The Stimulus Progression

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The Stimulus Progression

Whatever the workplace environment, Muzak set out to maintain a median level of arousal. Muzak observed that natural levels of arousal are never static or consistently varied, but rise and fall throughout the day as well as over fifteen minute cyclical periods. In response, Muzak arranged programs according to a “Stimulus Progression,” varying musical energy levels over fifteen-minute segments that would be followed by either a thirty-second or fifteen-minute long period of silence, depending on the subscriber's desire. The Stimulus Progression was based on Muzak’s analysis of its songs for their emotional content and energy levels. Factoring in tempo, type of music, instruments employed, and the size of orchestra, Muzak determined a stimulus value for each song. By the 1950s, Muzak could carefully vary its level of stimulus during the day to offset decreases in worker efficiency during mid-morning and mid-afternoon slumps. The fifteen-minute length of the Stimulus Progression also served to enhance productivity by creating more distinctly delimited breaks between spurts of work activity. The order of the Stimulus Progression was crucial: studies showed that if played backwards, it would put listeners to sleep.

The Stimulus Progression was based on the human heartbeat. Playing music at a rate above that of the heartbeat—an average of 72 beats per minute at rest—stimulated the individual, but constantly doing so would make them nervous. Thus, the Stimulus Progression would start out below 72 bpm and rise above that rate. That the Stimulus Progression addressed the heartbeat at rest indicates that Muzak focused not so much on the factory, where workers might exert themselves but on the office, which had its heyday in the postwar era and where workers would be sedentary.

Programmed for round-the-clock shifts, Muzak created an endless circadian cycle in which all sounds, including silence, were given space. Eventually, Muzak began to develop additional programs for use in homes, hospitals, urban environments, government facilities, and outer space. With its omnipresence, Muzak could order our lives temporally.

In “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” Gilles Deleuze traces the transition from a society of discipline to a society of control. As both Bataille and Foucault point out, architecture was the instrument for discipline and order throughout the Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a device for creating enclosure and allowing for the supervision of many workers by a few managers, buildings structured society. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, this model no longer held power. In place of the ‘molds’ made by enclosures, Deleuze states that we are entering into a time of modulations. Instead of fear, work based on identifying with, and entering the flow. The Stimulus Progression ensured the success of modulation in the workplace.

Next: Muzak Fills the Deadly Silences