Ive been making my way through Westerkamp’s essays on her website. Her ideas on soundscape composition are largely concerned with the sonic consequences of a place and its political, geographical, economical and ecological histories, as evidenced in her comparison of Brasilian and Indian soundscapes in her essay ‘Soundscapes of Cities’. In another one called ‘Speaking from Inside the Soundscape’, she expands on her idea of soundscape composition as an extension of Acoustic Ecology. To be inside the soundscape is to be aware of oneself as a component of it, rather than separate from it – i.e perceiver vs perceived. This, for her, becomes synonymous with the cultivation of an ecological consciousness. The recordist/ composer’s endeavour to increase the audience’s ecological consciousness through composed soundscape becomes increasingly important. Westerkamp places utmost importance on the indiscriminatory stance of the ‘microphone’, much like the nakedness and openess of the newborn ear, before lived experience makes it selective. Yet her methodology of prompting this openness, while aurally embodied, is largely concerned with the idea of literality – something I feel is not always necessary in order to successfully create a composition that is classed as activistic. Bridging different places of experience and inducing some resonance with the natural world, I believe, can be achieved through the imaginal mode. There comes a point where I become unsure of the lines I’m treading in terms of agency and ownership, especially in regards to those more than human voices that are central to this conversation. Navigating this entangled blur from the standpoint of purity is quite impossible, and perhaps where I’ve been going wrong. Instead of trying to adhere to every opinion I should instead let each inform my own instincts. I think the particular boundary I am referring to – that threshold in which ecological consciousness truly becomes a product of composition – is challenged best in this excerpt by Westerkamp:
Environmental sound is a type of language, a text. As well, the technology through which we transmit the sounds, has its own language, its own process. If we truly want to reveal meanings through recorded environmental sound and truly draw the listener inside these meanings, then we must transmit precise information and knowledge and demystify technologically hidden processes. When we have done something simple as condensing the duration of a dawn chorus in order to fit it into a pre-determined time frame on a CD, let’s say that and how we have done it. Let’s name the voices of the place, let’s mention the weather for example or the season, the landscape, the social and natural context. Or let us at least be clear about the inherent confusion about time and place when we work with environmental sound.
Thinking on my work so far, I wonder how much precise information to transmit. Most of what I have recorded so far is that of jackdaws, as well as the inevitable occurence of other sounds such as aircraft, traffic, other birdsong, and people. Each recording in of itself could be a composition that prompts a discussion into the inherent interconnectivity of the environment in relation to the jackdaws, and even myself as recordist. This seems to me like the ecological consciousness westerkamp proposes. Given that the nature of my work is concerned mainly with animism however, the imagination becomes integral to bridging the gap between the psychological and the physical. I get the sense that refashioning the sonic material to tell a sort of sonic fiction can still maintain an awareness of their provenance and relevance in an ecological context. Im reminded of Hector’s lecture on Sonic Fiction. Though I haven’t followed up much on this idea in terms of research, I remember him saying that this concept might be be viewed as a resistance to the banality and repressiveness of modernity. The imagination then becomes a powerful tool that challenges the status quo – in creating more reciprocal futures, and giving agency back to the individual. As long as this agency is concerned with honouring and amplifying the voices of the natural world, then this to me seems both ecologically conscious, as well as imaginatively empowering.
Something interesting that just occurred to me is the power of creative soundscape composition to change how the listener interacts with their soundscape. Someone recently told me that, after listening to an environmental soundscape recreation I had made, they become more aware of the birdsong around them, hearing their song with a renewed intensity. Though this soundscape was an inaccurate, somewhat exaggerated recreation of the actual habitats recorded, its ability to affect her in this way still remained.
Hildegard Westerkamp herself says:
Ideally, if we have managed to strike a chord in our listeners, the listening experience will re-emerge as valuable memory and information at a later point, or it will encourage listeners to visit, hear and experience first hand the original place or situation of which the work speaks…
Then we have come full circle. The work has created the naked, open ear in the listener, a curious ear that has moved him or her into action, into interaction with the soundscape…
But the “naked ear” of the microphone can achieve a wakefulness in our listening that has a direct influence on how we speak with environmental sounds through our compositions and productions. A new balance between recording/listening and composing/soundmaking can be achieved.
If her concept of the ‘naked ear’ is meant to foster an openness to sound in its rawness, allowing the listener to connect with the soundscape without the usual layers of interpretation or selective hearing, does this allow for the manipulation of audio for aesthetic reasons, or the inclusion of musical interpretation? In her work ‘Beneath the Forest Floor’ all of the sounds used, though manipulated, were recorded in the old-growth forests on British Columbia’s westcoast, moving the listener through visible forest, “into its’ shadow world, its’ spirit; into that which effects our body, heart and mind when we experience forest.” A beautifully rhythmic piece that does what it sets out to. Elements of musicality do appear however, and her dedication to using only field recordings as creative material appears to me as nothing more than a compositional challenge, though I’m sure she would argue differently. If she had actually used instruments to achieve the results given, and falsely claimed them as manipulated versions of original recordings, no-one would be none the wiser. What is most important in my opinion, is that the musical element successfully props up the rest of the composition in an appropriate way. Maybe I am simply trying to find an excuse to exercise my ability as a musician, but I do feel that the actual intention to move someone, is far more important than achieving the kind of restrictive purity in westerkamp’s compositions. Perhaps it is just a matter of personal values.
Some of the challenges I am faced with is that my work does not intend to be completely site specific, like Beneath the Forest Floor. The sounds of Nonsuch Park, and its jackdaws, are meant more as catalysts for a wider conversation into the emotional undercurrents of perception. In my improvisatory filmmaking I have captured everything from shadows to eyes, reflections of light, fluid movement, windows, shapes and textures of the city, and a whole host of other liminal, ‘in between’ moments that affect our perception of the world around us. These seemingly invisible forms clothe the ear. I think these moving images will underlay the sound of the jackdaws, without needing to be sounded themselves. (The opposite of schizophonic? Seen but not heard?). This hopefully will induce an awareness of the source of our preconceptions, in visceral form – those that colour our encounters with the more than human world. Still, I need to figure out how this all leads to a mutual transformation. Too many ideas maybe!
Regarding the actual composition, I have thought about only using the jackdaw recordings as material, as well as the church bells of nonsuch that ring every hour and have become an integral part of my sonic experience of the park. But I don’t know how to introduce enough variation into the piece. The whole piece should describe the encounter with the jackdaws, as a sort of epiphany in which one no longer hears them in relation to external preconceptions, but rather as a deeper exploration of self. By engaging with the nakedness of Westerkamp’s ear, one should feel more able to ask what it is that is truly going on internally when experiencing such visceral more than human encounters. Maybe its about changing the traditional symbolism of corvids as representing death and thievery as an element of mutual transformation. In overcoming these stories passed down, we allow ourselves to interact with these creatures as not an extension of human projection, but subjectivities in their own right. Ironically, despite their historical associations they are one of the most populous groups of birds, thriving in number unlike other more endangered birds. Still, through this ‘mytho-poetics’, we equip ourselves with the ability to alter other stories we have told that might have negative consequences on the welfare of our environment… potentially?