Dr. Barry Blesser
// Author, Lecturer & ScholarDR. BARRY BLESSER is an author, lecturer, and scholar from Belmont, Massachusetts. His book “Digitization Of Audio: A Comprehensive Examination Of Theory, Implementation, And Current Practice” (1978), and “Global Paradigm Shifts In The Audio Industry [Parts 1 & 2]” (2000) are available from the Audio Engineering Society, and “Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture” (2006) is available from The MIT Press. Dr. Barry Blesser is a former Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a founder of digital audio, and has over forty years of experience working in acoustics, audio perception, and cognitive psychology.
Website: www.blesser.net
Photo: Dr. Barry Blesser / Blesser Associates
Interview:
All sensory experience, be they hearing or seeing, have the potential to change the emotional and spiritual state of the perceiver. Music is just one of many. A sensory experience such as music does have an intrinsic spiritual significance, but rather, the composer and listener may experience spirituality when creating or listening to music. A performer may try to communicate emotions or spirituality using music as the vehicle, but the listener may or may not decode what the musician intended. Conversely, even if there was no attempt to embed a spiritual message, the listener may experience an “altered state of consciousness”. All stimuli have the potential to change the listener’s consciousness, and an altered state is not a negative perception even though the phrase is usually used with drugs. Music is simply one vehicle to communicate spiritually.
“All sensory experience, be they hearing or seeing, have the potential to change the emotional and spiritual state of the perceiver… Music is simply one vehicle to communicate spiritually.”
– Dr. Barry Blesser, author of “Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?: Experiencing Aural Architecture”
