BOOM MOMENTS:

The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel, and Buy by Joel Beckerman with Tyler Gray, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on October 21, 2014.

• Sound also affects the way we taste food (e.g. sound of airplane makes airplane food bland, along with air),
• “While the low humidity in an airplane cabin and the cabin pressure affects the way you perceive taste, the Unilever study suggests that the lack of flavor in onboard meals can be partially blamed on the dull drone of the airplane engines. That type of noise makes you less sensitive to salt, sugar, and spices. But you do notice more crunchiness, according to the study, which would help explain why you’re likely to pass on the in-flight Salisbury steak but ask for a second bag of peanuts.”
• Listening to music we like makes us enjoy food more

• “Iraq was the first time I noticed it,” says U.S. Army lieutenant colonel Robert Bateman, a military historian who’s taught at West Point Academy and did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his first tour, he lived in downtown Baghdad. Sound would bounce off buildings and down alleys, but he gathered a tremendous wealth of information by listening carefully to the details of what he heard. He could tell who was fighting, who was winning, and when the conflict was about to end; he could pinpoint the source of a battle or explosion to within fifteen or twenty degrees. The sound of the gunfire provided information. “You can tell when a unit is running out of ammo, because their rate of fire slows,” he says. The American weapons themselves had distinctive sounds; the M4, M16, A2, and M249 are 5.56 mm weapons, meaning they have relatively high-powered charges but small diameters. “They have a sharper sound,” Bateman says. By contrast, the venerable AK-47, used by insurgents as well as the Iraq and Afghan militaries, is a 7.62 mm weapon. “It’s bigger around, and a deeper or throatier round,” he says. “In addition to the sound of the gunfire, the frequency and patterns of it told Bateman stories. If, for example, an American army unit got hit with an improvised explosive device, he’d hear the boom . . . then silence . . . and then maybe, after a while, a burst of gunfire, but not always. If an Iraqi special police battalion was hit, he says, he’d hear the explosion, then mostly silence, then some sustained fire. “But if an Iraqi army unit was hit—their discipline tended to be lower, their enthusiasm for gunfire tended to be higher—then they would do what we called the ‘death blossom’” (a reference to the movie The Last Starfighter), Bateman says. “Every man would fire his entire magazine of ammunition randomly outward from his perimeter. You could tell what had just happened from kilometers away before any reports were sent.”
• “In addition to the sound of the gunfire, the frequency and patterns of it told Bateman stories. If, for example, an American army unit got hit with an improvised explosive device, he’d hear the boom . . . then silence . . . and then maybe, after a while, a burst of gunfire, but not always. If an Iraqi special police battalion was hit, he says, he’d hear the explosion, then mostly silence, then some sustained fire. “But if an Iraqi army unit was hit—their discipline tended to be lower, their enthusiasm for gunfire tended to be higher—then they would do what we called the ‘death blossom’” (a reference to the movie The Last Starfighter), Bateman says. “Every man would fire his entire magazine of ammunition randomly outward from his perimeter. You could tell what had just happened from kilometers away before any reports were sent.”
• 
  
• That’s when you get a boom moment. Boom moments happen when a sound triggers this kind of multisensory experience — a complex mix of memories and expectations wrapped in feelings that aren’t immediately explained by the sound itself. If I played you the sound of sizzling fajitas, then told you it wasn’t, in fact, meat hitting a white-hot skillet but rather a person burning his or her hand on a hot stove, or water from a firefighter’s hose landing on the flaming roof of a home, you would react with a completely different set of feelings. The sizzle alone isn’t what’s so distinct; it’s the power of that sound to surprise and delight your ear in an unexpected setting, then usher you through the rest of the sensory experience that naturally follows. This chapter will show you how Chili’s and others put the powerful emotional impact of sound to work to create experiences you remember. It’s about discovering which sounds at which instants make for boom moments.

Notes on Children and Sound:

• Since children experience sound, even before birth, we assume that they know a great deal about it. But it is actually one of the prominent misconceptions of young children. They enter our classrooms without the development of an accurate conceptual under-standing. Some of their ideas include: There is no difference between loudness and pitch; you can see and hear a distant event at the same moment; in wind instruments, the in-strument itself vibrates not the internal air column; hitting an object harder changes its pitch; the pitch of a tuning fork will change as it "slows down," or "runs" out of energy; and sound can travel through empty space. There are also many sound-related ideas they simply cannot explain, such as how we hear.

Encyclopedia of Aesthetics:

Notes on Building Speakers:

I attempted to create a piece of music that would embody a specific feeling: Being in movement and engaged on a dancefloor



Thesis Notes:

The installation will take place in a single room. In the center of the room hangs a hammock
suspended in the air. The hammock, made out of steel chain link, is surrounded by ~200
speakers of varying size, shape, and tonal quality (some carry heavier bass tones, some
more mid­range, etc). On the ceiling is a video projection synced up to the sounds in the
speakers. To fully experience the work there is only one way: laying in the hammock. Each
speaker is facing the hammock, and many play sounds at a dB that can only properly be
heard if at a certain proximity (the exact proximity of the hammock to the speaker), while the
visuals projected onto the ceiling above the hammock appear skewed and difficult to make
out unless laying in the hammock and looking directly above.

The hammock is painful to lay in; not enough to be injured, but enough that the physical
sensation of steel pressing into flesh is noticeable at all times. The viewer is reclining but
suffering. The artwork becomes somewhat of an endurance piece, performed by the viewer.
The audio, which is extremely lengthy and ever­changing (possibly continually adjusted and
extended by the artist), is inherently pleasing to the ear, and hits certain pleasure centers in
the brain consistently, releasing dopamine and bringing joy to the listener. The visuals are
captivating and calming. Inspired by the works of Ryder Ripps, Nicolas Jaar, Tao Lin, Marina
Abramovic, Hot Sugar, Bunny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Grimes, Soul Keita, Vito Acconci, Joy
Williams, William Eakin, Guy Maddin, My Chemical Romance, Cliff Eyland, and anyone I
have ever met who has made anything, the installation not only invites the audience to
become the performer, but also to suffer in order to fully experience the work.
Conceptually, the piece touches on a broad range of topics, specifically the way in which we
as a society currently experience media, the way our IRL existence often takes a back seat
to our entertainment and distraction. It brings forwards ideas of "suffering for one's art", but
also suffering to experience art, or performance. Waiting in line for hours to see your favorite
band, straining your neck in a movie theatre to watch a sold­out film, following someone on
social media incessantly to 'stay updated'. The installation also calls attention to the flaws
within artistic documentation, and the fact that certain aspects of an artwork can be
captured, but it's essence, it's true 'message' can only be experienced through just that;
experience.

I would like to begin my research by acquainting myself with sound artists, specifically
performance artists that have worked primarily with sound. I am interested in researching the
effects sound and image have on the brain, and how to maximize sensory input without
overwhelming the viewer. Extensive research will also need to be done on the mechanics of
sound, musical composition, and techniques for the installations' layout. The fabrication of
the chain link hammock will also need to be heavily researched. I will also be researching
what I as well as many others view as the "great" performers throughout musical history, and
the trials and tribulations they experienced throughout their careers. This research as a
whole is intended to be ongoing, and will, I feel, continue post completion of this work and
into the multi­faceted aspects of my artistic career that I intend to expand on over time. I
hope, however, that this work will become a catalyst for future endeavors, and that it will be
challenging enough that I feel the need to improve all aspects of myself as a person and
artist in order to execute it honestly.

The installation will partially be viewable by entering the gallery space and observing the
speakers and projection from the outside, or from a live stream that captures an aerial view
of the hammock, but in order to experience everything at once, one must enter the work,
subject themselves to pain, documentation, suffering, beauty, joy, and as a result, become
the performer and the artist.