Sounds by water and trees

Shaping encounters through sound

18. september 2025

Fokus: Sound and the More-Than-Human Worlds

DOI https://doi.org/10.48233/54

Abstract

This audio paper seeks to understand the agency of sounds and instruments in designing intra-actions between humans and their environment. It further explores how different mediating technologies influence the ways professional musicians experience place through sound. In addition to the core research group, members of the contemporary music ensemble Norrbotten NEO participated in these site-specific explorations, which were devised as part of the ecological urban sound art project Invisible Sounds. Through a long-term collaborative artistic process, described in the audio paper, an hour-long composition titled Sounds by Water and Trees was produced (Hultqvist et al., 2024).

The mediation between humans and the environment was driven by audio technologies on site, utilising sensors, hydrophones, and surround sound microphone arrays, along with their deep entanglement with musical instruments. The interview materials and the original audio recordings have been further analysed by revisiting the multi-modal recordings and exploring the individual experiences of each participant through stimulated recall analysis (Östersjö et al., 2023). The audio paper expresses all these layers of signification while emphasising the individual experience expressed by the participating musicians. The project is characterised by recursive loops that flow continuously between subject and object, self and world, order and chaos in rhythmically cohering and complexifying patterns. We provide examples of how such complexifying patterns may emerge through a participatory and multidimensional engagement with sound in tandem with the mediation enabled by the technologies used.

Bibliography

Agrawal, S., Bech, S., Bærentsen, K., De Moor, K., & Forchhammer, S. (2021). »Method for Subjective Assessment of Immersion in Audiovisual Experiences«, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 69 (9), pp. 656-671.

Anderson, J. (2007). »Reality is not a recording/a recording is not reality«, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 122, pp. 2945-2945.

Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The Political Economy of Music. University of Minnesota Press.

Barrett, N. (2020). »Deepening Presence: Probing the hidden artefacts of everyday soundscapes«, Proceedings of Audio Mostly (AM’20). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp. 77-84. doi.org/10.1145/3411109.3411120

Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature, A Necessary Unity, E.P. Dutton.

Becker, J. (2010). »Exploring the habitus of listening«. In Juslin, P. and Sloboda, J. (eds). Handbook of music and emotion: Theory, research, applications. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 127– 157.

Berg, J., & Rumsey, F. (2000). »Correlation between emotive, descriptive and naturalness attributes in subjective data relating to spatial sound reproduction». Presented at AES 109th Convention, 25-22 September, Los Angeles. Paper number 5206.

Berg, J., & Rumsey, F. (2002). »Validity of selected spatial attributes in the evaluation of 5-channel microphone techniques«. AES 112th Convention, 10-13 May, Munich, Germany. Paper number 5593.

Berg, J., Johannesson, T., & Nykänen, A. (2022). »Mixing for in-ear monitors: understanding the work of monitor mixing engineers«. AES 152nd Convention.

Cerwén, G.; Kreutzfeldt, J.; Wingren, C. (2017). »Soundscape actions: A tool for noise treatment based on three workshops in landscape architecture«. Frontiers of Architectural Research, 6, pp. 504–518.

Debaise, D, and Stengers, I (2017). »The Insistence of Possibles: Towards a Speculative Pragmatism«. Parse Journal No.7, Univ. of Gothenburg.

Guastavino, C., Katz, B., Polack, J.-D., Levitin, D., & Dubois, D. (2005). »Ecological Validity of soundscape reproduction«. Acta Acustica united with Acustica 91(2), pp. 333–341.

Hogg, B. (2015). »Healing the Cut: Music, Landscape, Nature, Culture«. Contemporary Music Review, 34(4), pp. 281–302.

Hultqvist, A., Östersjö, S. and Berg, J. (2024). Sounds by Water and Trees. Footprint Records.

Hultqvist, A. and Östersjö, S. (2019). »Invisible Sounds in a Nested Ecological Space«. Sonic Argumentation I, special issue, Seismograf Journal, 18 December. Accessed 28 February 2022. Available at: https://seismograf.org/fokus/sonicargumentation-i/hultqvist_ostersjo.

Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Abingdon, UK, Routledge.

Jensenius, A. R. (2013). »An Action–Sound Approach to Teaching Interactive Music«. Organised Sound, 2(3) 18(2), pp. 178–89.

Lakoff, G, and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Leman, M. (2008). Embodied Music Cognition and Mediation Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mitchell, D. (1998) »Toward an Aesthetic in Mixing for Multichannel Music Presentation«, AES 105th Convention, 26–29 September, San Francisco. Paper number 4818.

Östersjö, S. (2020). Listening to the Other, Leuven, Leuven University Press.

Östersjö, S., Nguyen, T. T., Hebert, D. G. and Frisk, H. (2023). Shared Listenings: Methods for Transcultural Musicianship and Research. Cambridge University Press.

Rohrer, T. (2007). »The body in space: Dimensions of embodiment«. In Ziemke, T., Zlatev, J. & Frank, R. M. (Eds.), Body, Language and Mind. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 339–378.

Rudi, J. (2021). »Designing Soundscapes for Presence in Virtual Reality Exhibitions: A Study of Visitor Experiences«. Visitor Studies, 24(2), pp. 121-136, DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2021.1907151

Senger, M. (2005). »G2 Institute for Integral Aesthetics, Aesthetic phase shift – Lecture and event series«, Academia.edu, Available at https://www.academia.edu/39088613/The_Coming_Re_Formation _

Thelle, Notto J. W. (2010). »Making Sensors Make Sense: Challenges in the Development of Digital Musical Instruments«. MA dissertation, University of Oslo.

Voegelin, S. (2010). Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. New York, Continuum Books
Wiener, N, (1988). The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, Da Capo Press