Time Travel at the V & A

Yes folks, you cannot only travel into the past at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but I somehow unexpectedly stumbled into the future. After walking up a very ornate staircase with lots of painted walls, decorative plasterwork and intricately tiled floors, I found myself in the Whitely Silver Gallery. This was a room full of cabinets and cases full of silverware that went on the entire length of the museum as far as the eye could see. But to my right I could hear some voices and electronic sounds and buzzing, and looking into the room I saw that it was dark and things were lit behind walls with halogen lights and there was text and noise and it all looked so very contemporary in contrast to the room I was standing in. So I abandoned the silver room and ventured into "The Future of Hearing", as it was labelled. Always one to be more interested in the future than in the past I guess.
The small room had 4 booths, each labelled with a year in the future, 2007, 2012, 2016 and 2020. I was intrigued by the mixture of sounds and thought of all the people I know who are interested in sound art and music and cacaphony.
2007 was entitled "Personal Expression" and held showcases, speakers and a video all related to hearing and hearing aid technology as it is expected to be in the year 2007. There were prototypes of hearing aids that will help you protect your hearing and yet help you hear better in nightclubs. Coming out of the wall speakers were the overlapping sounds of two interviews about people who have suffered hearing damage, buzzing bees and ticking clocks.
For some time now I have been aware of the fact that many people now subject themselves to high levels of sound at their own hands. This is in addition to the noise of the city and the noisy environments we find ourselves in. By this I mean walkmans, and now i-pods or MP3 players. I particularly notice it on public transportation, on the C-Train in Calgary and on the Tube here in London. Many, many people are plugged in at all times with earbuds that I am sure subject your ears to more sound, closer to the cochlea than ever before. So seeing all these hearing aids, made me think of what a strange society we live in that on the one hand invents all kinds of apparatus to do us damage, and then jumps in with all kinds of apparatus to try to fix what has been damaged by the first apparatus. I thought of this earlier this week when I was in the Science Museum looking at the old technologies for producing power, such as waterwheels and windmills. Isn't it odd that we have gone full circle and now in an effort to save or deal with our diminishing resources, we are turning once again to these old technologies.
Meanwhile, back in the "Future of Hearing", I come to the year 2012: Pass The Sound Control. In this area they tell me that silence will be a valuable commodity in the future. After a week in London, I would say it already is! They suggest that we will need to create personal sound space using devices that are both beautiful and functional and that are cleverly disguised as elegant headsets, glasses and jewellery. This technology will enable one to protect one's ears as well as amplify a mobile phone, laptop or MP3 player. They will also provide you with superdirectional hearing, just like a coyote! In addition to this you can choose your field of hearing to enable you to hear the people closest to you in a bar situation, or further away, if needed.
By the year 2016 we will have systems networked into our bodies. This will be an extension of body language, as it is based on other means of communications such as your body responses to your environment. You could wear a wristband and an earpiece that will monitor your bodily responses to the person you are talking to by changing colour. So by looking at the bracelet you and the person you are talking to can tell if one of you is bored, inattentive or really excited. No more having to act like you are interested, because they will know if you are not! Or how about this. A small device that sticks to your skin and is naturally conductive and wireless. By carrying a receiver you can receive information which will automatically be transmitted to your ear pieces. Another handy dandy item is a necklace and headset that monitors sound and transmits it to the cochlea via the C7 vertebrae.
Because personal hearing health will be more of a priority, personal sound management will becaome a part of your annual health check-up. One device could warn you if you are in a dangerously loud environment to prevent damage. The room these devices were in was entitled "Bodies Talk". From the speakers there eminated undecipherable voices, whispers, beeps, languages misunderstood. Everything sounded like it was only partially there or backwards, what I imagine it might be like if you were losing your hearing.
By 2020 we will be able to tune in to previously unaccessible sounds, as animals do, and turn off unpleasant sounds. The Sound Filter ear plugs sounded interesting to me. These would respond to the surrounding auditory environment and turn it into something more pleasant. How about traffic turned into soothing harmony, or a song made out of the sound of rainfall, or music that sounds unique and different everytime you listen to it. Or the Mute which is a soundstick with in-ear filters that allow you to have selective hearing. By pointing to an annoying sound, such as a drill, an irritating colleague or a barking dog, you could mute it. Sounds like a magic wand to me! There was one thing that made me think of Douglas Adams book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and that was the Goldfish ear plug, which had a 10 second memory, just like a goldfish. By waving your hand next to your ear, you could replay something you heard within the last 10 seconds. I sure could use one of those as I have met so many people whose names I can't remember and have been given so many directions that I promptly forget. In the year 2020 there will also be little badges you can wear if you are communicating with a person with impaired hearing that would transmit your voice directly to their hearing aid and yet override surrounding noises. Sounds good to me! and I'm sure it would sound even better to the hearing impaired.
I found this display in the V & A to be both informative and thought provoking, plus I was very surprised to find anything futuristic in such a vast old museum whose primary focus is on the past.
Coming out the other end of "The Future of Hearing" I found myself back in the 20th C. Not the 21st C but in the 20th C, in a room full of furniture and Swatches and showcases full of familiar objects from my youth. A couple of interesting things I encountered was a book made by Richard Long called "Mud Handprints" from 1984 that was comprised of his handprint on every page made from mud from the River Avon which was actually very lovely. And the other thing I found was a book by John Cage called "Wild Edible Papers", 1990 which he made after seeing poor South American families boil ink out of newsprint and eat the pulp. He referred to his book as "the physical manifestation of a conceptual pursuit" and a "happening" as well as art.
All very exciting and stimulating.