2. What Is a “Field”?
Early uses of the word “field” in ethnology incorporated some of its prior meanings from the natural sciences and military theory (Pulman 1988). It could mean the “field” from which the researcher collected “data” and “samples” of material culture. It could also mean the field where the researcher encountered “the Other,” which could result in “confrontations” with alterity or in “negotiations” of a shared worldview. In the arts, the concept of “field” was conceptualized along a slightly different line, more in relation to its meanings for the physical sciences, particularly in theories of gravity and magnetism. Artists used it to describe their endeavors to capture forces that ran “between” substantial things, implemented action from a distance, and suffused space with a coherence of its own. I will use these three entrance points to explore the definitions of “field” recordings as well as their potential failures.