A major part of my practice of sonic placemaking is considering how sound is gathered, generated, or otherwise relates to the place that is being interacted with. In my work, this has often revolved around methods of field recording — like my aforementioned work with the electromagnetic microphones, spectral analysis, and other means of technological diffusion and interaction. When dealing with sound in this context, my process asks the question: What represents the place sonically?
The answer to this question lies in materials that prod listeners to recreate, reimagine, and restructure their view of a place, which has pushed me toward gathering material that is less immediately able to be connected to specific places, yet is intrinsically representative of a place all the same. A standard audio recording of a city street can offer some immediate, if limited, context to a place, but a contact mic recording of a manhole cover on the street offers an intimate perspective that raises different questions from a listener about the same place.
The work of German sound artist Christina Kubisch is an obvious starting point when considering (and reconsidering) how we listen to places and question them (especially when engaging in alternative forms of listening, amplifying, and recording). Kubisch’s work revolves around electromagnetic field microphones and creating sound walks that focus on the depth of surrounding electromagnetic interference which exists in the world around us:
Lighting systems, wireless communications, radar, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cellphones, computers, tram cables, antennae, navigation systems, ATMs, Wi-Fi routers, neon signs, public transportation networks, etc, all generate electrical fields – hidden as if under cloaks of invisibility, but with incredible presence.1
While perhaps a simple element of listening on the surface, this is absolutely key to the experience of connecting to and understanding the complexity of place through augmented listening. In a powerful way, Kubisch’s sound walks are placemaking exercises in real time; these sounds are not meant to be listened to in order to identify place for someone, but instead to allow a listener to reinvent and recreate place for themselves. The sounds which make up these alternate spaces of listening are simultaneously unidentifiable and so intrinsically intertwined with the experience one can have with place (whether they are from an electromagnetic field recording, contact mic recording, hydrophone recording, or other method of capturing):
There are complex layers of high and low frequencies, loops of rhythmic sequences, groups of tiny signals, complex layers of pitches, long drones and many elements which change constantly and are hard to describe. Some sounds are much alike all over the world. Others are specific to a city or country and cannot be found anywhere else…The perception of everyday reality changes while you’re listening to the electromagnetic fields; the everyday appears in a different context. Nothing looks the way it sounds. And nothing sounds the way it looks.2
I myself discovered electromagnetic field recording essentially by accident, as many others have, simply by experiencing interference unintentionally; this appraisal of Kubisch’s work offers a fitting representation of why alternate modes of listening, capturing, and recording are so valuable for gaining a wide perspective on what makes up the essence of place.
The accessibility of less expert-focused devices, which somewhat encourage interference and less-than-perfect recording quality, helps prod us as listeners towards this type of consideration of place. My interest in this type of thinking came mainly from the technological access I have had in the previous few years, and specifically from the fact that I have not always had the most sophisticated equipment. Nonstandard methods of recording offer, in my experience, push listening towards considering sound as full of possibility and complexity — the same way we ought to consider what builds a place. Composer and sound artistMichael Pisaro-Liu’s reflections on his experience working as a collaborator with sound artist and field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda touch on these thoughts as well, with Pisaro-Liu pointing out that the experience of observing a place through recording is one that is deeply affected by biases and assumptions as well as filtered through the restrictions of the recordings themselves:
...[an] apparently electronic sound was obtained by placing a stethoscope on the ground very close to an insect. Even now, as I clearly hear the insect, my first apprehension of it as something synthetic stays with me. My attention here, and throughout this magical work, wavers between one mode of listening and the next, never resolving itself to a stable perspective. The “detours” (or misdirections) that formed the recording process yield something hidden in the situation.3
Developing a sound world consisting of both organic and synthesized/ processed sound elevates the listening experience from a place of guided observation to questioning and actively reconstructing a space — even if the space is reconstructed incorrectly. The significance of Tsunoda’s work is dependent on interaction between the musical and extra-musical elements: “They are in constant motion; unstable, and we hear on one side of the membrane what happens on the other.” This is an integral part of working with outside material in my music; just as in Pisaro-Liu and Tsunoda’s views, self-referential and recursive relationships are integral to finding a meaningful interaction between music and its inspiration.
In speaking about his release Extract From Field Recording Archive (2019), Tsunoda posits that searching for alternate perspective is what makes this process of sonic extraction viable, saying:
It can be said that the object of the vibration and the act of observation are inseparable…it is not really 'detection' or 'documenting', but is more likely closer to 'depiction'. The word 'depiction' has a nuance of both watching and portraying an object simultaneously.4
This dual nature of “depiction” is key to why I choose to gather sounds from places and use them as elements in musical performance. These places aren’t represented by the sounds, but their use as musical material creates a distinct relationship between the act of performing and the relation to place.
There are two mirrored elements that extend beyond simply gathering sound from place, and which I consider to be more in the realm of “extracting” sound from place and creating sound which relates to the concept of “portraying” place: translating sound into data and translating data into sound. In my practice as an acoustic and electronic composer, finding ways to turn sound into notation has been of significant interest to the development of my process, something which I see as a bridge between the more composition-oriented and sonology-focused aspects of my musical practice.
When creating notation from a field recording or other such audio file, I execute a spectral frequency analysis (using programs such as SPEAR or Audiosculpt) which I then process in a custom-built Max/MSP application I have built. With this application, I can alter the parameters of the notation and create alternate versions as I wish before any further commitment to the compositional process.
An important thing to note with this part of my process is that it is not computer-assisted orchestration, and I rarely (if ever) have used its results verbatim in a piece of music. It’s perhaps best to say that this technique illuminates another perspective that I would not normally be exposed to just by listening, providing something which is closer to the portrayal of a sound source while avoiding doing so verbatim.
Conversely, this research has also spurred me to explore the opposite process: Converting data directly to sound. Given my aesthetic leanings as a musician, my exploration of sound gathering errs more toward noise, and my experimentation with data sonification has largely sought to explore the ways in which raw data can be represented as something that is aesthetically noisy, raw, and visceral, as opposed to something which fits into pitch-based parameters. As part of this, I have also eschewed using particularly sophisticated methods for these sonifications, instead choosing to pursue avenues that are not meant for data sonification (for example, importing raw data files into DAWs as if they were audio files). This allows, in my opinion, for the data to speak more to what it is rather than what I want it to be, as I avoid using sonification parameters that are of my own design and simply take what is provided to me5 — something which is at the core of this philosophy of sound gathering.