Customer Reviews

Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture

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A very engaging, wide-ranging look at the aural environment from many perspectives: cultural, historical, architectural, physical, sociological, political and more. The authors explore many of the deep and often times not-so-obvious connections and influences in an unusual, informative and refreshingly multi-disciplinary approach. Even though covered topics are broad in scope and complexity, the book is written in an easy and engaging conversational style that is neither academically stodgy nor technically overwhelming. But neither does it attempt to simplify the subject into shallow triviality.

Unlike many modern-day science popularizations, this book is not a simple distillation of some lofty academic field. Rather it is at once the introductory text, the major body of research and a pointer to even wider exploration of the a heretofore under-explored and under-appreciated topic. There's plenty of new and useful material here for the professional practitioner in a number of disciplines. At the same time, the entire book is accessible to the casual reader, the neophyte. No chapter or paragraph need be avoided by any reader: all are carried along with the narrative: none are left behind.

Personally, I have read book in out-of-order pieces as my busy schedule allows, without the feeling that I really should have read it in a more disciplined fashion. Rather than having to read other sections out of sheer necessity, I've gone back to fill in the holes more out of curiosity and interest.

If you want to understand the intimate connection between humans and the aural space they live in, there is no better place to find it than this book. If you're looking for a new model of understanding of a complex topic through an truly broad, interdisciplinary approach, this book is the best model I know of.

It's difficult to recommend it to highly.

Since I first heard Stevie Winwood sing about his choice between deafness and blindness, I have known that my ears where primary. This book is the authoritative confirmation.

Barry Blesser defines a "New Science" in this book, which mirrors his leading-edge career. This is a shining example of Nexialism (the Science of Everything) because it integrates conventional divisions of science and painstakingly assembled factoids into a raft of fresh multi-disciplinary theses. It represents a decades-long study utilizing creative insights, and flows with well written, compelling examples without sacrificing rigor.

I met Barry at the 1978 Convention of the Audio Engineering Society, where he was demonstrating the first professional digital reverberation generator. This mathematical room simulator was the starting point for elucidating how our ears provide us with more and better information about our environment than our eyes.

Aural acuity and aurally generated mental maps have been largely lost in our visual culture, starting with Guttenberg's enabling of widespread education through reading alone and continuing to television and Internet where LCD monitors have replaced most direct human contact. This has been exacerbated by the Industrial Age which has filled the aural environment with the noise of motors, controlled explosions and collisions. Further insult and injury to our hearing sense comes from audio production by alarms and annuciators and sound reproduction by increasingly cheaper transducers. Modern architecture has produced terrible acoustic environments, some masquerading as suitable concert and conference venues as well as residence and office.

"Spaces Speak" is a clarion call to re-gain this lost ground. It describes how detailed and precise hearing can be, and how to achieve a synthetic aural environment as healthy as the natural world for which our sense evolved.

Thank you, Mr. Blesser, and BRAVO!

I commend this book to all my colleagues in the AES, CAS, ASA and AIA.

Very interesting and new thinking about that sound around. Recommend for sound engineers, acoustic design architects, musicians and people who love music and/or are interested in the aural spaces abounding. Do you like John Cage, Terry Riley, ee cummings? Can you sing the sound of one _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _?