Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

This paper constructs a framework for a multispecies approach field recording and listening in the Anthropocene age. It responds to political geographer Anja Kanngieser’s Geopolitics and the Anthropocene: Five Propositions for Sound, which calls for sound to be considered as a method for geopolitical thought. In order to interrogate both the experience of field recording, and the mediated act of listening, I draw together the fields of sound studies with sensory, and multispecies ethnography, and expand on historical notions of the soundscape. By soundscape I mean the combined output of interactivity between geological, biological and anthropogenic forces, and the resulting sonic expressions of said interactions. The framework calls for the soundscape to be understood as a multilayered ontology through which there is a convergence of multispecies relationships, or entanglements, across time and geographic location. These entanglements are not necessarily obvious. Sometimes quiet, sometimes elusive, sometimes only audible through the mediated conduit of digital technology. I argue that to be aware of these entanglements, is to open ourselves to a type of beauty that is firmly rooted in the present paradigm of extinction and loss. By virtue of this understanding, we are bestowed with an opportunity to embrace the grave reality of the Anthropocene and move forwards with what activist Joanna Macy calls compassionate action.