When we started the Journal of Sonic Studies back in 2011 and launched the first open call for papers, we were afraid that we would not receive enough submissions to fill an issue. We were wrong! Now, some six years later, in response to an open call, we again welcome evidence that sound studies is not only alive and kicking but still growing: the amount of papers we received for this issue was so overwhelming and the quality so high that we decided to fill two issues, of which this one is the first, and, still, we needed to put aside several articles which certainly deserve to be read by the sound studies community. Although many JSS issues are thematically organized, often with the help and under the responsibility of a guest editor and established without a public call for submissions, we deem it important to publish non-thematic issues every now and then in order to pay close attention to the current state of sound studies affairs. From the very beginning it has also been our aim to provide a platform for scholars and artists who are in the early stages of their (academic and/or artistic) careers. Besides, we have and will continue to attempt to create space for sound studies not primarily rooted in the humanities or social sciences in order to further inter- and transdisciplinary discussion.
Against this background, we proudly present JSS 14, containing eight freshly-baked essays from Australia, the UK, the US, and Indonesia. Together they give an overview of how discussions within the domain of sound studies simultaneously affect several other disciplines and discourses. Nicola Di Croce’s contribution with the rather enigmatic title “You can hear them before you see them” is a socio-political report on the segregation and marginalization of certain areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland. What is fascinating about this essay is that the socio-political becomes somehow sonified, in this case through the melodies produced by ice cream vans which need to navigate in rather peculiar ways through the streets of Belfast due to the many road blocks. As Di Croce concludes, these melodies not only signify the politico-religious and social differences between neighborhoods, they also “encourage an understanding between communities” by shaping a “shared sonic environment” which can be considered as “a possible first step to promoting pacific dialogue between conflicting groups.”
In “Silencing Urban Exhalations,” Jordan Lacey also deals with sounds in a public urban environment, approaching the subject, however, primarily from an aesthetic point of view that also touches on health issues and elementary human well-being. The article describes a sound studies elective at RMIT University in Melbourne. A loud exhaust fan outlet dominates the sonic ambience of a square where people tend to gather, and students of the course are asked to develop plans for an improvement of this ambience. In other words, the objective is not only to raise awareness of a sonic environment but also to directly intervene in the sonic design of an urban space. Although not explicitly political, Lacey nevertheless concludes that “the opportunity to creatively engage with city soundscapes can lead to meaningful and thoughtful responses that might contribute to improving the relationship people have with their city.”
Frans Ari Prasetyo is another contributor to this issue whose contribution centers on sounds in public spaces, yet differing from Di Croce and Lacey in his approach and praxis. Whereas Di Croce emphasizes the socio-political organization of a city exposed through sounds, and Lacey investigates how our public sonic environment can be (re-) designed to enhance a general well-being, Prasetyo created “City Noise,” a soundfile consisting of several processed field recordings which sonically report two recent natural disasters in Indonesian history as well as one less recent political event. In and through “City Noise,” questions can be raised about the dynamic relationships between recording soundscapes and producing art works while simultaneously striving for “objective” documentation and satisfying a desire to store certain memories. In Prasetyo’s contribution the political operates on (at least) two levels: in the soundfile itself, registering human miseries, and in the connection he makes between his artwork and the (re)presentation of certain events.
In “Noise as ‘Sound out of place’” by Hugh Pickering and Tom Rice, the socio-political is again more prominently present. The aim of their contribution is to rethink noise, not as a “phenomenon” with specific intrinsic characteristics, but, as they write, to emphasize its contextual nature, acknowledging that it is a category into which sounds are placed rather than an essential quality of the sounds themselves. As the concept of noise is always embedded in social, cultural, and/or ethical contexts, it is by definition political in nature, especially apparent when we take into account the decisive role played by those people or agencies who define a certain sonic event as noise. Noise, as Pickering and Rice conclude, is “sound out of place,” because it is not only anomalous or ambiguous in specific situations but also because it is often judged and evaluated as disruptive and dangerous by specific people. Hence, the right to make or ban noise is granted and contested in a socio-political arena.
Mark Peter Wright’s article can be considered socio-political in a different manner. It argues for a new critical perspective called “Post-Natural Sound Arts” (PNSA), whose focus resides within the context of environmental sound arts and disciplines such as field recording, acoustic ecology, and soundscape studies. According to Wright, PNSA questions entanglements of power and agency between recordists and their subjects and produces new epistemological consequences in relation to silence, subjectivity, and technology. By discussing historical and contemporary audio documents, Wright demonstrates how sonic representations are part of an interlacing of geographies, media, and time. These recordings, Wright asserts, harbor trace evidence of colonialism, war, and anthropocentrism and are re-presented here so that we can critically re-listen to and question a history of non-impact within the practice of environmental sound arts.
Tara Brabazon’s “The sounds of food” neither deals with nor offers a solution to misophonia; instead it presents in a deliberately non-narrative way three situations in which food and sound connect, though not necessarily in a meaningful way: while shopping for groceries, when food is delivered to a domicile, and during the cooking process. It is not Brabazon’s objective that the reader-listener is able to easily recognize the food sounds and directly relate them to a specific stage of food consumption; rather, by intentionally disconnecting the sounds from their sources – a process she calls “defamiliarization” – we become more conscious of the soundscapes that surround our various connections to food. She simultaneously claims and shows that “meaning construction (or, more precisely, determination) [is] difficult in sonic systems.” Asking attention for these food sounds implies a political intervention in contemporary food studies, as their claim of multi-sensory engagement often excludes the sonic components of food. The sonic “defamiliarization” furthermore ensures that new relationships and opportunities may emerge within the various modes we have of connecting to food.
Ryan LaLiberty discusses another socio-political issue related to sound: self-improvement. In “Audio Acid: Affective Design and the Psychoacoustic Trip,” he explores how binaural beats address the presumed bodily-affective capacities of listening subjects and the complex discursive and material networks designed to arouse them and incite resonance between the human body and non-human sounding media. Binaural beats and the meditative auditory experience the associated rhetoric claims they provide, LaLiberty explains, do not just heal or prevent defect and injury; they heighten the overall quality of life. At least, that is what the creators and distributors of binaural beats claim. In his paper, LaLiberty situates the discourses surrounding binaural beats historically and critically investigates how binaural beats are presented as commercial media objects while maintaining an open and intrigued mind and ear to the psychoacoustic phenomenon – which we term “binaural” – itself.
Perhaps the most explicitly political paper in this issue is Bryce Peake’s “Listening Like White Nationalists at a Civil Rights Rally.” This essay, which is accompanied by a set of recordings that allow us to listen in to this soundscape, addresses the listened-to world of white nationalists protesting a 2015 civil rights rally in the United States. It explores the acoustemological world of white nationalists protesting Justice or Else in order to open new avenues for reflection and research on American racial politics and white nationalist activism while taking care not to amplify their racist, sexist, and jingoist feelings as anything other than symptoms of particular forms of suffering. The statement with which Peake ends his essay could be considered as an appeal to all sound scholars and artists: “We as intellectuals must begin to experiment with new ways to make sense of the multisensory and political production of difference.”
In conclusion, we feel it appropriate to end with a disclaimer: it is we the editors who have, retrospectively, descried a common thread – the socio-political – running through all articles; the open Call for Papers did not ask for this. Perhaps this emphasis on a certain motif might be considered a (questionable) socio-political act in itself that somehow does injustice to the richness and versatility of each individual contribution. Even though socio-political aspects permeate or loom in each article, all authors address many other issues as well. And in the end, it is of course up to you, the reader, to connect with the essays in a way which suits you best.