MERSBE – noise and sound market for well-being: hearing modulations and contemporary aural cultur

Abstract

This article explores a unique sound market: the MERSBE - an acronym in Portuguese for “Noise and Sound Market for Well-Being”. This market is characterized by presenting noisy proposals for different purposes, such as improving memory and sleep quality, increasing the ability to concentrate, physical and psychological cures, among others, always committed to well-being. The emergence of MERSBE also reveals how contemporary culture establishes new ways of relating to noise, inverting what seemed to be the logic of its uses until recently. From a provocative and challenging position - as in the case of Russolo's Futurist Manifesto, in concrete music’s movement, or even in musicians like E. Varese and J. Cage, up to the punk and Japanese noise - the noises now seem to serve the global markets, being welcomed and cultivated as positive and docile experiences. How can this affect contemporary aural culture? That’s the central question of this article, which was elaborated from an immersion in social networking sites, such as Youtube, for the observation of the analyzed sonic products. The main theoretical reference is the Sound Studies and authors who work with research around materialities of communication, mainly. As final results, the article points out some factors that can already be interviewed as relevant participants, in the modulation of noise listening in contemporary aural culture.