(Re)Educating the Senses: Multimodal Listening, Bodily Learning, and the Composition of Sonic Experiences // Steph Ceraso // Part 2.

"Another problematic feature of sound-as-text multimodal composing assignments is that they rarely require students to reflect on their embodied listening experiences. The teaching of listening as a practice has not yet been discussed substantively in multimodal composition scholarship on sound.10 Taking listening for granted as something that students just “do” when composing with sound is a problematic notion because it perpetuates the idea that listening is a natural (as opposed to learned) act, which implies that everybody (every body) can hear the sounds being composed. These kinds of assignments are ear-centric in that they do not account for an embodied listening audience—they do not ask students to consider their own or others’ bodily limitations and capacities."

"Ear-centric listening practices often focus narrowly on the meaning and interpretation of audible words, but multimodal listening practices take into account the dynamics of the sonic composition as a whole. This holistic approach to sonic composition requires composers to consider how sound works with and against other elements in a multimodal composition (images, video, text), as well how those elements and the composing environment in general will affect the audience’s experience."

"I want to be clear that my emphasis on the body, or situated embodied experience, as a mode of inquiry in multimodal listening practices does not make this kind of training any less intellectual than listening practices that focus solely on the meaning of sound or alphabetic language. Instead, I understand multimodal listening to be what Debra Hawhee refers to as “a mind-body complex.”"

"Multimodal listening pedagogy offers a way to teach students to be more capable and sensitive listeners during the production of multimodal compositions, and in their experiences with various sonic texts, products, and environments. This project is pedagogical, then, not only because it presents teaching applications for the classroom; it is also pedagogical in the sense that it proposes listening practices that can help anyone learn to be more thoughtful about sensory experiences and interactions in everyday life. In a culture where being plugged in to digital devices is a common occurrence, when so much of what we pay attention to is streaming through earbuds or flashing on screens, I am calling for a reeducation of our senses—a bodily retraining that can help us learn to become more open to the connections between sensory modes, materials, and environments. In addition to listening in to digital content, it is time that we learn to listen up, out, through, and around."

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