Radiant Dissonance

by Darren Copeland

This text and linked audio works were Darren Copeland's 30 minute contribution to Radiant Dissonance, volume 2, a 5 CD set of half-hour radio programs by Canadian audio artists. The text and audio clips appear here with the permission of the author/artist. More information about Radiant Dissonance can be found at the bottom of the text.

My name is Darren Copeland - this is a show about radio.

On a scale between engagement and indifference, radio in North America registers closer to the latter, despite the promise and glitter of its early days. Even when a program today is truly absorbing in content and execution, the experience of listening to it is compromised by a number of activities, sounds, and visual impressions that clutter the domestic environment where radio is so meekly inserted...

North American radio is like a deaf and blind lecturer who has learned the art of elocution, but is entirely unaware of the fact that no one in the audience is listening or has the slightest interest in trying.

Until the art of focused listening can be cultivated in the general public, radio will continue to muddle in the mid-field of the North American domestic soundscape.The ability to focus attentively on the radio, or just on one task at a time, would be reflected in the elimination of sounds competing for foreground attention.

Furthermore, it would be reflected in the recognition that today's trend toward 'louder is better' in restaurants, cafe's, and many entertainment venues is both annoying and potentially hazardous to the hearing and the acoustic sensitivity of North American society at large. The lack of attention to radio mirrors the lack of composition in the everyday North American soundscape where human proportion is obliterated by the unnecessary whine and drone of vehicles and other mechanized sounds.

Although invisible to the gaze if its audience, radio shows up in many places - automobiles, kitchens, restaurants, store fronts etc. - to fill the awkward silences of busy lives.  Radio does not undermine its goal of being a pleasant companion to a distracted audience 24 hours a day.

I would wager that if North American radio was not restricted by its indifferent audience but rather compelled to challenge it, the attention of this audience would gradually shift back to genuine engagement.  There at last would be something to be excited about and dive into.  The media would no longer be confined by what it lacks but by what it possesses over other communications media.  The blind and deaf lecturer from my earlier example would thus find a way to interact with his or her audience.

Radio has the power to engage the imagination of the focused listener which is the power to paint pictures far more vivid than those transmitted on television.  The operative word here is paint which in my mind is to create, or to invent, make, instill, inspire, evoke and ultimately enliven the mind - the human spirit - to participate actively in a listening experience and engage its own sense of authorship in mediating the broadcasted information.

For radio to be meaningful and worthwhile both the medium and its listeners need to become more active.  An active radio is one that cultivates a vocabulary of techniques and resources that are rich, diverse, complex and intricate in both content and form while continuing to be pertinent and informative.  However, our blind and deaf lecturer still requires the audience to cooperate in order for his new lecturing skills to have any effect.  Therefore an active listener must learn to cultivate sensitivity to his or her everyday acoustic environment and discover ways to orchestrate it into meaningful and socially constructive forms.

Without an active relationship here in North America radio and its audience will continue to collaborate on nothing more than an increasing excess of competing information.

"They're Trying to Save Themselves" (8:01)

Programme note:

The CBC commissioned the piece for Loss and Legacy, a commemorative broadcast for the anniversary of September 11th. The sounds are all taken from an eye witness account aired on CNN following the tragedy. The words spoken undergo a number of textural metamorphosis taking on different images that relate to the events of September 11th, such as low-flying aircraft, and panic voices, as well as other sonorities that paint the emotional atmosphere.

Radio does not need words. It needs connection - connection between program and listener, artist and community.  Connection is possible in so many ways on radio through stories, anecdotes, reflections, sounds, words, and through silence.  The listener must actively participate for connection to be possible.  With conscious aural attention he or she must walk in a field of sound, rummage through its crops and live the adventures it harvests.  The radio producer must insure the field invites participation by making it relevant, soulful, insightful, original, complex and well-crafted.  For connection to be possible radio must not be approached by either party as a kind of background wallpaper that lingers behind various domestic activities.  It is an active medium through which two minds are engaged for a period of time.  There might be a goal for this engagement such as to better oneself, share experiences, absorb other peoples experiences, or expand the range or depth of ones knowledge, or to touch another person's heart.  Without engagement there is no reason for radio.  It would be a pollutant, a drain on human energy.

Lapse in Perception (10:04)

Date: 1998-99. Length: 8’

Lapse in Perception is a text-sound composition about the challenge of understanding complex sensory phenomena in the everyday world.

Typically attention paid to everyday situations is quite superficial. While walking down the street one is quite happy to know that there are a row of shops on the right, vehicle traffic to the left, and the odd pedestrian passing by. Any more information begins to take the mind away from apparently more important matters. I wonder how much relationship there is between tuning out the external information in this way and our general neglect of the natural environment.

There is an element in this work that portrays what happens to something when its presence is neglected. This element is represented by the word "lap" and repeats frequently followed by a number that increases sequentially from one to fourteen. Each time the phrase appears it loses more of its intelligibility and assumes a strident pure-tone character. This process of textual obliteration illustrates the recession of clarity in our acoustic environment due to indifference and actions guided by self-interest.

The physical environment is a complex phenomenon, as is the make up of human personalities. The many layers that make up a person or a physical environment are combined every moment in a day through a complex network of interconnecting and contradictory patterns. Ignoring this complexity is to walk away from the beautiful contradictions and intricacies of life and reduce experience to mere surface impressions.

Lapse in Perception was composed in 1998-99 for the radio program Out Front on CBC Radio One. Special thanks to Judy McAlpine for her feedback and support throughout the process, to the Geneva Centre in Toronto for their assistance with research into the topic of autism, and to Mike Ladd for his invaluable recording contributions on Ward's Island in Toronto.

Text for Lapse in Perception

(by Darren Copeland)

(There are four voices played by the same person. Voice A undergoes a series of processes where each appearance of the voice is passed through an additional generation of reverb processing. Gradually the text spoken by this voice gets obliterated, producing strident pure tones that act as transitional markers between sections of the piece. Voice B asks questions in a mechanically slowed down voice and Voice C answers them in a mechanically sped up voice. Voice D is the main character of the piece, speaking 'naturally' into an old-style microphone..)

A: Lap one.

B: What do you see?

C: Perfect solids that are tiny particles.

A: Lap two.

A: Lap three.

D: The tempo of the world fluctuates enormously. Life scattering quickly confuses your attention. A person is here, there; eyebrows move this way and that; arms flap about; every detail jumps around uncontrollably. Your attention is dazzled into oblivion. By contrast, life holding to a standstill dissolves your attention. Focus on one static image and gradually inner thoughts occupy the moment and shut out the presence of the image. If the image is of a person and they suddenly scream will that scream be heard? Will it be any louder than a pin falling in the stock exchange? How far into absence can you go?

A: Lap four.

B: What do you hear?

C: Articulated sentences that are perfect nonsense.

A: Lap five.

D: The world around you appears surreal and illogical in its composition. Summer time breeds its own flavour of contradictions. At one moment: birds chirp; one crooner sings; wind rustles; one keyboard rattles; trains bustle; and two clocks count different times. How often is logic suspended like this?

A: Lap six.

A: Lap seven.

B: What do you see?

C: Pictures framed by social custom and happenstance.

A: Lap eight.

D: Perception is a wide-open playing field. You are not alone in the park: crickets, people, bikes, and boats are all there. The breeze in your face, the smell of flowers, and the imagined taste of ice cream scale the thousand details of the park down to the size of your stride. With this division the park is now split into two: you and the many things around you. The vast openness is reduced to a convenient size. Your stride is a demarcation.

A: Lap nine.

B: What do you hear?

C: Events fashioned by memory.

A: Lap ten.

D: Perception is a revolving door. You are riding a bicycle in the park. The wheel of the bicycle glides along the pavement. You and the spinning wheel open up memories. Through the doors of perception enter worlds once collected. Again, you are on a bicycle in the park. The wheel of the bicycle glides along the pavement. You and the...

A: Lap eleven.

A: Lap twelve.

B: Who are you?

C: A series of lines that fill a comprehensive chart.

A: Lap thirteen.

D: Lines help shape identity -- providing a chance to understand you. But the entanglement of billions of lines that serve you, your many forms of distinction, all make the act of determining identity a complicated matter. Attaining a clear image of your identity is a process fraught with difficulties. There is never enough time to untangle the multitudes of lines and contributing factors. There are never enough rapid flicks of the eye to snag every change in shape and purpose. Change factors in every instant of your being. Identity - your identity - defies calculation. Perception buzzes with information; understanding lags far behind.

A: Lap fourteen.

B: What are you?

C: A seed of explosive complexity overwhelming the inadequate and untrained faculties of perception.

(c) 1999, Darren Copeland