© Carla J. Maier
Peer-reviewed audio paper

Towards an ethics of listening

Sonic research and postcolonial sensibilities
Af
6. april 2021
Fokus: Sounds of Science
  DOI https://doi.org/10.48233/SEISMOGRAF2610

This audio paper reflects on and refracts the research process of sonically and sensorially engaging with public monuments and postcolonial sensibilities in the urban space.

The auditory research methods from which this audio paper is created include embodied and situated listening as well as the recording and production of mediated sonic narratives. In the first part of the audio paper, snippets of an audio walk for the public monument I Am Queen Mary are presented, and the qualities and limitations of this format are reflected. As will be argued in the second part of the audio paper, the limitations that were encountered in the research process became the vantage point for a more radical sonic editing of field recordings that served to sonically rethink what it means to listen in a particular place. An auditory research practice is developed in which the encountered sonic regimes and affective relationships are amplified and become integral to the sonic narrative of the audio paper. As the author demonstrates, the process of amplifying and editing recorded sounds become a way of remembering past listening experiences that are rematerialized in a different form through sampling and sonic manipulation. Listening as a method, incorporating techniques of sound recording and editing, evokes a different way of acquiring knowledge, of unlearning how one is supposed to hear within our entangled postcolonial histories and to sonically think towards possible futures.

Bibliography

Belle, L. & Ehlers, J. (2018) I Am Queen Mary. Public sculpture, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Cardiff, J. (2005) The Walk Book. Berlin: Walther König.

Gupta, A. & Ferguson, J. (1997) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Groth, S.K. & Samson, K. (2016) Audio Papers – A Manifesto. Seismograf, 16.

Lane, Cathy (2017) A Manifesto for New Listening (or 20 thoughts about Listening). Reflections on Process in Sound, 5 pp. 59-81.

Maier, C.J. & VanDrie, M. (2020) Rhythming: A Manifesto (in preparation).

Maier, C.J. (2019) The Ocean In Between: An Audio Walk (unpublished).

Richards, M. (1993) Clear de Road. Zoop Zoop Zoop: Traditional Music & Folklore of St. Croix, St. Thomas & St. John. New York: New World Records. CD.

Ouzounian, G. & Lappin, S.A. (2014) Soundspace: A Manifesto, Architecture and Culture, 2(3)pp. 305-316.

Pink, S. (2015) Doing Sensory Ethnography. Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Websites

I Am Queen Mary [online]. Available at: https://www.iamqueenmary.com [Accessed 15 March 2021].

Keywords

anthropology of sound
listening
affect
postcolonial studies
public monument

Fokusartikler