Using his own personal home of Tvargastein (a mountain cabin near the Norwegian city, Ustaoset) as an example, Naess demonstrates how sustained engagement with a place can make one more mindful of their consumption habits and raise ecological awareness. Though his methods border the extreme and his choice of home unique, he was able to determine how to attain the base necessities for life while living off-grid. “Water carried by hand from sources two hundred to three hundred metres away becomes more valuable” (2016, p….) he tells of his experience there. Resources are looked upon as having more value than before when one lives in such a way, “hence one experiences an increasing feeling of quality and richness.” He claims that a place can determine one’s attitudes, one’s likes and dislikes, and one’s general outlook. By engaging in scientific and observational activities in Tvargastein he was able to solidify a larger process of identification with his home. A place-person, as he would put it. He argues that this process is not only cognitive, but conative, being the element in psychological processes that tends towards activity or change and appears as desire, volition or striving.
In contrast, the urbanised, consumer driven world, puts us at the mercy of politics that systematically favours people “who concentrate mainly on getting more of what there is not enough of” (Naess, 2016, p…). The marketability of profound psychological transformation does not bode well with the intentions of mass corporations. Comfort has made us blind to our own potentialities. Instead of being taught to live in relation with our surroundings, many of us have been born into an unconsciously inherited ideology of place corrosiveness; That a place is there to serve us and our needs.
“The dependence on goods and technologies where one does not belong, the increase of structural complication of life – all these factors weaken or disrupt the steady belongingness to a place.”
Naess, 2016, p…
On the other hand, a sense of place is “strengthened through a tightening of the relationships between the self and the environment.” If this is the case then the question lies therein; How can we establish places as ‘places’ in industrialised cities, decrease detachment from these places and increase respective belongingness to a wider gestalt? Allowing inhabitants “to develop the appreciation of what there is enough of”.
Reflection
Naess’ idealistic views are admirable, but his experience of a place is untranslatable to most others that lack the land space, opportunity, freedom of thought and geographical positioning he had. He does not adequately define, in my opinion, a universally applicable way of becoming a place-person. If we were all to follow in his footsteps, what would come of our current homes? Would we just abandon them? Without the same level of exposure to free nature, how are we to cultivate the same mindset? While I believe Naess’ fundamental principle of a place, or place/person, is something to strive for, a middle ground is needed to allow people to familiarise themselves with such concepts whilst retaining their urbanised lives. Systemic change is needed in the economic and political drivers of our cities that perpetuate individualism. And basic needs have to be met globally to free people from certain daily constraints, if they are even to consider such concepts.
Overall this chapter was very hard to make sense of. It made me question again the usefulness of such rigorous philosophical exercises. Even Naess himself says in parts of the book that those of us who are engaged with our personal ‘place’ have no time for metaphysical thought, in favour of concrete action; “People who are completely absorbed in the land have no need for high levels of abstraction and articulation”. Although a digression from the intended reflection of this blog post, it is important to know that this quote is preceded by the sentence, “Most supporters of the deep ecology movement are intimately acquainted with urbanisation” which in turn gives them better training to make their implicit global attitudes a basis for action (Naess, 2016, p.45). From this, some light might be gleamed on the advantages of both concrete action and abstract thought.
The beginning of this chapter recognises the persistent criticism that environmental activists face when trying to save a natural entity – such as a river, forest, animal or some other form of living/ non-living thing – due to the subjectivity of their personal experience with said entity. Their critics argue that this is not “reality as in fact”, but “reality as they feel it.”
According to Galileo, the motion of water molecules are an intrinsic property of water and so part of reality itself. Felt warmth however takes on a subjective existence. Naess argues, however, that the primary properties of a thing are conceptual or ens rationis, in that they only exist within the mind and so inherently are not parts of reality for the observer. Galileo’s thing-in-itself conception of water is challenged again by Naess’ idea that “no quality of a thing is such that it is separable from others.” Naess sees sensing and comprehension as the ‘primary qualities’ of a thing; Concrete contents have a “one to one correlation with constellations,” defined here as a group of associated things. As a result our experience of water is in relation to an irreducible and complex constellation of relata, that eliminates both objectivism and subjectivism. Such is “the colours of the sea as a part of innumerable gestalts” (Naess, 2016, p.73).
Problematically, Galileo’s worldview that secondary contents are a result of our own projections removes the need for altruistic intentions altogether. If we were to reduce our conception of things to their supposed primary qualities, and pay no attention to our spontaneous experience of them using our senses, then everything is suddenly reduced to a resource. Naess rejects the notion that sense qualities are projected and that things in themselves exist separately from their myriad of secondary and tertiary qualities. Instead he proposes an ontology whereby all qualities are on par with one another, as a traditional take on primary properties presupposes them as merely characteristics of abstract structure, not contents of reality.
Using Naess’ ideas we can formulate a more sustainable method of creating environmental motivation. For the conservationist, concrete contents are most likely understood as a constellation of gestalt relations, whether they are conscious of it or not. For the developer, however, ethics surrounding environmental concerns are informed by feelings based on their objective view of reality. As a result, any attempt to appeal to their morality will fall on deaf ears. It seems it is more a matter of personal ontology. Therefore changing conception should be our primary concern as opposed to brute force. “There is no way of making the developer eager to save a forest as long as he or she retains the conception of it as a set of trees” (Naess, 2016, p.77).
“Ecology changes our values by changing our concepts of the world of ourselves in relation to the world.”
(Callicot, 1982)
Despite the reduction of primary properties to abstract structures, being those that exist within the mind, Naess reminds us it would be unwise to underestimate their importance. Such structures are applied throughout the world by humans to help gain a deeper understanding of it. They are paramount to science and that of deep ecology too. Nevertheless, these structures should not be over-identified as contents of the world we experience. As Naess puts it, “Abstract structures are structures of the world, not in the world” and “The world of concrete contents has gestalt character, not atomic character”(2016, pp.79-80). Thoughts on perspectivism, too, can help us reduce a subject-object division by using the term ‘experience’ without giving it ownership. After all, according to his holistic world view, our mere existence is only another piece of relata in the constellation of the world.
Bibliography
J. Baird Callicot, “Hume’s Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold’s Land Ethic.” Environmental ethics4, 1982, pp.163-174
Naess’, Arne. “An Example of a Place: Tvargastein.” Ecology of Wisdom, edited by Alan Drengson and Bill Devall, Penguin Classics, 2016, p.45
Naess’, Arne. “The World of Concrete Contents.” Ecology of Wisdom, edited by Alan Drengson and Bill Devall, Penguin Classics, 2016, pp.71-80
The rather lengthy intro of Arne Naess’ Ecology Of Wisdom‘, while fairly repetitive, establishes a strong foundation of his fundamental beliefs. His unique home of Tvargastein and his passion for deep inquiry have culminated in a worldview in which he regards humans as, not superior, but equal to all other organic beings. His set of platform principles, namely deep ecology, is a framework for people to develop their own ecologically responsible philosophies. He coins these personal philosophies as Ecosophies: “All philosophies of life consist of basic value norms and basic hypotheses about the nature of the world. When these philosophies take careful account of ecological responsibilities, they become ecosophies” (Drengson, 2016, p.17).
Diversity in philosophy is celebrated within Deep Ecology. Quoting Naess, “There is no absolute truth and we must instead work together and respect each other’s methods and views to reach an integrated whole.” As I ponder on this I am reminded of certainindigenous practices I’d been exposed to whilst reading Karen Bakker’s book The Sounds of Life. An example that comes to mind is the Iñupiat (indigenous alaskan) fisherman who, in 1978, protested against the Whaling Commission’s ban on subsistence whaling in the Arctic. They argued that the number of whales left was far greater than the Commission’s calculations. Western reductionist science had already drawn its conclusions however, and the traditional, holistic knowledge of the Iñupiats were dismissed. While the techniques of data gathering scientists placed human perception at the centre of experience, the Iñupiats chose instead to listen closely to what their aquatic counterparts were communicating. Fascinatingly so, they had learnt to retrieve important information regarding whale activity by “placing the end of an oar up to their jaw, with the paddle in the water (Bakker, 2022, p.33).” An Iñupiat hydrophone? Methods such as these gave them an advantage over the Whaling Commission’s scientists and an Iñupiat-led bio-acoustic operation inevitably disproved the erroneous calculations. Their culture ultimately suffered unnecessarily as a result of industrial whaling and western ignorance. Returning to Naess’ quote, we see here how an integrated method using advanced western technology, indigenous knowledge and biocentrism became the most ideal solution.
Society has previously impacted the environment negatively by having a ‘consumption only’ relationship with the spaces it inhabits, driven by economic convention. By displacing indigenous peoples from these spaces, humanity discarded valuable, generational knowledge concerning a symbiotic relationship with our environment that made without the use of harmful technology. By simply listening to the whole (their extended selves?) and remaining a humble member of a wider gestalt, indigenous communities realised access to immense information that science is only now proving, many of which use obstructive techniques. Perhaps with the knowledge indigenous communities hold, we can refashion our utility of technology and science to restore said symbiosis.
On a more critical note, Naess’ suggested 4th principle of Deep Ecology states that we must “reduce our numbers” which I believe tows the line of ethical narrow mindedness. Without thorough context it fails to acknowledge the lack of education and healthcare in developing countries, that Naess may have had in his home of Norway. The prevalence of discrimination, marginalisation, lack of legal rights, fair education, inequality of opportunity and poverty globally strips people of the basic needs required for mental clarity. According to the UN, 71 percent of the world’s population live in countries where inequality has grown and “In 2018, the 26 richest people in the world held as much wealth as half of the global population” (n.d.). When such disparities exist it makes it somewhat unjustifiable to ethically condemn those with unsatisfactory living conditions. In this sense, privilege then becomes a pre-requisite for deep inquiry. Perhaps I would put greater importance on the relationship between social justice and environmental change if I were to rewrite the principles of Deep Ecology divulged in the book’s overture.
Added note from further reading: Given the wider context of the book, this ^ idea is implied and there is mention of this later however – “When basic needs are met human development is about being more, not having more.” (Earth Charter Initiative, 2000, cited in, Drengson, 2016, p.29)
Bibliography
Bakker, K. 2022. The Sounds Of Life. 1st ed. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, p.33
Drengson, A. 2016. Introduction. In: Naess, A. Ecology Of Wisdom. Drengson, A and Devall, B. Great Britain: Penguin Classics, p.17
Earth Charter Initiative, 2000. www.earthcharterinaction.org/2000/10/the_earth_charter.html, quoted in: Drengson, A. 2016. Introduction. In: Naess, A. Ecology Of Wisdom. Drengson, A and Devall, B. Great Britain: Penguin Classics, p.29
Nations, U. (n.d.). Inequality – Bridging the Divide. [online] United Nations. Available at: https://www.un.org/en/un75/inequality-bridging-divide#:~:text=From%201990%20to%202015%2C%20the [Accessed 12 Feb. 2024].
I curated a research playlist to kickstart the brainstorming process for title ideas. Notes I made in response to this have led me to the eco-philosopher Arne Naess and his book ‘Ecology of Wisdom.’ I believe his theories would marry well with the field of acoustic ecology.
I’ve had a deep dive into the web magazine, Seismograf and its special issue Fluid Sounds to clarify the definition of an audio paper. From what I’ve gathered, it is a fairly new medium that attempts to transcend conditioned notions of presentation and information access, specifically through sonic exploration and dissemination. It is unconventional in nature, not limited by an objective aesthetic or format and should serve as, not only a reflection of the topic at hand, but a “reflection of the reflection itself, that involves the process of knowledge production, presentation and representation” ( ). An experimental platform that extends the written academic text via audio production.
My key takeaways from the magazine’s manifesto are:
1. The audio paper affords performative aesthetics.
It has the potential to assemble heterogeneous and segregated knowledge disciplines. For instance, it combines the rationality of language and speech with the sensation and affective materiality of the voice, or it incorporates the sound aesthetics of various environments, landscapes and spaces to underline and strengthen the academic argument
It Incorporates the sound aesthetics of various environments, landscapes & spaces to underline and strengthen the academic argument.
Performative aesthetics are used to develop a means of expression.
Sounds and soundscapes become frameworks in which language performs
The situational context of aesthetics, materiality, tone, timbre, rhythm and physicality support the narration or operate on their own, in contradiction to the presented statements and arguments
Performative aesthetics recognise representation and presentation. That is, the relation between semantics and the mediation of dramaturgical elements (the performative gesture)
2. The audio paper is idiosyncratic.
It investigates environments – the social, the material and the sensorial – by taking several dynamics of the perceptual and analytical process into account.
Our respective, individual and sensory idiosyncrasies are always at the core of our methodologies, but here this is emphasised through the mediation of sensory and non-sensory research.
P. Oliveira’s audio paper, ‘The New Amagerkaner’ is a sound ethnography of the fictional island of Amager’s urban and social development set in an imagined future. “Due to its speculative nature, the delivery of the paper assumes a storytelling format, in which (half) imaginary auditory worlds and speculative devices are presented to the listener as if already part of a distant past.” Through this the discourse and reflection investigates how listening devices might be deployed as tools for subversion and political resistance.
Here we see an example of listening as an epistemic practice. By listening back on these ‘auditory ghosts’ we are invited to take part in a research process that uses Amager as a case study. Oliveira’s mediation of academic discourse and sonic fiction to reflect on current and future technological articulations and listening strategies is idiosyncratic by nature. She brings her own aesthetic peculiarities and inventions to transmit her findings and propositions, using expanded sensibilities and provoking new situated events.
3. The audio paper is situated and partial.
Site specificity as a tool for research and presentation.
Situated implies that the sound work is composed with sound from the environments from which they engage.
Situated and partial knowledge also implies that the production is restricted by its means of production: technologies, tools, media, places and contexts.
The audio paper draws attention to the knowledge situation by, for instance, reflecting on the means of production.
This is particularly evident in A. Baixinho and T. Blom’s audio paper ‘Mountain meets urban waterfront’. By combining field recordings from Hallingskarvet mountain and an urban waterfront atmosphere, with the site-specific real-time sounds of Islands Brygge, they explore how the pre-existing aural environment integrates with the invading sonic composition. An experiment in sounds as place-making. There is no escaping the situational limitations of the soundscapes used. However, when combined a new perspective is created, and differences both merge and become known.
4. The audio paper evokes affects and sensations.
Feelings and sensations are present in the audio paper and work side by side with the semantics of language and sound.
The aesthetic, material aspects of the audio paper produce affects and sensations in the listener.
sonic materiality induces presence.
The relation between cognitive reason and bodily sensations.
It does not represent lived processes so much as it participates in actively shaping processes.
Academic knowledge that is felt and processed temporally.
The audio paper ‘Hearing on the verge: cuing and aligning with the movement of the audible’ is a clear representative of temporal experience. We are engaged by listening to another’s movement. We are transported from our, perhaps, present mundane sensory affectations, and transported to a different sonic context. We explore the semantics of listening in movement here, through both academic reflection and bodily sensation. Our engagement is intensified and given a different dimension. An expanded mode of listening across space-time and across situated milieu of hearing.
5. The audio paper is multifocal; it assembles diverse and often heterogeneous voices.
It is not necessarily narrated from the perspective of a one dimensional protagonist.
Research questions and arguments are developed within academic frameworks, while the presentation can take various forms.
Dramaturgical complexities that not only function as a representational and performative tool but also integrates the overall academic argument in the representation itself.
We see this in the A. Führer’s audio paper called The Map is Not The Territory D’Or; a score for a soundwalk in the town of Roskilde, Denmark. He not only relies on his narration, but also incorporates other sound materials, these being 1) an interview in Danish with the artist, 2) a voice over of a theoretical text in English, and 3) recordings from performances of the piece, including walking, breathing exercises, and the sounds of ventilation systems and other environmental sound. “The paper does not offer a hermeneutic interpretation of Führer’s piece; rather it is a performative appropriation that uses the piece as a machine for experimenting with the relations between artist and theorist, artwork, embodied experience and academic representation, all of which are categories rendered somewhat problematic by the format of the audio paper itself.”
6. The audio paper has multiple protagonists, narrators and material agencies.
Not limited to narrations performed by human beings
Landscapes, objects, technologies and politics are rendered active agents.
This can be seen in ‘Mountain meets urban waterfront’, where the contents of the soundscapes themselves do most of the storytelling.
7. The audio paper brings aesthetics and technology together in mediation.
With reference to Bruno Latour (1999), Chris Salter explains it this way: “Technology does something in and to the world by modifying existing relations and constructing new ones between humans, tools, processes and the environment in which all are deeply entangled.
This frame of understanding underlines the awareness that recording equipment, filtering, mixing, mastering and conversions are not neutral processes and tools. They are in themselves expressions of various actors and aesthetic means.
8. The audio paper is a constituent part of broader ecologies.
It depends on diverse sound environments and human practices in its attempt to assemble aspects, narratives, phenomena and sensations of the world.
Always incorporates an awareness of the process of research and technological production
It not only reflects its own research question/s, but reflects the reflection itself: the process of knowledge production, the presentation and representation of language and voice, the narrative and dramaturgy, and the aesthetics of sound.
The elements required to bring a research paper alive with sound invite the narrator/ creator to choose carefully how these elements portray the information as there should be a constant awareness of aesthetics, both personal and impersonal.
Reflection
I find the aural papers offered by Seismograf in ‘Fluid Sounds’ intriguing and thought-provoking. They challenge our conditioning to only receive information and ask us to interact with and experience sources of knowledge in a different way. However, the avant garde nature of these papers strikes me as potentially inaccessible to those unfamiliar with the sound arts canon. Some questions that remain are: Does the current definition of an aural paper extend to topics that, not only analyse the nature of sound, in of itself, but use sound to explore other mediums? Where do we draw the line between an aural paper and a podcast. Does a podcast with performative aesthetics count as an aural paper, and is self-referential awareness always necessary. While Seimsograf’s manifesto is very in depth, I am still a little confused as to the where one might draw the line between between an audio paper and other similar sonic mediums. Nevertheless, the encouragement of performativity and personal aesthetic excites me as a means to step outside of conventional boxes with my final project, using syntax, tempo, time, voice, sound and music to express my research question.
Auditory evidence can include, but is not limited to:
Sound Matters, a playlist of audio papers written and produced by Tim Hitman and supported by Bang and Olufsen, starts with an episode called ‘The Sound of Life Itself’.
(‘Bang & Olufsen presents Sound Matters: a series of podcasts looking at – and listening to – all the sounds of the world around us. Forthcoming instalments will investigate all kinds of sounds that happen in our noisy cosmos, how we listen to them, the stories we tell about them, and all the ideas, inventions, discoveries, possibilities and ideas that live in the realm of the audible. Written and produced by Tim Hinman and supported by Bang & Olufsen.‘)
The sonic episode, decorated with field recordings and quiet ambient music, seamlessly intertwines the presenter’s voice with pre-recorded material whilst keeping the narrative singular and cohesive. To start with, Tim Hinman cleverly sets the scene… ‘the snow all around me, at the edge of a patch of pine trees’ (somewhere in a forest in Sweden)… ‘looking for some peace and quiet’. He goes on to give some context to the scene, explaining why he’s taken these recordings – As someone that’s worked in the sound industry for around 20 years his aim was to find some sort of ‘audio ground zero’ to find out where listening begins. All of this pretexts the actual podcast, that commences with the series’ ident ‘Sound Matters’. A poetic way of setting the audience up for an exploration into how humans fit into the big picture of sound – the soundscape of planet earth.
Over a recording of Wolves in the Algonquin provincial park in Canada, Bernie Krauss, the creator of said recording and participant of episode 1’s podcast, introduces himself as a Bio-acoustician who records all forms of nature and organisms of all sizes from viruses to large whales. Starting off as a musician, he went on to work on many film scores – most famously on Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’. We are offered an insight into Bernie Krauss’ journey in the sound industry – from musician to field recordings.
Krauss’ references to Geophony: ‘referring to the sounds of natural forces, such as water, wind, and thunder, occurring in wild, relatively undisturbed habitats‘, Biophony: ‘referring to the collective acoustic signatures generated by all sound-producing organisms in a given habitat at a given moment.’ and Anthropophony: ‘representing human generated sound from either humans, themselves, or the electro-mechanical technologies they employ’ were all accompanied with soundscapes that sonically described what area of life each definition stood for. The episode even broke down a cityscape to reveal the layers of noise found within, linking it to how industrialisation has erased our connection with the natural soundscape. The podcast deftly expands on this by fading a soundscape of a city into a soundscape of nature to portray the differences in noise pollution and tranquility between the two, allowing the audience to aurally feel the difference as opposed to gauging it off mere text.
On a side note, a thought I found very enlightening was that natural sounds have no cultural bias, unlike many of the sounds made by humans, which is why they therefore induce sounds of tranquility and calmness, as there is no agenda or meaning we can attach to them other than their form and function.
This episode of the series Sound Matters aesthetically compares multiple soundscapes in a variety of ways. Like the sound of a plane flying overhead to introduces Krauss’ voice, which not only points to the matter at hand but also builds tension and a sense of urgency in the build up to the dialogue, or the frequent backing track of sonic environments that acts a constant reminder to the spaces within a landscape and the sounds that occupy them, and even the sound of silence to represent an ecosystem that is dead or close to dying, raising our awareness of the impact of noise on nature – man made noises can interfere with habitats and how the creatures within them hear, hunt and communicate.
Overall, I feel that the sonic imagery in this podcast accompanies Hinman’s and Krauss’ dialogue in a way that helps us visualise things, allowing us to engage even more with the information provided. Poignantly so, a podcast on the importance of sound in a very visual culture – setting the theme for the rest of the series
