Soundwalking, Sonification, and Activism
- Andrea Polli, talking about Geosonification
“In bringing these distinct areas together, I will identify, compare, and discuss each field, particularly with regard to subjectivity and listening attitudes between soundscapes and music, in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a theory of environmentally aware sonification practice I define as “geosonification.” I will argue that the act of listening through public soundwalks and other formal and informal exercises can build environmental and social awareness and promote changes in social and cultural practices.”
Shaeffer v. Schafer
According to Schafer, a soundscape cannot and should not be separated from its geographical location. In Tuning the World, he used the term “schizophonia,” evoking schizophrenia or mental dislocation, to describe the separation of sound from its location to argue against the prevailing practice of electro-acoustic musicians inspired by composer Pierre Schaeffer’s idea of the “sound object,” i.e., creating compositions made of recorded sound disconnected to its source. In contrast to Schaeffer, Schafer promoted re-establishing the ecological connection of sound to its environment (Schaeffer).
Logging
Composer and acoustic researcher Bernie Krause expanded upon Schafer’s ideas about hi-fi and lo-fi soundscapes to create an analysis of the frequency spectrums of ecosystem soundscapes. He found that in a healthy ecosystem, for example, an old growth forest, living creatures fill every possible frequency band in the sound spectrum, while the frequency spectrums of more recently developed ecosystems, like forests regrown after extensive logging and clear cutting, have prominent gaps in the spectrum (Krause).
Soundwalking
Hildegard Westerkamp, was the invention of the practice of soundwalking. Soundwalking as defined by Westerkamp is an embodied method of personally connecting with the soundscape through focused listening, while physically moving through space. The main purpose of a soundwalk is listening to an environment.
Westerkamp
Westerkamp has addressed this incongruity (Shaeffer’s claims that you can’t remove the soundscape from place) in her writings, emphasizing that the recording, manipulation, and broadcast of soundwalks can actually bring listeners closer to the environment. She says that composers can “make use of the schizophonic medium to awaken our curiosity and to create a desire for deeper knowledge and information about our own as well as other places and cultures” (Westerkamp 1996: 2). She argues that listening to a soundscape composition does not disorient the listener, but rather “creates a clearer sense of place and belonging for both composer and listener” through the artistic transmission of meanings about place, time, environment, and listening, and that, “a soundscape composition is always rooted in themes of the sound environment”. Finally, she concludes that a soundscape composition is “meaningful precisely because of its schizophonic nature and its use of environmental sound sources” (Westerkamp 1996: 2). Here, it seems that Westerkamp is arguing that the immersive nature of a soundscape composition, or in other words its ability to transport the listener to another place and time, enhances a listener’s understanding of place.
A specific technical area of soundscape recording Westerkamp emphasizes is the ability of recording equipment to amplify barely audible environmental sounds. As she states: “position the microphone very close to the tiny, quiet, and complex sounds of nature, then amplify and highlight them…[so that] they can be understood as occupying an important place in the soundscape and warrant respect” (Westerkamp 1996: 19). While the use of recording equipment as a technical prosthesis to allow listeners to hear outside the range of normal human hearing is an element in some soundwalk compositions, listening on a human scale is prominent in the soundwalk recordings of Westerkamp and others. This technique emphasizes the embodied nature of listening. Canadian soundscape composer and scholar Andra McCartney has written extensively about embodiment in soundwalk recordings. She explains: “Soundwalk work is far from detached. The recordist’s perspective is written into the recording…a recording soundwalker is simultaneously an intensely engaged listener, connected by a phonic umbilicus to the surrounding world” (McCartney 2009).
As if engaged in a political demonstration, soundwalkers move through space in a silent protest of both the visual dominance in contemporary culture and the constant industrial and electroacoustic noise assaulting our sonic environment.
*except, that if I use this theory, I would be reintroducting the industrial and electroacoustic noise into the sonic environment - see Soria-Martinez 2017!!
David Dunn
David Dunn observed that bringing the auditory nature of an environment into conscious attention inevitably serves to define the historic and ongoing social relationship of humans to that environment.
Also includes a discussion of soundscape v music and attitudes towards them/constructing them “Therefore, the meaning of traditional music leans toward the celebration of human shaping and manipulation of the environment through sound, while if it would be possible to assign meaning to listening to a soundscape, it would be closer to celebrating human connection and subordination to the complexity of the environment.”
Subjectivity in geosonification, audification, and soundscape composition
Data sonification, specifically the process of translating numerical data into sound, demands the interpretation and simplification of the observed phenomenon. Geosonification, a term created by the author to describe the sonification of data from the natural world inspired by the soundscape, also suffers from this translation process.
numerical data used in geosonification is itself a simplification, as it is impossible to collect discrete data on every process that happens in a continuous environment. However, the human and instrumental intervention inherent in gesonification can be seen as an extension of human and instrument intervention in soundwalks and audifications, since human presence is highly apparent in soundwalk recordings and audification also requires the intervention of an instrument to transpose the signal. All three: soundscape recording, audification, and geosonification, involve humans making high-level choices about when, where, and what to record, from microphone placement to post-processing. **connect to performativity theory?
This process of translating data into an unfamiliar form for an esthetic purpose can be compared to what media scholar Herbert Brun called “anticommunication”.
In a 1970 position statement on technology and composition to UNESCO, Brun called the process of new language development “anticommunication” and saw it as the offspring of communication, an attempt to say something through new modes and an active way of re-defining or re-creating the language (Brun). Within conceptual artist Joseph Beuys’ universe, media art could not only reshape and reorder information but also could reshape the communication and distribution of media. Beuys did both when he called for a reshaping of the unbalanced worldview of the West in his 1974 Energy Plan for Western Man and when he radically changed the definition (and distribution) of art with the idea of social sculpture (Beuys). Although the radical nature of the process of audification and data sonification may seem to take one out of his or her environment, this process of reshaping and reordering information may actually bring one closer to the natural world. When one closely examines soundscape, audification, and sonification in relation to the Acoustic Ecology movement, it is possible to re-establish a link between data, communication, and the environment.
For the purpose of comparing the sonification of data describing various environments to soundscape recording and composition, it is necessary to limit this comparison to only sonifications that have been inspired by the soundscape or geosonifications.
In comparison, when creating a geosonification not only must the author translate the data to sound but he or she also must undergo a series of preliminary steps, from creating a detailed model of the environment in collaboration with scientists to designing a system for mapping this numerical data to sounds. As in the aforementioned process of audification, both phonographers and creators of geosonifications have to address subjectivity.
Sonification is by necessity a different process. The data itself might involve physical measurements (model data is usually coupled with observed data from the field), but the scale of the data set ultimately sonified can be far outside of possible human experience, for example, vast geographical distances shrunk to the size of a room and long time periods compressed into a few minutes. **Thus, creating sonifications using soundwalking and soundscape composition as a model may serve to humanize the resulting sonification work by bringing the data to the human scale and by allowing audiences to relate to the sonification on a physical level. This might serve to increase environmental knowing by allowing listeners to experience data through their bodies.
However, geosonification offers opportunities that field recording and audification do not. The process offers a potential expansion of the shifts in scale inherent in audification. For example, audification can allow the amplification of very small signals, the acceleration of very slow signals, and the deceleration of very fast signals, but sonification allows control of speed and scale far beyond the control afforded by audification. Geosonification allows the selection of very specific parameters and the examination of these parameters under very controlled conditions. Geosonification research, therefore, can focus on precise aspects of the human perception of sound for the most effective and efficient delivery of information. One focus of this research should be soundscape studies, especially in the area of environmental data analysis, because the soundscape is an essential part of how humans understand an environment. The soundscape model of sonification also can offer listeners a non-Western, immersive, and spatial experience of environmental data that can allude to an ongoing phenomenon and can inspire empathy in the listener by placing him or her inside the environment.
The practice of acoustic ecology generally, and soundwalking and phonography specifically, provide alternative pathways for understanding the natural and man-made environment. Soundwalking by its nature is a subjective experience, and the structure of soundwalking compositions emphasizes this subjectivity. The creation of sonifications of environmental data from models or field research is also a subjective process, and modeling the design of sonifications on the real-world soundscape can provide opportunities for addressing the problem of subjectivity. Soundwalking and field recording can be activist practices that address pollution and preservation through the organization of groups of people undertaking subversive activities, through the uncovering of unheard sounds and vibrational signals, and through collective documentary action, as demonstrated in the author’s NYSoundmap project.
*Sonifications modeled on the soundscape also have the potential to convey environmental information *more effectively than those modeled on music.
Random asides: mapping is inherently colonial; how to get that across through the sonification?