I ventured out to Tolworth Court Farm Fields today and I don’t really know why I waited so long to get out and record. Its been two months since I went out armed with microphones and it felt comfortingly familiar. Ears pricked and mind open I started wandering whichever way felt right. Over the summer I developed quite a rigorous approach to field recording during my internship, taking note of wind speeds, flight paths, humidity, etc, as well as having specific locations in mind, helping me devise my now personal developing methodology. I feel now however, that this purpose driven approach to recording, while beneficial to my brief at the time, might have coloured my perception of the environment and perhaps prevented a deeper understanding of my sonic environment. On the other hand, I hadn’t really devised any sort of plan today and it felt very liberating to merely follow my ears, placing complete trust in my instincts. Over the past year I have developed a relationship to these fields due to repeated visits volunteering for the re-wilding initiative Citizen Zoo, as well as personal field recording trips. As a result my orientation of the area was already well established, and this helped to give me some sense of direction.
I haven’t actually listened back to the recordings I’ve made yet but I’ve had so many interesting thoughts during this outing that I thought best to unpack them first. I think first and foremost, what most surprised me was the unexpected encounters I had, directly and indirectly. As the fields are one of the few sites in London that are currently being re-wilded, my previous ventures here have always focused on capturing wildlife sounds such as that of birdsong and ‘singing’ insects. I realise this focus might have blinded me to all of the sounds that truly represent the fields. Within the first 5 minutes of assembling my mics, pressing record and beginning to walk, a couple of guys (who I later found out were 2nd year forensic students) sitting on a bench nestled in an alcove shaped space within a hedgerow, struck up conversation with me. Not long after, while perched in another spot listening out for some birdsong, I was taken aback by a loud mechanical growling sound accompanied by a flurry of voices. I soon realised this was the sound of a community of young men who use the fields regularly as a place to gather, smoke cannabis and ride their motorcycles, something I am sure most regular visitors have become accustomed to. Later on, while trying to find a good spot to record birdsong in the narrow wooded area along the perimeter of the fields, I stumbled upon another couple of young men inhaling nitrous oxide and laughing hysterically as a result, which made for a pretty awkward but funny encounter. I couldn’t help but feel their laughter against the backdrop of birdsong made for a fairly absurd soundscape, maybe highlighting the contradictory nature of this place. A place that urges mindfulness, yet simultaneously offers a safe space for mindlessness?
The noise of the bikers and the trash and vandalism left by youth that seek refuge here put them at odds with what these fields represent for a lot of people – a developing safe-haven for wildlife. For others perhaps, these fields represent a place to escape to and a place of community, even if these communities promote anti-social behaviour. But who is to blame for this dissonance? The individualism, inherent in capitalistic progress, that drives the heart of our cities encourages focus on personal achievement. The inequalities that arise from this, be it economic, social, cultural, and even environmental have cascading effects (like that of earth systems) on our attitudes and preconceptions. Yet empathy is required here to avoid pointing the finger of blame at the individual, taking into account every beat of life that preceded them and their decisions. If ignorance is not the fault of the individual, then perhaps it is a symptom of a wider, out of sync rhythm that we are all at the mercy of.
Thinking back to these sonic encounters earlier today I can’t help but feel that they are as much the soul of these fields as are the wildlife noises. Even so, as I listened out for birdsong, parakeet voices were the most dominant. In my 2nd year audio paper I used the settlement and spread of parakeets in the UK, as a symbol of human carelessness. The quote below commenting on their presence is taken from my audio paper.
Descendants of escaped pets that bred and multiplied, mass colonising pockets of spaces within Britain’s cities and home counties in the 19th century (Hunt, 2019). We are still largely unaware of the ecological repercussions caused by their presence, if any, but as evolution shapes birdsong to its place, could we learn something from their vocalisations?
In the same way that anthropocentric sounds impose on animal communication directly, even altering the evolution of birdsong, parakeet voices might be seen as an indirect human imposition onto native birdsong. Being the loudest biological voice in the soundscape of the fields, it made me wonder whether their mere presence encroaches on the ability of other birds to communicate and/or find mates. Birdsong, it seems, will evolve to be heard in an evermore louder world. Another quote from my audio paper stated that:
In the rainforest many aesthetics and narratives coexist, connected through bonds of evolutionary kinship. Vocal competition here however, has converged birdsong from different species into a communicative web, allowing for mediation of acoustic space (Krause, 1987). This interspecies collaboration is only possible, because all parties involved benefit, unlike the urbanised blackbird that has been pushed to the edges of its sonic environment.
One can speculate that parakeets and other native birds might find some common grounds to share their acoustic environment, nevertheless, industrial sounds do not evolve in tandem with the voices they muffle – a one sided evolution. What will then happen to organisms that are unable to evolve fast enough to be heard over the din of capitalism? In relation to Darwinian theory, playfully speaking, might we call this survival of the loudest? Listening to the parakeets triggered a thought process within me that recognised their voices as an extension of human-centric attitudes. Not to say that these critters are complicit in human dominance, but it has become undeniable to me that their chattering and squawks within the context I hear them in, carry far more information when truly listened to.
What stands out to the most is that none of these sounds are heard in a vacuum. These fields are immersed in beautiful contradictions, and yet they are all part of a connected whole, representative of endless perspectives and multiple layers of being. The lack of singing insects, highlighting the seasonal shift; The acousmatic sounds of the A3, blanketing the entire soundscape. What seemed like opposing forces at first, now feels more like an interconnected melting pot. Is there a way to represent this creatively, fostering a sense of empathy to all creatures, human and non human, intertwined with the fields’ past present and future?
