Leo Liu

Towards from eyes to deep listening Shaozheng Liu(Leo) S3835828 ARCH1359 Fiona Harrisson 12 October, 2020

1. Introduction

This essay explores deep listening and the relationship to sound and what is seen. Moreover, how” visual listening” and “invisible listening” mentioned in the essay can be reflected and applied in landscape practice.

"Deep Listening involves going below the surface of what is heard and also expanding to the whole field of sound whatever one's usual focus might be. Such forms of listening are essential to the process of unlocking layer after layer of imagination, meaning and memory down to the cellular level of human experience."

Judith Becker, 2004, p2.

People could break out of their mental limitations again and again by listening deeply to reflect on themselves. However, without communication, the importance of listening is always ignored. In daily life, we are more tend to believe what we see.

The focus of my reflection essay is how to dialectically view the changes in the picture in the sense of hearing and vision, then apply these changes to the practice of landscape architecture.

In this essay, I will begin my exploration with my experience of epidemics and findings through previous listening practice, then turn to the new definition of” visual listening” as well as “invisible listening”. I want to show how these were explored and connects to my observation. Then, describe what I learned from it, and how could it connect to Landscape Architecture practice.

Notes from the pandemic:

The blockade at home is very boring, facing the invariable scenery outside the window and the furnishings in the house, I do not know when such days can end. However, my family members are always with me.

But I also sometimes think that only an event like the epidemic, which can destroy the existing social order of mankind, can give me this opportunity to integrate into my family.

Figure 1: Mountain Suburbs of China: Photo by Shaozheng Liu, 2020,

Figure 2: Private Residential Balconies, Photo by Shaozheng Liu, 2020,

A scene in the video that I used to represent my environment and the sound I felt

2. Follow the sound track

The questions always come from practice.

When I was doing sound map drawing practice, the questions about listening and seeing came to my mind: Through different kinds of deep listening which were explored through theory and practice-led me to begin thinking about the fact that when we describe the sound we heard, we always subconsciously relate it to visual input. Sound is to hear, and sight is to see. Are we listening to the sound or “seeing� the sound? When we get our thoughts from sound, are we disturbed by the emotions that come from sight? In this section, I will gradually elaborate on the emergence and development of this thinking.

Listening practices

In the past few weeks, I have been practising and exploring listening -- including a variety of listening exercises and literature readings.

Through some philosophical papers, I discussed the differences in ways of thinking and were encouraged to re-examine what I saw. A video recording our location and sound during the epidemic period and The Sound map was the first practice we were exposed to. They both emphasized listening to the environment around us and recording the sound. I recorded the sounds of my home, community garden and coffee shop at the same time on different days. Each practice can make me feel something.

Findings

Through listening practice, I gradually realized that cognition is the result of the joint action of multiple senses. Listening, as a way for us to understand the world, often needs to interact with other senses to play its role.

The initial listening practice is a process of understanding deep listening from many aspects. We stand on the shoulders of giants to comprehend and explore it. I worked on the sound map for five days, and the results varied from day to day, due to the different listening methods.

Figure 3: Sound maps, Sketch by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

Day 3 Summer with birds and cicadas singing Saturday. 1st August. Sunny.

8:44 am- 8:47 am 7:11 pm- 7:14 pm.

Day 4 The footsteps of children and the joy of the weekend Sunday. 2nd August. Sunny.

8:02 am- 8:05 am 6:34 pm- 6:37 pm

"Last week, I was struggling between visual expression and auditory expression, but after the second week, I found that this was unnecessary.

For people, any scene and picture impression should be the result of several sensory combinations, and seeing is also part of listening."

Shaozheng Liu, 2020. P2.

As for the discipline of Landscape, listening and seeing is entirely unbalanced in the process of landscape experience, and people’s perception of soundscape mostly comes from the visual environment. Can we improve this situation?

3. Deep listening: Extending and thinking “When I experience dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the riverbank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awarness. There is no need of words. A big part of dadirri is listening. Through the years, we have listened to our stories. They are told and sung, over and over, as the seasons go by. Today we still gather around the campfires and together we hear the sacred stories” Miriam- Rose Ungunmerr- Baumann. 2002. 01.

People’s perceptions always come from their perceptions.

After that dadirri experience, Ungunmerr developed an understanding of deep listening as well as his definitions and practice method. I have never experienced Dadirri, but I also have my own unique experience of deep listening.

This section shows how I started to practice with other people’s research on deep listening and redefined it based on my understanding.

Figure 4: Street during the epidemic, photo by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

Deep listening practice

In BREARLEY Gulpa Ngawal, According to the four types of listening defined by Otto Scharmer in Learning from the future:1) Downloading - confirms what you already know. 2) Objective or attentive listening - paying attention to what differs from your own concepts. 3) Empathic listening - seeing the world through someone else's eyes. 4) Generative listening - listening from the emerging field of the future - getting ourselves out of the way in order to open a space. (Otto scharmer, 2009, pp. 78) The author summarizes the method of deep listening and the purpose of our exploration.

I’ve tried to practice deep listening in these four ways, during this process, I often set some preconditions for myself: sitting in a crowd, closing my eyes, deliberately distracting myself, and talking to others. I recorded my practice as sound diaries.

Downloading - I heard the sound of the cafe methine today, I ignored it, but even if I listened casually, I still knew what was causing the sound.

Objective or attentive listening - Does this mean that the more we focus on trying to hear a particular sound, the more we lose sight of the other prominent sound elements in the environment?

When we pay more attention to “something loose from our concepts,� we are more likely to ignore our concepts.

Generative listening - we begin to find a sound in our consciousness. When we are drinking, smoking, sleeping. These times we have not concentrated consciousness, but this is also our awareness of the busiest time.

My definitions of deep listening

The reclassification of listening is of great significance to me.

It represents my new thinking and exploration from the perspective of others. For me, it’s possible to reclassify these four types of listening visually into two broad categories: · “Visible” listening: Listen to what we can see -- from the environment, from other people · “Invisible” listening: Listen without seeing -- feel the silence, feel the emotion, listen to yourself There is a strong connection between listening and seeing in these two listening categories. As a landscape architecture primary student, I am constantly reminded to pay attention to the environment around us, we see them with our eyes; however, we’re more accustomed to using ears as receptors for communication.

Either seeing or listening is a means of input. “Visible” listening is more authentic and represents things in the objective world, and we record shapes and the sounds that surrounding make in our mind as a reserve for our experience.

“Invisible” listening - it sounds like an ethereal experience.

For example, like there was also activity in the human body during people sleep, our minds also develop when consciousness is free. Without visual interference, all small sounds are amplified, like the blind is very dependent on their ears, we could go through visual listening to catch a deep weak spark in our mind, and enlarge it, then breakthrough of our thoughts.

Figure 5: Hainan, China, spring, photo by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

4. Towards from visual listening to Landscape

So how can I apply the new theory to my professional study?

What practical benefits can I get besides thinking over and over again?

As a design discipline, landscape architecture tends to place more emphasis on visualization, which also means that listening is not dominant. So, One thing that’s important to me is to try to understand the spirit of “Invisible” listening: Utilize a single receptor can enrich my thinking.

In this section, I will share how I extend the application of the new theory.

Figure 6: Zebra Cafe, photo by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

Figure 7: Iron forest model, photo by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

What does visual listening mean?

The redefinition of listening has these implications for me: First of all, it reflects my critical thinking. I can certainly expand on the theories of others, but I think it is more important to learn the way others thought about problems and how to practice them. For example, Brearley, Scharmer, they all have different views on the classification of deep listening because they have gone through different practical processes. For me, the practical process is the period of struggle between visual and auditory interaction in public places; therefore, I could redefine “Visible” listening and “Invisible” listening.

Then, Listening with vision means that we have more perspectives to perceive -- to perceive others, to perceive ourselves, to perceive landscapes. As I began to pay more attention to hearing, I became more alert, and It was important to me that I could often catch fleeting thoughts in my mind.

The process of feeling the sound is silent but also calming. I can’t help but want to share my feelings with those around me and immerse them in them.

Finally, in the process of practising the new theory, it really helped me with other courses. I used took a long time to come up with the Design Studio’s main idea, but there was no progress. However, I got inspiration from practice.

When I was doing invisible listening, I keep asking myself what the experience should it feels like and what experience the theory would give to others. Later, I realized that landscape design could also find its way through these two questions. With the guidance of methodology, my design became as natural as making sentences.

Exploration of theories

From listening practices in The sound in my body (see appendix ), I tried to practice both visible and invisible listening -- drawing sounds with my eyes closed and listening to my own body -- all of which made me realize that both receptors are crucial.

Figure 8.1: Sound maps In Zebra Cafe, sketch by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

Day 1 The footsteps of children and the joy of the weekend

My exploration started at the community coffee shop. In the beginning, I needed to observe the sound types of the site and classify them, which would be a gradual process. From visible listening to invisible listening, I tend to remove the factors that interfere with my listening step by step.

Figure 8.2: Sound sketchs In Zebra Cafe, sketch by Shaozheng Liu, 2020

Staring at the coffee machine, I seemed to blend in. When the picture in my vision is frozen, my mind became active. Simple curiosity about an unfamiliar machine would jump elsewhere - if it had been an artwork, what would I have thought and heard?

Day 2 Focus on the coffee machine

In the second stage, I try to achieve as insouciant a state as possible - a state that somewhere between visible listening and invisible listening. In this way, I can avoid being affected by the visual influence and always blur the picture of the sound source object; thus, new shapes are established in my mind.

Day 3 Casual listening while taking notes

I had completely closed my eyes - almost asleep. Before we design a project, we are often asked to look at many good cases, because only input information can we output our ideas. When we listen invisibly, relying solely on sound as input, what ideas do we output?

Day 4 Listening in half sleep - without eye sight

Extend the exploration to Landscape

We can begin visual listening through a form of meditation - When people stand on the grassland, the open Landscape reminds us of ethereal and melodious sounds; when people stand in narrow spaces, we hear echoes and feel depressed. It’s all about the experience that vision gives us. However, what will happen when people rely less on their eyes to get a feel for the Landscape?

In addition to photosynthesis, the roots of any plant variety can process more than a dozen chemical messages simultaneously. (Stefano Mancuso 2012) Just as the underestimation of plants’ abilities often accompanies humans. Human’s listening and associative abilities are also underestimated.

Nowadays, the soundscape is not popular in landscape architecture, which I think is because, on a large scale, it is difficult to form a complete experience tour line. However, I have noticed that there are some sounds studies in the field of public installation art.

Since the birth of new media art, give priority to with the recording of public art is gradually changed the traditional photography art, the process is, of course, people’s taste of art from the visual to hear. At present, public installation art is prevalent.

Besides, public installations and landscape structures have similar components, which might be able to become a new media in Landscape to carry voice.

Figure 9.1: Acoustic longing, photo by Yunnan Gai, 2020

Figure 9.2: Acoustic longing, photo by Yunnan Gai, 2020

This is a sociality installation, which collects different sounds that people of all ages notice. At the same time, it hopes to awaken people's attention to life through people's memory of sound Yunnan Gai. 2019

6. Grow with deep listening

In this seminar, in addition to deep Listening, we discussed a lot.

We discussed Taoism, viruses, the meaning of presence and the fact of dialogue.

Whenever we have a conversation, we were always trying to think from a different perspective. In this process, I have also grown a lot. This section is about my changes and how the course Silence and other animals have affected me.

Something has changed in my perception

The practice of visual listening has influenced my usual way of thinking in study and design.

Figure 10: Thinking pattern diagram, drawing by Senge, P, Scharmer, O, Jaworski, J , Sue Flowers, B, 2005

The deep thinking is a revolution in our consciousness. If thinking is a sense, listening can absolutely do the same work that thinking does when we're consciousless. Therefore, can we make the voices in our bodies collide and communicate at all times?

Shaozheng Liu, 2020. 08.

I insist that the shift in thinking has been my most significant change. The education mode I received in the past is similar to Reactive learning. Due and homework are the driving force for me to move forward. During this course, I found that Deeper Levels of Learning would be more beneficial to me in learning and design, which makes me self-censor and think more and more. I believe in ultimately, this learning style is etched into my DNA like an instinct.

How will "Silence and other animals" affect me in the future This insight not only gives me a new perspective on landscape architecture but also will undoubtedly affect my future study and life.

Getting my hearing back means a lot to me. Silence used to mean loneliness and used to scare me, but through practice, I’ve learned to enjoy it, to talk to myself in silence. I really understand how deafening silence is.

Also, I learned the importance of multiple perspectives: "Thanks to me, for an indefinite time you will no longer work, your kids won’t go to school, and yet it will be the opposite of a vacation.

Vacations are that space that must be called up at all costs while waiting for the obligatory return to work. " Paru Dans Lundimatin. 2020.

The epidemic, for example, brought me a long-lost reunion with my family at a time when everyone thought it was a disaster.

All in all, what I did was break away from mechanized learning, find joy in dull silence, choose patterns of dialogue, discuss topics I have never thought about before, listen carefully, or stay silent!

REFERENCE LIST Brearley, 2010, Gulpa Nagawal, pp. 7-8 Judith Becker, Deep Listeners, Music, Emotion and Trancing (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004), p.2.

Senge, P, Scharmer, O, Jaworski, J , Sue Flowers, B , 2005, Presence: Exploring profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society Nicholas Brealy Publishing: London pp. 3-17 Shaozheng Liu, 2020, The sound in my body, p.2 Stefano Mancuso, 2012:" The roots of plant intelligence," accessed january 22, http://www.ted.com/talks/stefano_ mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_intelligence.html.

Ungunmerr-Bauman, Miriam-Rose, 2002, ‘Dadirri: inner deep listening and quiet still awareness’ Emmaus Productions. p.2 Yunnan Gai, 2019, Acoustic longing, Installation Art work.