Category: Aural Cultures

I ended up having to sacrifice the idea I had of a phenomenological radio experience where I talk live from location. I thought I could squeeze it in at the end, but mostly due to bad time keeping I’m having to settle with the academic style of dissemination. As a result of my absence, I was quite unsure of how to organise the concept and production plan. Ive been accidentally working to last year’s assignment outline pdf on moodle and as a result have created a script and short abstract instead of a concept and production plan below 800 words. It’s far too late to amend this fully now and is an oversight on my part. Overall, I wasn’t able to finish all of the sound design but having come this far I’ll continue to work on it in my own time.

Going back and linking everything I’ve researched up till this point has been quite overwhelming. I feel like I normally take quite a maximalist approach to work and hoard ideas instead of paying attention to the ones that matter. After making a mind map and highlighting all of the most important concepts, I realised that all of them, in some shape or form, led to my ideas on aestheticism. Inspired by Westerkamp’s “tiny voices” I’ve thought to extend its definition to our own inner voices, or aesthetics.

Learning what to sacrifice has been difficult but I’ve finally settled on a title. Tiny Voices: An Acoustemological Theory For Self Realisation. Perhaps I’ve read one too many academic papers for my own good but I’m trying not to overthink it anymore. I’ve attached some photos of my process in organising the mess that is my mind. Funnily enough, not so long after coming up with this title, I heard some parakeets screeching in my garden. I took up my MKE600 and recorded them for about 20 minutes. After some noise reduction in post I started experimenting with different background ambiences. This process of creation and experimentation has actually helped me word together a possible intro to my script.

Both J. Riley and H. Westerkamp’s examples above induce a feeling of calm using soft-spoken voices and inviting soundscapes. Their use of textures creates a safe environment for the listener to reflect on what is being transmitted. It seems that Riley takes the trope of Eno’s ambience as a non-authoratitive music to help nudge the audience further into a state of introspection. The ‘searching microphone’ is used by both artists to reveal and amplify certain sounds. Riley finds the inner sound of trees while barnacle sounds serve as a backdrop to Westerkamp’s dreams. These ‘tiny voices’ as Westerkamp describes them, draw our ears more deeply into the contours of sound and its colours. While listening to these, I start to experience for myself the marriage of inner and outer worlds. Both reality and imagination are combined to create a unique experience.

The textures and minute sonic details in these aural experiences evoke pleasantly curious feelings, that perhaps might initiate a journey that takes us away from our preconceptions. Combining the composer’s intent with the power of the sound materials themselves, a perfect balance is struck to achieve this. “Real World Work,” as defined by Katherine Norman:

“….can be seen as a move away from the reality, but through the reality, that frames our experience of music…..While not being realistic, real-world music leaves a door ajar on the reality in which we are situated. I contend that real-world music is not concerned with realism and cannot be concerned with realism because it seeks, instead, to initiate a journey which takes us away from our preconceptions, so that we might arrive at a changed, perhaps expanded, appreciation of reality.

I am reminded of A. Naess’ musings on an immanent god as a metaphor for ‘absolute freedom’. I interpret this as the creative aspect of the whole. The combined cooperation and realisation as a path to self-realisation. Norman’s ideas bring this notion to the soundscape composition:

…real world-music, like poetry, is impelled by a desire to invoke our internal ‘flight’ of imagination so that, through an imaginative listening to what is ‘immanent in the real’, we might discover what is immanent in us

Bibliography

Kolber, D. (2002) ‘Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk: shifting perspectives in real world music’, Organised Sound, 7(1), pp. 41–43. doi:10.1017/S1355771802001061.

Norman, K. 1996. Real-world music as composed listening. Contemporary Music Review 15(1): 1–27.

I need to put together a plan to visualise everything I’ve researched up to this point. The connections are forming in my brain and there are so many more things I’m curious to explore, but without a solid plan, I feel as if I’m flailing a little more than I need to. I intend to do this next, however, in the meantime, I’ve been following a strand of articles and journals that started with my introduction to Westerkamp’s Microphone Ears.

Composed soundscapes, by nature, are a ‘schizophonic’ listening experience, in that it “is characterized by the fact that the sound source always originates in another place than where it is heard and often produces a mood or atmosphere that is out of context of the listener’s physical location,” as defined by Murray Schafer. These intermingling soundscapes, urban and rural, acoustic and electro-acoustic, grown out of the acousmatic music tradition, might cause disorientation regarding one’s sense of place. Though Westerkamp believes that mindful soundscape composition can create ‘conscious’ listening as opposed to lulling us into comfort.

But what exactly is a soundscape composition? I find it loosely defined, like audio papers. I’ve been asking myself how much abstraction I am able to incorporate into a composed soundscape, that still allows the materiality of my original field recordings to speak for themselves in creating an ecological awareness within my audience? I don’t particularly want to use environmental sound in a purely descriptive sense. I believe the creative interplay between myself and my surroundings can offer more of my personal aesthetic. After all, anyone can create an overview in a straightforward fashion, meant only to transmit what has been learnt. I feel that we have more to gain from learning through one another’s affections, as long as their is a reflexive element involved when creating.

In the definitive Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (1999), ‘soundscape’ is defined as:

An environment of sound (or sonic environment) with emphasis on the way it is perceived and understood by an individual, or by a society. It thus depends on the relation- ship between the individual and any such environment. The term may refer to actual environments or to abstract con- structions such as musical compositions and tape montages, particularly when considered as an artificial environment.

(Truax)

An ethnography of sorts, in that they both are embodied practices which both rely on sensuous ways of knowing. Soundscape composition as acoustemology seems right? Letting the listener remain somewhat aware of the source material seems key, from what I’ve gathered. J.L Drever, in his article ‘Soundscape composition: the convergence of ethnography and acousmatic music‘ describes the reflexive process as having “an ongoing conversation about experience while simultaneously living in the moment. By extension, the reflexive ethnographer does not simply report ‘facts’ or ‘truths’ but actively constructs interpretations of his or her experiences in the field and then questions how those interpretations came about (p.23).” By this rule of thumb there then should be a balance between the developing of my personal aestheticism, proficiency, intuition and preference with the original materiality of my environment.

Soundscape composition continuously calls for a high level of awareness. In this sense, it is a mode very compatible with the audio paper.

Are there ethics associated with soundscape composition? Westerkamp seems to believe so, dubbing all soundscape composers as inherent acoustic ecologists, with a duty to raise awareness through active engagement with our soundscape. Turning the schizophonic listening experience into one that can bring comfort and even a strengthened identity, instead of displacement and uprootedness.

“In the end, of course, no matter where the sound sources come from, the composition created from environmental sounds will be experienced as an entirely new place and situation within an entirely new context, depending on where it is heard. What really matters is whether the sonic language of the piece speaks meaning- fully to composer and audience alike and whether its presentation is conducted with conscious attention towards an ecologically balanced acoustic environment”

(Westerkamp, p.56)

In everything I’ve researched up till this point, I’ve noticed something quite profound. The interaction between the real and the abstract, the processed and unprocessed, the composer and environment, the self and the other. Everything appears to me as relational. Within this web of interrelations, is there a united collective? A hive mind of subjectivities?

Bibliography

Levack Drever, J. (2002) ‘Soundscape composition: the convergence of ethnography and acousmatic music’, Organised Sound, 7(1), pp. 21–27. doi:10.1017/S1355771802001048.

Truax, B. 1999 (Handbook for Acoustic Ecology) Vancouver: Cambridge Street Publishing.

Westerkamp, H. (1999) ‘Soundscape before 2000′, Amsterdam

Westerkamp, H. (2002) ‘Linking soundscape composition and acoustic ecology’, Organised Sound, 7(1), pp. 51–56. doi:10.1017/S1355771802001085.

Since going on my last field recording trip, I’ve been thinking how best to narrate my aural paper. I quite like the idea of situating myself within the soundscape as I read my script, bringing an element of embodied experience to the process of dissemination. This has been inspired by a few different practitioners, whose work I’ve listened to lately. Antoine Bertin, in one episode from his aural series ‘The Edge Of The Forest’, in which he weaves together field recordings and sonifications of data collected around the world, walks through the Maquis of the Corsican mountains while describing his surroundings to us. This immediate transportation of our senses feels somehow shared and more intimate… It feels as if he is addressing me directly… And at times it feels that we are somehow eavesdropping on a personal moment of reflection/ experience. Sharing the soundscape with Antoine’s past self, I don’t feel alone and the interaction feels more honest as opposed to the controlled aspect of recording voiceovers in post. This approach to narration is also seen in ‘The Sounds Of Life’ Podcast that I blogged about previously, where we are connected to the speaker through the sound of his footsteps in the snow and his following description of the environment.

Exploring this methodology of field recording further I’ve now read some of Hildegard Westerkamp’s work. Her experimentation with radio as an artistic medium led to her radio show ‘Soundwalking’. For one hour each Sunday afternoon during the years 1978-79, she broadcasted soundscapes of Vancouver into people’s homes. She called it “radio that listens”. A radio with a phenomenological approach to broadcasting, reminiscent of Pierre Schaefers suggestions in his article Radical Radio. “What I am urging is a phenomenological approach to broadcasting to replace the humanistic. …Let the phenomena of the world speak for themselves, in their own voice, in their own time (p. 142).” Her aim here was to evoke new meanings of real life soundscapes through environmental listening on radio. She would speak live from the location of each recording, directly to the listeners, her voice collaborating with the acoustic quality of her immediate environment to reveal their combined unique sonic character.

Thinking back to the article ‘Idiosyncrasy as Method’, this, to me, seems a prime example of one’s expanded sensibilities and idiosyncrasies leading their methodologies. Her mode of broadcasting encourages us to “listen through it to the world” as opposed to silencing us. It is anti-hegemonic by nature and gives both listener and creator a newfound autonomy and awareness. By embracing her very own “epistemic continuum of practices, senses, substances, concepts” she challenged an implicitly underlying hierarchy of the senses.

The contextual basis from which she designated her “microphone ears” at any given point serves as inspiration for my next field recording trip. The “moving microphone” seems most relevant to this blog, although I will continue to explore my environment using the “stationary” and “searching microphone.”

Bibliography

“Hildegard Westerkamp.” Hildegard Westerkamp, 2015, www.hildegardwesterkamp.ca/writings/?post_id=74&title=the-microphone-ear:-field-recording-the-soundscape. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.

“Idiosyncrasy as Method.” SEISMOGRAF.ORG, 2016, seismograf.org/fokus/fluid-sounds/idiosyncracy-as-method. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.

_Schafer, R. Murray. “Radical Radio” in Voices of Tyranny, Temples of Silence, Arcana Editions, 1993.

‌

I’ve recently been volunteering occasionally at local rewilding sites with the initiative Citizen Zoo. It has helped replace a sense of detachment to my neck of the woods with an opportunity to discover and interact with some beautiful green spaces close to me. Spurred by my research so far, I went field recording at one of these sites to gain some potentially usable soundscape recordings in my Aural Paper (Tolworth Court Farm Fields). Naturally contextualising what I’d learnt regarding eco-acoustics during this process, I found myself so much more attuned to the varying nature of animals and soundscapes in the meadows and along the hedgerows. Haskell’s book in particular has given me imaginative agency. When looking out at the meadow, I couldn’t help but wonder of the relationship between it’s floral diversity and acoustic make-up. Birdsong, too, prompted introspection into the inflection and frequencies I was hearing, where it hadn’t before. A lack of singing insects also came to my attention. After scanning the temporal and spatial qualities of the area by focusing only on listening, I decided to set up my recording equipment on a pathway in between two tall hedgerows that pierced the meadow, due to fairly high wind speeds. The natural shelter the hedgerows offered also made it an optimum location to record birdsong.

Having purchased a matched stereo pair of Clippy EM272 omnidirectional microphones for ambience recording, due to their low noise and high sensitivity electret capsules, I chose to experiment with the A/B spaced pair mic array. In one instance I used my stereo bar, but in order to create a wider stereo image in the second recording, I attached one of the lavaliers to my bike a considerable distance away from the other. I also chose to simultaneously record using the X/Y cardioid mics on my handheld Tascam DR44WL in order to compare the various recordings afterwards. I found the increased phase and amplitude differences from the wide A/B recording compared to the narrow configuration of the X/Y cardioids superior due to the broader and more diffuse polar pattern of the omnidirectional clippys. I tried my best to avoid pushing the gain too high in order to avoid the self (pre-amp) noise of the TDR44WL. The recordings can be found at the bottom of this blog post.

I decided to let my presence remain within the recordings. It’s all good and well curating an environment to my whims… but I was, too, part of the soundscape and thought it best to leave it that way, instead of fashioning a false sense of serenity, perhaps echoing Haskell’s ideas of beauty born from fragmentation. In between recordings, I used the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s app ‘Merlin’ to identify specific birdsong around me from within the natural symphony – I found a plentitude of Eurasian Blue tits, Parakeets, Robins, Chiffchaffs and the occasional Eurasian Wren and Goldcrest. The app uses a spectrogram to define the time span and frequency range of the birdsong it receives. I found this fascinating as it allowed me to visualise where on the frequency spectrum each species of bird generally inhabited.

I have since been devising a way to organise all my field recordings from this and previous ventures gaining inspiration from other sound designers and the Universal Category System. This has helped greatly in terms of locating relevant files easily when working.

I’m currently halfway through reading Haskell’s Sounds Wild & Broken. It contains so many fascinating nuggets of information regarding the evolution of animal sound-making and listening. The total body immersion of hearing in certain fish and frogs, the relationship between floral diversity and expansion of sonic expression and the drum-like hearing organs of cricket are some examples among a vast array of others. By intricately demonstrating the complex links between our hearing organs (pinnae, cochlea and cilia) to that of other species and their overall origins Haskell attempts to demonstrate how the phenomena of sound making evokes “ancient connections” (Haskell, 2023, p.15).

In the opening chapter of the Book, he claims that exposure to the multitudes of sounds of snapping shrimp and other creatures had a profound effect on his sense of self. Upon piercing a ‘sensory barrier’ (marshland water surface) with a hydrophone drop-rig his “thoughts and feelings about identity shifted.” Interestingly, I found his transformative experience analogous to Naess’ musings on collective self-realisation and anthropocentrism.

“My unaided human senses utterly failed to convey to me the richness of the marshes.”

Haskell, 2023, p.16

Biological evolution connected creatures through the endowment of sonic ability, yet simultaneously built perceptual walls and determined our aural distortions. The limitations of our sensory biases however, geared towards survival, can be overcome by an awareness of the “thousands of parallel sensory worlds that co-exist.” Referring again to Naess’ philosopy we can see how this growing awareness is conducive to extended self-identification. I do believe that there really is no escaping our perceptions. By trying to we are ultimately denying our implicit nature. We experience sound in relation to the frequency ranges within which our hearing inhabits, the aesthetics of how we self-organise what we hear and a whole host of other inherited factors passed down by evolution, no matter the species. The phenomenology of sound then, is but another building block of the concrete contents that make up our overall aesthetic experience.

Considering this, the most pressing task is to cultivate a consiousness that our senses are not the centre of experience. If awareness includes things we cannot experience, such as the whole body listening experience of certain species, or infrasonic/ ultrasonic sounds made by elephants/ bats, then perhaps, in contrary to Naess’ opinions, knowledge of abstract structure works hand in hand with aesthetic experience in order to change one’s conception of the world.

The anatomy and sensitivity of any given being’s hearing organ are their personal portal to aural aesthetic experience. We now know that non-humans also have subjective preferences. Spring peepers, for example will only respond to particular mating calls they find attractive based on “knowledge embedded in the frog’s genes, body and nervous system.” Certain birds too, undergo cultural evolution by variegating elements of tone, rhythm and pitch in learned birdsong; sonic adaptation via aesthetic innovation. Aesthetic experience draws on genetic inheritance, lived experience, cultural teachings and bodily participation (Haskell, 2023, pp.124 – 190).

Aesthetic assessment, however, requires a deeper level of perception. Historically, human bias has been determined by our preconceptions. Darwin and his victorian counterparts projected ‘quiet domesticity’ in females and ‘loud conquering’ males onto songbirds. “Instances of female bird song were traditionally dismissed as rare or the outcome of hormonal aberrations.” This idea has now been overturned with female song present in 71 percent of surveyed songbird species (Langmore, 2014).

From a neurological standpoint, the sophisticated choices both we and other species make are all processed by the same nerve cells and neurotransmitters (Haskell, 2023, p138). This nullifies the strength of experiential walls and shows that we are all moved to live out our preferences in more similar ways than we would have ourselves believe. Our preferences of beauty have the power to dictate how we interact with the world. Unnoticed this can lead to ignorance and self containment. But a totalitarian objective truth is not the aim here. Rather an appreciation for the collosal diversity of subjectivity. This quote by Haskell sums it up the best.

“But subjectivity does not mean that we do not percieve truth. Aesthetic experience can, when it is rooted in deep engagement with the world, allow us to transcend the limits of the self and to understand more fully the ‘other’. Outer and inner worlds meet. Subjectivity gains a measure of objective insight. In an experience of beauty or ugliness is an opportunity to learn and expand”

Haskell, 2023, pp.137-138

In Irish Murdoch’s book ‘Sovereignty Of Good’ the notion of ‘unselfing’ is very much synonymous with the broadening perspectives of aesthetic experience. “Relaxing of the spirit, of our essential nature, into the shared pulse of existence” (Popova, 2019) might allow us to experience profound beauty, transcend the narrow walls of the self and connect us to a collective experience that include our non-human kin.

Bibliography

Langmore, N. (2014). Female birds rival males in bird song | ANU Research School of Biology. [online] biology.anu.edu.au. Available at: https://biology.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/female-birds-rival-males-bird-song [Accessed 8 Apr. 2024].

Popova, M. (2019). An Occasion for Unselfing: Iris Murdoch on Imperfection as Integral to Goodness and How the Beauty of Nature and Art Leavens Our Most Unselfish Impulses. [online] The Marginalian. Available at: https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/10/21/iris-murdoch-unselfing/ [Accessed 9 Dec. 2023].

Haskell, D, G. (2023). Sounds Wild And Broken, edited by Alan Drengson and Bill Devall, Faber & Faber Ltd, pp.15-190

I’m aware that most of my blogging process so far has mainly concerned inspirative research. My attempts at thoroughness have been fairly time-consuming and despite this, I’ve still been struggling to arrive at a singular topic. The central themes are there, namely extended identification, acoustic ecology, non-duality and indigenous practices, and the connection between these is growing in apparence. Yet I cant help but feel I’m spreading my energy too thin. Arriving at a specific point in which all my research converges in a tangible way is proving harder than I expected.

I’m currently reading ‘Sounds, Wild & Broken’ by the biologist and writer David George Haskell to help frame what I’ve learnt reading the Ecology Of Wisdom within a sonic context. Haskell’s examination of the diversity of aural experience is wonderfully descriptive. At the start of every chapter, he waxes lyrical on the sounds he is immersed in and it has inspired me to potentially start my aural paper similarly. Taking into account the idea of interdependence of experiential subjectivity and concrete contents, a Geertzian thick description of my aural surroundings seems appropriate as a way of demonstrating the role I play in the soundscape. Experience is always contextual. There is no escaping our perceptions, as the cilia that line our ear canals, the pinnae, or ear trumpets as Haskell describes, and a myriad of other evolutionary hand me downs all bias our sensory experience (Haskell, D, …)

Does an increasing awareness of these inherent biases suggest that non-human beings have inherent value? How is this conducive to a widened sense of self? If Naess argues that changing our conception of the world is necessary for collective self-realisation, is this where I should start? This blogging exercise has made my intentions a little clearer, but I feel as if the scope of my undertakings are still too broad.