Reading Davis’ talk was extremely hard. Very confusing and lots of re-reading passages. He says that society today, as a whole, is deviating further away from society in the Renaissance, in the sense that nowadays, society is becoming more and more based on visual cues. I agree with this statement, as you look around, at the movies and shows, everybody is trying to outdo everybody else with big explosions and lots of on screen action and whatnot. Its becoming more and more of a brute force thing, innundating you with all the visual cues. There’s none of that simple elegance of sounds. Which brings up another part of Davis’ talk about the differences between visual and acoustic space.

“Where visual space emphasizes linearity, acoustic space emphasizes simultaneity—the possibility that many events that occur in the same zone of space-time. In such a scheme, a subject—a person, maybe—organizes space by synthesizing a variety of different events, points, images, and sources of information into a kind of organic totality”

The way I see it, visual space is portrayed as this grid like structure. Rigid and non moving. That it doesn’t adjust to changes. Acoustic space, on the other hand, is viewed as this fluid ethereal…stuff. Acoustic space is something that does adapt to the changing times, and as a result, acoustic space has a good foothold of become much more than what it is today, as acoustic space tends to put you right in the middle of everything. Although it seems Davis is of the opinion that soley an acoustic world (or nearly all acoustic) is the best, I still believe that there is benefits to a visual display. I am with Davis though that in today’s society, people don’t view sounds as highly as they should. Sound is just an accompaniement to say a movie, where I believe an emphasis of sound or visuals would make it much deeper and have many more levels of emotion.

“But in an immersive acoustic environment, you might hear all the sounds you would hear on a street corner, spatially organized in real time, surrounding you. This is much, much, stronger than a visual experience, which tacitly distances you, places you in a transcendent, removed position, rather than embodying you at the center of a new context.”

 Clearly, you can see that Davis sees the acoustic space as better. You have to actively engage yourself in it, as opposed to an idle spectator on the sidelines. and with today’s machine’s having such a developed “acoustic domain”, I think Davis truely believes that future will be integrated more and more with this acoustic space. One of his final comments is this:

“As our machines become more complex, our relationships with them will become more complex, and whole new domains and dimensions will keep opening up”

While I do think that his ideas about the acoustic world are true, sound being a lot more poignant than visuals, this statement was very chilling. Just thinking about the statement conjures up images of humans eventually becoming machines. Integrating ourselves with metal and wires just to reach new dimensions of an acoustic world, or whatever it will evolve into. Maybe its just me…

 Megan Nordstrom

Going from Davis’ talk to Megans portfolio was very very different. Immediatly, you see that you can understand what she’s saying! Alas, I found her whole pirate theme annoying and distracting. I thought that took away some of the credibility of her portfolio, but I assume part of my feelings about that is due to my dislike of people acting like pirates, whether in appearance or voice; but i digress! Trying to eliminate my bias, I thought her portfolio was pretty well written and interesting, yet, i enjoyed it less than Davis’ talk. Maybe because it was easier to understand and i didn’t have to read and re-read it, and didn’t get that much accomplishment finishing it.

“‘It is not necessarily what the narrator says about the production of car, but how he says it. He uses a slow, knowledgeable approach that helps gives a feeling of ‘Old America” (2)… By unpacking the voice of the film’s narrator, I am able to show how the type and style of narration relates to the time period and social issues of that era… ‘It was obvious that the director wanted the audience’s main focus on the narrator’s voice instead of on the images’ (3). “

 I thought that this was pretty important in that different aspects of the sound changes how one percieves it differently. the choice of words, and the way that he says it all serve to help people interpret it. Then of course the images would only serve to strengthen their interpretations of the narration. The narration has many layers that you would need to consider all together to be able to grasp the full idea of what he’s narrating, much like what Davis says, about the acoustic space making one more involved, instead of the visual world where all you do is sit around detached from it.