- Activities
Sounds are a perpetual and dynamic property of all landscapes. The sounds of vocalizing and stridulating animals and the non-biological sounds of running water and rustling wind emanate from natural landscapes. Urban landscapes, in contrast, are dominated by human-produced sounds radiating from a variety of sources, such as machines, sirens, and the friction of tires rotating on pavement.Our modern crisis of separateness can be described in the dominance of our anthrophonic sounds over the sounds of other beings, where our sounds of modernity are in dissonance and incoherent with the places we inhabit.
-- excerpt from The Science of Sound in the Landscape
In this inquiry, I am interested in how we can experience participation in an embodied form, through creating sound and playing music in respect to the place it is played in. The form of coherent sound-making with a place, in its resonating qualities, and its sensuous recall, can give us an experience and a hint into what it means to be in participation with the world. Where the music and rhythm we make – alongside and in participation with, rather than in imitation or domination of, the other-than-human world - is done through attentive listening and observation of the soundscapes in the places we inhabit and move across.
I began this journey with a few friends, playing together in indoor and outdoor places, and listening attentively to each other and how the sound moves in the space around us, and at times responding to the rhythmic and non-rhythmic queues from birds, wind through leaves, and sounds of people passing by.
My first recorded experiment was part of my dissertation, Becoming Woven.
The following media can give an idea of my approach to sound & participation.
Sounds of the Australian east coast tropical rainforest, by Marc Anderson.