Performance Research

ISSN: 1352-8165 (Print) 1469-9990 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rprs20

Music for Lovers: Shared binaurality in a mobile

sound installation
Florian Hollerweger
To cite this article: Florian Hollerweger (2010) Music for Lovers: Shared binaurality in a mobile
sound installation, Performance Research, 15:3, 11-14, DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2010.527193
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2010.527193

Published online: 29 Oct 2010.

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Date: 04 April 2016, At: 00:25

Music for Lovers

Shared binaurality in a mobile sound installation
florian hollerweger

Downloaded by [University of Warwick] at 00:25 04 April 2016

d e s i g n a n d i m p l e m e n tat i o n

concept

In a loving relationship, ones personal view of

the world is frequently challenged and an effort
is required to understand the perspective of
ones partner. Listening to each other constitutes
an important concept in this respect putting
oneself not in each others shoes, but rather in
each others ears. The mobile sound installation
Music for Lovers tests the ability of sound
technology to facilitate this process. It allows
two listeners to exchange their auditory points
of view in real-time. The setup is simple: each
listener wears a pair of headphones that are
extended by microphones mounted on their
earcups. The microphones and headphones
are connected in a crosswise fashion, allowing
listener A to hear the world through listener Bs
ears, and vice versa.
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The difficulty of adopting anothers perspective

starts with the individualistic perception of
physical space as experienced through the
position and orientation of our bodies. Music
for Lovers exploits the possibilities of binaural
sound recording: a technique that allows for the
reproduction of a three-dimensional aural image
by comparably simple means.1 For a binaural
recording, a microphone is placed inside each
ear of a dummy head or of the actual recordist,
with the microphone membranes effectively
resembling the human eardrums. The result is
a stereo recording that captures the difference
in the arrival times of a sound wave at the
two ears and the filtering effects caused by
reflections from the head and the pinna. Since
these physical characteristics vary with the
position of a sound source, their detection allows
our auditory system to determine the spatial
origin of a sound. Binaural recordings faithfully
reproduce these cues. When played back through
headphones, a binaural recording recreates an
aural impression of three-dimensional space
with an accuracy which is otherwise restricted to
multichannel loudspeaker arrays.
Binaural recordings are generally played
back outside of their original context. With
Music for Lovers, however, the sound picked
up by the microphones needed to be played
back simultaneously to allow for an interactive
experience between the two listeners. This
required a trade-off with regard to microphone

Pe rf o r m a n c e R e s e a r c h 1 5 ( 3 ) , p p . 1 1 - 1 4 Ta y l o r & F ra n c i s L td 2 01 0
D O I : 1 0 . 1 0 8 0 / 1 3 5 2 8 1 6 5 . 2 01 0 . 5 2 7 1 9 3

Music for Lovers (detail)

Photograph and copyright by
Florian Hollerweger, 2009

1 A classic example of the

spatial realism created by

binaural sound
reproduction is the Virtual
Barber Shop at <http://
www.qsound.com/demos/
virtualbarbershop _long.
htm>.

Downloaded by [University of Warwick] at 00:25 04 April 2016

2 I have also

experimented with
microphones mounted on
top of earphones inserted
into the ear canal. This
brings the microphones
much closer to their ideal
positions. However, for
Music for Lovers I have
chosen to rely on
conventional
headphones, which are
easier to fit to different
ears in an exhibition
situation.
3 Mueller and Karaus

design study Transparent

Hearing (2002) in part
uses a technical setup
similar to that of Music
for Lovers. However, they
envisioned their system
as a tool for verbal
communication under
circumstances where this
would otherwise be
impossible, such as
cross-room conversations
at a noisy party.

positions, since the optimal positions inside

the ears are blocked by the headphones. As a
compromise, the microphones were mounted
on top of the headphone earcups.2 While this
reduces the accuracy of the binaural image by
increasing the distance between the microphone
capsules and obliterating the filtering effects
of the pinna, the spatial characteristics of
the recording are still preserved to a certain
degree. In particular, discrimination between
left and right still operates satisfactorily. For
example, if one listener abruptly turns the head,
the other listener will experience this shift of
perspective in a very realistic manner. Thanks
to the real-time nature of the experience, the
distortion of other spatial hearing cues is partly
compensated for by the visual information that is
simultaneously present.
The technical setup of Music for Lovers
necessitates a voltage supply for the
microphones and the amplification of the
microphone signals before playback. The use
of off-the-shelf hardware allowed the projects
implementation within a few days. The
components are placed inside two transparent
heart-shaped boxes, worn around the neck of
each listener. The headphone cables connect the
two listeners or lovers in a physical as well as
in a symbolic sense. The installation is entirely
portable, so that the listeners are free to explore
their environment, both indoors and outdoors.
Several participants in Music for Lovers
suggested that I should build a wireless version
of the piece. In fact, the first prototype of the
installation was implemented by streaming
audio among two mobile clients over an ad hoc
wireless network. However, listeners who tried

this system tended to use it as a medium for

verbal communication as soon as they moved
out of sight of one another. As a result, the
prototype unintentionally acted as a not very
sophisticated implementation of the telephone.
This experience revealed that for Music for
Lovers to succeed, it needed to be presented in a
shared situation where verbal communication
would be equally possible without the technical
equipment.3 This was achieved by connecting
the two listeners via the three-metre long cables
of their headphones, keeping them within
close proximity. The deliberate creation of a
context where there is no obvious need for
technologically mediated telecommunication
encourages the audience to reconsider their
approach to the technology. The use of a wired
design also carries symbolic value, since the
cable runs between the two heart-shaped boxes
that the listeners wear around their necks. In
order that the wire does not become an obstacle,
the two listeners need to coordinate movements
during their aural exploration. Each listener can
move around freely within the constraints of the
cable, but at the same time the two parties need
to move as an entity much like lovers.

Hollerweger

Technical diagram for

Music for Lovers
Diagram and copyright by
Florian Hollerweger, 2010

the art of listening

The primary breakthrough in the development

of sound reproduction technologies came in the
late nineteenth century, when devices started to
be modelled after the ear rather than the vocal
apparatus (Sterne 2003: 70ff.). Nevertheless,
thinking of sound as a recordable signal focuses
more on the articulation than the reception of
sound. The mere presence of loudspeakers or
headphones raises expectations in the audience
of being subjected to something to anything
different from that which they would otherwise
hear. In this sense, the everyday sounds that
occur around us correspond to the opposite of
something: nothing. Some listeners have put
on the headphones of Music for Lovers and
immediately given up on it, having heard ...
nothing. In a mediated listening environment,
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Music for Lovers

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sounds that are not obviously mediated become

the equivalent of silence. Silence, however, is
one of the hardest signals to convey through
headphones.
Music for Lovers demonstrates the process
of social appropriation through which we
have come to accept sound technology as an
articulating medium. But has this view of
technology turned us into better listeners?
Music for Lovers reinterprets sound technology
by emphasising the receiving rather than the
transmitting end of acoustic communication.
The piece does not primarily enable its listeners
to express themselves verbally (although
it does not prevent them from doing so).
Instead, it allows them to perceive their own
articulations as heard by the person with whom
they communicate. The telephone, by contrast,
restricts itself to the conveyance of intelligible
verbal messages and hence has no need for
transmitting the spatial attributes of an acoustic
scene.
How well does sound technology as we
know it lend itself to the artistic goal of Music
for Lovers? Peter Ablinger has shown that
technologically mediated listening is never
neutral. In Weiss/Weisslich 36 (1999), a single
listeners aural experience is mediated through
a microphoneheadphone chain similar to the
one used in Music for Lovers (Ablinger 2008:
71). Although conceptually equivalent to realworld listening, the resulting experience
differs dramatically from our everyday aural
perception. This difference, according to
Ablinger, is precisely what constitutes his
piece. It manifests itself, for example, in the
background noise of the amplifiers, a strange
compression of the foregroundbackground
relationship, the spectral characteristics of
the transducers, and binaural artefacts due
to the non-ideal microphone positions. In
contrast, Music for Lovers is not concerned with
auralising the difference between immediate and
technologically mediated listening as such, but
nevertheless requires the acceptance of it. The
installation makes as close an approximation
13

as possible with sound technology to stepping

into the aural shoes of another person. It is, of
course, tempting to imagine an entirely different
technology that inherently lends itself to aural
perception rather than audible articulation.
Music for Lovers finds itself in a long
tradition of sound art which emphasises the
aural experience of sounds already present
in the environment. This Cageian legacy
of aestheticizing sound as a perceptual
experience, rather than as a performed
articulation, characterises the many works of
sound art that aim at engaging the audience
in a performance of listening.4 The works of
artists such as Max Neuhaus, Pauline Oliveros,
Bill Fontana, Peter Ablinger and Akio Suzuki
direct auditory attention by referring to sitespecific sounds, acoustic phenomena, or to the
process of listening itself. The artistic strategies
employed include introducing sounds which
either explicitly fit or contradict their host
environment, encouraging the audience to
make sound themselves, or using architectural
interventions as a means of changing the
physical conditions of everyday listening. With
the emphasis on everyday aural experience
comes a shift away from the concert hall or art
gallery, towards everyday practices themselves
as a context for aestheticised listening.
Soundwalking, for example, has become a
manifold artistic practice for pursuing sonic
drives in everyday life (Drever 2009). Some
art works are concerned with the technological
mediation of a mobile listening experience,
such as the audio walks of Janet Cardiff, which
deliberately confuse the borders between preproduced sounds (played back through a portable
music player) and the actual sound environment.

4 The phrase
performance of
listening was coined by
George Lewis in a panel
discussion at the
Sonorities Festival of
Contemporary Music
2007, hosted by the Sonic
Arts Research Centre in
Belfast.

Music for Lovers (detail)

Photograph and copyright by
Florian Hollerweger, 2009

 Two listeners enjoying

Music for Lovers
Photograph and copyright
by Florian Hollerweger,
2009

Hollerweger

in particular, have become a symbol of isolated

listening. Music for Lovers attempts to reinterpret headphones as a social listening
technology.
acknowledgements

Music for Lovers has so far been exhibited on two

different occasions. It was premiered at the Broadcast
Gallery of the Dublin Institute of Technology during
the Symposium of the Inter-Society for the Electronic
Arts (ISEA), 2831 August 2009. The piece was also
shown at the launch night of the Ad Hoc artists
initiative5 in Belfast on 25 September 2009. I would
like to thank Rachel ODwyer, Colm Clarke and James
Hepburn for these opportunities to exhibit the work.
Music for Lovers has been pursued as part of a PhD
study at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast.
The authors research there has been funded by a
SPUR (Special Programme for University Research)
studentship at Queens University Belfast.

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5 See http://www.

adhocbelfast.co.uk

Christina Kubisch uses prepared headphones to

sonify the ubiquitous but inaudible phenomenon
of electromagnetism (Carlyle 2007). Other artists
have created audio walks in which the sound
experienced by a mobile listener is continuously
recorded, digitally transformed and played back
in real-time. The earliest example of such a
work is probably Akitsugu Maebayashis Sonic
Interface from 1999 (Kato 2003).
Music for Lovers draws on several of the
artistic strategies outlined above. It references
the very process of listening by using sound
technology in a situation where there seems to
be no obvious need for it. The installation creates
an inherently mobile listening experience, since
the best way for the two listeners to experience
each others acoustic perspective is by actively
realigning their positions to each other. Music
for Lovers also encourages the audience to
create sound themselves; they often do so by
tapping or stroking the microphones. Most
importantly, however, the installation addresses
technologically mediated listening as a shared
activity. The history of sound technology can
be read as a continuous privatisation of aural
experience (Sterne 2003: 154ff.). Headphones,

references

Ablinger, Peter (2008) HREN hren / hearing

LISTENING, Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag.
Cardiff, Janet and Schaub, Mirjam (2005) Janet Cardiff:
The Walk Book, Cologne: Walther Knig.
Carlyle, Angus (2007) Interview with Christina
Kubisch, in Angus Carlyle (ed.) Autumn Leaves: Sound
and the Environment in Artistic Practice, Paris: Double
Entendre, pp.703.
Drever, John Levack (2009) Soundwalking: Aural
Excursions into the Everyday, in James Saunders (ed.)
The Ashgate Research Companion to Experimental
Music, Farnham & Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, pp.
16392.
Kato, Sawako (2003) Soundwalk, Digital Media, and
Sound Art, in Proceedings of the 2003 Symposium
of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, Melbourne,
Australia. Retrieved on 19 August 2010 from <http://
www.acousticecologyaustralia.org/symposium2003/
proceedings/papers/sKato.pdf>.
Mueller, Florian and Karau, Matthew (2002)
Transparent Hearing, in Proceedings of the 2002
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
Minneapolis, USA, pp. 7301.
Sterne, Jonathan (2003) The Audible Past: Cultural
Origins of Sound Reproduction, Durham & London:
Duke University Press.
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