The listener as an adaptive device: an ecological and biosemiotical approach to musical semantics (original) (raw)
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From Sound to Music: An Evolutionary Approach to Musical Semantics
This paper holds an evolutionary approach to musical semantics. Revolving around the nature/nurture dichotomy, it considers the role of the dispositional machinery to respond to sounding stimuli. Conceiving of music as organized sound, it stresses the dynamic tension between music as a collection of vibrational events and their potential of being structured. This structuring, however, is not gratuitous. It depends on levels of processing that rely on evolutionary older levels of reacting to the sounds as well as higher-level functions of the brain, which allow listeners to emancipate themselves from mere acoustic processing of sounds to the level of epistemic interactions with the sounding music. These interactions are partly autonomous and partly constrained, but they all stress the realization of systemic cognition in the context of a living system‘s interactions with the environment. As such, listeners can be conceived as adaptive devices, which can build up new semiotic linkages with the sounding world.
Axiomathes, 2005
ABSTRACT. This paper addresses the question whether we can conceive of music cognition in ecosemiotic terms. It claims that music knowledge must be generated as a tool for adaptation to the sonic world and calls forth a shift from a structural description of music as an artifact to a process-like approach to dealing with music. As listeners, we are observers who construct and organize our knowledge and bring with us our observational tools. What matters is not merely the sonic world in its objective qualities, but the world as perceived. In order to make these claims operational we can rely on the ecological concept of coping with the sonic world and the cybernetic concepts of artificial and adaptive devices. Listeners, on this view, are able to change their semantic relations with the sonic world through functional adaptations at the level of sensing, acting and coordinating between action and perception. This allows us to understand music in functional terms of what it affords to us and not merely in terms of its acoustic qualities. There are, however, degrees of freedom and constraints which shape the semiotization of the sonic world. As such we must consider the role of event perception and cognitive economy: listeners do not perceive the acoustical environment in terms of phenomenological descriptions but as ecological events.
Biological Roots of Musical Epistemology: Functional Cycles, Umwelt, and Enactive Listening
Semiotica, 2001
In this article I argue for an epistemology of music, stating that dealing with music can be considered as a process of knowledge acquisition. What really matters is not the representation of an ontological musical reality, but the generation of music knowledge as a tool for adaptation to the sonic world. In order to do this, I have brough ttogether the epistemological claims of Jean Piaget, the biological methodology of Jakob von Uexküll, and the constructivistic conceptions of Ernst von Glasersfeld, stressing the role of the music user rather than the music. Dealing with music, in fact, is not a representational aair, but is a process of semiotization of the sonorous environment that is the outcome of interactions with the sound. Hence the role of enactive cognition and perceptual-motor interaction with the sonic environment. What I consider to be a central issue is the way how listeners as subjects experience their own phenomenal world or Umwelt, and how they can make sense out of their sonic environment. Umwelt-research therefore is highly relevant for music education in stressing the role of the listener and his listening strategies.
Music as Environment: An Ecological and Biosemiotic Approach
This paper provides an attempt to conceive of music in terms of a sounding environment. Starting from a definition of music as a collection of vibrational events, it introduces the distinction between discrete-symbolic representations as against analog-continuous representations of the sounds. The former makes it possible to conceive of music in terms of a Humboldt system, the latter in terms of an experiential approach. Both approaches, further, are not opposed to each other, but are complementary to some extent. There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between the bottom-up approach to auditory processing of environmental sounds and music, which is continuous and proceeding in real time, as against the top-down approach, which is proceeding at a level of mental representation by applying discrete symbolic labels to vibrational events. The distinction is discussed against the background of phylogenetic and ontogenetic claims, with a major focus on the innate auditory capabilities of the fetus and neonate and the gradual evolution from mere sensory perception of sound to sense-making and musical meaning. The latter, finally, is elaborated on the basis of the operational concepts of affordance and functional tone, thus bringing together some older contributions from ecology and biosemiotics.
This paper provides an attempt to conceive of music in terms of a sounding environment. Starting from a definition of music as a collection of vibrational events, it introduces the distinction between discrete-symbolic representations as against analog-continuous representations of the sounds. The former makes it possible to conceive of music in terms of a Humboldt system, the latter in terms of an experiential approach. Both approaches, further, are not opposed to each other, but are complementary to some extent. There is, however, a distinction to be drawn between the bottom-up approach to auditory processing of environmental sounds and music, which is continuous and proceeding in real time, as against the top-down approach, which is proceeding at a level of mental representation by applying discrete symbolic labels to vibrational events. The distinction is discussed against the background of phylogenetic and ontogenetic claims, with a major focus on the innate auditory capabilities of the fetus and neonate and the gradual evolution from mere sensory perception of sound to sense-making and musical meaning. The latter, finally, is elaborated on the basis of the operational concepts of affordance and functional tone, thus bringing together some older contributions from ecology and biosemiotics.
Body, mind and music: musical semantics between experiential cognition and cognitive economy
Transcultural Music Review, 2005
This article argues for a processual and experiential approach to dealing with music. Starting from the theoretical writings of James, Dewey and von Uexküll as well as from empirical evidence from current neurobiological research, it introduces an adaptive model of sensemaking, relying heavily on the epistemological paradigms of “embodied” and “experiential cognition”. Central in this approach is an “enactive” conception of music cognition as the outcome of interactions with the sounds, stressing the role of the cogniser as an actor who constructs and organises his/her knowledge. This involves low-level reactive machinery—a kind of lock-and-key—as well as higher-order cognitive mediation that goes beyond mere causality and that allows the music user to “cope” with the sounds.
Musical sense-making and the concept of affordance: an ecosemiotic and experiential approach
2012
This article is interdisciplinary in its claims. Evolving around the ecological concept of affordance, it brings together pragmatics and ecological psychology. Starting from the theoretical writings of Peirce, Dewey and James, the biosemiotic claims of von Uexküll, Gibson’s ecological approach to perception and some empirical evidence from recent neurobiological research, it elaborates on the concepts of experiential and enactive cognition as applied to music. In order to provide an operational description of this approach, it introduces some conceptual tools from the domain of cybernetics with a major focus on the concept of circularity, which links perception to action in a continuous process of sense-making and interaction with the environment. As such, it is closely related to some pragmatic, biosemiotic and ecosemiotic claims which can be subsumed under the general notion of functional significance. An attempt is made to apply this conceptual framework to the process of musical sense-making which involves the realisation of systemic cognition in the context of epistemic interactions that are grounded in our biology and possibilities for adaptive control. Central in this approach is the concept of coping with the environment, or, in musical terms, to perceive the sounding music in terms of what it affords for the consummation of musical behaviour.
Music Cognition and the Bodily Approach: Musical Instruments as Tools for Musical Semantics
"This article is about music cognition and the role the body plays in its acquisition. It argues for a processual approach to dealing with music rather than conceiving of music as an artefact. Leaning heavily on the older philosophical writings of Dewey, it tries to provide an operational approach to the musical experience, with a special focus on the sensory-motor interactions of the music user with the sonic world. As such, it is possible to conceive of the music user as an adaptive device, with natural perceptual and effector tools that can be modified at will. It is argued, further, that musical instruments can be considered as artificial extensions of these natural tools, allowing us to conceive of them in epistemological terms as tools for music knowledge acquisition."