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Contemporary Music Review

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Image-of-sound, or i-sound:
Metaphor/metaform
a
François Bayle
a
INA-GRM, Maison de la Radio , 116 avenue du Président
Kennedy, F-75016, Paris, France
Published online: 24 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: François Bayle (1989) Image-of-sound, or i-sound: Metaphor/metaform,

Contemporary Music Review, 4:1, 165-170, DOI: 10.1080/07494468900640261

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494468900640261

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 Contemporary Music Review, 9 1989 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH
1989, Vol. 4, pp. 165-170 Printed in the United Kingdom
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Image-of-sound, or i-sound: Metaphor/metaform I

Franqois Bayle
INA-GRM, Maison de la Radio,
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116 avenue du President Kennedy, F-75016 Paris, France

Taking the case presented by the acousmatic situation (radio, records, and especially works of
organized sound designed for concerts), the central question discussed is that of conditions or criteria
of the listenability of organized sounds projected into a listening space by electroacoustic means.
Based on their morphological "appearance" - raw material, transformation stages, composed
sequences - effects of salience and pregnance, as well as distinguishing features of reference and
coherence, will be assessed. A recognition model for perceptual forms in the musical dimension is
drawn from compositional experience for the acousmatic stage. A function-flowchart is proposed as
a "bridge" between the physical and the symbolic, between hearing sound and comprehending its
meaning, between listening and understanding.

KEY WORDS: Acousmatic, coherence, listenability, musical form, sound image, metaphor,
experimental music, musical operations.

I paint what I can't photograph and photograph what I can't paint. Man Ray

Music is pure non-sense. Beethoven, to Goethe

Yet the representation, the image, the staging of this non-sense involves recourse
to a profound meaning at the very root of all complexity, of morphology. The
body of acousmatic 2 music would thus appear to constitute a valid element in the
investigation into music and the cognitive sciences. Investigation understood
here as raising the question of whether correspondences usually affected by
sounds in music - accents, influences, relationships, correlations, polyphony,
polychromy, polyrhythms, etc. - are related to the emergence of "meaning". Or
even to a "meaning of meanings", a meta-meaning produced by the play of
symbols, metaphors, metaforms (forms of forms 3) - all correctly tuned. Correctly
tuned not only among themselves (acoustically) but also in tune with experience
in general, with the sense of life . . . . If this can be assumed, then perhaps the way
in which the audible is segmented should be taken into consideration. Correctly
segmenting means correctly depicting. That is to say making an accurate image of
the contours of the audible and its perceived coherence on several planes (planes
in immediate and constant juxtaposition):
- the first plane of motor-sensory appearance (hearing),
- the second plane of attention focussed on relevant details (listening),
- the third plane of corrrespondence (understanding).
.... I heard you without listening, neither comprehending nor understanding." Pierre Schaeffer

165
 166 Fran~;oisBayle

This trichotomy of the audible accomplishes its role of "rendering understand-

able" through its very circularity, a constant back and forth play (Peirce, 1978),
For the audible in general, understanding means first of all taking the environ-
ment into account based on the phonic trace of things, events in the objective
world. Which means intelligently identifying the sound residue of acts and
objects, whose conflicts and frictions are manifested as phenomenological "ap-
pearance" which signals, informs, anticipates and explains other planes of con-
sciousness, notably tactile, gestural and visual appearance. While understanding
what is musically audible (both more specific and much more broad than the
audible in general) means taking the subject and the subject's body into account,
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in this projected world. Reverting, then, to this body of sensory pleasure, of ideas,
where new, "utopian" (in short, symbolic) connections arise. Which also means re-
situating and constantly recycling a library of referential musics, invoking a realm
of objects (simple notes or clusters . . .) and a treasure of timeless values (the
classics...).
A major technological feat then intervenes: the possibility of fixing or creating
sound, then listening to the trace it has left. This new capability (roughly contem-
porary with the arrival of photography and cinema) serves our argument in so far
as the notion of image constitutes a scale model of appearance. As well as con-
stituting a new object - or i-sound - an intermediate object which in a certain way
includes appearance, where it can be followed and seen to work. A mis-
understanding should perhaps be quickly cleared up here. At once banal and
highly original, acousmatic production was born of recordings (on cylinders,
records, tape) designed to facilitate, to "relay", the musical act, bringing it nearer
in time and space. Listening without seeing, via radio and recordings henceforth
constitutes a common practice where the relay pretends to - without ever
achieving- transparency. From this context emerges the truly original situation of
the creation of a domain specific to acousmatic music. This sui generis acousmatic
situation now stands in opposition to the initial context. Every skill of art and
sound technique is invoked to substitute image for object, to generate fictional
objects, forging a new compositional writing, a rhetOric, a poetics. 4 Thus
montage, insertion, extraction, stretching and filtering become method and
content, medium and message, as do the shattering of time and place, the shifting
of contours, their superimposition and mixing, and even the introduction of
speed and spatiality. And all the cognitive skills needed to mark out and identify
these new objects are also called into play. Certain "dotted lines" have already
been traced in order to distinguish the planes of hearing, listening, comprehend-
ing.5 Considering a scaled-down version of the acousmatic domain reveals at least
three points of significant interest:
- This field proposes "texts" of direct sound, arranged according to the limits
(yielding reference points) of the authors' know-how and hear-how, with no
reinforcement from any additional element or ally (performer). This means that
during listening, the absence of reinforcement provided by visible clues obliges
the author to express the meaning inscribed in the text (other reference points).
- The acoustmatic field is relatively recent. Compared to the scope of traditional
music, it constitutes a relatively pure micro-field where certain clear behavioral
features emerge, free of cultural overdetermination. These features constitute
the "primitives" of cognitive auditory practice. For example: more or less
 Image-of-soundor i-sound 167
predictable assemblage of percussion/resonance, translation/resistance,
apparition/growth ... by inversion, interversion, stimulation.
- But the most original point concerns above all the question of content. The
acousmatic field, to a greater extent than any other, is predisposed (most
probably in my own musical composition, but also more generally in the
"musique concr6te" style) to the experience of morphological singularity,
whether this be the constitution of sound material reacting to constraints, or an
auditory vigilance open to de-realized, idealized potentialities.
Cognition thus constitutes one of the evaluating procedures which compare and
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distribute direct or induced psychic energy. The trichotomy mentioned above can
be taken up again in reference to levels of faculties engaged in attentive listening:
- F i r s t : our ear becomes interested in perceiving the circumstances, typo-
morphological details, and interactions between sound materials. This auditory
faculty works as a detector limited only by P6hysiological thresholds. Detecting
salience; attack, contour, bursts of sound . . . .
- Second: Our being becomes interested in perceiving origins and evolutions,
coherences (fusion) and distinctions (identification). The natures of these
entities (things, complexes) surpass the field of the audible, which they traverse
not only in the "before-after" direction, but also along paths of inertia, vel-
ocities, temperatures, coloring, d e n s i t i e s . . , that is to say qualities of "during".
The corresponding cognitive faculty works as a modeler according to psychoacous-
tic schemas. Detecting forms (prey), space (landscapes), actors (characters). 7
- Third: Our mind, "stuck in its body" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964), constructs a mis-
adaptation, a body undergoing growth. The symbolic faculty,works as opening,
current, exchange, incompletion. Detecting pregnance . . . .
This proposition suggests that the cognitive function, truly ungraspable "in
itself", is apprised from "above" and "below". The symbolic function exercises
remote control from above, rearranging the real according to a "projected" world.
And it is conditioned from below by the qualitative structuring of the morpho-
logical world which "serves as input to our perceptual apparatus",to use Jean
Petitot's expression. He reminds us that the

world that we apprehend is a phenomenalizedobjectiveworld. The conditionsof perceptual possibil-

ity are alreadygivenin this world, throughmatter's facultyof organizingitself,evenorganizingitself
qualitatively.Physical,physio-chemicaland thermodynamicprocesses possess what couldbe called
catastrophic infrastructures, essentiallyrelated to those processes' singularities.Singularitieswhich
constitutethe morphologicalcomponentof phenomena. And of their qualities.It couldbe arguedthat
it is these catastrophicinfrastructureswhichare subsequentlyprocessed by our perceptualapparatus.
(1985)
Thus we come, a third time, to the trichotomy of the audible:
- hearing and presentification (activating audition),
- listening and identification (activating cognition).
- comprehending and interpretation (which activate musicalization).
Following C.S. Peirce, this trichotomy could then be related to three degrees of
intentionality concerning images-of-sound.9
 168 FrancoisBayle

- t h e i s o m o r p h i c i m a g e (iconic, r e f e r e n t i a l ) o r im-sound
- t h e d i a g r a m , a s e l e c t i o n of s i m p l i f i e d c o n t o u r s ( i n d e x i c a l ) , o r di-sound
- t h e metaphor/metaform, a s s o c i a t e d w i t h a g e n e r a l c o n c e p t ( s i g n of) o r
me-sound.
W e w o u l d t h u s h a v e a c o n c e p t u a l f r a m e w o r k p r o v i d i n g a u s e f u l t o o l for t h e
e x e c u t i o n of b o t h r e c e p t i o n ( u n d e r s t a n d i n g ) a n d p r o d u c t i o n ( l i s t e n a b i l i t y ) of a
m u s i c a l text c o m p o s e d of " o r g a n i z e d " ( V a r 6 s e ' s t e r m ) 1~i m - s o u n d s , d i - s o u n d s , a n d
m e - s o u n d s . T h e f u n c t i o n - f l o w c h a r t ( F i g u r e 1) is a n a t t e m p t at a s c h e m a t i c r e p r e s e n -
t a t i o n of this. B u t a n y a t t e m p t to d e s c r i b e t h e f u n c t i o n i n g of a n " a c t i v e " s y m b o l i c
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f a c u l t y c a n n e v e r d o m o r e t h a n offer a s p a c e for t a b l a t u r e s , a s a h e u r i s t i c tool.

W e w i l l a l w a y s h a v e to " r i s e " to t h e l e v e l of m u s i c , h i g h e r a n d g r e a t e r t h a n o u r -
selves.

M u s i c . . . is too far beyond the world and the designatable to depict anything but certain
outlines of Being - its ebb and flow, its growth, its upheavals, its turbulence.

M. Merleau-Ponty - Eye and Mind

Translated front the French by Deke Dusinberre

Notes
1. N.B. This article complements the point of view expressed elsewhere in this volume by Jean Petitot,
"Cognition, Perception and Morphological Objectivity", applying it to the domain of the musical.
2. Acousmatic: A pure listening situation, where attention cannot be drawn to or reinforced by a visible
(or predictable) instrumental causality. Music conceived only in the form of images-of-sounds
(i-sounds) and only perceived at the moment of their projection into space (potentially staged or
performed cinematically).
3. Metaform: Every act of vigilance - including music listening, especially listening in the acousmatic
mode - is necessarily established according to criteria of "emergence", made possible by a hierarchy
of archetypal references constituting a dictionary of "forms of forms". These might be considered
generalized words, or "ideograms", for the psychic apparatus. For example:
- on the first, or "presentification" level, everything connected with sudden irruption: summon-
ing, disappearing, clashing, extracting, scraping, b u r s t i n g . . .
- on the second, or "identification" level, everything indicating gesture and constraints concerning
sound material: colliding, compressing, twisting, stretching, fragmenting...
- on the third, or "interpretation" level, everything relating to a "world" or "ulterior world" of
poetic, abstract relationships: echo or rebound, values, colors, brilliance, a u r a . . .
4. Metaphor: In the generation and proliferation of sound forms produced and perceived in an acous-
matic situation, images-of-sound (i-sounds) enter into "projective relationships" with target-
figures in the semantic field (dynamic verbs) such as: press, crush, draw together, penetrate,
invade, envelope, engulf, and many others. Moreover, both production and listening situations
involving i-sounds engage two forms - one external, entailing pure energy, the other internal,
entailing pure perception. These are married under the auspices of an "imaginary thing", a fictional
and metaphorical "as if", much more real and true than any veritable, indistinct cause. In relation
to metaform (source-form), metaphor functions as target-form.
5. Experience: Experience first of all establishes consciousness of the coherence of a unique thing from
the diversity of its various aspects. This capacity for synthesis uses stabilizing experience to reduce
the world of appearance to a more restricted, more coherent, world of things. Experience then
assumes the inverse aspiration from the success of this exercise: to successfully divide, to lose in
order to rediscover. By implementing various operations and manipulations, experience locates
and produces new coherences, peoples a new space with new "things" (experimental music).
6. Technique - Operation - Manipulation: Operation refers to the techniques used to "bring into being"
new objects via physical constraints and transformations. Manipulation concerns a transformation
 hnage-of-sound or i-sound 169

by state by ice|on slov fist

Imege level nlienc, indication
I-sound .tcolplex contoueippricilt|on
speedend flov of burets
~ fS(IS, Ilndlclptl
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Oiogrie level stlbility / motion

D-sound 2~ homogeneous/ heterogeneous
foem / ,dg,
coherence / cloud

Metsphor level
M-sound
J
J
/new / comprehensible
~,~e|turlted / Jn(oherent ' d

Figure I Function-flowchart.
 170 Francois Bayle

of effects geared to targeted perceptual results. From operative "bringing into being" acting on
morphological infrastructures arises a "bringing into appearance", full of surprises and anomalies
in terms of categories (illusions - anamorphosis - syntheses - hybrids), contributing to eventual
savoir-faire (a craft and its tools).
7. Landscape - World and World-Behind-the-Scenes: " . . . The apple.., forms itself from itself and comes into
the visible as if it had come from a prespatial world-behind-the-scenes". (Merleau-Ponty, 1964). The
stream of sound projection peoples acousmatic listening according to a scenario of forms, a
panorama carpeted with characters, hillocks, varyingly "stimulated" states within the sound
c o n t i n u u m - a morphogenetic landscape. It is made by hand, but with the help of technology, that
is to say that the handiwork is invisible though everywhere felt.
8. Character: In this landscape, the listening subject works - "symbolically replays" - the music. One
"pilots" one's listening like a vehicle, an apparatus simulating spaces and forms . . . A tense
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relationship with appearances is established, full of risk, desire, antipathy, hope. This reproduces
the same sensation of strangeness as when a tale is recounted.
9. Image and l-Sound: "I do not look at [a painting] as I do a t h i n g . . . M y gaze wanders around in it . . . . It is
more accurate to say that I see according to it, or with it, than that I see it" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964).
"A photo is always invisible. It's not the photo itself which is s e e n . . , photos: signs which don't "take" too
well . . . . " (Barthes, 1980).
The gaze defines images based on the trace they leave on a medium sensitive to the luminous energy
emitted by an object. I-sounds are defined by audition in the same way, in an isomorphic appear-
ance at the sound source (that is to say transmitted in the same way through the air to the auditory
system). But, like images, i-sounds are differentiated from the source-sound by a double disjunc-
tion: the first physical, coming from a substitution of causal space, and the second psychological,
coming from a displacement in the region of effects (awareness of a simulacrum, an interpretation,
a sign).
10. Coherence - Listenability: A system of related qualities which emanate from a "thing", positing this
thing as appearance, and constituting its degree of coherence. Its pregnance - its transmission of
a clutch of qualities - lends credence to imagined, non-causal, free associations. For example, the
coherence of "lemon" enables us to hazard the observation that "sourness is yellow" (Ponge).
" . . . Without the notion of (coherent) thing, we are confronted with the sound object (i-sound) like a film
viewer who doesn't know how to recognize a coherent character in the various close-ups and long-shots of
different movements and still poses by the same actor, and who therefore soon becomes exhausted trying to
itemize these movements second by second". (Chion, 1988).

In "natural" music, all "external" factors of coherence - for instance, instrumental identification
("clarinetness"), visible gestures (the participatory involvement of the gaze), etc., must be well
"observed" so that in the staging of listening in an acousmatic situation they can be "relayed" by
i-sounds/coherence markers and elements of rhetoric. Attention is thus held, during acousmatic
production, by the maintenance of coherences, insuring the listenability of "i-sounding" composi-
tions w h e n played. New coherences are thereby created, coherences neither realistic nor causal,
but truly phenomenal.

References

Barthes, R. (1980) La chambre claire. Cahier du cindma, 18-136. Paris: Gallimard.

Bayle, F. (1984) La musique acousmatique, ou l'art des son projet6s. Enjeux, 211-218, Paris: Encyc-
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Bayle, F. (1986) Ecouter et comprendre - In "La recherche musicale au GRM", La Revue Musicale, 394/
397, 109-119.
Chion, M. (1988) Du son a la chose. Analyse Musicale, 11, 52-58.
McAdams, S. (1984) The auditory image: A metaphor for musical and psychological research on
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(eds.), 289-323, Amsterdam: North Holland.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964) Eye and Mind. In The Primacy of Perception, James Edie (trans), Evanston, Ilk
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