Piano transductions: music, sound and noise in urban Taiwan

Introduction

“…In this case, Indigenous dispossession was the precondition for the construction of Wall Street, a metonym for the US finance industry, where a wall was built to keep the Lenape people out of their homeland in an area now known as lower Manhattan (Barker 2011). 3 Sykes (2018) and Hsieh (2019), for instance, both argue against the idea of a 'singular, omnipresent' or 'holistic' understanding of the word 'soundscape' . Instead, both scholars argue for a soundscape that is moving, contested, relational and mutually constitutive.…”

“…Journal of Sonic Studies and Sound Studies) and other publications where writers have examined auditory environments and practices in societies such as India, Turkey, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Caribbean (e.g. Basdurak 2020;Porath 2019;Lynch 2019;Hsieh 2019;Sykes 2018;Bronfman 2017;Cheung 2016;Östersjö and Nguyễn 2016). Researchers have focused primarily on the relationship of contested urban soundscapes to issues such as noise reduction, governmentality, spirituality and technology.…”

Caring through Sound and Silence: Technology and the Sound of Everyday Life in Homes for the Elderly

“…A core theme of sound studies research is to attend to what sonic anthropologist Christine Guillebaud (2017) described as the "inherent complexity" of ambient sound (2), that is, to acknowledge and examine both the material as well as the immaterial (the social, cultural and historic) textures and alterations of the sonic worlds that we live in. This point is emphasized by anthropologist Jennifer Hsieh (2019) who writes that what the study of piano sound as noise in Taiwan demonstrates is "the distinctions between noise as a material object and noise that is imbued with meaning" (14). Although the concept of "soundscape," as it was first formulated by Murray Schafer in the 1970s, has been criticized for focusing primarily on the materiality of sound, neglecting the social and cultural embeddedness of sound and ways of listening (Samuels et al 2010), in later refinements of the soundscape we already find explicitly mentioning of both the material and cultural dimensions.…”

“…In her recent study on piano sounds in Taiwan, Hsieh (2019) reminds us that if we are to understand the soundscape of one place, we need to open up the perspective to include those broader sonic expectations that inform social connections and disconnections over auditory events. Hsieh (2019) explains how the piano, which was introduced to Taiwan as part of Western art music, served "as a symbol for upward mobility as well as an instrument for moral refinement" (7).…”

Sonic Histories of Occupation

“…Journal of Sonic Studies and Sound Studies) and other publications where writers have examined auditory environments and practices in societies such as India, Turkey, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Caribbean (e.g. Basdurak 2020;Porath 2019;Lynch 2019;Hsieh 2019;Bronfman 2017;Cheung 2016;Östersjö and Nguyễn 2016). Researchers have focused primarily on the relationship of contested urban soundscapes to issues such as noise reduction, governmentality, spirituality and technology.…”