listen just listen
The proliferation of unskilled and reductive audio is reshaping our listening habits.
Much of today’s audio content, such as in podcasting, is produced without consideration for its non-monetary impact on listeners, often driven by creators’ desires for easy content creation or quick audience growth – and this is increasing with AI generated audio voices and content. This trend risks diminishing our capacity for rich aural experiences. Our ears naturally crave depth and nuance.
Studies suggest that the sheer volume of subpar audio is dulling our ability to discern nuance in both acoustic media and our everyday sound environment. This is affecting things like knowledge apprehension, attention span, tolerance for other voices.
If we’re desensitized by low-quality audio, we risk losing connection. We’re not just missing out on better content – we’re making it harder to hear our planet, its creatures, and each other.
HiFidelity English version available here.
Listen with quality headphones.
This is an excerpt from Peter Leonhard Braun’s groundbreaking Bells in Europe, that took sound out of the studio. Winning the Prix Italia, this piece transformed radio drama and documentaries. It has been translated into many languages.
From 1974 through 1994, Braun led the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB), the largest documentary department in Germany, at a time when recording equipment was first becoming portable. This changed everything.
Braun is a widely esteemed radio producer, writer, teacher, and mentor who developed the European “radio feature” as a distinct form, and by doing so influenced generations of radio producers around the globe.
Andrea Dancer’s mentor, Don Mowatt, brought the form, which used multiple dramatic forms to tell a story, to the CBC flagship program Ideas.
Andrea’s audio work is grounded in this lineage.
We, and all existence, are shaped by sound.
Enter Hans Jenny, the Swiss physician who discovered Cymatics in the 1967. Cymatics is a scientifical method that reveals how frequencies create visible patterns in matter.
Sound vibrates through all matter, including our cells, forming unique patterns. We neurologically sync (the science of entrainment) with what we focus on listening to, connecting us to others and our acoustic environment.
This raises questions about the impact of our audio listening habits and the acoustic experience of the listener.
Everything is sound. An aware nuanced listener immerses themselves in planetary existence and experiences self and other accordingly.
Experience a
Produced by Andrea Dancer and Michal Kindernay for Radio Acustica, Český rozhlas, EBU
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