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by Pauline Oliveros

What is the difference between hearing and listening? Does sound have consciousness? Can you imagine listening beyond the edge of your own imagination?

In response to the anti-war movements of the 1960s, pioneering musician and composer Pauline Oliveros began to expand the way she made music, experimenting with meditation, movement and activism in her compositions. Fascinated by the role that sound and consciousness play in our daily lives, Oliveros developed a series of Sonic Meditations that would eventually lead to the creation of Deep Listening – a practice for healing and transformation open to all, rooted in her musicianship.

Quantum Listening is a manifesto for listening as activism. Through simple yet profound exercises, Oliveros shows how Deep Listening is the foundation for a radically transformed social matrix: one in which compassion and peace form the basis for our actions in the world.

This timely edition brings Oliveros’ futuristic vision – blending technology and spirituality – together with a new Foreword and Introduction by Laurie Anderson and IONE.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Art, Essays, Meditation, Female Authors

86 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

[Yari · Rating 4 out of 5]

A friend gave me this book a week after I had a retreat in the forest. After sleeping the first night, I told everyone in amazement that the insects, frogs and birds singing at the same time sounded like songs... everyone laughed at me in denial. And I laughed with them a little bit ashamed.

"When one is listening to the whole field of sound without focusing on any one sound but expanding to include all sounds that can be heard- sounds seem to become interrelated rather than chaotic or meaningless. The field seems to have a unified logic and form as if it were a composed piece of music"

Short but very insightful.
I can't hug this book enough.

[Filipa André · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love what it is about but was a bit painful to actually read…

[Pablo Tablas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The more I know about Oliveiros, the more I doubt the integrity of her practice. I'm always torn between seeing her as a visionary - who's developed a new technique to truly widen our perception -, or a strategist - who's founded an empire based on orientalist philosophies for naïve rich kids.

[Salma · Rating 2 out of 5]

The introduction has a curious cultish, advertising rhetoric, especially near the end: abstract terms with definitions vastly ambiguous; emphasizing community while the occasion of collectivism is unclear; overestimating the radical, social reach, the blanket effect of "Deep Listening." The abstraction continues in Oliveros' essay: sometimes it's abstraction with enough specificity to get you to engage with the scope of her ideas; other times, the abstraction is lofty, without much material to sink your teeth into. The composite arguments are half-formed or at least half-articulated, sort of like the target audience already knows her practice and could fill in the blanks, so the whole thing felt like a cursory adjunct, which it might be.

Oliveros defines quantum listening as "listening to more than one reality simultaneously.... listening in as many ways as possible simultaneously – changing and being changed by listening." This last bit is interesting to me: the idea, weakly and distractedly expanded upon here, of our conscious listening transforming the material we are listening to. This, Oliveros tells us, is analogous to collapsing the wave function in quantum mechanics, which refers to how a quantum system transforms from a superposition of multiple states into one single, definite state upon observation, before which the quantum system undecidedly coexists in different states as a smeared object, a wave.

The common idea here – in both quantum listening and collapsing the wave function – is that the condition of what we perceive through listening or observing is an artifact of our conscious engagement with it. This makes it sound like the modes of our perceptible world (sound, visual objects, etc.) are circuitous with our consciousness, waiting for feedback to be rearranged, redefined, and transformed. I think this idea is narcissistic, optimistic, and ridiculously imaginative. The quantum listening definition starts in the last 6 pages of the essay, so if you must, read these. Anyway, there are some good ideas here, I just wish it were more specific. Maybe I will check out her other work and give this another go.

[Johnny · Rating 4 out of 5]

David lynch would eat this up

[Florian · Rating 4 out of 5]

geeft me zin om omgevingsgeluiden actiever te beleven en te voelen!

[Maeve de Bordons Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep listening for everyone!

[Martyna Ratnik · Rating 1 out of 5]

lol, anyone?

[Jacobcerisgandy]

4/20

Been occasionally reading this on the way to work but had a bad month and stopped doing virtually anything altogether. Lot of interesting thoughts raised in this. I’d quite like to try the group listening exercise provided at the end.

[Ruth · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is a particular type of boomer that has absolutely no real clue what ‘energy’ is. Or what ‘quantum’ means.
“Intended for healing, a new, living entity is sonically formed each time the meditation is performed”. Ok sure it is. I like magic mushrooms as much as the next person but this level of silliness is maddening. We have a brief respite in the land of sense on p29 before soon plunging back into a matrix of vibrating energy. Back in the days before you needed a full time job to pay the gas bill apparently you could do a three year course in it.
There is a great book to be written about concentrated listening, but this isn’t it.

[Kye Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve wanted to read this for ages and a very lovely person must have been using their quantum listening as I was gifted this as a present. Pauline’s writings, thoughts, theories and ideas have put so many of my own thoughts on listening and sound perception into words and it was a delight to read.

Academic/essay type text are often impenetrable to me and get lost in big words that aren’t saying much but this touches on so much more than just listening and does so in an engaging and cute way. You do not need to be musically minded to get something from this book!

[Arcadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, Deep Listening is a lifelong practice. The more I listen, the more I learn to listen. Deep Listening involves going below the surface of what is heard, expanding to the whole field of sound while finding focus. This is the way to connect with the acoustic environment, all that inhabits it and all that there is.

[Luuk van de Klundert]

Geluisterd tijdens het lezen:
Niks

[warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

got this from my sib for christmas <3 🥰

def some sections of this book aren't for me, and tbh they dont need the foreword and introduction so much. but im taking some important things from this. the way listening has been subjugated to sight (and reading & writing) in our society, partially as a product of industrialization, was very interesting. the discussion of listening as a fundamentally mutualistic thing that is always changing the listener and the listened-to was also cool.

i want to work on protecting my ears more, 'reminding myself when i'm not listening,' developing a wider listening practice that can deeply listen to the "focal and the global" ... maybe my new years resolution?

[Rebecca De · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to stop reading because they were like why does no one care about sounds? why is there no sound recorded of the stars in space ? And it’s because space is a vacuum and sound only travels through particles so there is no sound in space :( ((like duh just google it, did you do any research?))
So too wishy washy for me (and I love that wishy washy shit, Im like wish and wash all over the place) but also will probs try read again some other time

[Morgan Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Are we creating the sound that we hear by listening or is sound creating our listening?"

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Quantum Listening leads you to notice that you are listening. Quantum Listening leads you to attention to a point — all or nothing focus which changes that point forever. Quantum Listening leads you to an all-embracing perspective of an ever-expanding field. […] Quantum Listening is listening to our listening.” Pauline Oliveros’s Quantum Listening is a fascinating treatise on Oliveros’s practice of Deep/Quantum Listening, “a heightened state of awareness [that] connects to all that there is”. With a foreword by Laurie Anderson and an introduction by Ione situating Oliveros and her work within their contexts, the short essay then moves through Oliveros’s practice from its early conception to its present use. “From childhood I have practiced listening. As a musician, I am interested in the sensual nature of sound, its power of synchronization, coordination, release and change. Hearing represents the primary sense organ — hearing happens involuntarily. Listening is a voluntary process that through training and experience produces culture. All cultures develop through ways of listening. Deep Listening is listening in every possible way, to everything it's possible to hear, no matter what you are doing. Such intense lietening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts, as well as musical sounds.” I enjoyed her observations that “the ear tells the eye where to look”, and ���Each listener, through the act of listening, affects the field and thus the form. The form affects the listener in a dance of reflections in the space between.” Oliveros argues that “We hear in order to listen. We listen in order to interpret our world and experience meaning. Our world is a complex matrix of vibrating energy, matter and air, just as we are made of vibrations. Vibration connects us with all beings and connects us to all things interdependently.” Her world view of interconnectedness through sound is an engaging one.

[Eve Henley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm. Wow? Perhaps I will start listening to everything all the time, if I have the time.

“Hearing is the passive basis of listening. Hearing is involuntary”

“We need sound designers and composers as consultants to city planning and noise abatement regulation”

“And, because we do not all share the same culture, we definitely are not all listening in the same way to the same things”

[Tim June · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wat interessante inzichten, maar vooral een handleiding voor verschillende oefeningen. Handig als je een Deep Listening retreat zou willen hosten, minder interessant voor mij als lezer die meer geïnteresseerd was naar de filosofie achter het concept van Oliveros.

Lijkt me leuk om in de toekomst naar een Deep Listening sessie te gaan. Ben alleen een beetje bang dat er veel new-age hippies zullen zijn. Love witte mensen met dreads!

[Yvonne Boon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not concrete enough.
2.5 stars

[Isobel · Rating 5 out of 5]

very inspiring

[Jeroen Schwartz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Verder met de opdracht (wens) ‘een geoefende luisteraar’ te worden. En een getrainde lezer. In ieder geval geldt het essay (of manifest) voor mij een aanmoediging om bij alles (wat je doet of ‘hoort’) te voelen, al raakt het schrijven me minder dan gehoopt doordat het abstract blijft.

[Diego Amaya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wonder how many books (at least the two I read) has Pauline Oliveros written basically saying “guys I think we should listen more to the birds”.

I wish she talked more about the practice itself (only two pages that resemble a cooking recipe) instead of talking about spiritual nanobots that will help us tune into the bigger self (wtf?)

[pier · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing

[Leon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I preface this criticism by saying I may be missing some concepts or themes elaborated upon in her earlier essays as there are some quite esoteric ideas that are only briefly mentioned seemingly with assumption that the reader already understands.

I wish there were a little more substance over the advertising of Deep Listening(TM) because once it gets going it is thought provoking. This sort of makes it feel like an induction into a listening cult (which i’m not totally against…)

However, Oliveros is one of the great innovators of our time and her contributions to the cultural canon remain undeniable.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

un libro muy guay para leer en la playa.

[Layan · Rating 3 out of 5]

short introductory text on "mindful" listening. Interesting concept but lacked depth and substantiation. Writing jumps around and seems disjointed

[Dante]

not sure my palms will be registering electromagnetic waves or the aural non-dimensions of quantum flux any time soon, but a clearly important document!

[Seyhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another petite read from the MIT Bookstore.

Quantum Listening gently shifts your awareness to the intelligent world of sounds around us. It invites us to discern the soundscape we constantly inhabit.

Questions like these run through the book:

What if you could hear the frequency of colors?
Does the skin listen as much as the ear does?
Can sound be understood not only as waves, but also as particles?
Is sound intelligent?
Could it carry a form of consciousness?

The book also quietly criticizes how little scientific attention sound itself has received. In the end, it is an invitation to deep listening, to sound, to silence, and ultimately to listening itself.

Even though they are completely independent from each other, reading them in sequence (Quantum Dreaming, Doing Nothing, and Quantum Listening) almost feels like a perfect trilogy for our noisy times.

Three small books that gently slow you down.
One invites you to dream.
One reminds you to pause.
And one teaches you to listen.

In a world overflowing with noise, conflict, and endless reaction, this strange sequence felt grounding, almost like a quiet antidote to the chaos of war around us.

Especially in this moment of history, when our social matrix feels saturated with conflict, noise, and the constant tension of war, it felt like exactly what I needed to read. Everything seems too loud, too reactive. No one really listens to one another anymore. Our society seems to have stopped dreaming as well.

Perhaps what we need now is deeper listening to other people, to other cultures, to other religions, and to perspectives beyond our own.

Maybe that is the real meaning of quantum listening and quantum dreaming, to expand awareness beyond the noise of our own certainties.

In a world where the battle between good and evil seems to be shifting to a new and uncertain level, perhaps change begins with something simple.

Listening.