credit: Simon Alleyne

Why I Wrote Listening to Places

Description

The book Listening to Places (Void Gallery, 2022) contains exercises designed to encourage self-reflexive listening. These activities are predicated on platial thinking, a philosophy that asserts the importance of places as responsive contexts that shape, and are shaped by, our being-in-the-world. This belief weaves an ontology of being with an ethos that’s literally grounded in the places we occupy. Despite the philosophical foundations, this is a practical handbook that will aid musicians, composers, sound designers, field recordists, producers,… anyone who wishes to enhance their experience of sound. These exercises are designed to facilitate workshops, sound-walks, and other activities.

See also the entry of the book itself.

Paper presented at the 2023 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference: Listening Pasts - Listening Futures, Atlantic Centre for the Arts, New Smyrna beach, Florida, USA. 23-26 March 2023.

Thanks

Photo by Simon Alleyne, courtesy of Void Gallery.