1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, environmental issues such as biodiversity loss, pollution, sustainability, global environmental justice and, particularly, climate change have grown to become some of the most significant socio political – and, many would argue, moral – issues of our time; however, it is generally acknowledged that humankind is still failing to respond to them with the necessary degree of urgency. In a 2005 article on climate change, leading US environmentalist Bill McKibben argued that this problem of inaction was fundamentally a cultural one, and that the arts could play a crucial role in facilitating our ability to tackle contemporary environmental challenges, noting that ‘[a]rt, like religion, is one of the ways we digest what is happening to us, make the sense out of it that proceeds to action’, and asking ‘[w]here are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?’ (McKibben Reference McKibben2005). Far from being a lone ecological voice crying in a cultural wilderness, however, McKibben’s call-to-arms coincided with the beginning of a huge surge of interest around arts and ecology – a fact which he acknowledged in a follow-up piece four years later, in which he reflected that at the time he wrote his article, ‘[c]learly there were lots and lots of people already thinking the same way, because ever since it’s seemed to me as if deep and moving images and sounds and words have been flooding out into the world’ (McKibben Reference McKibben2009).
This surge in ecological engagement has been evident in every area of the arts; and sound art is no exception, with an increasing number of artists such as Leah Barclay, David Monacchi, Matthew Burtner, Andrea Polli, David Dunn and Jana Winderen using sound as a medium to creatively address a wide variety of contemporary environmental issues. In October 2006, Joel Chadabe and the Electronic Music Foundation evidenced this trend with the staging of Ear to the Earth, a five-day festival of environmentally concerned sound art in New York – an event which would continue to be held annually for the next seven years, and which today operates as ‘a global community of environmental sound artists responding to climate change’ (Ear to the Earth 2011); while in 2008, Matthew Burtner established EcoSono, described as ‘an activism network advocating environmental preservation through experimental sound art’ (Burtner Reference Burtner2011: 234), through which he has staged an annual educational ‘EcoSono Institute’ for the creation of new environmentalist sound works.
2. ECOLOGICAL SOUND ART: A NEW TERM FOR A GROWING MOVEMENT
The exponential increase in environmentally concerned sound arts activity over the past decade clearly demonstrates the existence of a significant contemporary movement; however, this movement has yet to achieve the recognition enjoyed by environmentalist works in almost every other art form. Perhaps most fundamentally, there currently exists no generic terminology with which to identify, define or describe it – something which is a prerequisite for any field if it is to gain a coherent identity, and become part of a meaningful discourse. The term ‘environmental sound art’ is already in limited use (Bakht Reference Bakht2009; Otsuka and Sandberg Reference Otsuka and Sandberg2009; Cummings Reference Cummings2010; Koutsomichalis Reference Koutsomichalis2013; Wright Reference Wright2015; Bianchi and Manzo Reference Bianchi and Manzo2016; Blackburn Reference Blackburn2016) as an umbrella term for sound works in which the ‘environment’, in its most general sense, functions as site, subject or material; however, the fact that there is no separate terminology with which to distinguish the growing movement of environmentalist sound works means that the philosophies, meanings and methodologies that lie at its heart are in danger of being lost, ignored, diluted or misunderstood through being subsumed within this wide field.
In this respect, today’s environmentally concerned sound art is in the same situation that was resolved within the visual arts a quarter of a century ago, when the 1992 exhibition Fragile Ecologies collected together environmentalist art from the previous thirty years and recognised it as a distinct movement in its own right. Up until this point, as the exhibition’s curator Barbara C. Matilsky observed, ‘critics and curators often lumped dissimilar artists together, which resulted in a confusion of different sensibilities and tendencies that continues to this day’ (Matilsky Reference Matilsky1992: 38). In particular, environmentalist artworks were commonly conflated with the movement known variously as land art, earth art or earthworks, within the more general category of ‘environmental art’; however, as Matilsky noted, ‘[n]ot all environmental art is environmentally sound nor does it carry an ecological message’ (Matilsky Reference Matilsky1992: 43). To address this, the movement of environmentalist art represented by Fragile Ecologies was christened ‘ecological art’, defined as ‘a new approach to art and nature based upon environmental ethics’ (Matilsky Reference Matilsky1992: 56) – terminology which, either in full or in its abbreviated form of ‘eco-art’, is now in common usage, a fact demonstrated by its entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Just as the last twenty-five years have seen ‘ecological’ or ‘eco-’ art gain widespread recognition as a specific movement of environmentalist works within the wider field of environmental art, there is now a pressing need for the same to happen for today’s environmentalist sound art. Reflecting its equivalent in the visual arts, therefore, this article proposes the adoption of ‘ecological sound art’ as the most suitable terminology for this important contemporary movement.
3. THE ABSENCE OF ECOLOGICAL SOUND ART FROM CURRENT CRITICAL DISCOURSE
In most areas of the creative arts, the explosion in engagement with environmental issues has been reflected by growing bodies of both academic and popular literature, with an abundance of ecocritical texts in the fields of art (Matilsky Reference Matilsky1992; Weintraub Reference Weintraub2012; Kagan Reference Kagan2013; Brown Reference Brown2014; Miles Reference Miles2014), fashion (Hethorn and Ulasewicz Reference Hethorn and Ulasewicz2008; Brown Reference Brown2010; Minney Reference Minney2011; Black Reference Black2013; Gordon and Hill Reference Gordon and Hill2015), design and architecture (Guy and Moore Reference Guy and Moore2005; Stang and Hawthorne Reference Stang and Hawthorne2005; Shedroff Reference Shedroff2009; Anker Reference Anker2010; Bergman Reference Bergman2012), literature (Glotfelty and Fromm Reference Glotfelty and Fromm1996; Armbruster and Wallace Reference Armbruster and Wallace2001; Buell Reference Buell2005; Garrard Reference Garrard2012; Westling Reference Westling2014), film (Ingram Reference Ingram2000; Willoquet-Maricondi Reference Willoquet-Maricondi2010; Gustafsson and Kääpä Reference Gustafsson and Kääpä2013; Rust, Monani and Cubitt Reference Rust, Monani and Cubitt2013; O’Brien Reference O’Brien2016), theatre (Heinlein Reference Heinlein2007; Cless Reference Cless2010; Arons and May Reference Arons and May2012; Besel and Blau Reference Besel and Blau2014; Lavery and Finburgh Reference Lavery and Finburgh2015), and music (Mellers Reference Mellers2001; Ingram Reference Ingram2010; Pedelty Reference Pedelty2012; Von Glahn Reference Von Glahn2013; Allen and Dawe Reference Allen and Dawe2016). Such scholarship serves an important function in recognising, consolidating and promoting common bodies of environmentalist practice within these art forms, providing critical analysis, evaluating their significance and enabling their incorporation into the wider critical discourse surrounding the cultural response to contemporary environmental issues. In surveying this extensive canon of ecocritical scholarship, however, sound art is notable by its absence.
While we might perhaps expect to find ecological sound works incorporated into the critical discourse surrounding eco-art, all existing texts in this field limit their coverage to the visual arts (Matilsky Reference Matilsky1992; Spaid Reference Spaid2002; Natural World Museum 2007; Weintraub Reference Weintraub2012; Kagan Reference Kagan2013; Brown Reference Brown2014; Miles Reference Miles2014). Linda Weintraub’s extensive review of the field, To Life! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet, provides a stark example, with a taxonomy which divides the field into eleven kinds of art practice including paint/print, sculpture, performance, photo/video, bio art, generative art, social practice, digital art, installation, public art, and design – but with sound art nowhere to be found (Weintraub Reference Weintraub2012: xviii–xxi).
Another place in which we might expect to find some engagement with ecological sound art is the recently established field of ecomusicology, defined by Aaron S. Allen in the Grove Dictionary of American Music as ‘the study of music, culture, and nature in all the complexities of those terms … consider[ing] musical and sonic issues, both textual and performative, related to ecology and the natural environment’ (Allen Reference Allen2013). Indeed, some critics have explicitly argued for sound art’s inclusion within ecomusicology: Jeff Todd Titon states that ‘the proper frame [for ecomusicology] is sound and sustainability; music is too narrowing’ (Titon Reference Titon2013: 8), while Alexander Rehding argues that if ecomusicology is to achieve the same level of impact as ecological movements in other art forms, it must expand its definition of music, noting that ‘[n]on-Western musical traditions and sound art, in a post-Cagean universe, hold considerable potential in this regard, as does the pioneering work in sound studies that has exploded traditional notions of music and musicological enterprise’ (Rehding Reference Rehding2011: 412). In the recent collection Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature, meanwhile, editors Aaron S. Allen and Kevin Dawe claim that ‘[w]ork in ecomusicology is on a music-sound continuum: the ecomusicological objects and/or subjects of study are parts of complex systems involving a wide range of sonic phenomena’ (Allen and Dawe Reference Allen and Dawe2016: 8). Despite these encouragingly inclusive statements, however, sound art is once again notable by its almost complete absence from current ecomusicological scholarship, which remains confined to the more traditional, ‘note-based’ musical genres of popular (Ingram Reference Ingram2010; Pedelty Reference Pedelty2012) and classical music (Mellers Reference Mellers2001; Von Glahn Reference Von Glahn2013).
In many ways, this situation merely reflects an ongoing problem faced by sound art as a whole: while it has for some years been gaining increasing recognition in the gallery-based art world, academia has been slow to follow this trend, with the established disciplines of both art history and musicology largely failing to engage with it. This has led to the gradual emergence of sound arts as an independent field of study, with its own growing body of critical scholarship; and within this can be found a number of texts which do engage with the links between the environment, environmental sound and sound art (Truax Reference Truax2001; LaBelle Reference LaBelle2006; Bandt, Duffy and MacKinnon Reference Bandt, Duffy and MacKinnon2007; Carlyle Reference Carlyle2007; Rudi Reference Rudi2011; Bijsterveld Reference Bijsterveld2013; Belgiojoso Reference Belgiojoso2014; Gandy and Nilsen Reference Gandy and Nilsen2014). However, in these texts such issues are invariably viewed through the lens of acoustic ecology; and while many of its core principles are of undeniable importance to ecological sound art, the fundamental fact that acoustic ecology is by definition a field concerned with the acoustic environment means that it only tends to engage with contemporary environmental issues to the extent that they impact the environmental soundscape. Many of today’s environmentally concerned sound artists are moving beyond these boundaries, however, using sound as a medium to creatively address every facet of the growing world environmental crisis in ways which, despite their enormous contemporary relevance, are still being almost completely overlooked by current sound arts scholarship.
Thus seemingly neither ‘visual’ enough for eco-art, nor ‘musical’ enough for ecomusicology, and with acoustic ecology-based sound arts scholarship largely failing to engage with the wider environmental issues which are its central concern, the growing movement of ecological sound art is in danger of silently disappearing through the cracks. Furthermore, addressing this problem is not merely in the interest of the artists involved, but also in that of the field of sound art as a whole: for an art form still battling to achieve the widespread public recognition enjoyed by art in almost every other medium, its active engagement with issues of such huge global importance represents a prime opportunity for sound art to impact upon public concerns and agendas outside the academic institutions and specialist circles to which it is still largely confined.
4. COMMON APPROACHES WITHIN ECOLOGICAL SOUND ART
As a first step towards establishing it as a coherent field of practice, this article will now proceed to outline some of the core approaches that characterise ecological sound art, through a summary of some of the key works in the field. This brief list is offered here as an initial description of a dynamic and growing field, and should by no means be taken to represent the full extent of its possibilities; nor should these approaches be understood as mutually exclusive categories, since a number of them may be (and often are) combined within a single work.
4.1. Enacting metaphors which facilitate a personal connection with environmental issues
Perhaps the most common approach within ecological sound art is the enactment of artistic metaphors which facilitate a heightened awareness, deeper understanding and, most importantly, a personal connection with contemporary environmental issues. One example is Suspended Sounds, a collaborative work created for the inaugural Ear to the Earth festival in New York in 2006, in which sound artists Joan La Barbara, Joel Chadabe, Alvin Curran, David Monacchi, Aleksei Stevens and Rama Gottfried composed 8-channel sound works from recordings of the sounds of extinct and endangered species, which were diffused in an immersive sound environment designed by Alban Bassuet. As Joan La Barbara commented: ‘As I worked with the sounds of these now extinct or endangered animals and birds, the depth of the poignancy of the situation was almost overwhelming. I felt as if I were breathing life into beings that no longer exist’ (La Barbara, in Ear to the Earth 2015).
An even more direct and personal connection was achieved in Katie Paterson’s Vatnajökull (the sound of) (2007/8), in which a phone line connected callers to a microphone buried in an Icelandic glacier, enabling them to listen to it melting in real-time. For her related work Langjökull, Snœfellsjökull, Solheimajökull (2007), meanwhile, Paterson made recordings of the melting sounds of the three glaciers of the title, pressed them onto records made from their own refrozen meltwater, and played them on turntables until they completely melted. As Andrew Brown comments, through these simple yet powerful sound works, Paterson ‘transform[s] us into silent and impotent witnesses as the polar ice cap recedes before our very ears’ (Brown Reference Brown2014: 78).
The transplanting of sound from one location to another was also at the heart of Graciela Muñoz’s El Sonido Recobrado (‘Sound Recovered’) (2014), a work which deals with the ongoing issue of water rights in Chile, whose largest and most powerful river, the Baker, is just one of many being illegally dammed and drained by mining, agriculture and hydroelectric companies, causing ongoing problems for local communities. Muñoz recorded the sounds of the Baker at five different locations along its length, then brought the recordings to her own home town of Petorca, whose river was also dammed and has been completely dry since the 1990s, where she played back the sounds of the Baker over twenty-eight speakers set in the dry river bed. In doing so, Munõz’s work ‘temporarily recovered a lost experience where a sound that does not exist anymore appears again, superimposing the past over an uncertain present’ (Velasco, Pohl and Nieto 2015: 1), creating a powerful statement which connects the exploitation of the Petorca with the similar fate faced by the Baker and the communities which live around it.
4.2. Articulating the harmonious coexistence of humans, technology and the natural world
Other works use sound as a medium for the investigation and articulation of ways in which human beings and our technologies can coexist harmoniously with the rest of the natural world. David Monacchi’s Integrated Ecosystem (2009), one of several artistic outputs from his ongoing Greenpeace-sponsored project Fragments of Extinction, is composed from field recordings of soundscapes from areas of primary equatorial rainforest. The work functions as a demonstration of Bernie Krause’s Acoustic Niche Hypothesis, which states that in a healthy ecosystem ‘each creature … [has] its own sonic niche … [which is] occupied by no other at that particular moment’ (Krause Reference Krause1987: 3): it is accompanied by projected real-time spectrogram analyses which allow the audience to correlate the sounds they are hearing with their arrangement in the frequency spectrum, while Monacchi’s own improvisations on flute and live electronics are strictly confined to the available acoustic niches, thus ‘building a powerful metaphor as of one species that performs within a composite ecosystem while trying to find a balanced, harmonic relationship to it … [and thereby] help[ing] to create an ecological awareness for repositioning our species within nature’ (Monacchi Reference Monacchi2011: 247–8).
While Monacchi’s works are generally intended for the concert hall or gallery, the numerous electronic compositions which comprise Walter Branchi’s all-encompassing work Intero (‘Whole’) (1979–present) are designed to be heard outdoors in specific environmental locations, with the object of facilitating a heightened appreciation of their natural soundscapes. This approach, which Branchi calls ‘integrated’ or ‘eco-’ music, stems from his strong ecological convictions, representing an attempt to nurture humankind’s relationship with the natural world:
It is a music that goes beyond the concept of the world centred exclusively on anthropocentric values, but is based on ecocentric values … It is a music interwoven into a network of interdependent relationships with the world outside … [in which the listener] is not the center of the happening, but is included; he listens to music, listening to the environment. (Branchi Reference Branchi2012: 71)
The interaction of electronic technology with environmental soundscapes also represents a central part of David Dunn’s artistic practice, in which sound is used as a medium to explore the ways in which ecosystems function. In works such as Entrainments 1 (1984), Sonic Mirror (1986–7) and Autonomous Systems (2003–5), automated electronic systems are set up in which the soundscape of a natural ecosystem is recorded, processed, played back into the environment and then recorded again, creating a feedback loop shaped by the interaction between the technological system and the living ecosystem, and in which ‘certain participants in the environment – the flies, the birds – begin to “play” the system, interacting with it’ (Burt Reference Burt2007). Dunn regards these sonic experiments as a step towards humanity finding a way back into the interconnected ecosystem from which we have become estranged:
I’m very interested in these archaic systems of understanding environmental balance: seeing ourselves as an intrinsic part of larger systems. I would be happy if my work serves no other purpose than to suggest ways in which we might rediscover this sense of fundamental connectedness … We need to compose processes of interaction which will help reestablish a saner balance of humanity within the biosphere. The language I’m envisioning is an experiential, dynamic process that explores whatever tools and metaphors are available in that direction. (Dunn Reference Dunn1988: 15–16)
4.3. Allowing us to experience normally inaccessible aspects of the environment
Ecological sound art can also allow audiences to experience aspects of the environment they would not normally have access to, facilitating a heightened knowledge of, and respect for, the world we live in. Another of Dunn’s works, The Sound of Light in Trees (2006), features detailed recordings of the pine bark beetle which is responsible for decimating the population of piñon pines in New Mexico, raising awareness of the problem by allowing us to hear the destruction going on inside the trees, invisible to the naked eye. However, this constitutes only one element of the work: Dunn also discovered that playing the recordings back to the beetles had a profound effect on their neural system, causing them to cease their tunnelling and feeding behaviours, and even shutting down their reproductive cycle, enabling him to use his work as an effective, and eco-friendly, form of pest control to actively combat the problem.
A different kind of hidden world is revealed in the sound works of former marine biologist Jana Winderen, which provide a sonic window into the underwater ecosystems which exist largely independently of human beings, encouraging our awareness and respect, and reminding us that we are not the centre of the universe:
[T]his relates back to the importance of the inaudible, to that which lies outside our senses and our possibility of perception. This is a field which we are not able to experience and yet other creatures are operating there. For me, it is important to hear this field since it is inhabited by beings who have existed for many millions of years longer than our species. Without wanting to sound at all New Age, it is an issue of respect, of sensitivity and of developing a questioning approach to the environment. (Winderen, in Lane and Carlyle Reference Lane and Carlyle2013: 157)
One recent project entitled Silencing of the Reefs saw Winderen working in collaboration with Germany’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation to explore the changing soundscapes of the earth’s remaining coral reefs and promote greater understanding of how they are being negatively impacted by human actions, asking: ‘[w]ill the reefs be silenced before we even have had the chance to listen to them and even begin to fully understand these fragile ecosystems?’ (Winderen Reference Winderen2013).
In December 2015, two works staged at the COP21 climate summit in Paris used sound to transport visitors to two very different environments under threat from climate change, bringing a vitally tangible and experiential dimension to the issues being discussed in theoretical terms at the summit. Leah Barclay’s Rainforest Listening (2015) was based at the Eiffel Tower and accessed via a mobile app which immersed visitors in a variety of rainforest soundscapes as they moved around, with each level’s viewing platform corresponding to a different layer of rainforest vegetation. On the streets of Paris, meanwhile, Holly Owen and Kristina Pulejkova were dressed as polar explorers, wearing ‘backpack cinemas’ equipped with headphones on which audiences could experience their work Switching Heads – Sound Mapping the Arctic (2015), in which an ice sculpture of a human head with binaural microphones planted in its ears explores the Norwegian island of Tromsø, listening to its soundscapes and hearing local people’s testimonies of the ways in which climate change is affecting it.
4.4. Communicating environmental data through sound
Some ecological sound works utilise sonification as a means to achieve an experiential understanding of ecological dynamics and processes. As a technique which involves mapping data sets onto sonic or musical parameters, sonification is increasingly being employed as a scientific tool in a range of fields, and for a wide variety of purposes (Hermann et al. Reference Hermann, Hunt and Neuhoff2011). Artist Andrea Polli collaborates with climate scientists and meteorologists to produce sonification-based sound works which comment upon climate issues, such as her Airlight series (2006–7), in which data from air quality monitoring stations in Taipei, Socal and Boulder are translated into sound to create a real-time aural representation of the levels of various atmospheric pollutants; and Sonic Antarctica (2009), the product of an artistic residency with the National Science Foundation, which blends field recordings, interviews with scientists, and sonifications of the climate data they are studying, enabling us to ‘hear’ our warming world from multiple perspectives. Heat and the Heartbeat of the City (2004), meanwhile, is an interactive work centred on sonifications of projected temperature increases in Central Park caused by global warming. In an interview regarding this project, Polli commented on what she felt sonification could bring to our understanding of the issue:
I think that sound is a very visceral thing and I think that if people can really feel the potential difficulties, the potential discomfort, but more than just uncomfortable, actual problems that will result from global warming, maybe in some way they will be convinced to think more seriously about the issue. (Polli Reference Polli2005)
Sonification is also at the heart of the compositional approach which Matthew Burtner has named ‘ecoacoustic’, describing it as ‘a type of environmentalism in sound … tak[ing] the form of musical procedures and materials that either directly or indirectly draw on environmental systems to structure music’ (Burtner Reference Burtner2005: 10). Burtner has composed many such ‘ecoacoustic’ sound works, such as Iceprints (2009), in which a hydrophone recording made beneath the Arctic ice is combined with a piano part based on a transcription of the recording, with its pitch determined by mapping the progressive decline in Arctic ice over the forty years between 1970 and 2010 onto the first six octaves of the keyboard, and each page of the score covering one year, thus translating the process of ecological change into music. Auksalaq (2012), meanwhile, is a multimedia ‘opera’ composed around a narrative which addresses the effects of climate change upon the Arctic through a combination of sonification-based compositions, field recordings, video and interviews with both climate scientists and the native Alaskan Inupiat people whose way of life is being threatened by the melting of the Arctic ice.
Perhaps the most widely known sonification-based work of ecological sound art, however, is John Luther Adams’s The Place Where You Go To Listen (2004–6), a permanent sound and light installation at the Museum of the North in Fairbanks involving the real-time sonification of geophysical and climatological data from the surrounding environment, allowing visitors to ‘hear’ the dynamics of the Alaskan ecosystem as a constantly unfolding composition. In the accompanying book, Adams reveals that the project stems from his conviction that ‘music can contribute to the awakening of our ecological understanding. By deepening our awareness of our connections to the earth, music can provide a sounding model for the renewal of human consciousness and culture’ (Adams Reference Adams2009: 1).
4.5. Facilitating community engagement with ecological issues
Finally, some works of ecological sound art move beyond the one-way ‘artist-to-audience’ dynamic to engage communities as active participants and collaborators, facilitating a direct and personal engagement with the environmental issues that most affect them. Leah Barclay has realised many such projects, underpinned by her ‘Sonic Ecologies Framework’, ‘a multi-platform methodology proposed to initiate cultural change through sound … [which] pivots on a site-specific creative project embedded in a multi-layered community cultural engagement process developed in response to a specific environment’ (Barclay Reference Barclay2012: 17). Her projects have included Sonic Explorers, which engages young people in ecological sound art; The Dam(n) Project, which has seen Barclay working with communities in India’s Narmada valley, using sound art as an activist tool to respond to the destructive damming projects which threaten their water supplies; and Biosphere Soundscapes, an ongoing series of networked projects in which artists and communities are working together to use sound as a means of understanding the environmental health of UNESCO biosphere reserves. All these projects stem from Barclay’s firm belief in the power of sound art to impact how we approach today’s urgent environmental issues:
Now, more than ever, there is a critical need to listen to our environment and generate a paradigm shift that engages our auditory perception. Sound, as a creative medium, is undoubtedly one of the most powerful means to stimulate this shift in consciousness. Electro-acoustic music, with the use of natural sounds exposing the state of the world, could be an unprecedented tool in artists taking action in ecological crisis. (Barclay Reference Barclay2012: 22)
5. THE ECOLOGICAL AGENCY OF SOUND ART
The five approaches outlined above serve to demonstrate just a few of the ways in which ecological sound art might help audiences to engage with contemporary environmental issues. However, it still remains to address perhaps the most vital question of all: that of whether ecological sound art can be regarded as a significant and effective means of approaching today’s urgent ecological crises. To answer this question, the final section of this article will draw from three key works of contemporary ecological theory, examining the parallels that exist between the new modes of thought they propose and the ways in which we experience sound art, and which reveal it to be an inherently ecological medium.
5.1. The ecological thought: sensing the mesh of vibrant matter
One of the fundamental pillars of contemporary ecological theory is the principle of interconnectedness between the different elements within the earth’s ecosystems, our understanding of which Timothy Morton describes as ‘thinking the ecological thought’:
The ecological crisis we face is so obvious that it becomes easy – for some, strangely or frighteningly easy – to join the dots and see that everything is interconnected. This is the ecological thought. And the more we consider it, the more our world opens up. (Morton Reference Morton2010: 1)
Morton coins the term ‘the mesh’ to describe the network of interconnections between everything, noting that ‘[t]he mesh of interconnected things is vast, perhaps immeasurably so … Nothing exists all by itself, and so nothing is fully “itself”’ (Morton Reference Morton2010: 15). He explains that the mesh does not just include living or organic forms, but all matter – every ‘thing’ on the planet – and that ‘each being in the mesh interacts with others. The mesh isn’t static. We can’t rigidly specify anything as irrelevant’ (Morton Reference Morton2010: 29–30).
In The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram states that the only way to truly internalise this principle of ecological interconnectedness is through the cultivation of our sensorial perception of the world around us, since to do so is to ‘enter into a sympathetic relation with the perceived … Perception, in this sense, is an attunement or synchronisation between my own rhythms and the rhythms of the things themselves, their own tones and textures’ (Abram Reference Abram1996: 54). Becoming sensorially attuned to the world in this way, argues Abram, will result in an embodied understanding of our place within the earth’s biosphere:
As we return to our senses, we gradually discover our sensory perceptions to be simply our part of a vast, interpenetrating webwork of perceptions and sensations borne by countless other bodies … It is, indeed, nothing other than the biosphere – the matrix of earthly life in which we ourselves are embedded. Yet this is not the biosphere as it is conceived by an abstract and objectifying science … it is, rather, the biosphere as it is experienced and lived from within by the intelligent body – by the attentive human animal who is entirely a part of the world that he, or she, experiences. (Abram Reference Abram1996: 65)
In Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett argues that it is our failure to acknowledge the vitality and power of non-human matter which ‘feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption … preventing us from detecting (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling) a fuller range of the nonhuman powers circulating around and within our bodies … [and impeding] the emergence of more ecological and more materially sustainable modes of production and consumption’ (Bennett Reference Bennett2010: vii–ix). Like Abram, Bennett advocates ‘a cultivated, patient, sensory attentiveness to nonhuman forces’ (Bennett Reference Bennett2010: xiv) as the key to enhancing our perception of, and respect for, their agency, arguing that ‘[s]uch a newfound attentiveness to matter and its powers … can inspire a greater sense of the extent to which all bodies are kin in the sense of inextricably enmeshed in a dense network of relations’ (Bennett Reference Bennett2010: 13) – in other words, facilitating our thinking of Morton’s ‘ecological thought’.
5.2. Sensing ecological relationships through sound
Sound’s unique ability to reveal the system of dynamic relationships that exists between things in the world is, of course, a fundamental pillar of acoustic ecology: in Acoustic Communication, Barry Truax states that ‘[l]istening … is the primary interface between the individual and the environment … Moreover, listening habits create a relationship between the listener and the environment … the interlocking behavior of sound, the listener, and the environment [are understood as] as a system of relationships, not as isolated entities … With sound, everything interacts with everything else’ (Truax Reference Truax2001: xviii–xix). More recently, in Sonic Possible Worlds, Salomé Voegelin notes that ‘[s]ound is the invisible layer of the world that shows its relationships, actions, and dynamics … [and] augments, expands and critically evaluates how we see the world and how we arrange ourselves to live in it’ (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 2). Voegelin explains that, since sound is the product of a dynamic event, it indicates not what is, but what is happening, in our environment, facilitating our perception of the network of relationships between things:
Sound … [indicates] phenomena that function not as objects or subjects, as entities, but sound the temporal connections between objects and subjects as things thinging, contingently … We do not hear entities but relationships, the commingling of things which generate a sonic world. (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 162)
In The Tone of our Times: Sound, Sense, Economy, and Ecology, Frances Dyson similarly notes that ‘[s]ensation is heralded by noise – the noise of movement, not of things. Sensation flickers on the skin and gathers up the body, pulls it out of its tempestuous inner monologue, and presents it with the world’ (Dyson Reference Dyson2014: 109). Like Abram and Bennett, Dyson argues that only a new sensibility, grounded in the direct sensing of the dynamic, vibrant world around us, can hope to furnish us with the true ‘common sense’ which is the necessary foundation for a heightened ecological consciousness – and ‘this is where sound and listening play a pivotal role’ (Dyson Reference Dyson2014: 149):
Sound’s ephemeral and atmospheric nature is, like the environment, something that circulates outside of exchange, and refocuses attention on the space and the environment of the subject rather than the subject per se … [that] offers some entry into the dilemma of how to hear the world and in hearing, also be able to act, with the aim and existential condition of the ‘in-common’. (Dyson Reference Dyson2014: 149)
Comparable descriptions of the inherently ecological nature of sound are also found within ecomusicology: in Music and the Skilful Listener: American Women Compose the Natural World, Denise Von Glahn observes that the fact that music ‘surrounds us and enfolds us in space simulates our relationship within the all-embracing natural world’ (Von Glahn Reference Von Glahn2013: 6–7), and argues that the act of listening encourages a particular mode of being in the world based on ‘growing into an environment rather than insisting upon reshaping it’ (Von Glahn Reference Von Glahn2013: 322). In The Jukebox in the Garden: Ecocriticism and Popular Music Since 1960, meanwhile, David Ingram explores the notion of ‘eco-listening’, which argues that ‘the activity of listening itself has a special role to play in the formation of ecological awareness’ (Ingram Reference Ingram2010: 16), concluding that ‘music is the art form best suited to fostering the ecological self … [since] the dominance of the visual sense in human beings encourages a sense of separation between subject and object, or human perceiver and things in the world, which has had disastrous consequences for the health of the environment … [while] the sense of hearing overcomes the limitations of sight by enacting the fundamental ecological principle of holistic interconnectedness’ (Ingram Reference Ingram2010: 59).
5.3. Sonic possible worlds
To move towards genuine and lasting ecological change, however, requires not just the attainment of more ecological ways of thinking and being in the present, but also that we are able to conceive of alternative futures: to re-imagine how things could be. In Eco-Aesthetics: Art, Literature and Architecture in a Period of Climate Change, Malcolm Miles considers art’s ability to help us to do this, asserting that ‘art inflects life, just as life inflects art. Representations of ideas establish them’ (Miles Reference Miles2014: 11), and going on to reflect that ‘[p]erhaps I am lost in a dreamworld if I imagine a postcapitalist, environmentally just and sustainably joyful society, yet unless I can imagine it I have no way to contribute to it … art … is an imaginative as well as an interruptive project, requiring a re-visioning of the world’s value structures’ (Miles Reference Miles2014: 29–30).
The power of sound art to realise such a re-visioning – or, perhaps more correctly, a re-listening – of the world is explored by Salomé Voegelin in Sonic Possible Worlds, in which she outlines how listening to sound can impact our perception not only of what the world is, but also, crucially, of what it could be:
Listening to the landscape’s pluralities and possibilities, hearing the dense multiplicity of its mobile production, allows us to challenge the singularity of actuality and articulate a different sense of place and a different sense of self that lives in those possibilities and shows us how else things could be … Sound slices through the visual frame and organisation to propose others: temporary, invisible, and ephemeral re-framings that demand our participation and re-frame the listener also. (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 22)
When we listen to a sound work, Voegelin argues, we become submerged in a ‘sonic possible world’, which is created and recreated by our experience of what we hear. Furthermore, when we emerge from the possible world that has been generated through our listening, we do not do so into the version of the world we previously inhabited – indeed, we cannot – since the new thoughts, perceptions and sensations that we have experienced will be carried forth into the actual world, creating ‘a different actuality linked to and infected by new possibilities’ (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 31). For Voegelin, this has ‘not only an aesthetic but also a social and political significance in that it has an impact on ideas about what the world and what the subject is presumed to be and what else they could be’ (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 2–3). Thus the effect of the sound work is to create not only a new possible world, but also a new possible listener with a renewed relationship with the world that is inherently ecological; as Voegelin explains, ‘[t]he listening subject inhabiting the sensorial sense of the work is not a humanist subject but a post-humanist subject who lives in equivalence and reciprocity with her environment and understands her role as one of responsibility instead of superiority’ (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 141).
Furthermore, the fact that these new possibilities are generated neither by the sound nor by the listener alone, but rather by the interaction of the sound with the consciousness of the listener, reveals ‘that the outside is not overwhelming and infinite, but is the intertwining of himself, his agency, with the agency of nature, equivalent, reciprocal, and generative … Such a worldview is more equal and does not grant the power of conquest but the responsibility of togetherness’ (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2014: 118). Sound art is thus revealed as a medium which inherently embodies and ties together the fundamental principles of contemporary ecological theory outlined by Morton, Abram and Bennett: providing a sensuous experience of the interconnectedness of our own agency with the agency of vibrant matter, as part of the dynamic and shifting mesh of the earth’s ecosystem.
6. CONCLUSION
As global weather patterns grow increasingly erratic, the Arctic ice sheets continue to recede and scientists issue ever-starker warnings concerning our fate, it has become increasingly clear that the numerous environmental crises we face require urgent action on an unprecedented scale; however, as Naomi Klein points out, ‘[f]aced with a crisis that threatens our survival as a species, our entire culture is continuing to do the very thing that caused the crisis, only with an extra dose of elbow grease behind it’ (Klein Reference Klein2014: 2). Given this situation, perhaps the most critical question of all is how we might begin to re-imagine our relationship to these environmental crises in order to overcome this state of fatal inaction: as Bill McKibben notes, ‘[w]e can register what is happening with satellites and scientific instruments, but can we register it in our imaginations, the most sensitive of all our devices?’ (McKibben Reference McKibben2005).
In recent years, an increasing number of artists have begun using sound as a medium to help us to do exactly that, creating works which take a variety of approaches including (but not necessarily limited to) creating metaphors to help us connect with environmental issues on a deeper and more personal level; articulating the harmonious coexistence of humankind and our technologies with the earth’s ecosystems; engendering awareness and respect for invisible or inaccessible areas of the environment; expressing environmental data through sound; and actively engaging communities in the environmental issues that most affect them.
This article has argued that this growing area of sound arts practice must be recognised as a significant contemporary movement in its own right; and that, following the precedent set within the visual arts, it should be distinguished from the wider field of environmental sound art by the terminology ‘ecological sound art’. Such a move is vital if this important movement is to be afforded the same recognition as that currently enjoyed by comparable ecological movements in other art forms, and included within the wider critical discourse surrounding the cultural response to contemporary environmental issues – a discourse from which it is currently notable by its absence.
Furthermore, the recognition that the fundamental characteristics of how we experience and relate to sound art directly embody the new modes of thought proposed by some of today’s leading ecological theorists regarding our understanding of today’s urgent and complex environmental issues reveals sound art to be an inherently ecological medium – one which enables a direct, sensorial engagement with the agency of vibrant matter, facilitating an embodied understanding of our embeddedness within an interconnected ecosystem, and creating sonic possible worlds which allow us to re-imagine how things could be. Taken together, all of these factors make plain the importance of establishing ecological sound art as a distinct and significant new field of practice within contemporary sound arts: one which, in the words of David Dunn, might perhaps serve as ‘a conservation strategy for keeping something alive that we now need to make more conscious, a way of making sense of the world from which we might refashion our relationship to nonhuman living systems … [and which might] provide us with clues to our future survival – and that is a responsibility worth pursuing’ (Dunn Reference Dunn2009: 97).
