Deafness is poorly understood in general. For instance, there is a common misconception that deaf people live in a world of silence. To understand the nature of deafness, first one has to understand the nature of hearing.Here is a YouTube video of Glennie's collaboration with Icelandic singer Björk for the song "Oxygen." The visuals are simply a collage of photos of Björk, but that's Glennie playing behind Björk's vocals. The song is part of Glennie's 1998 greatest hits compilation.
Hearing is basically a specialized form of touch. Sound is simply vibrating air which the ear picks up and converts to electrical signals, which are then interpreted by the brain. The sense of hearing is not the only sense that can do this, touch can do this too. If you are standing by the road and a large truck goes by, do you hear or feel the vibration? The answer is both. With very low frequency vibration the ear starts becoming inefficient and the rest of the body's sense of touch starts to take over. For some reason we tend to make a distinction between hearing a sound and feeling a vibration, in reality they are the same thing. It is interesting to note that in the Italian language this distinction does not exist. The verb 'sentire' means to hear and the same verb in the reflexive form 'sentirsi' means to feel. Deafness does not mean that you can't hear, only that there is something wrong with the ears. Even someone who is totally deaf can still hear/feel sounds.
Here's a 34-minute video of a presentation she gave on "How to listen to music with your whole body." There doesn't seem to be a transcript of her words (how sadly ironic is that?), but she talks about and demonstrates the difference between technically performing a piece of music and playing it as an artist who listens to and creates nuance.
And here's an excerpt from the documentary Touch The Sound:
Bionic Ear blog mentioned Glennie recently here.
Alison at Noesis writes about the lack of transcript for that TED speech here.
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