In the reading "Nature, Sound Art and the Sacred" by David Dunn, he made me realize how much the sound around me is an art in itself. Although it may be basic sounds such as airplane noises above our heads to as simple as the typing noises from our phones, they all create an environment that allows us to understand what it means to live in the society that we live in. The sounds we hear are an art that we all get to experience.
When Dunn says, “I wonder if music might be our way of mapping reality through metaphors of sound as if it were a parallel way of thinking to the visually dominant metaphors of our speech and written symbols” (Dunn), I started to think more about what the sounds around me mean to me other than just it being the typical sounds I hear each day. Rather than just hearing students on campus just talking and making noises, I recognized more that I myself am making the same sounds just like everyone else. I am in the same sounds as the students here. Instead of just trying to find the art through my eyes, using my ears to push that visual to audio makes “art” much more meaningful than it really is.
Later in the reading, Dunn starts to talk about his pieces of music and how he was inspired by John Cage’s work. Although he creates the sounds and calls it “art”, I find it difficult to understand his “music”. I understand why it is an art, but I find it difficult to take the sounds and comprehend the meaning behind them. Everyday sounds that I listen to makes sense to me and why it creates meaning, but it’s harder to understand sound that is artificially created by man with intent. That being said, although I may not understand the reasoning and meaning behind his sounds 100%, I understand that there is much more to the meaning of Art than there is other than seeing through my eyes.
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