What does a podcast do? Recently, I recorded a podcast for the McMullen Museum at Boston College. It was a conversational interaction with my Communication Department colleague Celeste Wells. For just over 20 enjoyable minutes we discussed two paintings in the current exhibition Nature's Mirror: Reality and Symbol in Belgium Landscape.
This is a tremendously diverse display of what might be termed high-cosmopolitanism, in so far as its chronological scope stretches from wood prints made during the early days of the printing press in the sixteenth century to early twentieth century paintings.
As high cosmopolitanism it offers a perspective of a diverse Belgium, as cities and towns emerged in the formative days of capitalism, through to the First World War. As "art" it is "high" in the way Raymond Williams defined high culture - art on gallery walls within boundaries that are learned within formal culture and privilege. As high cosmopolitanism it offers representations about the way of life of diverse peoples, whose class and cultural orientations are mostly coexistent. Their "structures of feeling" (to take another Williams term) are shown in the unfolding social consciousness of the many ways of life of the people and places depicted.
The current exhibition is as good as anything I have seen in a traditional museum setting.
Celeste discussed Léon Spilliaert's (1881-1946), “Scene of War,” 1917. I discussed Eugèbe-Joseph Verboeckhoven's (1799-1881), “Mountainous Landscape with Bridge,” n.d.
Images of the paintings are in the link to the podcast.
Podcasts are all the go! And as I note in my contribution to the podcast, one of the reasons I chose the bridge was because of the way it described technology as a means by which humans communicate - in this case, a structure as a means of transport for communication purposes. The technology of the bridge saves time in traversing the valley, allowing messengers to deliver information more quickly, yet to me, the bridge is about the fragility of surviving a crossing on the rickety structure. Due to the bridge, people move through space in shorter amounts of time. The impact on human life, in creating civilization through engineering feats like a spidery bridge, was and is significant.
A similar point was made by the American culture and communication historian James Carey in Communication as Culture, where he referred to the invention of the telegraph as the way to restructure social and commercial life, which changed space and time.
Back to the podcast: Podcasts involve hearing, which is almost an olfactory sense, such is its richness. Perhaps the currency that podcasts are experiencing in the present moment is due to the way they draw listeners in through aural sensibility, to massage the part of the human brain that has not been adequately stimulated in the face of the visual onslaught of the always-on screen. Think about the dominance of the screen: the "pixilated people" as I once somewhat critically suggested, are primarily about a visual experience based on optic nerve sensations.
The podcast removes the obsessional visual characteristic from the calculation of digitally delivered information services. Instead, it offers a way to knowledge that requires listening as a singular mode of information delivery. In this sense, I am reminded of "Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media" an article by my fellow Australian Kate Crawford, who describes listening as an analogy for how Social Media is utilized. She suggested a range of potential ways for listening: the most relevant is where Social Media engages listeners in reciprocal and receptive attention to each other. This was fine (and is still relevant) in 2009 when Crawford published the article.
In 2017 conditions have altered. Now podcasts create, directed listening and less reciprocal listening, where the the full attention of the listener's aural capacity is called upon, with not much expectation for a digital or on-line reaction. It is difficult to imagine a podcast being successful. It is not a Twitter or instant messaging or Social Media system, previously defined, in which the interactive commentary, the conversations, are what have salience.
In contrast, there is a somewhat reactionary characteristic to podcasts - its directedness is structured around highly attentive listening to one way speech. It reduces the social in Social Media by offering mobility to the spoken word. It shares this with the Walkman which took music to the streets, moving it out of the lounge room, the bedroom, and concert hall into the private space of the listeners' headphones. It changed the culture, and as Stuart Hall and a group of authors noted in Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, that little device had a big impact on culture. Unfortunately, I would suggest that its impact includes a negation of social interaction even social life itself, as it privileged individual consumption and aural pleasure over sociality. (I am interested in the shifting definitions of private and public, mostly because the success of private culture reduces, even denies the capacity for shared, collective social life).
As usual, the analysis is complex.The aural intensity of podcasts continue the richness the Walkman offered, as well as the negation. Both technologies share a focus on aural intensity while cutting off the possibility for community interaction by delaying reactions to speech.
Despite these misgivings, a podcast offers a way to explore negotiated meanings within art for listeners.
And I want to enthusiastically suggest that any opportunity to identify and reflect through speech on the high cosmopolitanism of Nature's Mirror is welcome. The exhibition offers the chance to reflect on Belgian social life, drawing attention to historical knowledge about art and society, as well as offering an appreciation for the important work artists do in responding to the world while reflecting on how the world looks many years later.
Here are some questions abut podcasts:
What is a listening community? What does a listening community look like when the verbiage is about art? Can ideas be brought from the history of listening to music that will inform an understanding of podcasts?
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