Paper publication

“Before listening: ambience as aletheia” in the Journal of Sonic Studies 29. here

Abstract

For Heidegger, phenomenology is predicated on aletheia, the previously hidden revealing itself to our attentions. This process challenges anthropocentric ideologies of nature by decentering the human perspective. This paper applies aletheia to the sonic domain, tracing a path through Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Tim Ingold, and Arne Naess. This understanding informs the author’s work as composer and sound artist. The site-responsive performance Matrix for Glaciers considers each setting as an active field of potentialities. The composer’s task is to create suitable conditions for listening, those that encourage the milieu to reveal itself to our attention and care.

Description

I am safe in saying that this paper is a major work, presenting much of the philosophical framework for my activities in sound.

Back in November 2023 I presented my site-specific sound performance “Matrix For Glaciers” at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. This was part of the symposium “Beyond Listening: Agency, Art and the Environment” under the aegis of the Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies (CENSE).

I always take a conference’s theme to heart, as a way of expanding my research in new directions. So from “beyond listening” I considered what is “before listening”… hence this paper. It’s about dead glaciers and living sound. It’s about ambient music and the post-human.

Thanks

To the CENSE committee for an inspiring time in Budapest, to editor Marcel Cobussen and the reviewers who corralled my divergent thoughts into some readable pattern.