I thought I would make a quick blog post reflecting on my shifting trajectory.
Up till now I’ve been juggling ideas of sonification, sonation, biocymatics and non-linear dynamics. These are all ideas I am genuinely interested in, but to my disservice, my curiosity can be as changeable as the wind. I’m certain these ideas will appear in and influence my eventual work but I can’t help but feel that my current path needs reassessing.
Portfolio work has been put on the back burner for a while now, as I’ve focused most of my efforts towards writing and submitting Element 1 of my research paper. In the last few days since my hand-in I’ve been feeling really stuck as to where to go from here. Looking back over the last couple of months, It’s becoming clear to me that I all too often fall into the trap of ambition, concentrating more on crafting brilliant, ostentatious ideas as opposed to truly appreciating what’s in front of me. In these conquests for recognition, accessing my creativity becomes an ongoing struggle, where the focus centres on realisation as opposed to process. I think there are probably some quite profound lessons to be learnt through engagement, but I haven’t yet been able to resolve my internal unwillingness to it. I’m starting to accept however, that a growing awareness of my self-inflating tendencies won’t resolve anything alone, and have decided to trace my interests back to some of my previous projects, in the hope that it might offer some insight into what it is that truly resounds with me.
Field recording and soundscape compositions have been my dominant creative endeavour over the last year. Field recording in particular, is a practice I have come to deeply appreciate, as it offers an engagement with the world around me, as opposed to the endless screen-time I have mostly been used to when creating. Field recording is synonymous with deep listening and by its very nature challenges us to question our preconceptions. And yet I feel somehow as if most of my field recording ventures have capitalised on the environment around me, as opposed to taking part in something that transcends a subject/ object dynamic – something that could be akin to developing a ‘sonic consiousness’? – In relation to my research paper.
Hildegard Westerkamp and Jez Riley French, whom I familiarised myself with during my Y2 Audio Paper research, gave me an inkling into how field recorded work can addresses social and environmental issues and it is this intersection that strikes me as most relevant to my developing practice. I have recently got my hands on the book Environmental Sound Artists – In Their Own Words, a selection of essays curated and edited by Frederick Bianchi and V.J. Manzo as well In The Field – The Art Of Field Recording, curated and edited in the same vein by Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle, that I hope will provide some inspiration and direction. In the spirit of practice, I intend to visit a local rewilding site that I have recorded before in order to try and get things going. I suppose I’m searching for a sense of grounding, hoping being out in the field will take me out of my head.