A Sonic Treasure

Julian Treasure is my great discovery of the day! I stumbled across this video online today and was so grateful for this man's understanding of sound, how powerful it is, how it can affect us both negatively and positively- and the clarity of his expression. He talks about ways in which we can use sound to enrich our lives and things to be aware of to lessen the potential damage of certain sounds and modern technology.

One of the things I loved that he talks about is how we are developing a sort of dissociation (he calls it "dislocation") between what we see and what we hear- ex. being overuse of telephones. We are constantly "inviting into our lives the voices of people who are not present with us"- we take this for granted and in fact many people today are really addicted to their cell phones.
Makes me think of a song by Greg Brown.


I also found the information about the compression of sound through the use of digital recording, mp3 players, etc. very interesting- that compressed sound makes us tired and cranky because our brain has to work so hard to fill in so much of the sound. Fascinating, and of course it makes perfect sense, given how incredibly nurturing the "right" kind of sound and/or music can be, whether it is natural ambient sound from water, birds and insects to a live concert in a hall acoustically designed for optimal music appreciation.

The right kinds of sound and music feed our brain and nourish our whole being.