(Re)Educating the Senses: Multimodal Listening, Bodily Learning, and the Composition of Sonic Experiences //Steph Ceraso.

"To distinguish multimodal listening from listening practices that depend on the ears exclusively, it might be useful to think of listening to and for audible sound as earing. Multimodal listening moves away from organ-specific definitions and instead conceives of listening as a practice that involves attending to not only the sensory, embodied experience of sound, but to the material and environmental aspects that comprise and shape one’s embodied experience of sound. Unlike ear-centric practices in which listeners’ primary goal is to hear and interpret audible sound (often language), multimodal listening amplifies the ecological relationship between sound, bodies, and environments. Broadly speaking, multimodal listening is a bodily practice that approaches sound as a holistic experience."

"“If I want to play something quietly, sometimes I move my mallets but I’m not actually touching the instrument. So, the audience feels I’m playing extremely quietly, and they really do believe they’re hearing something even though nothing is coming out. It’s because they’re seeing the movement [. . .] that automatically gives them the feeling that sound is there.” By deliberately drawing attention to the movements of her mallets, Glennie tricks her audience into believing that those movements resulted in audible sound. Playing with the audience’s perception of sound enables Glennie to give the audience a glimpse into her own visual listening practices. Her anecdote also highlights the strong connection between sound and vision that most people unconsciously rely on when listening. Indeed, when Glennie performs her sonic compositions, the visual aspects of her performance are an important part of the audience’s listening experience. The speed or slowness with which Glennie moves her body as she plays, her facial gestures, and the way that she physically handles the instruments all contribute to how sound is being experienced by the audience."

"I realize that multimodal listening practices may seem unnecessary for people with functioning ears. If one can hear, then what is the point of using additional sensory modes to attend to sound? I argue that the kinds of multimodal listening practices Glennie uses are necessary and purposeful to everyone because, unlike earing, these practices enable listeners to achieve expansive sonic experiences that can lead to rich, meaningful sensory encounters."

"Bodily memory is reinforced during every single sensory encounter one experiences. After enough sensory experiences, bodies acquire knowledge about how these encounters affect them, which informs how they will respond to new sensory experiences. In this sense, the very act of living—of being a body interacting with the world—is an ongoing series of educational events."

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CE/0772-nov2014/CE0772Educating.pdf