Listening with earth
Abstract
How can we (re)learn to receive vibrational information from Earth, and would this be considered an act of listening? Framed as a conversation with Earth, this audio paper weaves spoken word with field recordings of intertidal zones from Southeast Australia using listening instruments (hydrophones, geophones, custom-built aeolian harps) that foreground sounds beyond our usual thresholds of perception. Funded by the Sydney Environment Institute, our research was the basis for Listening to Earth (2024), a spatial sound installation, and inspires our audio paper that explores how we listen to the more-than-human and what sonic stories Earth tells.
Drawing on methodologies in deep listening practices, sound ecologies and non-extractivist discourse, we explore ways sound enables a dialogic exchange with Earth as collaborator and co-author. That our ears and eyes perceive only a small fraction of an infinite spectrum of vibrational energy raises the prospect that our bodies are soaked in a constant din of inaudible vibrations that bypass our brains to act directly on our organs. This embodied approach to listening through vibration is at the heart of our research and guides our listening practice. Vibration itself is a form of earth story and our dialogue and compositional practice, an attempt to understand them. In dialogue with Earth, through extended deep listening and recorded documentation, this audio paper will weave our argument of sound’s capacity to reveal stored vibrational earth stories through our research findings and reflections.
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