Listening to Myself Listening Respons

Listening to Myself Listening, by Aden S. Hill's ethnography collected the ideas I had while performing my drift walk, Listening to Milwaukee. While on that drift walk I discovered there is an extraordinary difference between the act of hearing a noise and listening to a noise. Hill describes the act as interpreting what is being heard and evaluating and understanding it. He makes the distinction between hearing and listening. I can relate with him because I have been so involved with listening to Milwaukee the past three months.

Hill talks about Murray Schafer idea that sound gives information of trends in societies. The sound of rushing cars, people talking, dogs barking, crickets chirping all give information about a time and place. I explored this theory while preforming my last drift walk. I discovered that Milwaukee offered a much deeper sense of something. I listened to that information and found a world beyond city life. I found what makes the city of Milwaukee a wonderful place. The city offers people both city and nature (Milwaukee River Trail). Hill elaborates on an idea from, Pauline Oliveros. She believes how an individual listens provides the way they interpret the world and eventually how they experience the world. It is interesting that a sonic world has the power of reality. It can change a environment, thus changing the world.

Hill outlines daily confrontations we have with sound on a daily basis and the different effect a voice has vs. a environmental sound. I interpret his explanation of sonic stages to represent different levels of sound and there information.