Pauline Oliveros’ “Deep Listening” in the Dan Harpole Cistern

 

In Oliveros project, architecture is used in order to play with sounds. In the underground concrete water storage tank, sound waves can travel for hundreds and hundreds of meters. While recording, the people on site were basically sitting in a musical medium. Therefore, those people were so to speak able to physical feel the music not only auditory but from within. The vibration and bass basically have permeated their bodies. In addition, the people on site were genuinely surrounded by music. The unique acoustic quality led the sound to reverberate over a long time. Although the music is entirely (and originally) generated from acoustic instruments, the created music sounds similar to an electronic crafted new age meditation music. I can only imagine how the whole atmosphere must have felt: surreal, mystique and also kind of creepy. The eternal echo really supports the mystical character.

            Oliveros states herself that deep listening is her life practice. For her, deep listening is a philosophy: “Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible.” This obviously draws a connection to John Cage’s approach of sound and silence. Which is why she is also referred to as “female John Cage” in the field of experimental tape music at that time. Oliveros approach sheds light onto the individual experience of listening regardless of the type of music or even daily sounds.

            Another point I want to make how influential Oliveros actually was and still is for electronic tape music. While listening to some of her pieces on YouTube, I came across the video “Pauline Oliveros & Deep Listening | Women In Electronic Music” of the channel Sounds Good. In this video the creator also talks about Oliveros point of view regarding “women composers.” As a student of the field of gender studies, I consider it extremely important to listen to those who are affected by (gender) stereotypes; therefore, I find it extremely interesting what Oliveros had to say about the topic. If I understand correctly, she prefers a shift away from the identity of the composer, in this case a woman (“’women composer’ as seen as its own category of musician” (compare YT video), to a strict focus onto the music. She intended that this would help to emphasize the actual new ideas within the music community. I personally think that this information was additionally helpful to me in order to contextualized the course information even further.