Reconceptualizing ourselves and our environment interests me from both a social science perspective (e.g., constructivism) and a musical perspective (e.g., noise and field recordings). A recent All Things Considered on NPR reported on composer Brent Michael Davids’ Tinnitus Quartet, which replicates the sound Davids hears as a result of his tinnitus.

Davids’ idea is to communicate what he and other people with tinnitus hear to those who do not have the condition, and the radio segment approaches the music in this way. A more interesting approach, however, would have been to use the different ways in which we (in this case, people with and people without tinnitus) hear to question our conceptualization of sound and hearing (or, more generally, the senses). More specific, it demonstrates the personal/individual character of our senses and breaks apart the uniformity (among people) with which we treat/understand each sense. Unfortunately, neither the reporter, Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr, nor Davids does so directly.

Based on the snippets of the piece in the segment, I would certainly like to hear the full version, which is an 18 minute piece of a constant high-pitched tone with violin-created grasshopper chirping noises that eventually fall away to silence.