Recorded sound documents a moment in the past, the moment of the sound being recorded. Tiny air vibrations emanate from the sound source and, in turn, vibrate a tiny little diaphragm on a microphone. If the recording is stored digitally then the vibrations are translated into 0s and 1s as data. Much like a photograph, a sound recording uses processes of capture to allow us partial access to a moment from the past.

But sound is also heard in the present, in the ‘here and now’ of listening. Art historian Jane Blocker has written that ‘recorded sound bears a peculiar relationship with the past. Seemingly more real than photographs or other artifacts, “sounds and events that occurred at the time of the recording” are presented as though “taking place during the time of listening”’ (Blocker 2015: 39)

It is perhaps something of this reality effect of here and now presence that makes sound and audio an interesting medium in relation to performance. Sound has an animacy, an (a)liveness, and a haunting quality, that creates an experience of encounter between the sound source and the listener. Sound philosopher Casey O’Callaghan invokes notions of live performance when he describes sounds as events they ‘are happenings that take place in one’s environment […] Sounds, like explosions and concerts, occur, take place, and last’ (2007: 57).

Audio performances might be thought of as encounters, events, moments of what Matthew Reason and Anja Mølle Lindelof have termed ‘(a)liveness’ – an experience of liveness that comes about through shifting modes of attention (2016, 1). Reason and Lindelof explore how liveness is a product of the spectator’s (or listener’s) acts of ‘audiencing’, the performative bringing into being of a performance through their ‘variously active, distractive or contested attention’ (17). Crucially audiencing does not rely on a co-presence, and is not specific to any medium, but perhaps the vitality of sound is something that encourages the production of these lively encounters in audio performance.

…

Listening is an embodied act. We literally listen with our bones – the tiny ossicle bones in our ear that amplify sound, causing the fluid in the cochlea to vibrate. In her sound response to our provocations Amy Sharrocks reminds us that ‘our ears are open at all times to the world… [they] invite the agency of the world in’. Listening is a relational act, it places the listening body into a network of sounds emanating from our environment.

From the perspective of acoustic ecology, sound theorist and composer Garth Paine argues that sound recording itself can be considered as a mode of listening to the environment, ‘a way of engaging with the vast detailed experience of the world’ (2016: 366). He writes that ‘Sound sources move around us, perhaps in relation to each other and also in relation to environmental forces, all making up a manifold and complex morphology … a network of rich yet largely invisible interconnections.’ (Paine 2016: 364).

And in her recent book Experiments in Listening Rajni Shah draws on philosopher Gemma Corradi Fiumara’s philosophies of listening to explore ‘a kind of affective register of holding attention, involving all our senses; reading, watching, and listening’ (Shah 2021, 46). Shah argues that this understanding of listening moves towards a ‘different kind of knowing, based on attentiveness’ (47). Listening challenges the dominance of speech and sound works that re-frame our experience through alternative modes of attention have the potential to nurture ‘a more inclusive and ecological’ approach to thought (46).

In Sharrocks’ response, Conversation with the River, we listen as she swims in the Thames. The action of swimming, and the water temperature, affects the sound of her voice, her movements interacting with the water creating audible sploshes and splashes. A conversation with the river, the river conversing with us. Audio performances can be considered as experiments in listening as a way of encouraging attentive interrelation to the animacy of non-human things. Or to draw on Donna Haraway (2008), listening is a way of “becoming-with” human and non-human things: a mode of perception that opens us up to the many assemblages of our world, grounded in connection and inter-dependence.

–H.W.

List of References:

Blocker, J. (2015) “History in the Present Progressive: Sonic Imposture at The Pedicord Apts”. TDR: The Drama Review. 59:4 (36-50).

Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Reason, M. and Lindelof, A.M. (2016) Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Routledge.

O’Callaghan, C. (2007) Sounds: A Philosophical Theory. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.

Paine, G. (2016) “Ecologies of Listening and Presence: Perspectives from a Practitioner”, Contemporary Music Review. 35:3, 362-371, https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2016.1239385

Shah, R. (2021) Experiments in Listening Performance Philosophy Series. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.