Distortion of Sound and Inaccessibility

By Anonymous -



One theme that we've been talking about recently is the distortion and amplification of sound, first in relation to Quranic recitation, and as of yesterday, drag performance. With Quranic recitation and the call to prayer, the sound is amplified through the use of microphones and speakers, and distorted through the amplification, but also distorted as the sound mixes with the sounds of daily life: cars, horns, music, voices and more. In the workshop by House of Larva, we listened to the audio of some of their performance, as well as a guided meditation, in which the vocals that had been recorded were often greatly distorted, either by the person speaking, or through later audio editing on the computer.

Something that I've been thinking about in regards to this is how this modification of voice could lead to a loss of understanding and accessibility to the listener. This comes from my personal experience of being hard of hearing. As a result of my hearing loss, sound overall is much quieter to me, there are pitches that I simply can't hear (mainly in the high frequencies), and sounds and voices are not as clear to me, they come into my brain being slightly or very muffled, for lack of a better word.

In terms of Quranic recitation and the call to prayer, I imagine that being hard of hearing would not hinder me too much. The chanting would be something that I'd have grown-up with or studied (hypothetically), and the distortion from the speakers or from background noises would be something I was used to and associated with the chanting.

With the performances from House of Larva, I think it's different. It seems like much of their performance relies on the auditory aspect, certainly what we listened to in class. throughout the audio clips we listened to, I was only able to pick up some words here and there. While I realize that the distortion might be a crucial part of the performance, it meant that if there was a message or story they were showing, it was lost on me, at least until they explained it after, a luxury I might not have at a live performance. Similarly, I was unable to understand the guided meditation at the beginning, which may have explained or prepared me for have cool whip on my hands.

While I still enjoyed hearing from the group and experiencing their performance, I can't help wondering how it would be different for me had sound been less distorted, but then maybe the performance would be missing a crucial element if they were speaking differently...

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