When it comes to listening more clearly, says R. Murray Schafer, society is in need of a big old Q-tip. “Our senses are clogged with too much,” Schafer says. He should know. The septuagenarian is a pre-eminent composer—when asked to name a great music teacher, John Cage answered, “Murray Schafer of Canada”—and writer who defined the field of “acoustic ecology” in his seminal 1977 text, The Tuning of the World (Knopf).
Lead photo credit: Wei Li, who makes "dangerous popsicles" modeled on magnified versions of viruses and bacteria. (L to R: chicken pox, MRSA, HIV, E. coli, influenza).
