actor and performer had brought him to a huge success and still enduring until today. But only few people have tried to understand the fascination from his voice on our listening brains. Why does his voice appeal so much to us? What makes his voice so appealing to our listening apparatus? This is a very interesting point to be considered. Indeed the success of Sinatra has to do with his ability to play with our brains, knowing how to create and fulfill expectations (Huron 2008) and how to engage an interesting play with our brains. Being so successful and so appealing to audience of every age, it is interesting to investigate how Sinatra can reach this iconic status but, for the purpose of our paper, how our listening mechanism reacts to Sinatra’s singing. Being this only a short introduction to this topic, an attempt to suggest ways to interpret this phenomenon, we will concentrate on one specific song “All the Way”, one of the biggest successes of Sinatra. We will compare his performance with the performance of other successful singers (Celine Dion, Harry Connick Jr.) to understand how these performances are different from each other and what it means for our listening apparatus.
REFERENCES
– Huron David (2008). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. Cambridge (MA), USA: The MIT Press
boltmwj1 (Mark Johnson)
Email: johnsonmwj1@gmail.com
Website: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.com
Listening to the economy: The cybernetics of Risk
This paper is about the distinctions that constitute our ‘antennae’ as we try to listen to a world in economic crisis and make meaningful decisions based on what we hear. I propose that cybernetic mechanisms can re-wire our antennae, and in the process help us to see what may be happening in a new light.
I start with the conception of ‘viable systems’ (drawing on Beer) and human attachment and loss (drawing on Bowlby) arguing that they can provide a framework for the questioning of economic assumptions concerning property, commodities, money, exchange and markets which underpin the conventional economic viewpoint from which nations are experiencing such difficulty in making meaningful distinctions and constructive policy decisions.
Fundamental to the argument is that the conception of humans as viable biological systems relates directly to the sociological work of Beck concerning ‘risk’: ‘risk’ is experienced as anxiety, which in itself can be seen as a systemic reaction of the viable system with regard to its interactions with the environment. Coupled with risk is the reality of ‘loss’ for those caught up in the economic crisis, and in this regard, Bowlby’s control systems view of ‘attachment’ can help to characterise the interpersonal dimensions which have a bearing on mechanisms of individual well-being and anxiety management.
This short paper proceeds by addressing each of the key economic concepts re-articulating them in cybernetic terms. In conclusion, by arguing that our ability to listen to the world in which we live depends on the quality of our antennae, a cybernetic intervention focused on the construction of new sorts of antennae may be a useful thing to do!
CWelch (Christine Welch)
Email: christine.welch@port.ac.uk
Storytelling and listening: co-creating understandings
Co-authors:
Peter Bednar
Human beings live in hope that we can be understood when we try to communicate with each other but we also know that we might be wrong. We strive for better understandings, engaging in an on-going ‘dance’ of collective sense-making. Our concepts of ‘understanding’ and ‘better understanding’ are not clearly defined; this too is constantly re-negotiated and re-valued over and over. This is not just as a dance, but one in which no one leads or follows in a conventional fashion. Leading is transient and changing – first one and then another shows a way. Rules for the steps and movements are constantly changing – revised through intended and unintended engagement of involved actors. While temporarily it may appear that someone leads and others follow – this is also in flux and changing. Conversations in an organizational setting frequently take place in a context of decision-making. Often, participants are seeking for some kind of consensus upon a course of action. We suggest that this has a negative impact upon the quality of those conversations and leads to premature consensus and decision-taking that is less effective than it might be. A focus upon efficiency and rapid action can lead to sub-optimality and loss of effectiveness, as participants focus upon outcome rather than listening. Lessons might be learned from bygone times when storytelling was regarded a major vehicle for group interaction, social cohesion and creation of plans for action. Participants who have time and space to engage with one another’s narratives, and who listen actively to one another’s points of view, gain an opportunity to share in interpreting experiences. We can see this in modern life when we make efforts to share our tacit knowledge with others through mentoring. Effectively, mentor and mentoree attempt to create a common narrative of experience by questioning and listening each to the other in a particular context. We suggest that an open systems approach which enables individuals to explore and share their contextually dependent understandings will be helpful in this. We propose a framework that supports and guides participants to give attention to co-creation of understandings of problem spaces through exchange of narratives. There is then an opportunity to engage in exploring similarities and differences in narratives, rather than seeking for optimization. Rather than a decision-taking system, participants create a richer pool of ‘knowledge’ as a basis for informed decisions.
ErrolHTout (Errol Tout)
Email: e.tout@curtin.edu.au
Website: http://errolhtout.com.au
Aural Representations of architectural Space – Listening
Co-authors:
N/A
Abstract
Architecture is not only a visual and physical phenomenon but also an instrument that tempers and constructs our sound perceptions of the world. My recently completed PhD contains a number of projects drawing attention to the significance of what I have termed ‘aural representation’ as being a contribution in forming an understanding of a work of architecture and how architectural space conditions not only how we see the world but also how we hear it.
My PhD asked the question ‘Can sound be used to tell audience things about space that, perhaps, images cannot?’ The findings from this question interact with, and extend, an internationally recognised body of scholarly work.
The PhD projects led to a final project involving a substantive body of creative work to help to make the knowledge gained in the PhD more explicit. This paper will present composed music, ‘aural representations’ for selected spaces based on my perceptions of their spatial sound characteristics. Each individual piece of music is based on the aural characteristics of the spaces it is created for, and in some cases, within. The pieces wrap themselves around the ‘room tone’ of the space.
laudrich (Larry Richards)
Email: laudrich@iue.edu
Difference-Making from a Cybernetic Perspective: The Role of Listening and Its Circularities
This paper takes as a premise that listening (and its circularities) becomes an essential practice for making a difference in the world when taking a second-order cybernetic perspective and represents a critical concept in the design of a participative-dialogic society. The speaker-respondent circularity turns listening into a conversation. Participants set ego aside and explore new ways to be present. This perspective on listening and difference-making suggests an alternative approach to the uniquely human attribute called consciousness, from the current one characterized by purposiveness to one focused on presence. I claim that this idea of a desirable society is so foreign to prevailing ways of thinking about the world and how it works (and must work) that it would be condemned as “anarchist” if openly promoted, as it implies an alternative to the reward-oriented hierarchy approach to the design of economic and social systems that dominates corporate and governance structures world-wide. By advancing the idea anyway, I expect to make a difference. In particular, I propose the anarchist’s imperative: listen, think and design kinetically (in contrast to kinematically).
LeslieB (Leslie Burm)
Email: info@tarra.be
Tie the Tie
1.Introduction
The ambition of this paper is to demonstrate how my participation in the 2011 ASC Conference on Listening contributes to my field of interest and might contribute to the reflections of other participants.
Participants in the conference are asked to design a tie. I took this instruction as a starting point for a generative process.
The structure of my contribution, for now (10/05/2011), will be as following.
First I will give an insight into my design process of the tie in relation to my field of interest. I believe a kind of diary structure will suit the purpose. A pre-reflection can be found under the chapter ‘Before’
During the conference I will use the tie to interact as intensive as possible with people. I will keep trace of the information, the tie will be the mediator. My reflections on the fly will be communicated under chapter ‘During’.
A post-reflection on my experiences will be written down under the chapter ‘After’. This chapter should lead to insights which I will share under chapter ‘Conclusions’
Mark10 (Mark Burgin)
Email: markburg@cs.ucla.edu
Awareness, Sensing and Comprehension as a Context for Listening
Awareness, Sensing and Comprehension as a Context for Listening
Mark Burgin
Department of Mathematics, UCLA
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, 90046, USA
Listening is not merely a separate act or action – it is a process. To sustain this process, it is necessary to be attentive to what a person is listening. As a result, we see that true listening is impossible without awareness. At the same time, the central component of listening is auditory sensing – without receiving sounds, listening in its direct meaning is impossible. However, to really listen, it is not enough only to acquire sounds through sensory channels. It is necessary to understand these sounds, explicating their meaning. As a result, we come to the third basic component of listening – comprehension. Only on the level of comprehension, listening becomes the key process that turns talking into conversation. This allows us to build a theoretical model of listening, expounding the role of feedback in the process of listening, as well as relations between listening and other sensing and mental processes. In addition to listening in its direct meaning, there is metaphorical listening as natural languages and especially their utilization are build on metaphors, which extremely expand possibilities of natural languages to convey information. To better understand listening in its direct meaning, metaphorical listening is described and analyzed. The basic tools used for process analysis and theoretical modeling of listening both in a strict sense and in broad, metaphorical sense are system approach, information theory and cybernetics.
mcgree (Elizabeth McGregor)
Email: mcgree@gmail.com
Listening to the Knowledge of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web has not only changed modern communication; it has also changed the way people obtain the wealth of information that is made available by the web. The web can be viewed as a set of multiple “speakers” or “teachers” conveying multiple sources of information on multiple topics. Users must choose which teacher/speakers are providing the most relevant information and then must “listen” to them, a distributed learning process. This paper describes the contributions that Human Factors Psychology can make to understanding how we put together all of the individual pieces of information found on the web in order to capture the bigger picture. The goal is to provide a foundation to make the speaker/listener communication more effective.
Peter Bednar (Peter Bednar)
Email: peter.bednar@port.ac.uk
Storytelling and listening: co-creating understandings
Co-authors:
Christine Welch
Human beings live in hope that we can be understood when we try to communicate with each other but we also know that we might be wrong. We strive for better understandings, engaging in an on-going ‘dance’ of collective sense-making. Our concepts of ‘understanding’ and ‘better understanding’ are not clearly defined; this too is constantly re-negotiated and re-valued over and over. This is not just as a dance, but one in which no one leads or follows in a conventional fashion. Leading is transient and changing – first one and then another shows a way. Rules for the steps and movements are constantly changing – revised through intended and unintended engagement of involved actors. While temporarily it may appear that someone leads and others follow – this is also in flux and changing. Conversations in an organizational setting frequently take place in a context of decision-making. Often, participants are seeking for some kind of consensus upon a course of action. We suggest that this has a negative impact upon the quality of those conversations and leads to premature consensus and decision-taking that is less effective than it might be. A focus upon efficiency and rapid action can lead to sub-optimality and loss of effectiveness, as participants focus upon outcome rather than listening. Lessons might be learned from bygone times when storytelling was regarded a major vehicle for group interaction, social cohesion and creation of plans for action. Participants who have time and space to engage with one another’s narratives, and who listen actively to one another’s points of view, gain an opportunity to share in interpreting experiences. We can see this in modern life when we make efforts to share our tacit knowledge with others through mentoring. Effectively, mentor and mentoree attempt to create a common narrative of experience by questioning and listening each to the other in a particular context. We suggest that an open systems approach which enables individuals to explore and share their contextually dependent understandings will be helpful in this. We propose a framework that supports and guides participants to give attention to co-creation of understandings of problem spaces through exchange of narratives. There is then an opportunity to engage in exploring similarities and differences in narratives, rather than seeking for optimization. Rather than a decision-taking system, participants create a richer pool of ‘knowledge’ as a basis for informed decisions.
Philip (Philip Baron)
Email: pbaron@uj.ac.za
Website: http://www.ecosystemic-psychology.org.za
A conversation with my friend technology: A challenge to the status quo
A simple way to determine what is important to people is to investigate where they are spending their time. If a person spends a lot of time with their child, cares for him, plays with him, loves him, it is clear that they have an authentic connection. Is the same true regarding technology? Do we spend a considerable time relating to our technological devices, playing with them, thinking about them and desiring them? How do we respond when we cannot use our favourite electronic gadget? Our relationship with technology mirrors several characteristics of our human relationships. A reflection on one’s life may provide a shock as to how much technology has become a full member in our human family. One area of interest is in information and communications technology (ICT). Our communication methods have changed and are changing as advances in technology allow us new ways of expressing ourselves, while also reducing traditional communication methods. We have been warned of the dangers of complete reliance on technology by Heidegger some time ago.
Heidegger stated (1977):
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology. P.4
It is true that some thought of him as a Luddite, however philosophers often have insight into future happenings; thus, it is worthwhile hearing Heidegger’s call for awareness. The reason is summarised by Merold Westphal (2004:24) where he says: “technology threatens to become the only thinking, to become the sole criterion by which we operate”. He further states that the great thinkers of the past were philosophers and theologians, while the great minds of today are engineers and entrepreneurs. In terms of ICT this raises a few important questions. Are our technology based communication methods decided upon by engineers and programmers? Are our ICT devices a form of interruption? Can technology be taught listening skills, or social skills? Can our ICT become a full member of our conversations?
srabeler (Sylvia Rabeler)
Email: srabeler@binghamton.edu
Cybernetic Scrying: a painterly, “self-listening/else-watching,” spatial reasoning enhancement method
PURPOSE:
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and share a formal method for cybernetic self-listening; a process by which one expands their own cognitive self-awareness and rational processes while immersed in artistic expression.
DESIGN/METHOLDOLOGY/APPROACH:
Therapeutic scrying uses self-observed negative feedback, in an algorithmic manner, to accessing information available in one’s own semi-subconscious. It is an a-perceptive, iterative, technique which focuses on listening to, and seeing, information that is absent in the perceived environmental domain.
RESEARCH LIMITATIONS/IMPLICATIONS:
The scope of this document is limited to cybernetics and the arts. However, this methodology has potential for use in the field of clinical art therapy. The present research does not explore the empirical efficacy of therapeutic scrying.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE:
Scrying fuses cybernetics and art to create a new tool for breaching mental blocks or boundaries in reasoning and creativity.
KEYWORDS:
art, body-mind, cybernetics, feedback, listening, therapy
Supriya Kummamuru (Supriya Kummamuru)
Email: Supriya.Kummamuru@tcs.com
Cybernetics Framework for building a Listening Organization
Co-authors:
Sekhar Vadari
Cybernetics Framework for building a Listening Organization
Listening Organization: A Cybernetics Framework to enable an organization to establish efficient formal channels to capture , understand and address the stakeholder needs effectively.
Abstract: The paper presents a Framework for building a listening organizations based on cybernetic concepts. Presently organizations need to deal with enormous complexity in the environment: both external and internal . . In order to understand and absorb this complexity for survival they also need to have the formal channels which would capture, process and deliver results from understanding these noises. This calls for the organization to have autopoietic homeostats to deal with this inherent complexity. Communication, feedback, control and variety matching with respect to the environment are some of the cybernetic concepts which will be the building blocks of the proposed framework.
Employees play a key role in the survival and decline of these large organizations. Employee competence, capability and morale are the key ingredients to the organizations growth. It is inherent that organizations should have the capabilities or systems to “Listen” to the needs of the employees to be viable. Organizations often fail to hear the voice of their employees, while there could be abundant evidence in advance. The organization as a whole cannot hear and assimilate these voices and are not prepared for an eventuality. Most organizations are poor listeners
Individual Listening (ILA, 1996) is defined as the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages. Organizational Listening can said to be the process of capturing , understanding and addressing stakeholder needs through formal and informal channels.
Viable Listening organization should design formal structures to enable Individual Listening and organizational listening. The proposed framework suggest the design based on cybernetic concepts.
tfischer (Thomas Fischer)
Email: Thomas.Fischer@xjtlu.edu.cn
The Role of Listening and Non-Listening in the Formation of Organizational Hierarchies
In his book Tractatus Paradoxico-Philosophicus Uribe presents an oscillator (in section I.17), which alternates between two states (say ON and OFF) at a frequency that is easily observable (say in the form of a blinking light) for human observers (say 1Hz). The oscillator has an output and an input. The output channel sends a very short trigger signal at the moment the oscillator changes from its ON state to its OFF state. When the oscillator receives such a triggering signal on its input channel, it immediately resets its timer to the beginning of its ON cycle. If two such oscillators are connected to each other (the input channel of each to the output channel of the other), the two oscillators will, from the viewpoint of a human observer, soon display a stable alternating oscillation at which one oscillator is ON and the other is OFF for one second, then one oscillator is OFF and the other is ON for one second and so on (the blinking light will appear to jump back and forth). Similar oscillators with four input channels and four output channels can be used to achieve such oscillations in two-dimensional arrays and similar oscillators with six input channels and six output channels can be used to achieve such oscillations in three-dimensional arrays. Larger arrays require progressively more “negotiation” time until the overall back-and-forth oscillation between any two neighboring oscillators is synchronized. In the process of synchronization all oscillators of the described design are playing identical roles and have equal impact on the overall synchronization progress. This process of synchronization can be regarded as a radically simplified metaphor for human organization amongst individuals of identical power, i.e. no hierarchy amongst the individuals before, during and after synchronization. In my proposed paper I would like to explore this metaphor further and investigate how the broadcasting or not broadcasting of the trigger signal and how the listening or non-listening for trigger signals from neighboring oscillators affect the formation of causal (power) relationships and hierarchical structures amongst oscillators. I expect this exploration to be interesting when viewed as a metaphor for the role of human speaking and non-speaking as well as human listening and non-listening in the formation of hierarchies in organizations of humans. I will implement related software and/or hardware experiments to discuss in my paper and, as far as practically possible, also to show at the conference.
timjachna (Tim Jachna)
Email: tjachna@hotmail.com
Co-authors:
What kind of a listener is a design educator?
The role of a design educator is often described in terms of the skills and knowledge they “deliver”, the methods they “apply” or the “outcomes” that they achieve in the students. In this paper, I propose that defining a design educator as a certain type of “listener” can lead to insights into the specificity of design education that cannot be garnered from these other points of view.
I discern at least five distinct modes of listening involved in the role of a design educator:
– “Listening for” is the most conventional mode of educator listening, in which design educators listen to students for signs of “learning outcomes”. This mode is often applied in order to give students “feedback” on their development as part of a conversation loop.
– “Listening to” is a mode in which design educators seek to understand the reasoning and thoughts behind a student’s design decisions or their position. In this mode, the educator seeks to gain the ability to “think with” the student in coaching them through their design process.
– “Listening as” is a type of role-playing listening, in which design educators place the student in different modes of being-listened-to (or not being-listened-to) that students can expect to face as designers. This mode simulates a social situation within which students can rehearse different tactics of interaction.
– In “listening as example”, design educators provide students with a model for the type of listener a designer they believe a designer should be. For students to learn from this mode requires the educator to earn the empathy of the students – a very different relation than the deference often expected of students in learning from educator “feedback”.
– Simply “listening” is the mode in which design educators remain sensitized to the potential for new ideas and inspirations in their listening to students and others, that influence their practice as a design educator holistically. This mode of listening is the least goal-oriented, task-specific or intentional, and is necessary for sustaining creative practice in education.
In the proposed paper, I will explain and illustrate – through example scenarios from my personal experience and observation – the ways in which I perceive these different modes of listening being practiced by design educators (in both beneficial and detrimental ways) and will venture an exposition on the special type of economy of speaking-and-listening that sustains the process of design education.
vandermerwejj (Johann van der Merwe)
Email: vandermerwejj@cput.ac.za
Finding no-one
By listening we find out that we are not. Ordinary listening merely accesses data and at best information, but that does not necessarily lead to action, in the absence of the making of distinctions. Once we get to this constructivist point, we can use the space of ‘we are not’ to make distinctions between our old selves and the continuously (re)designed new selves, and for that to happen we need to pay attention to what listening can reveal.
Claudia Westerman (2010:24-25) queried, apropos of last year’s C:ADM conference, the type of space that a cybernetic conversation needs in order to ‘be designed’ / constructed (my wording), and, even more interesting, she uses the term ‘framing’ in the context of this space, as well as reporting that there were many questions from participants “about rules and how to play them”. Mark Johnson (2010) was somewhat concerned with the notion of causality in terms of the nature of constructed realities, in the sense that “I’d like my cybernetics to allow me the freedom to at least consider the possibility of an ontological world, just as it lends itself to allowing me to consider the possibility of the absence of reality”, to which Ben Sweeting responded with “cybernetics [locates] us in the world in the midst of reciprocal subject-object interactions”.
This paper, then, will have a conversation with itself, following Luhmann’s (2002:156) ‘only communications can communicate’, in the sense of wondering about Westerman’s space for conversation, and what framing means for the conversationalist (speaker) and listener (same person, who is also the observer of self-observations); it is in the ‘framing’ that construction of realities take shape, and it is here that a communal sense of the rules and how to ‘play’ them emerge, an element of cybernetic conversation that should speak to Johnson’s concerns over causality. This space of becoming is nothing if it is not an ontological world of possibility, and it is here that we find both presence and absence playing new games with new rules, proving that cybernetics allows us to locate ourselves in worlds of probability wherein we are the reciprocal subject-object relation. If listening could be made visible, we would be able to see this happening, see ourselves being redesigned, ‘as we speak’.
