Sounding Places and Sonic Fiction
Kit’s Beach – Hildegard Westerkamp, transcript
As soon as I make space to hear sounds like this, or to dream them, the sound of the city blows back in, gusting through the other sounds on tape to dominate the acoustic space. Then I feel the strength to face the city again or even to be playful with it.
Play with the monster. Then I can face the monster.”
This is my first and final year of my bachelor’s sound arts degree. Doubts are rampant throughout the research period. I’m constantly questioning my ability to understand what is listening in the sound art context, although I’ve been listening my whole life.
Westerkamp’s sensory ethnographic take on this field recording demonstrates how our perceptual system constantly filters, focuses and associates the world around us, even in dreams. Through her narrative and field recording, I was able to enter her mind and understand her surroundings.
I am sitting in my living room in Southeast London, and the train station right across my floor rumbling. Seagulls crowing with traffic buzzing in the background. I’ve listened to this 3 times. Both were in my bedroom, one time with headphones on. The city was not interested in joining then. But now, Lewisham is playing with it.
Kit’s Beach – Hildegard Westerkamp, transcript
But I’m trying to listen to those tiny sounds in more detail now. Suddenly the background sound of the city seems louder again. It interferes with my listening. It occupies all acoustic space and I can’t hear the barnacles in all their tininess. It seems too much effort to filter the city out.”
When I was listening through headphones, I was still able to bypass the background shrieks and beeps and be enveloped in her world in my own sonic fictional space. My world is filled with colours, barnacle music and Westerkamp’s healing dreams. But my relationship with it stuttered and was sucked out to the rudeness of movement of Lewisham as soon as I resorted through speakers in the living room. Police, Ambulance, and Fire truck raging across again. I wonder what happened on the other side of town? Are they alright? I feel like everything is on hold because of the emergency, yet I can’t feel their pain.
Listening is active, as with all our senses. The environment around us shapes how we “look” at things or how things change in our minds. According to Sarah Pink, the senses are not separate from other dimensions of experience. It is entangled with movement, place, and social relations. In the book “Doing Sensory Ethnography”, sensory ethnography challenges us to think about how knowledge is communicated not just through words but through the senses. Whether we like it or not, relationships are formed through being in existence.