Sounding Places / Listening Places
If we wish to develop a more sustainable future, we urgently need to reconnect to our environment and restore a more reciprocal relationship with the earth. In the Radio ArtEZ podcast series Sounding Places / Listening Places writer and music journalist Joep Christenhusz and creator of sound works, writer and Deep Listener Sharon Stewart enquire how sound and listening can help us to do so.
In contemporary Western culture, we seem to have lost an intimate connection with the land. More often than not we consider our surroundings as a passive backdrop in which humankind can take center stage: controlling the landscape, developing infrastructures, and extracting resources at will. This rather anthropocentric position has become unviable, however, as recent human-driven ecological crises – like climate change, the dramatic loss of biodiversity, and large-scale destruction of habitats – are clearly indicating. If we wish to develop a more sustainable future, we urgently need to reconnect to our environment and restore a more reciprocal relationship with the earth.
Episodes
1. The Natural Soundscape: Listening to Bernie Krause, Evelien van den Broek and Barry Truax
2. Deep Listening®: Pauline Oliveros and the Sonosphere
3. Urban and Domestic Listenings: Peter Cusack and Elise ‘t Hart
4. Deep Listening® and Reciprocal Listening with Tina Pearson
5. Land, Listening, and Leaving: Talking to Ame Kanngieser and Lisa E. Harris
6. Deep Listening® performance scores with Lisa E. Harris
Sounding Places – Listening Places was commissioned by ArtEZ studium generale. Interviews, texts, and voiceovers by Sharon Stewart and Joep Christenhusz. Editing and sound production by Dennis Gaens of ondercast.
#1 The Natural Soundscape: Listening to Bernie Krause, Evelien van den Broek and Barry Truax
Sounding Places / Listening Places #1
This first episode focuses on the natural soundscape with musician and soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause, composer Evelien van den Broek and soundscape composer and Acoustic Communication Researcher Barry Truax.
Shownotes
In the audio examples from Evelien van de Broek’s Biophonica the following field recordings were used:
- On track ‘I Rainforest’, we heard recordings by Bernie Krause, PhD.
- The field recordings on track ‘III The Last Northern White Rhinoceros’ were provided by Dr. Ivana Cinková of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Palacký University Olomouc.
- The field recordings on track ‘IV The Blue Whale’ were retrieved from Freesound.org
- This episode also uses a field recording of the Brazilian rainforest by Reinsamba: freesound.org/people/reinsamba/
Reading and Listening
Krause, Bernie, The Great Animal Orchestra (Back Bay Books, 2013)
LaBelle, Brandon, Background Noise, Perspectives on Sound Art (Bloomsbury, 2006)
Schafer, R Murray, The Soundscape, Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World (Destiny Books, 1994)
Truax, Barry, Acoustic Communication (Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1984)
Van den Broek, Evelien, Endlings (album): evelienvandenbroek.bandcamp.com/album/endlings
World Soundscape Project, The Vancouver Soundscape (album): www.soundohm.com/product/the-vancouver-soundscape
Links
Bernie Krause: www.wildsanctuary.com
The Great Animal Orchestra (website): www.legrandorchestredesanimaux.com/en
Barry Truax: www.sfu.ca/~truax/
World Soundscape Project: www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html
Evelien van den Broek: evelienvandenbroek.com
#2 Deep Listening®: Pauline Oliveros and the Sonosphere
Sounding Places / Listening Places #2
This three-part miniseries centers around Deep Listening®, the lifework of composer, musician, writer, and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros. Aspects of this creative and meditative practice are shared from the perspectives of Sharon Stewart, Tina Pearson and Lisa E. Harris, Deep Listening® certificate-holders.
In the first mini-episode Sharon Stewart offers facets of her connection to Deep Listening® along with some of the history of the practice, as related to the sonic environment – or the sonosphere – with pertinent excerpts from Oliveros’ text scores. Together with Sharon Stewart, you can perform a seminal Sonic Meditation, number VIII: Environmental Dialogue.
The full script of the episode is also available as a PDF.
Shownotes:
- “Listening to Deep Listening®: Reflection on the 1988 Recording and the Lifework of Pauline Oliveros”, by Sharon Stewart, Journal of Sonic Studies, 2012
- Excerpt from an essay from 2007 – entitled My “American Music”: Soundscape, Politics, Technology, Community. This essay can be found in the book Sounding the Margins by Pauline Oliveros.
- Excerpts from a 2006 article “Improvisation in the Sonosphere” for Contemporary Music Review. This essay can be found in the book Sounding the Margins by Pauline Oliveros.
- ∞ = 0 poem by Pauline Oliveros, printed in The Roots of the Moment (1998: 27).
- “Pauline Oliveros” at Red Bull Music Academy, Hosted by Hanna Bächer
- Masterclass Pauline Oliveros at Sonic Acts 2021: ‘Introduction and Background of Deep Listening®’ (Stories start around 15m30s)
- Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening®: A Composer’s Sound Practice, 2005. New York: iUniverse, Inc.
- The introduction details a short conceptual story of the practice, followed by various exercises for personal and group practice and process training, a number of Deep Listening® Scores and questions, and concluding with an Appendix of essays written by participants.
- Deep Listening® Album 1989 with Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, and Panaiotis
- TEDx Talk 2015 The difference between hearing and listening | Pauline Oliveros | TEDxIndianapolis
- The Center for Deep Listening® at Rensselaer (RPI)
- Deep Listening® Retreats
- Anthology of Text Scores by Pauline Oliveros (2013) Deep Listening® Publications
- “VII: Environmental Dialogue” from Sonic Meditations by Pauline Oliveros (1971) Smith Publications
- Excerpts from “Healing Dream Mandala: Beehive version,” by IONE and “Slow Walk, Slow Song” by Pauline Oliveros, led by Jennifer Wilsey, at the Ratna Ling Deep Listening® Retreat in 2018. Both recordings were made and edited by Sharon Stewart.
#3 Urban and Domestic Listenings: Peter Cusack and Elise ‘t Hart
Sounding Places / Listening Places #3
This second episode focuses on urban and domestic sounds with field recordist, musician, and researcher Peter Cusack and sound artist Elise ‘t Hart.
The full script of the episode is also available as a PDF.
Shownotes:
Reading
Cusack, Peter, Berlin Sonic Places: A Brief Guide (Wolke Verlag)
Cusack, Peter, Sounds From Dangerous Places (ReR Megacorp, 2011)
Voegelin, Salomé, Listening to Noise and Silence
Links
Peter Cusack: www.crisap.org/people/peter-cusack/
Favourite Sounds: www.favouritesounds.org/
Sounds From Dangerous Places: www.sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/
Elise ‘t Hart: www.elisethart.com/
#4 Deep Listening® and Reciprocal Listening with Tina Pearson
Sounding Places / Listening Places #4
In the second mini-episode of the three-part miniseries Deep Listering®, Sharon Stewart draws upon her own scores and the work of Canadian composer, multimedia artist and Deep Listener Tina Pearson, inviting you to contemplate some ways we can involve ourselves in a respectful, listening and playful dialogue with our sonic environment.
This interview forms part of Sharon Stewart’s current area of inquiry for the ArtEZ Professorship Theory in the Arts, namely: ethics and ethical practices within artistic research and the creative arts.
Shownotes:
Oliveros’ 1976 article “On Sonic Meditation” in Software for People
YouTube: Late Music Ensemble: Pauline Oliveros ‘Sonic Meditation I‘ “Teach Yourself to Fly”
https://tina-pearson.com/ Website
Toward A Reciprocal Listening: A score for World Listening Day 2020 by Tina Pearson
Quote of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson in As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE)
World Listening Project
World Listening Day
radio aporee ::: maps – sounds of the world – aporee org
Sharon Stewart on SoundCloud
my ear rests as the channel poetry by Shanda Studd (Sharon Stewart and Amanda Judd)
Homing inside out – A listening guide for home quarantine, 2020, by Soundtrackcity, The Mystifiers and STEIM, with contributions by Sharon Stewart, Vivian Mac Gillavry, Michiel Huijsman, and Guy Wood
#5 Land, Listening, and Leaving: Talking to Ame Kanngieser and Lisa E. Harris
Sounding Places / Listening Places #5
In this third episode, Sharon Stewart converses with geographer and sound artist Ame Kanngieser, Melbourne, Australia, and vocalist, writer, composer and interdisciplinary artist, Lisa E. Harris from Houston, Texas about themes of land, ownership and sound. Do we have an intrinsic right to record our immediate soundscape? Who owns sound?
The full script of this podcast is available as a PDF.
Shownotes
The interview with Ame Kanngieser took place on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people of the East Kulin Nations. We acknowledge the traditional owners of these lands and pay our respects to elders past and present and to Country itself. Sovereignty was never ceded, resistance is ongoing.
Reading and listening
AM Kanngieser
Website: AM Kanngieser
Soundwork: Eulogy for the Handfish, The Parallel Effect, 2020
Talk: Listening to Ecocide at Sonic Acts, 2020
Collaborative talk: Listening as Relation, an Invocation for CTM Festival: Discourse Series – Critical Modes of Listening, 2021, with Métis/otipemisiw anthropologist Zoe Todd, 2021
Article: “From environmental case study to environmental kin study” in History and Theory, 2020
Article: “A brief proposition toward a sonic geo-politics” in Journal of Sonic Studies, 2016
Article: “Geopolitics and the Anthropocene: Five propositions for sound” in Geohumanities, 2015
Article: “A sonic geography of the voice: Towards an affective politics” in Progress in Human Geography, 2011
Lisa E. Harris
Website: LI(SA((E.))HARRIS
Foundation for Contemporary Arts: Dorothea Tanning Award, Music/Sound, 2021, Lisa E. Harris
Rising Residents: Climate in Crisis Residencies at A Studio in the Woods, 2020
Interview: “Growth Potential: Lisa Harris Interviewed by IONE” in BOMB magazine, 2020
Interview: “Deep Space, Deep Listening®, and EarthSeed: An Interview With Lisa E. Harris” by Betsy Huete in Glasstire, 2020
Album: Earthseed by Nicole Mitchell and Lisa E. Harris, 2020
Live, multimedia performance: Cry of the Third Eye, description in Glasstire, 2020
Album: Cry of the Third Eye (From Original Soundtrack) on Spotify
Installation Work: “Please, Have a Seat” and “Black Bodies in Space” in Objektiv, 2020
YouTube: “You’ve got a Right to the Tree of Life” Lisa E. Harris, 2013
YouTube: “Getting acquainted with Hermann, my theremin” Lisa E. Harris, 2017
They eat the Kill and then Have Cake.
(For Juneteenth in Texas, USA)
What happens to captives when captives are set free
to run on captured land?
Is this called Jubilee?
Should not their ancestral land be restored to them and them unto It?
Black people, we have made a new covenant every time our feet stand upon the Earth.
We restore the captive land . She is set free to run through our captured feet.
And this is just one reason why
They make us to hover so
The drip draws
Bone from
The meet.
-Li Harris
6/19/2020
#6 Deep Listening® performance scores with Lisa E. Harris
Sounding Places / Listening Places #6
In the third and final mini-episode of the series Deep Listening®, Sharon Stewart asks Deep Listening® practitioner, interdisciplinary artist, creative soprano, and composer Lisa E. Harris from Houston Texas to tell us about her connection to Deep Listening® and share with us some scores she has written. For those of you who love participatory vocalising, this one is for you!
Shownotes:
Sharon Stewart, ‘Listening to Deep Listening®. Reflection on the 1988 Recording and the Lifework of Pauline Oliveros’ Journal of Sonic Studies, 02 (2012)
LI(SA((E.))HARRIS website
Undocu meant it. A psychic declaration by Lisa E. Harris, In support of immigration rights and human rights for all of humanity.