Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?
Experiencing Aural Architecture
Experiencing Aural Architecture
By Barry
Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter
MIT Press © 2007
MIT Press © 2007
| Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?
Experiencing Aural Architecture By Barry
Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter MIT Press © 2007 |
| Biographic sketches of authors:  Dr. Barry
Blesser has
spent the last 40 years exploring the influence of cognitive and
perceptual psychology on the design and implementation of
technology. His doctoral thesis, the perception of spectrally rotated
speech, conclusively demonstrated the existence of a variety of
cognitive strategies that are available for decoding speech. As one of
the pioneers of digital audio technology during the 1970s, he
transformed his fantasy of a portable concert hall into the first
commercial artificial reverberation system, which was used extensively
in the creation of recorded and broadcast music.
He demonstrated
the relevance of perceptual strategies in his study of the
diagnostic accuracy of medical radiologists. In the early 1980s, his
research on how humans read handprint resulted in the creation of a
startup company that developed an automated recognition
system.
While Dr. Blesser has focused on creating and implementing
technology as a technical and management consultant, he also
integrates the arts and social sciences into the design
process.
As an independent scholar, he has spent the last 5 years researching
the new concept of aural architecture, which led to his current
passion: the social consequences of functional deafness when in
corrosive acoustic environments. Acoustics is an inseparable
combination of the hard and soft sciences. See also his extended biography for more information. Dr.
Linda-Ruth Salter was a pioneer in crossing
discipline boundaries when she obtained a Ph.D. degree in
Interdisciplinary Studies from Boston University in 1984. Her doctoral
dissertation examined the nature of sacred space in secular societies.
Additional research showed the significance of place and spatial memory
in maintaining group identity. Dr. Salter has consulted in the area of
research and planning for a successful built environment in public
housing, educational and business spaces, and has taught urban studies
at Boston University. As a consequence of living in Asia, studying
Sumi-ink painting, and her interest in the symbolic meaning of material
culture, Dr. Salter created a specialty in promoting historic
indigenous crafts by founding an international Asian fine arts
business. Recently, Dr. Salter co-authored the first scholarly article
on Qing Dynasty belt ornaments, which emphasized their symbolic and
social role in Chinese society. Presently she is Asst. Professor in the
Humanities and Social Sciences at New England Institute of Technology,
where she contributes to the fine and performing arts curriculum in a
technology context. Fusing and integrating the fine arts, technology,
and social science is her specialty.Drs. Blesser and Salter, a husband and wife team of 35 years, fused their collective knowledge and experience of the physical and social sciences to create the concepts of auditory spatial awareness and its manifestation as aural architecture. Spaces Speak embodies their shared philosophic bias: technology changes the social and artistic aspects of culture, while at the same time, culture influences the properties of technology, invention, and innovation. Last Modified: 29 November 2007 | |||||||||||||||