Blog post #5

The difference between “hearing” and “listening” is that “hearing” is more to do with the physiological act of hearing sounds and that sounds you hear are random. For example, you hear someone talking on the street, but you may not focus on the content of the talk. “Listening” means paying attention to the sound, and you make an understanding of the sound. Moreover, we will make choices about what we listen to. People usually choose to listen to things which they are interested in or are important to them. Sometimes, structural features will inform how we listen. For example, when we hear someone of the same race speaking on the street, we prefer to listen to the sounds we are familiar with over others. There are some other structural elements that can affect our listening experiences like mood, weather, and position.

Schafer and Krukowski believe that there is a close connection between sound and space. In other words, sounds can describe what’s happening in space at that moment. Krukowski says “Listening has a lot to do with how we navigate space” which means when we listen to some sounds, and these sounds are on the space will tell us what’s going on. Krukowski also mentions that people wear headphones to keep some noisy sounds outside their ear, and it is the way to run from ears contact. However, even when people use headphones to isolate themselves from external sounds they are still in their own space. Schafer shows that the sounds may come from the environment around us, but the sources of sounds are varied.