How detrimental are iPods to the hearing you still have?

”PEOPLE don’t look into the sun to see if it damages their eyes,” says Dr. Robert Sweetow, director of audiology at UCSF. “It continually amazes me that people don’t realize if you blast your ears, you’re going to hurt your ears.”

The innovative, stylish and incredibly popular Apple product, the iPod, which has taken the world by storm with its strikingly subtle features allowing large amounts of data to be stored and listened to at any given time. The iPod was in the news this month, due to the unlikeliest source, as the device can now upload videos and still pictures, it has been claimed to have won the Carling Cup at Wembley thanks to Ben Foster’s heroics in the penalty shootout. Foster was watching footage of Tottenham Hotspur’s penalty-takers, which had been prepared by Eric Steele, Manchester United’s goalkeeping coach. Alex Ferguson saw the video and rearranged his squad accordingly, leading them to victory.

More wonderful free publicity for Apple I thought, then I reminisced. Four years ago in the few remaining weeks of the G.C.S.E History class, a spiky-haired classmate of mine smugly brought in an iPod, playing it loudly and I said ‘In a few years time, you’ll be like me’ which he laughed off promptly claiming his hearing was fine. Of course it was fine, he had only just got it and the impact it makes is more long term... then it hit me as to the reason why my tinnitus has worsened over the past year or so. It was barely comfortable as it was since I contracted meningitis at the age of three, but the tinnitus was largely ignored, progressively worsening by the year.

In order to block it out, I listen to whale noises before I sleep to combat the high pitch frequencies I hear, which ironically must have been caused by listening to my iPod at high volume, which of course I shouldn’t do, but then how else would I be able to hear it?

Perhaps I should explain; I have a total of five per cent hearing in the left ear and seven per cent in the right, diminishing by the day leading to the audiologist to state in 20 years time I’d hear nothing. Now with the mp3 abuse I predict he is approximately six years off, taking into account the results of the levels test in 2008. Never mind this, what concerns me is the impact iPods will have on the Hearing in 10 to 20 years time, and also the Deaf.

We’ve heard all about the impact it can have on the Hearing teenagers, and how leading audiologists claim a rapid decline in hearing has increased as people approach middle age as opposed to previous years. One such analytical audiologist at Northwestern University in the U.S found ‘ Ear buds are placed directly in the ear and can boost the sound signal by as much as six to nine decibels. It’s enough to cause hearing loss after only about an hour and 15 minutes,’ which, as shocking as it may sound, is not surprising when you consider the widespread use of ear-buds.

Clearly it shows the worrying impact of the magnitude of decibels enforced upon the ears, citing its 110db volume similar to that of nightclubs and the sweat laden DJs. Also it is more detrimental then factory noise: this is concerning as many factory workers at my father’s steel constructing firm have retired due to terrible, sudden hearing loss. So if these men cannot cope, how on earth can the Deaf, who already have extremely low levels of hearing? Meningitis caused my ear-drum to inexplicably collapse, but could placing an ear-bud so far into the ear cause similar damage?

What is needed is a scientific test to collaborate all these little pebbles of knowledge to form a warning to the teenagers, London Tube users and runners on the streets that their favourite device is in fact soon to be their Achilles Heel. Large organizations such as Phonak need to play Devil’s Advocate.

There are many issues to be resolved in the world at the current time however such as the economic crisis and job losses, but with the continuation of ignorance, many people in 10 years time, will be like me: unable to sleep until 5am due to the rattling, strange high-pitch noises causing sleep deprivation. Or when talking in the street, desperate to hear the friend telling you about the night before and as you try to lip read, you find yourself falling into a trap of isolation.

It’s not pity nor sympathy that is required, but awareness.

By Benjamin Stonehouse

One for all and all for one at your local cinema - the joy of subtitles

‘YOU have a new email’ box comes up at the bottom corner of my screen. Ah of course, it’s Thursday today! It’s that weekly notification from subtitles@yourlocalcinema.com website. I emit out a feeble “yay”. I have to confess, it’s one of the things I most look forward to on a Thursday. Why? This notification serves a provider of informing us, deaf/hard of hearing people the upcoming subtitled films in our local town via an e-newsletter. So long gone are the days of having to suffer by waiting for the DVD to come out and hitting HMV first thing in the morning.

Though this website is funded by the UK film industry, never did I know this subtitled film information service was set up by a seventeen years old deaf lad, Dean Rhodes-Brandon until he recently won the Make Your Mark Enterprising Young Brits People’s Choice Award (2009).

This information service was actually set up in 2000 when he was eight years old (with some help from his parents). It is extremely generous of him to sacrifice his own time and effort to help around 5 million people including myself in the UK to ensure we have equal access to cinema. Not only does this website provide the date, time and location of around 500 subtitled films, in over 300 cinemas, it also provides thousands of audio described shows for the visually impaired audience. This website also includes subtitled and audio described trailers and clips.

We wouldn’t have the chance to go out with our family or friends as hearing people would do. Not to mention the opportunity of munching a large tub of popcorn and throwing one or two at the people ahead of us (not that I do it). Whether it’s at Odeon, Cineworld or Star City Vue cinemas, the information is mostly and I repeat: MOSTLY, accurate. There have been a few times when I turned up to a cinema, all geared up, to find out from the staff behind the counter there were no subtitled films going on that day. Charming.

My friends have often complained that in their local town, the subtitled films are shown on less popular days like Thursday and Sunday, when they would prefer to go on a Friday or Saturday.

I am sure that some of you have encountered technical problems with the captions whilst watching a film. It’s either blurred, too tiny, half missing and there’s been an occasion when the captioning was lop-sided so I had to watch the film with my head lop-sided too. I will never forget that feeling of disappointment when I attended the screening of Harry Potter. The captions failed to work, and I went to complain to the staff. Five minutes later, I was leaving the cinema with my refund and a free cinema ticket for my next visit. That was a large tub of popcorn wasted.

But besides all these issues, it has been successful most of time. Surely this role must be a huge pressure in Dean’s life, but when he viewed his first subtitled film Chicken Run, it “changed his life” he said. Dean is currently working with organizations that focus on disability, companies that specialise in technology as well as working with cinemas all over the U.K, Wales, Ireland and even the Isle of Wight for future improvements (let’s hope the problems I described are considered).

“Before our website/information service came along, there was no English-language subtitled cinema... the only way deaf people could enjoy cinema was to watch a foreign language film. Ridiculous,” says Dean.

That reminds me of an unfortunate incident when I once enquired about a foreign film ‘Mongol’ and wanted to ensure it had subtitles. The staff told me there were none and I argued that I was told there was a subtitled version on that day. Then of course I realised that it was already subtitled. You can imagine my embarrassment.

Dean has mentioned that in his role as head of yourlocalcinema.com, “receiving feedback from other people with hearing problems or sight problems is the best thing of all.”

Right, when’s the next subtitled film?

Louise Buglass

Language of art

As part of Tate Modern’s regular free BSL talks programme – which takes place at 7pm on the 1st Friday of every month, usually with a deaf gallery presenter - I led a tour of their Defining Constructivism exhibition with around 70 attendees. Conveying the social, cultural, historical and political framework that so inspired the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s in deaf-friendly terms proved a challenge.
This was not just due to the foreign names (which I chose to show on paper rather than finger-spell), but also the complexity of describing the mood of that time. How do you explain an artist working with emotional detachment to someone who understands only the highly expressive culture that saturates his life today?
The emphasis that Deaf Culture places on self-expression is what gives us our directness. The daily communication barriers within the mainstream that we face make conveying our feelings difficult, which subsequently make us all the more determined to get to the point when we can - and as quickly as possible.
I used to think that the language of visual art was universal and therefore amenable to this directness. Having attended the excellent three-part deaf gallery presenters’ course provided by Deafworks and the Wallace Collection that ended last month, I am no longer so sure.
While visual art does befit its title generally, sometimes what it visualises is not always clear to us, due to outside contributing factors that may either no longer exist or just don’t form part of our cultural sensibility. Far from failing to communicate its message, this makes the art all the richer in its comment on society – and all the more important a reflection of its time.
Back to the course. In the Wallace Collection’s Meeting Room, 12 deaf and hard-of-hearing gallery presenters, including myself, engaged in a discussion about being ‘conductors’ of the galleries we worked with, our audiences, and ourselves. It got us thinking about working with two or more languages and how we could bridge the cultural differences between our audiences and the art.
For us as deaf people, that discussion – one of several that peppered the course as a means of facilitating our professional development – was a turning point. Of course, before joining we already knew the value of research and preparation for gallery tours, but it also brought home the fact that our visual communication values didn’t necessarily bring us closer to understanding visual art.
However, it became clear that our own dedication to building on our knowledge – and the fact that we had few precedents in that respect - did make us specialists in the field. First-hand experience of being part of the Deaf Community gave us incentive to explore its intricacies from a deaf cultural perspective, enabling us to identify parallels to draw on and consider how best to explain artistic concepts that had none.
No BSL interpreter, however qualified and experienced s/he is, could undergo such deep-rooted thinking. Not that I am against BSL-interpreted gallery tours; they are invaluable in enabling deaf access to mainstream perspectives of visual art, especially when the commitment to clarity, skill, pace and accuracy is in evidence. But ultimately, BSL interpreters remain neutral channels through which BSL becomes spoken English and vice versa.
Aside from bringing deaf audiences closer to visual art in a way that BSL-interpreted tours don’t – on proviso, of course, that it is done well - another advantage of deaf-led tours is the opportunity it gives the deaf gallery presenter to stretch his or her intellect. What better way to develop an affinity with an art movement like Russian Constructivism than to swot up on it?

© Melissa Mostyn 2009

Conceptual vs. commercial

First, I am going to do a plug. Bear with me. On Saturday 25th April at 7pm, Salon is holding an exhibition of signed limited-edition prints at Nincomsoup in central London (www.salonart.org.uk).
The printed images – shot by Miles Thomas - depict works made by deaf and hard-of-hearing visual artists during Salon’s activities in 2006-8. Profits from the sales will be split between Salon for the benefit of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and the artists who created the original pieces, except in cases where the artist has specifically asked for all profits to be reinvested in Salon.
This is not aiming to be a conceptual art exhibition, although we would naturally respect buyers’ wishes to learn of the theories behind the works featured. Instead, it is a selection of some of our best images collected over the years, printed on light-fast specialist art paper for the sheer pleasure of our buyers.
Why have we reached this point in time? Deaf visual art has explored themes of communication for over two decades, with the intention to promote and celebrate Deaf Culture. However, although some truly witty works of art have come out of that culture, it can still be a hit-and-miss affair.
The challenges lie not in visiting art collections, collecting images of inspirational paintings, or even meeting mainstream artists. That conforms to the basic principle of accessing visual art as a spectator.
Rather, it is developing the BSL equivalent of contemporary visual art theory - which can be rather arcane and deeply rooted in spoken language culture at - that is difficult. You need to know the rules before you can break them. Experience indicates that the deaf visual artists most likely to do that tend to be bilingual.
Moreover, the prevailing view - that art is what you make it - makes it even harder to pick creative gold from the flotsam, ensuring that artists such as Stella Vine continue to attract controversy.
Salon was formed in 2005 to address exactly this issue. We may have been too radical for some. While many of the deaf and hard-of-hearing visual artists who came to us recognised their exclusion from the mainstream contemporary art scene, it was hard to create an environment in which the full impact of a conceptual 2D or 3D piece, questioning the status quo from a deaf perspective, could be realised.
That’s not to say that our activities didn’t incur creativity in our artists - they did. The result was some scrumptious pieces of deaf innovation. Among those that took your breath away with their visual purity were Martin Glover’s Old Man’s Ear, Matt Jenkins’ Untitled (The City vs. Nature), and Colin Redwood’s Natural Satellite. Printed images of all three will now be exhibited next month in editions of 250 along with several others.
But let’s not harbour any illusions here. Being part of a minority group, the number of BSL-using deaf visual artists able to transcend the commercial/community art mould is far outweighed by that of their mainstream peers.
Commercial art is no bad thing though. An artists’ agent told me recently how hard it was to sell high-concept works of the sort endorsed by Tate Modern. Would a Yves Klein blue canvas be happy in an one-bedroom flat? Only if it was of the huge penthouse variety! Then again, it’s been said that the only difference between Stella Vine and other similar artists is marketing.
So instead, of aiming for the moon, let’s work on developing an eye for aesthetics and/or visual witticisms that buyers can treasure. And if you do get shortlisted for the Turner Prize? Kudos to you.

© Melissa Mostyn 2009

Film and the mainstream issue

Watching a private screening of Stiletto before Christmas, it was noticeable how its square target at mainstream audiences disregarded its deaf input.
Stiletto (www.stilettofilm.co.uk) is a murder mystery thriller, centring round a hapless artist (Tom Harper) who tries to avert a supposed crisis initiated by a well-groomed sultry blonde (Beth Winslet). A classic homage that directly references its grant-maker - Apex Arts and Film London/Waltham Forest’s Hitchcock Production Fund – it’s a nicely crafted short that makes great use of the colour red as a recurring motif alerting us to impending danger.
Stiletto’s production team constituted a deaf director working with an entirely hearing cast and crew. This achievement may not necessarily seem that unusual in a population context. Skillset’s estimate that deaf and disabled people constituted 2.3% of the wider media workforce in 2003 should be treated with caution: for one film-maker openly declaring his deafness, several may underplay theirs. Choosing instead to work quietly ‘from within’, some may even dissociate themselves from any whiff of deaf culture whatsoever.
Not so William Mager, Stiletto’s director. Shorts like Hope and Betrayal (both 2002), and collaborations with Jonathan Reid (2003’s Text, Batteries and Earwax and its 2007 sequel, The Association) and Remark! (Reservoir Wolves, 2001), indicate a long-lasting bond with the Deaf Community that he clearly values.
Mager has, of course, worked on The Culture Show, Crimewatch and Waking The Dead as well as BBC TV’s See Hear. This edge over many of his deaf competitors is what gives Stiletto its polish, making it arguably the most high-profile of his three ‘hearing’ shorts so far - which made its inclusion in the 2008 Deaffest programme all the more odd, given how it stood apart from all those cosy Deaf films.
Talking to the director recently, he took pains to stress the need to prove his mainstream capabilities, worrying that placing a deaf character in Stiletto might imply “a “comfort zone” of working with deaf actors, which would perhaps limit my opportunities.”
Breakthroughs for deaf filmmakers are certainly rare. Interviewed by The Times in South Africa recently, Louis Neethling highlighted the difficulties of ‘transcending being labelled’: “Making films about deafness isn’t very glamorous and therefore a very small budget is given when you work in these fields. So you learn to get the most out of very little.”
Neethling is nonetheless determined to see more openly deaf people in mainstream film roles, setting up Mutt & Jeff Pictures for that purpose: “Why do we have to stick to issue-related or medical storylines? Why can't we have deaf actors in everyday-life stories?”
Mager doesn’t share Neethling’s passion in quite the same way; he would much rather be developing two discrete strands: “Deafness is always going to be part of me and the films I make.
“But I also have strong mainstream ambitions in the long term, and some of the stories I want to tell are rooted in other aspects of my life, such as Sheffield, where I grew up, and East London, where I live now.”
This is rather like attending a partially hearing unit within a mainstream school, spending half the time with deaf schoolchildren, half with hearing. A ‘dual identity’ then emerges where you conform by presenting two contrasting faces to each world.
Being only half-true to yourself most of the time, however, risks losing you both audiences eventually. Why shouldn’t Mager look into incorporating this duality into one, singular, theme? Revelations of an interest in European arthouse recently may appear to contradict his avowed fervour for going ‘mainstream’, yet could provide new inspiration for quirkier film-making tactics.
Let’s not forget all those mainstream films that have been derided for being too afraid to be unconventional in their portrayals of disability: Rainman, Forrest Gump, guilty all. By placing his multiculturalism in a mainstream context, William Mager could be setting himself the challenge of his entire career: entertaining both audiences to the full.

Since the column went to print, Stiletto was selected to appear in Tokyo Short Shorts, an international film festival in Japan next June. Tokyo Short Shorts is an official qualifier of short films for the Oscars and BAFTAs, and every film that competes for the festival’s awards is eligible for submission. The Hearing Times would like to congratulate William Mager, his cast and crew for this huge achievement.

(c) Melissa Mostyn 2009

New column – new playwriting ingenuity

The beauty of practising contemporary visual art is the limitless scope for imagination that it affords. It is this that gives the critic incentive to extend current interests to artistic disciplines that would formerly never get a second glance.

Although multi-disciplinary art has existed for decades now, Deaf Arts seem not to have quite reached that stage yet. Of course, exceptions such as Aaron Williamson and Sign Dance Collective spring to mind, although these tend towards the ‘deaf and disabled’ sensibility rather than a specific deaf cultural focus.

Within the creative Deaf/BSL Community, the divide between the performing arts and visual art remains. One rarely sees deaf performers at art gallery private views, while deaf visual artists becoming extras on BBC TV’s Switch don’t count as multi-disciplinary: they just need the money.

Hence the column. Each month, an aspect of Deaf Arts will be covered in the form of a review, opinion piece or profile. Not that one hopes to generate a school of multidisciplinary creative thinking: perish the thought. Rather, the aim is to explore and celebrate Deaf Arts in its entirety.

Thus it begins with Deafinitely Theatre. Their last production, Lipstick and Lollipops - Charlie Swinbourne’s playwriting debut – didn’t impress, due to a storyline rather too reminiscent of Eastenders to feel truly original, and a habit for characters to appear at cross-purposes, confounding all sense of time and space.

Given the company’s past output, however – dramas have explored cochlear implant politics, Nazi deaf genocide, and dysfunctional family life - it could be safely assumed that future plays would not repeat such mistakes.

Indeed, both Deafinitely Creative - a showcase of eight pieces by deaf writers – and Double Sentence, Deafinitely Theatre’s new work-in-progress, both of which were staged at Oval House Theatre over two nights, showed evidence of both a return to form and potential for further ingenuity.

To detail every one of the eight shorts-in-progress - developed over four intensive monthly sessions in London following a week-long residential writing course in Shropshire – would be impossible.

Nevertheless Mary-Jayne Russell de Clifford’s Buttercup (a charming story about an orphaned nun trying to avoid the laundry man’s attentions), Aliya Gulamani’s Energy (love and life in an unusual industrial climate) and Norma McGilp’s Hold The Line (a cracking dialogue between a deaf woman and her interpreter wrestling for control) should all be noted.

More anticipation was reserved for Double Sentence. Taking place on a black stage - unadorned save for a white-tape floor grid – the story concerns Tom Fry (Matthew Gurney), a Deaf BSL user adapting to prison life. After attempts to co-operate with staff and inmates fail to overcome the proverbial linguistic barrier, he is visited by Anna (Emma Case), a clinical psychologist with sign language skills, who could provide just the lifeline he needs.

Sadly, the respite is short-lived: another psychologist, Mary (the estimable Caroline Parker), brought in for a second opinion, lacks Anna’s communication skills and misinterprets Tom’s frustrated requests as an act of insanity. As a result, solitary confinement is recommended.

So far, so expected. This was classic issues-driven theatre that drew from four months’ research involving Deaf prisoners and ex-offenders for the first time and Deafinitely Theatre’s own political inclinations.

Its lucidity, however, was a surprise. A 20-minute preview following just two weeks of script development this might have been, but Double Sentence indicated an impeccably tight, absorbing story that brought home the appallingly bleak prognosis that many Deaf BSL prisoners face, commanding strong performances all-round.

Co-writers Andrew Muir – an actor and playwright responsible for the award-winning Green Grass, Push (selected as Time Out Critic’s Choice) and The Owl’s Nest – and Paula Garfield, Deafinitely’s Artistic Director, hope to go on national tour with Double Sentence in late 2009 (depending on funding) once scripting is complete.

One looks forward to what could lie in store – although not necessarily for poor Tom.

Visit www.deafinitelytheatre.co.uk for news of future developments.

(c) Melissa Mostyn 2009

Just a thought...

Recently I have been thinking about illusions, and how important they are to disabled people. For example, I am assured that those who are skilled in lip-reading and signing can actually 'hear' the sound of speech in their minds, by means of 'educated illusion'.

My lip-reading is very poor, so I have to turn on the subtitles when I watch TV. I also turn off the sound, because I find the ever-present 'background' jingles very distracting. How I hate them. Clearly the perpetrators assume that these silly scraps of music can be shuffled backwards and forwards in the ear of the listener, like mental playing cards in a pack.

Certainly an old-fashioned gramophone record is solid enough, and its single groove is spirally shaped. Yet the plain truth is that the music itself only has two dimensions. And you only have to watch the unilateral wobble of the gramophone needle, to understand this.

In the same way, it can be shown that not only live sound, but also the action of the human ear-drum, are two-dimensional. In other words, both actions are composed of nothing more than a frequency of response and a varying degree of energy.

Yet we talk about stereophonic speakers and omni-directional microphones, as if sound was something round and solid, like an invisible dome. Why is this?

I would suggest four possible answers.

First, thanks to the gift of perceptual projection, we have the illusion that the sensations that our ears are experiencing are actually originating somewhere in the distance. We talk about 'the sound of distant gun-fire,' or of 'hearing voices in the garden next door'.

But of course this magical effect does not apply to sound alone. It applies to our other four senses as well. For example, it applies whenever a blind man is feeling his way with a stick. In his mind, it is the tip of the stick which senses the various objects. Whereas in fact it is the sensors in his arm and finger muscles that are responsible.

The second answer is that, with the exception of a few clever animals and machines, most originators of sound transmit the noise all around them. And it is often possible, even for people who have hearing disabilities, to identify each of these sources by turning the head, and cupping the hands around the ears, etc. It's simply a matter of directing the ear to catch the sound waves at the best angle. In other words, as near to ninety degrees as possible.

The third answer, as all lip-readers and ventriloquists know, is psychological. For example, when you see the lips and eyes of a doll moving, the assumption that she is talking to you, is irresistible.

Finally, in real life, different sounds are very often originating in several places at once. Hence the TV/Radio broadcaster's compulsion to load a number of recorded sounds onto a single track, by post-productive editing. Thus, although the end result comes from a single loud-speaker, the idea is to make us feel that we are physically surrounded by a full orchestra of noise-makers.

And it's this crafty little trick that all those who suffer from intrusive TV & Radio jingle should bear in mind, when complaining!


By Richard Tomalin, 'Pipedown' TV/ Radio music sub-campaign.