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- Convenors:
-
Sarah Thanner
(Friedrich Schiller University Jena)
Anne Dippel (Braunschweig University of Art (HBK))
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- Discussants:
-
Alastair Mackie
(Friedrich Schiller University Jena)
Kirsty Kay (University of Sheffield)
- Format:
- Workshop
Short Abstract:
This workshop encourages participants to unwrite by using audio recordings from the field for sample-based synthesis and fieldnote composition. Reflecting on our sonic fieldnotes, we will explore how engaging creatively with sound may expose us to unseen parts of our field and inform our research.
Description:
The field is filled with multiple sounds which encourage scientific as well as creative sampling. Using both approaches to inform each other, will we detect new harmonies and rhythms in our data? Will unwriting like this allow us to gain unheard, and perhaps also unseen insights (Mackie, 2024)? How can this transform our modes of writing in times of transition (Dippel, 2022)?
Recording audio has long been important in ethnography. How do we engage with these sonic samples from the field once they have been recorded? It is usually anathema to change samples in any way, but in music there is a long tradition of adapting samples for audio synthesis and new compositions. Can we, as ethnographers, also use samples to compose sonic fieldnotes? And could sample-based synthesis expose hidden parts of our fields and challenge how we relate to our ethnographies?
In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the creative potential of fieldwork recordings. Introducing participants to ‘deep listening’ (Oliveros, 2005), we will question what we hear and how we listen in the field. Participants will then be sent to record different locations in Aberdeen and to create sonic fieldnotes. Instead of a regular audio recording device, they will use an app designed for recording, mangling and composing with samples. After returning from the field we will listen to each other’s sonic fieldnotes and discuss what we can learn from them which we might have missed using other methods, and how this can inform our understanding of the field.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
I am part of a small cooperative inquiry group, whereby we attempt to know local water bodies as responsive beings. We visit waterbodies and generate creative reflections of our experiences. I am eager to see how sonic recordings might help us be more aware of and better connected to our catchment.
Contribution long abstract:
I am part of a small cooperative inquiry group, whereby we attempt to know local water bodies as responsive beings. We visit waterbodies and generate creative reflections of our experiences. I am eager to see how sonic recordings might help us be more aware of and better connected to our catchment.
Contribution short abstract:
With this contribution, I would like to explore how the sound recordings I made as part of my ethnography in Juchitan, Mexico, in a context of increased violence, can be used to provide a different understanding of this new social and political situation.
Contribution long abstract:
In May 2024, equipped with a recorder and microphones, I returned to the southern Mexican town of Juchitán, focusing on the social and political processes at play around President AMLO's major national infrastructure project, the Transisthmian Corridor (Isthmus of Tehuántepec).
I arrived during the festive period, when parades, bandas and large velas follow one another, filling the city streets with sound. The market, like many other buildings, had collapsed in the major earthquake of 2017, and the city was also marked by the massive presence of exiles from the south of the continent, blocked on their way to Juchitán in extremely difficult conditions. I discovered a local context that had been transformed, marked by multiple forms of violence, vulnerability and insecurity.
How has this context affected the local sound scene? What has been silenced, what voices have been raised, what sonic presences have been revealed, accentuated or attenuated in this renewed context?
Contribution short abstract:
I wish to co-explore these queries - What ways can we expose and dismantle sonic colonialities if we conceptually juxtapose the inaudible onto deep listening through sample-based synthesis? What ways can we challenge Eurocentric/Anglo-centric modes of listening through creative sonic fieldnotes?
Contribution long abstract:
This workshop contribution is a hopeful exploration of intuitive yearnings for a multi-species collaboration through creative sonic fieldnotes and urban musicalities in Aberdeen. My research interest lies at the junction of sonic relationalities, sonic colonialities as Eurocentric ways of apprehending sound-based relations and sense making, and the ways in which deep/conscious listening (Oliveros 2005) can help unfold new imageries of multi-species attuning, relating, and sense making in non-colonial ways. Through this workshop, I wish to collaboratively speculate the interplay of sound and silence and how a juxtaposition of inaudible (Voegelin 2019) onto deep listening can resound non-colonial onto-epistemic relationalities between human and beyond-human. How can deeply listening for silence and/or the inaudible expose hidden worldings between ethnographers and their multi-species interlocutors? I wish to co-explore the sonic transmaterialities of thought and synthesis in the geo-cultural context of Aberdeen, perhaps prompting to an un-disciplining of ethnography through creative sonic interventions, to further speculate collaborative sonic worlds that challenge hegemonic norms of identity based divisions.
Contribution short abstract:
I currently utilize multimodal ethnographic methodologies to explore human and more-than-human relations in the Faroe Islands, and how this relations may affect intergenerational experiences of family- and everyday histories.
Contribution long abstract:
I wish to participate in this workshop to deepen my exploration of the potentials of sound recordings, both as field notes, exploring other ways of connecting, listening and participating. I am curious as of how paying attentions to sounds may cause me to see new perspectives and ask new questions. I am also curious about whether and how sound may be part of the research output.
I hope to hear positively from you.
Contribution long abstract:
Audio recordings have been an integral part of my fieldwork for many years, yet they often remain dormant, archived and only occasionally listened to by myself. I am currently involved in a project on grasslands, pastures and nomadic herds in north-east Italy, where I am also documenting the changing soundscapes and the herds' sound as I move with them. This has fostered my interest in how sound may reflects and shapes human-more-than-human interactions. I am interested in how sonic fieldnotes can enrich traditional modes of ethnographic representation and open up new ways of listening to and understanding the field, and how creative engagement with these sonic materials can reveal hidden aspects of the field. I am eager to explore the potential of sample-based synthesis and 'deep listening' to enrich my ethnographic work and to learn how others integrate sound into their methodologies. Beyond academia, my interest in sound extends to my role as artistic co-director of a festival dedicated to experimental jazz and creative music. I am currently envisioning a future edition of the festival that partly focuses on the sound of our city, incorporating sound walks, listening stations and live sound interventions, inviting musicians to reinterpret the acoustic spaces of the city and to stimulate public dialogue about the role of sound in shaping urban life. I would be delighted to take part in this workshop, experimenting with creative approaches to sonic fieldnotes and exploring how engagement with sound and artistic means can uncover new dimensions of ethnographic knowledge.
Contribution short abstract:
I opt for the importance (and fun) of incorporating non-textual field notes into the discipline, as well as I am full of fascination towards the urban audiosphere!
Contribution long abstract:
Besides recently graduating with an MA in Ethnology, I am a beginner sound engineer fascinated by the urban audiosphere. I have experimented with mixing sounds from field recordings but struggled to transform them into actual research data. I am also particularly curious - and much open to discussion - about integrating field recording techniques into my current research project on plants living in the city. So I believe this workshop could help to explore these interdisciplinary connections further!
Contribution short abstract:
I have been ethnographically working with field recording and deep listening for a number of years and am particularly interested in interspecies listening and the ways in which (deep) listening can challenge perceptual habits and cultural representations of the non-human.
Contribution long abstract:
In my ethnographic research, I have been working with field recording and deep listening for a number of years. As well as writing about listening and sound explorations, I have (co-)created soundwalks, experimental sound performances and soundscape compositions. I am particularly interested in interspecies listening and the ways in which (deep) listening can challenge perceptual habits (as described by Maurice Merleau-Ponty) and cultural representations of the non-human.
I would be very happy to be part of the workshop, learning from and with facilitators and participants, and actively sharing insights. As I am an experienced field recordist and have access to equipment, I could also contribute some equipment to the workshop if desired.
Contribution long abstract:
I’m a PhD Student strongly interested in sonic ethnography and anthropology of sound. In my current fieldwork conducted among polish native faith believers, I’m using sonic methods such as deep listening, field recording and embodied participation in sonic practices. However, I’m still looking for new methods that will help me better understand my field and that I can incorporate into my methodological toolkit. Therefore, this workshop could be a great opportunity for me to learn something new and to discuss sound methods with other scholars.