Hearing the World through the Fictions of Headphones

While I was unable to attend the session in person, I accessed Shuhei Hosokawa’s 1981 essay “The Walkman Effect” online.

Firstly, I found Hosokawa’s observation of “musica mobilis” striking- the melding of noise and music within urban landscapes, particularly its ‘involuntary’ nature, free of motive is something that I find deeply resonating.

In my own work, particularly inspired by Steven Felds acoustemology, I have become increasingly interested in ‘accidental’ or random musical spontaneity that occurs within nature. Subconsciously, I feel this interest may stem from romantic notions of escapism, a retreat from my perceived ‘ugliness’ of urban noise – the sirens, shouting and chaos. Yet, Hosokawa’s identification of a shared consciousness through sound within urban populaces leads me to consider an alternative idea of ‘beauty’ derived from the transmission and flux of redefined musical instruments– the dispersing of a portable radio listeners audio as he walks and the car stereo system blaring out coexist in a way that allows a populace to ‘listen together’.