Sound paradise for the listener
| The radio drama director creates a sound paradise for the listener - in which every sound event ideally has its place, and the fictional world operates by sound alone. |
| The pleasure of listening to the radio play is that we experience ideal listening. We enter into a sound world which provides the best solutions to our ears. The radio play is a universe of answers. |
 The relative values
of each sound event are balanced at their best. |
 As we move forward through
each scene, and through all the play, the sound events are dynamically
redefined to accommodate each coming event. Different perspectives
appear. |
| The 'transactions' between the elements are handled ideally in ways that surpass the Lifeworld. Sounds do not mask each other. Every sound event has its full value and is suitable measured against the others. |
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There is no redundancy. We do not have to reject and select, as we have to in the aural confusion of the Lifeworld. All is sound. There is no noise. We are not exposed to unwelcome noises.
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| Our ear-to-mind processing does not have to deal with unimportant background noise. All the signals are strong (in signal and in meaning) and none are weak. |
| We concentrate on extracting the meaning, not on the annoying Lifeworld business of different levels of noise. |
| The radio play director deals with all these transactions for us. |
| The increase in the amount of nerve firing being sent to the brain creates pleasure in the listeners. |
| Refer to Listening - how people listen |
| In enjoying radio drama, we listen to things that our ears do not. |
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There is a danger that some listeners can simulate some Lifeworld hearing damage. They can believe that some sound signals in the radio play distort their enjoyment. See 'noise' at http://www.savoyhill.co.uk/technique/noise.html
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| There is a condition called misophonia. This means a dislike of being exposed to a certain sound. So you can alienate some listeners by some high-pitched sounds |
| For misophonia (a dislike of being exposed to a certain sound), see http://www.tinnitus.org/home/frame/hyp1.htm |
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Research section on 'sound paradise' See also Aurality as central to radio theory Aural paradise: Each radio programme, and especially radio drama, constructs an aural paradise for the listener where each element totally signifies, with complete aural 'focus'. This is a central theoretical concept in Alan Beck's medium-theory approach.
Alan Beck comments: When we commit ourselves to the fictional world of the radio play, we enter an 'aural paradise' (as I term it). Part of the pleasure of listening to the radio play is that we experience ideal listening into a sound world which provides the best solutions to our ears. The relative values of each sound event are balanced at their best. As we move forward through each scene, and through all the play, the sound events are dynamically redefined to accommodate each coming event. Different perspectives appear. The 'transactions' between the elements are handled ideally in ways what surpass the Lifeworld. Sounds do not mask each other. Every sound event has its full value and is suitable measured against the others. There is no redundancy. We do not have to reject and select as we have to in the aural confusion of the Lifeworld. The radio play director deals with all these transactions for us.
Beck, Alan, 2000a, 'Cognitive mapping and radio drama', Consciousness and the Arts and Literature, Volume 1 Number 2, July 2000 Section 7 Way-finding in radio drama: aural paradise and 'Umwelt' (environment) In the radio drama 'mise en scène', the navigation or orienteering is firstly done for the listener by the director, in an aural paradise, as I have termed it (Beck, 1997b), amid highly specific and pleasurable conditions. In my opinion, this aural paradise is a first principle in analysing the listening-in. In the radio-mediated 'Umwelt' (environment and here listening niche), all is totally the subjective world of the single modality of listening, which overlays and matches point-for-point - and this is the pleasure of radio drama fictionalising - the 'actual' environment. The listener has a radio subjective cocoon, and the capacity to interpret each and every stimulus broadcast, for the reason that - and here is the point - radio 'Umwelt' (cocoon) is 'Welt' (Lifeworld) for the fictional while. That is, while listening-in, the subjective individual's environment (the lived 'Umwelt') equals to, or is coextensive with, the 'out there', the 'Welt' (world), the external reality independent of an individual observer. This is one of the crucial ways in which radio differs from the sight/sound media, especially one of the ways it differs from the plenitude of the visual track. This is where radio referentiality is categorically different. Of course, there is frequently interference or 'bleed-through' from secondary activities of the listener. These activities - ironing, driving the car, washing-up, etc. - are often mentioned in discussions of radio reception and attentiveness, as for example Crisell, 1994, 137 and Beck, 1998, 5. All questions and problems of knowledge are posed and answered within the aural world which has to be a knowable place. (A confused listener is a lost listener.) The director and the radio apparatus 'hear' and 'see' what the human ear cannot in the Lifeworld. The sound mixing and balancing have already been done for
me through the mediation of radio, and I am at the optimum listening
position in my consummatory field.
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