Field Report #4 (3rd go-round) - pt. 1

Fountain, by Patty Chang, allured me the most when I visited the Haggerty Museum of Art. Maybe it was because it was one of three pieces I first encountered stepping into the museum or maybe it was because I couldn’t fully comprehend it? I was first drawn to the visual imagery of the girl slurping up water and later was engulfed by audio when I put the headphones on. I chose this piece to write about because of how the audio affected me in relation to a comment brought up during class. I believe the comment came from Carl actually, and the question to Glenn Bach was something along the lines of “What is noise? How does one differentiate between noise and sound?” Glenn’s response was that he really didn’t have one. He said something like “there really is no such thing as noise, it’s an interpretation.” This concept really made my mind think. I had never completely considered it but Glenn is right. Noise is an opinionated term categorizing something to which one person finds unpleasant to the ear. It’s along the same philosophy as “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” This for me tied right in with the concept of acoustic-ecology and how “noise pollution results when man does not listen carefully,” (Schafer’s argument in “The Tuning of the World” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977). One person may hear the incessant drive-by of cars during a time of high traffic and feel that this is excessive noise pollution droning out the natural world’s audio beauty. A different person however, may see this “noise” as instead a collection of beautiful sounds layering to the natural world’s audio creating a symphony that can never be repeated.

This ties into Fountain for me because the whole piece was a lady slurping up water. If you consider traditional manners and acting polite through the Western world, the slurping of a liquid is considered improper and an obnoxious noise. Once again here is the opinionated term “noise.” For me I didn’t find this slurping to be an obnoxious noise but instead the sound of a lady trying to save herself (be it through literally drinking water to stay alive or to save herself from drowning through the reflection). I guess if someone heard the sound of a murder happening next to him they could consider it “noise” too, but most people don’t. So what truly qualifies as noise? Does noise have to be a boring action or does it have to be dependent upon the outcome of the event after it’s been analyzed? If you ever watch a tennis match you’ll probably hear the sound of a grunt. Is this grunt a sound of relief from hitting the ball or the player exhaling in pain? Does the context really matter to determine whether it’s a noise? I say no. I don’t think there is such as thing as noise, it’s all an opinion. My opinion is that the SOUND in Fountain helps drive home this concept of noise versus sound among many other comments that can be taken away from this piece both visually and through sound.

-Lydell Peterson