Autumn Leaves brings together a collection of 37 essays by a number of authors whose connection is their interest in various aspects of environmental sound art theory and practice. The book is a celebration of the richness of sound in space – ‘of the complexity of sound’s movements to and fro and of the wonders of our ears and minds’ (p. 5). It is highly eclectic in scope, the articles of varying intensity but consistently concise, making quite easy but intriguing and often provocative reading, and encapsulating the principal issues concerning proponents of soundscape studies and acoustic ecology today. Several of the articles invite further exploration of their subject matter elsewhere, thus the book operates in large part as a springboard from which to investigate each viewpoint more extensively. The book includes several pointers to a variety of online resources: related or supplementary material is presented on the publisher’s own site (untranslated interviews and further articles by the featured authors), and a collaborative project, also entitled Autumn Leaves, can be found at http://www.gruenrekorder.de, which offers three complementary (and complimentary) downloadable CDs by artists variously connected with the book and sound practice generally.
The sheer diversity of subject matter explored must have represented something of a challenge in structuring the book, which is decidedly non-linear in its organisation. Picking out particular themes and emphases that run throughout, as I have attempted to do in the following, should give the flavour of its contents, though it seems rather to belie their richness.
Documentation of the sonic environment and listening practice provides content for several of the chapters and ranges from the detailing of particular places/situations – for example, hospital wards (Tim Wainwright and John Wynne) and New York in a winter cold spell (Aki Onda) – to the collection and archiving of sound recordings representing larger environments: John Levack Drever discusses the soundscape of Dartmoor in Devon and the cultural responses to sounds (and changing soundscapes) in rural communities, while Cathy Lane offers a Hebridean sound map that lists the sounds and, in particular, lost sounds of that environment. Chapters dealing with 50 Finnish soundscapes and 50 Japanese soundscapes demonstrate the extension of this archival practice to the national scale. More unusual listening contexts are covered by Dan Holdsworth, who constructs an experiential image of the anechoic chamber through the quotes of others, and Tom Rice, who discusses ear training peculiar to doctors involving stethoscopes and alternative routes into understanding the workings of the body through sound. And Angus Carlyle presents an intense description of a soundworld experienced at the point of waking – ambiguous and with heightened sensation which is allied strongly with triggered and spontaneous thought.
Discussions of listening practice extend, inevitably, to acoustic ecology concerns and the importance of increasing public awareness of the sonic environment. This is addressed through descriptions of soundwalk development (Hildegard Westerkamp), sound categorisation exercises, and investigations of listeners’ reception of or response to sonic spaces. Tashi Petter and Rachael White present an assortment of individuals’ ‘favourite sounds’ in the environment (presumably gleaned from impromptu interviews with members of the public), while Mira Choi proposes the development of a kind of graphic gauge representing the subjective quality or value (that is, nice or nasty) of sound irrespective of its inherent loudness or ‘noisiness’.
Acoustic awareness-raising is related in turn to the exploration of the soundscape through sound art/sculpture and environmental intervention – sound art as ear cleaning. Jem Finer describes his Score for a Hole in the Ground – a horn in a forest which amplifies the dripping of water in an underground chamber – and Christina Kubisch is interviewed about the technical and aesthetic issues surrounding her Electrical Walks (in which the magnetic fields generated by electrical equipment in urban environments are amplified). Kubisch goes on to talk about acoustic cartography and the identification of electromagnetic ‘regional accents’. Finally, Alvin Lucier talks about his own work and approach to sound art.
Thoughts and techniques surrounding sound recording practice are covered through interviews with several respected practitioners. Chris Watson discusses his work, and in particular issues of extraneous or unwanted noise from the point of view of the nature recordist, while Peter Cusack describes a specific work – Sound From Dangerous Places – which addresses the disconnection between what is perceived as being a dangerous landscape and the often entirely innocuous soundworld that occupies it: the diversity and richness of soundscapes in these areas can be aesthetically rich and engaging, and quite at odds with the other implications of that context. The craft of the nature recordist is explored through contributions (such as Charles Fox’s) that include descriptions or photographs of recording setups, and Bill Davies offers a brief outline of acoustics issues that present themselves to the individual interested in capturing sound in the environment.
All of the above offer excellent perspectives and case studies on introductory issues surrounding the subject area; meanwhile, meatier philosophical and ontological discussions will satisfy more specialist readers of the book, tackling (and challenging) some entrenched ideas surrounding sonic environment study. Tim Ingold raises objections to the very term ‘soundscape’ sufficiently convincingly to make me slightly self-conscious about using the term at all in the present text. Salomé Voegelin (‘Völlig Losgelöst’) discusses how the disjunction between familiar visual and unfamiliar aural that occurs in early science fiction prompts an investigative listening mode, and observes how such a listening mode can be invoked to encourage a revised aural appreciation of a familiar space. Rhama Khazam investigates the relationship of sound to sculpture and architecture, discussing the nature of time and evolving relationships between the observer and work in much contemporary art while proposing the re-evaluation of the relative importance of the visual and the aural, advocating introducing aural strategies in the development of architecture – not only architecture considering the landscape but that being informed by soundscape and musical models, the evolution of organic shapes taking inspiration from quasi-organic virtual soundscapes as created by electroacoustic musicians (thus a revisiting of the notion of a ‘tuning of the world’). Steve Goodman celebrates the ‘bass materialism’ of sound – the ubiquity and potency of low frequency and infrasound (‘a contagious swamp of rumblings, gurglings and murmurs’) and its relationship to architectural form. Finally, Max Dixon contextualises much of the content of the other articles in terms of policy development in London relating to the sound environment. He advocates a more subjective interpretation of noise issues beyond ‘simple noise indicators’ and echoes the common consensus that emerges throughout the book regarding acoustic ecological concerns: that the issue is not about cancellation of noise, but about enhancement of the quality of the sonic environment, which many of the referenced projects and studies are designed to address.
Overall, then, Autumn Leaves is a book that can function as a solid introductory text, as a survey of individual case studies relevant to the field, as a challenge to existing understanding of the subject (offering, as it does, additional and more unusual perspectives on a variety of relevant issues), or simply as pleasurable ‘dipping’ material (which is perhaps the reason I enjoyed it most): all of this along with some intriguing photographic documentation and an extensive (and equally intriguing and diverse) set of recordings on the web resources site.
