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Aural Cultures

Westerkamp, Soundwalking and Idiosyncracy as method

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.

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Aural Cultures

Field Recording, Metadata & Birdsong

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.

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Aural Cultures

Self, Sensory Bias & Aesthetics

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

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Aural Cultures

Converging Themes

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.

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Aural Cultures

Indigenous Culture, Religion & Non-Duality

The philosopher Robert Ellis, in his paper titled ‘A non-dualist approach to environmental ethics‘, critiques the idea of ‘self’ in western philosophy, “being the consciousness that accompanies the beliefs and drives of the ego” (2003, p.2). The very nature of this definition is an imposition of dualism within the psyche. If we consider this, then a subject/ object perception of the world around us is perhaps a reflection of our internal forms of comprehension.

Looking to certain religions, a state of non-dual perfection is promoted as an attainable goal. Yet the asceticism associated with schools of Buddhism, such as Theravada, required to achieve spiritual flawlessness or liberation (Nirvana), appears to me as an overwhelmingly huge undertaking that could alienate those not so acquainted with it’s relevant practices. The mere recognition of the dualistic barriers that separate various aspects of our experience might be a slightly less intimidating starting point. One that indigenous practices and religious philosophy can offer us some insight into.

I’ve been quite enamoured with Bang & Olufsen’s ‘Sound Matters’ podcast series lately. Its 28th instalment, ‘Sound of The River’, narrated by documentary film and audio-maker, Rikke Hout, concerns the Whanganui River in New Zealand and its legal identity as a person due to its importance to the region’s indigenous Māori people. Hout tells of her experience with the Maori, ‘”Every rock, turn, rapid has a name and is just infused with memory and culture.” It might be inferred that this mythological personification of the river is anthropocentric, in that it limits the perception of its qualities by giving its elements human properties. On deeper inspection, however, one might realise that this is necessitated by the Maori as a means to deepen their relationship with the river. Naess might say that their spontaneous experience of the river is just as important as its abstract structure. In the podcast, one of 2 Maori spokespersons for the Whanganui says “I am the river, and the river is me”. Extended identification here is apparent and important to their way of life. The value of the Maori perspective is ubiquitous; it exists in all things (Jason Paul Mika et al, 2022, pp.441-463).

Creation myths too, can give us an understanding of a culture’s core beliefs. For example, central to Aboriginal Australian origins is the world-creation time known as “Dreamtime”, dating back 65000 years, that laid down the patterns of life for the Aboriginal people. This ‘placeless place’, on a continuum of past, present and future is essentially a non-dual reality.

In ‘The Ecology Of Wisdom‘, Naess speaks of a poem by the Japanese poet So-to-ba “in which the sound of the mountain river revealed reality and the poet had satori in listening to it” (Naess, 2016, p.199); Satori is a deep experience of Kenshō, “seeing into one’s true nature”, in Zen Buddhist tradition. The Japanese Buddhist philosopher Dōgen encourages a non-dual interpretation of the poem by asking whether it was So-to-ba who had satori or the river. To take a non-dual stance on this, we would have to accept that the happening of satori is reliant on a whole constellation of gestalt relations.

Spinoza’s immanence of God as interpreted by Naess, ascribes its infinite power to the combined cooperation of every living thing. Therefore love of an immanent God is to love all beings. Similarly, Advaita Vedanta, a school of Hindu philosophy separates the world of illusion (Maya) from the non-duality (Advaita) of universal reality (Brahman). Hermeneutics may give us the freedom to draw necessary contextual conclusions, but it’s clear that non-dual ways of being and seeing have arrived across different cultures, religions and philosophies throughout history. It might be dualistic of me to say that these realisations were reached separately as it would challenge the perceived interdependency of all things. Yet the ancient indigenous culture of Australian Aboriginals and Buddhist origins and scriptures seem far removed enough from one another to highlight some importance in the ontology of oneness and its prevalence outside of western thought.

Bibliography

Ellis, R. (2001). A non-dualist approach to environmental ethics by Robert Ellis. [online] Available at: https://www.robertmellis.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/A-non-dualist-approach-to-environmental-ethics.pdf [Accessed 5 Mar. 2024].

Linklater, S. (2015). What is Aboriginal Dreamtime? [online] Artlandish Aboriginal Art. Available at: https://www.aboriginal-art-australia.com/aboriginal-art-library/aboriginal-dreamtime/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2024].

Mika, J.P., Dell, K., Newth, J. et al. Manahau: Toward an Indigenous Māori theory of value. Philosophy of Management 21, 441–463 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-022-00195-3

Naess’, Arne. “The World of Concrete Contents.” Ecology of Wisdom, edited by Alan Drengson and Bill Devall, Penguin Classics, 2016, p.199

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Aural Cultures

Self Realisation

Naess believes that the process of self-realisation is conducive to creating an extended ecological self. He claims that “Increased self-realisation implies a broadening and deepening of the self” (Naess, 2016, p…). He uses Eric Fromm’s writings on the self to clarify this further. Fromm offers an alternative perspective to Freud’s theory of narcissism that describes “the phenomenon of love as an impoverishment of one’s self-love because all libido is turned to an object outside oneself (Fromm, p.84)”. He instead states that love for others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. They must both exist simultaneously.

While freud separates the notion of love into divisible categories, Fromm’s love is indivisible (but important to note that it starts with the self). Concerning environmental ethics, if we achieve a widened sense of self that spans all of our relata, then effort, or moral duty, is reduced as we transform the notion of self-sacrifice into self-interest. Self interest however, is not “conceived in terms of the subjective feeling of what one’s interest is, but in terms of what the nature of a human is objectively” (Fromm, p.86). Our inherent potentialities are not related to our impulses of the moment. Nevertheless, the misinterpretation of the term inherent potentialities as an extension of an ego-trip is strife in today’s society. An ego-trip that prioritises one’s economic status and career – “Isolating goods and services, independent of needs, it encourages self-interest through the lens of individualism.” It’s not to say that we shouldn’t focus on ourselves. But in order to attain self-realisation in separation to the ego, we must become more attuned to realising the manifestations of our true nature, as opposed to being ruled by the generalist goals of success handed down to us by societal expectation. By paying attention to this we may realise that non-humans too have inherent potentialities. Considering this I am reminded of a quote by the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius;

“Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

(meditations, p…).

We could consider a tree and its growth, its ability to sequester carbon and to provide a habitat for other living things. Does it do these things for some external validation or praise? We might say its inherent potentialities have been realised, in the way that its growth is tied to the other. Acquainting ourselves with the nature of our collective self-realisation as a species might seem unclear, but if we consider that our capacity for innovation has taken our survival out of the palm of competition’s hand, we might do better to realise the duty that is bound to our inherence.

“We are the first kind of living beings we know of who have the potential to live in community with all other living beings.”

(p.96).

According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a moral act is one of duty and against our inclination, but we may be compelled to carry it out due to the strength of our value systems. This can be an unsustainable, inconsistent and uncomfortable basis to act from. In contrast, a beautiful act is something we do based both on morals and positive inclination. A wider sense of self and identity means no moralising is needed to be selfless. We return to this idea of environmental ontology and realism as a superior, longer-range target, in opposition to environmental ethics as a means of invigorating action.

Bibliography

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Aural Cultures

Placehood

Overview

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.

Bibliography

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Aural Cultures

EoW Research – The World Of Concrete Contents

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 ethics 4, 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

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Aural Cultures

Deep Ecology & Inupiat Practices

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 certain indigenous 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].

Categories
Aural Cultures

Brainstorming Ideas

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.