1. Introduction
At a press conference on 22 February 2021, Dave Gruel of NASA suggested that the audience close their eyes and imagine themselves sitting on the surface of Mars as he revealed the first recorded audio from the planet. After the clip played, he described the experience as overwhelming. He lost his train of thought for a moment, ‘I can’t remember what I was going to go on and say next’ (NASA 2021: 42m40s).
The audio clip is not easily recognisable as the sound of a landscape and is not aesthetically beautiful. It sounds like a poorly fitted lavalier microphone rubbing against a shirt in an industrial fridge. Nevertheless, it is remarkable. It is remarkable because of its physical connection to a distant planet which no human has ever heard before. The recording is the direct result of sound waves on the surface of Mars causing the diaphragm of a microphone to vibrate. It is an audible trace of Mars.
This trace is distinct from realism; the fidelity of the NASA recording is fairly low, and it is difficult to understand what is being heard from the sound itself. Oliver Tarney’s heavily researched sound design for the 2015 film The Martian (Scott Reference Scott2015) is a cleaner and potentially a more realistic approximation of what the Martian soundscape might sound like to the human ear. However, it is unlikely to elicit the same response from Gruel and his audience. It lacks a physical connection to Mars itself.
In the following pages, I will be examining this physical relationship between recorded sound and its source to explore its potential for creative application in electroacoustic music. To do this, I will be drawing on photographic theory where concepts of trace and indexicality have been fundamental to practice and understanding. I am arguing that these concepts are transmedial and are a shared quality of both photography and recorded sound.
This article proposes an intermedial approach to electroacoustic composition and analysis. I suggest a theoretical model of ‘intermedial reference’ (Rajewsky Reference Rajewsky2005: 52), whereby the medium of electroacoustic music is approached through the established ontological and analytical frameworks of photography. Whilst photography and recorded sound differ in their ‘sensorial’ and ‘spatiotemporal’ modalities, they share a fundamental ‘semiotic modality’ (Elleström Reference Elleström and Elleström2010: 22). Specifically, both media are governed by a causal relationship between the recorded subject and the resulting media object.
This proposed framework expands concepts of intermedial transfer in relation to the sonic arts. The sonic trace demonstrates how visual-ontological theories can be productively transposed to audio media. In doing so, it provides a model for cross-media analysis based not on representational or narrative content but on shared mechanical and physical relationships to reality, thereby offering a new vocabulary for a musical discipline historically dominated by abstraction.
2. Photography and recorded sound
Both photography and recorded sound are methods of reproducing fragments of the world. Both use mechanical and either physical, chemical or digital means to record energy from the external world which can then be decoded and reproduced. Both are physically caused by emissions or reflections of energy – either photons or sound waves from the objects they record.
This causal relationship between the photograph, the sound recording and the external world distinguishes these mediums from other representational art forms. For example, there is no physical trace between a landscape painting and the landscape it represents, regardless of how true to life the painting is. Sonic renderings of birdsong or cannon fire in live musical works cannot be traced physically back to any specific event in the real world.
At their conception, both media followed similar cultural paths separated by around 30 years, what André Bazin calls the guiding myth – ‘an integral realism, a recreation of the world in its own image, an image unburdened by the freedom of interpretation of the artist or the irreversibility of time’ (Bazin Reference Bazin1967: 236). Documentation was initially considered a primary use of sound recording with Thomas Edison writing that the phonograph would outrank the photograph ‘for the purpose of preserving the sayings, the voices, and the last words of the dying member of the family – as of great men’ (Edison Reference Edison1878: 533). Similarly, Charles Cros of his invention, the paleophone, wrote that ‘Like the faces in cameos, I wanted beloved voices, to be a fortune which one keeps forever’ (Kittler Reference Kittler1999: 22). As Alan Licht notes (Reference Licht2019: 25), the invention of sound recording provided the first representation of a human in sound, something that had long been achievable in the visual arts.
Recorded sound and photography now occupy quite different cultural spaces. Whereas photography retains its cultural associations with documentation and preservation, becoming, among other things, an art form in its own right, recorded sound is primarily associated today with the presentation of symbolic or abstract sound, that is, language and music. As Seth Kim-Cohen puts it, ‘phonography has been, nearly from the outset, a conveyor of an already symbolic form, while photography has been accepted culturally as a conveyor of the real’ (Kim-Cohen Reference Kim-Cohen2009: 102).
Recorded sound’s relationship to the real is understandably of secondary concern in the context of most musical recordings of instruments and singers. However, electroacoustic music, in which sonic works are created from a near infinite variety of sound sources recorded from the real world, presents an opportunity for the creative embrace of this privileged relationship to the real.
3. Electroacoustic music and the real
The writings surrounding electroacoustic music and musique concrète have historically tended to align the art form with the form and abstraction of Western classical music. This is notably the case with Pierre Schaeffer’s interlinked concepts of ‘reduced listening’ and ‘sound objects’ (Reference Schaeffer1966). Schaeffer’s concepts have been frequently challenged not least by Schaeffer himself (Hodgkinson Reference Hodgkinson1987: 3). More recent revaluation of these concepts can be found in the writings of Joanna Demers (Reference Demers2010), Brian Kane (Reference Kane2014) and the book Sound Objects edited by James Steintrager and Rey Chow (Reference Steintrager and Chow2019) who challenge on various fronts the claim that a recorded sound can or should be severed from its physical cause. Nevertheless, Schaeffer’s theories and their guiding principle of abstraction have remained influential.
Where writing has focused on recognisable sounds in electroacoustic music, they are often discussed in terms of resemblance to the sounds they represent and their imagined sources rather than the causal relationship. Simon Emmerson’s ‘mimesis’ (Reference Emmerson and Emmerson1986), Denis Smalley’s ideas of ‘source-bonding’ (Reference Smalley1997), ‘source/cause’ and ‘indicative fields’ (Reference Smalley1996) and Trevor Wishart’s concept of ‘landscapes’ (Reference Wishart1996) all draw little distinction between sounds which are manipulated to resemble an aspect of reality and those which are directly recorded.
These theories acknowledge the relation of real materials to the outside world, and their potential to evoke non-musical meaning in the audience, but this is through resemblance rather than causality. For the use of recognisable or identifiable sounds in many electroacoustic works, this distinction is of little consequence. However, there is a value in acknowledging and experimenting with this causal relationship.
Some writers have touched on the subject of context-based compositions specifically within electroacoustic music. John Young and Ambrose Field both propose useful spectra relating to reality and abstraction (Young Reference Young1996) and reality and simulation (Field Reference Field and Emmerson2000). These bring us a step closer to the sonic trace but still relate primarily to auditory reception and imagination.
4. The photographic trace
The relationship between the photographic image and the world it represents has been of primary concern since the medium’s invention and remains a point of debate to this day. This tension stems largely from the historical comparison between photography and realist painting. The visual arts possess a lineage of literal representation that lacked a parallel in the history of sound prior to the invention of recording technologies. Music has not developed the same debates regarding representation. However, the theoretical literature generated by photography’s causal relationship to its subject provides a robust framework for audio media.
4.1. The index
A foundational term in the discussion of photography’s physical relationship with the subject it represents is ‘index’. The term has been widely used in the context of photographic discussion since the 1970s but has also been adopted and expanded by writers in different fields such as psychology and linguistics where it has developed its own distinct meanings.
The term was coined by semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce as part of a proposed three classes of sign early in his study of sign types, ‘icon’, ‘index’ and ‘symbol’ (Peirce Reference Peirce1998: 5). Iconic signs bear a resemblance to what they represent as in figurative painting. Indexical signs have a physical connection to the signified without necessarily resembling it, for instance, smoke signifies a fire, and a weathervane signifies the direction of the wind. A symbolic sign signifies its subject through cultural associations rather than any resemblance or physical connection. Words and abstract logos fall into this category.
Peirce’s theory of signs developed greatly beyond this trichotomy, but this is the distinction which is most widely used in photographic and fine art discussions and will be the most relevant for application to referential sound in electroacoustic music. The photograph and sound recording do not fit comfortably in these categories as they are both caused by their referent (an indexical relationship) and often, though not always, resemble it (an iconic relationship).
Peirce wrote very little on photography and nothing on recorded sound but does classify the photograph as an indexical sign whilst acknowledging its iconic characteristics. He notes that in certain respects, photographs are ‘exactly like the objects they represent. But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature. In that aspect, then, they belong to the second class of signs [index], those by physical connection’ (Peirce Reference Peirce1998: 5). Although like paintings, photographs tend to look like their subject, Peirce classifies them in the same category of signs as weathervanes signifying the direction of the wind and smoke signifying a fire. Photographs and recorded sound are caused by their referent.
The aspect of recorded sound discussed by Emmerson’s mimesis, Smalley’s source bonding and Wishart’s Landscape is the iconic aspect, resemblance. The fly in Wishart’s Red Bird ([Reference Wishart1977] Reference Wishart1978), for instance, sounds convincingly like a fly and is considered mimetic by Emmerson (Reference Emmerson and Emmerson1986: 34), but there is no physical connection to any insect that really existed. In this respect, that sound is iconic, but it does not hold an indexical relationship to its referent; rather, it relates to the voice of Wishart himself.
4.2. Fascination
The combination of resemblance and causality as acknowledged by Peirce is at the heart of the enigmatic quality photographs possess, which Tom Gunning calls ‘fascination’ (Gunning Reference Gunning2004: 48). As Gunning and others have observed, this quality goes far beyond the uses of photography as a sign. Whilst Peirce’s distinction above is useful to demonstrate this special quality of photographs and recorded sound, it does not fully do justice to the extent of this quality. Different elements of this fascination have been described by authors in different ways over the years.
Kendall Walton writes of the ‘jolt’ felt in mistaking the photorealistic Big Self Portrait of Chuck Close (Reference Close1967–Reference Close1968) for a photograph only to later find out it was a painting. He describes the change in attitude as ‘more like discovering a guard in a wax museum to be just another wax figure. We feel somehow less “in contact with” Close when we learn that the portrayal of him is not photographic’ (Walton Reference Walton1984: 255).
Roland Barthes’ (Reference Barthes1981) concept of the ‘punctum’ is similarly reliant on this intertwining of index and icon. The punctum is a nebulously defined aspect of certain photographs which ‘pricks’ the viewer and is not found in other forms of visual representation (Barthes Reference Barthes1981: 27). For Barthes, this aspect is not normally the intended subject of the photograph but can be a small and often accidental detail with personal significance to the viewer.
Barthes also identifies time as a punctum (Reference Barthes1981: 96) and is pricked by the realisation that the human subject of an old photograph is dead or likely to be so. He puts this in terms of the ‘that has been’ of a photograph, ‘by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces the belief that it is alive… by shifting this reality to the past (“this has been”) the photograph suggests that it is already dead’ (Barthes Reference Barthes1981: 79). He reports the same emotional response upon hearing the recorded voices of dead singers (Barthes Reference Barthes1981: 79), a response that Jonathan Sterne also talks about as a cause of fascination in the era of early sound recording (Reference Sterne2003: 289).
Susan Sontag describes how looking at photographs of human suffering differ from other visual representations of the same subjects, writing that ‘there is a shame as well as a shock in looking at the close up of a real horror’ (Sontag Reference Sontag2003: 41). This is a sentiment echoed by others including Walton (Reference Walton2008: 80) and Elkins (Reference Elkins2011) and is reliant on the knowledge that what is shown in a photograph is both visually accurate and the result of an indexical process.
Barthes’ prick, Walton’s jolt and Sontag’s shame are responses to photography’s combination of an uncanny resemblance (icon) and the knowledge that this resemblance is the result of a direct causal link (index) to its real life and often human subject. These responses are not elicited by weathervanes, smoking chimneys or other indexical signs. Neither are they elicited by other iconic visual representations, but rather by the intertwining of the index and the icon in photography.
4.3. Manipulation
Geoffrey Batchen suggests that the production of all photography involves some level of manipulation through choices related to lighting, exposure time, etc. (Batchen Reference Batchen2002: 139). This is similarly the case with recorded sound, where manipulation comes in the form of microphone placements, choice and in post-production seemingly invisible adjustments such as EQ and levelling. Here, I will be discussing the more overt and transformative forms of manipulation as well as distortions or faults which have the potential to impact the iconic relationship between the work and its source.
Manipulation of this type is commonplace in photography, although to a lesser extent than in recorded sound as used in electroacoustic music. But discussion of whether manipulation impacts the fascinating qualities of photography is a useful framework to stretch for application to processed sounds in an electroacoustic music context.
André Bazin addresses the index as decoupled from the icon. He writes ‘No matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discoloured, no matter how lacking in documentary value the image may be, it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model’ (Bazin Reference Bazin1960: 8).
This assertion, if read to mean that the photograph is ontologically identical to the subject it reproduces, is a controversial one and goes a step further than Peircean semiotic categorisation. Kendall Walton seeks to explain Bazin’s ideas through his concept of ‘transparency’ (Walton Reference Walton1984: 251) which is a useful tool for the context of discussing electroacoustic music.
Walton suggests that photography can be thought of as a transparent medium. When one is looking at a photograph, they are seeing the object through it, rather than seeing the actual object directly. Just as telescopes and microscopes allow us to see things that are far away or too small to see with the naked eye photography enables us to see into the past. What we see is the represented subject through a photograph even if the photograph itself is not the subject. Photography, Walton asserts, represents not just a way of making pictures but another form of seeing.
Even manipulated or misleading images retain a degree of transparency, comparable to viewing an object through water or a fairground mirror. When looking at a composite photograph, one still perceives its constituent parts; the medium remains transparent to the subjects even if the depicted event never occurred. Similarly, heavily distorted photographs can be considered transparent, provided the viewer recognises the process of distortion. However, in his 2008 addendum, Walton suggests that digital images are more likely to be opaque due to the comparative ease of their manipulation (Walton Reference Walton2008: 115). This implies a sliding scale of transparency, subjective to each viewer and dependent on their ability to recognise the methods and processes involved.
In photography, there is a significant body of literature regarding the maintenance or loss of the index in digital images compared to analogue forms of photography. This is worth further study in relation to recorded sound. For the sake of this argument, I am adopting a position aligned with Tom Gunning (Reference Gunning2004: 40) and Jane Seppänen (Reference Seppänen2017), for whom the manner in which photons are captured and stored does not reflect a diminishment of causality. Whilst there is clearly a distinction between digital, chemical and physical reproduction in photography and recorded sound, this does not substantively change their status as indexical media. In both cases, however, digitisation has made transformative manipulation somewhat easier, although in the case of electroacoustic composition transformative manipulation has been well established in analogue forms since the birth of the genre.
Discussing maintenance of the index following quite extreme manipulation, Gunning writes the following: ‘The power of the digital (or even the traditional photographic) to “transform” an image depends on maintaining something of the original image’s visual accuracy and recognizability’ (Gunning Reference Gunning2004: 41). This is in line with Walton’s description of transparency (Reference Walton1984: 251). Whilst one may still be able to trace the index through an unrecognisably manipulated work, the transparency, which I am arguing go some way to preserving the fascination felt by photography, can be easily lost.
In electroacoustic music, this kind of transformative manipulation is extremely widespread and often fundamental to a work. There is a potential inherent power in the intertwining of index and icon which is common to recorded sound and photography, but with manipulation this becomes fragile.
4.4. Truth
The indexical relationship of photography to its subject does not guarantee a faithful representation or truthfulness. Conversely the manipulation or unrecognisability of a photograph does not affect its indexical relationship, but rather its iconic aspects. Truthfulness and realism are qualities often attributed to photographs in the culture which qualifies their admissibility as evidence in a court of law or as proof of identity in use as passport photos. But this is not an inherent property of all photography or all uses of photography. The appearance of realism in a photographic image is again dependent on visual accuracy and what Tom Gunning calls a ‘truth claim’ (Reference Gunning2004: 41).
Gunning uses this phrase to describe the claim that photographs are true or accurately represent reality. This, he notes, means that there is always a suspicion of fakery in the photographic image and particularly in relation to images produced in the age of digital manipulation. These claims are not made by the photographs themselves but are contextual and culturally determined. He writes ‘the apparatus, in itself, can neither lie, nor tell the truth. Bereft of language, a photograph relies on people to say things about it or for it’ (Gunning Reference Gunning2004: 42). Joanna Demers discusses a similar concept in relation to soundscape composition noting that whilst these works subscribe to the idea that sounds possess an inherent ‘truth content’, they ‘reflect the same sorts of authorial choices made in any other determined work’ (Demers Reference Demers2010: 123).
The manner in which contextual information is communicated about photographs is largely through written captions. Without this contextual information, many photographs are impossible to accurately determine. Alan Sekula writes that ‘photographs, in themselves, are fragmentary and incomplete utterances. Meaning is always directed by layout, captions, text, and site and mode of presentation’ (Sekula Reference Sekula and Wells2003: 445). This, as we will come to, is perhaps key to unlocking a similar level of engagement with the external world in electroacoustic music as in photography.
Although outside the purview of this article, it is worth noting the destructive effects images and sounds generated by artificial intelligence have on the truth claim of photographs and recorded sound. Whilst these artificially created media lack the indexical qualities of a recording, they are in some cases virtually indistinguishable from photographs or recordings. There is much more research to be done on this but with the perceptual boundaries between these forms eroding, the concept of indexicality becomes a useful framework for distinguishing the recorded from the generated.
5. Ontological differences
Whilst I have been making the case for the application of theories relating to photography to composed sound works, there are significant differences between the two media which potentially impact this application.
5.1. Visual primacy
It has been evidenced that visual recognition is stronger than auditory recognition (Cohen, Horowitz and Wolfe Reference Cohen, Horowitz and Wolfe2009). Modern Western culture is accordingly visually dominant. We find ourselves able to distinguish and recognise visual cues more readily than audible cues. This accounts, at least partially, for how film audiences will gladly substitute the sounds of chopped cabbages for decapitations and cloth for wind. As pointed out by Rick Altman (Reference Altman1992: 44) and Michel Chion (Reference Chion1994: 96), in motion pictures we have come to expect sounds to be fabricated, either through synthesis or Foley. To watch a film where the sounds are exclusively recorded on location in real time is ‘totally strange’ (Chion Reference Chion1994: 96). In modern Western culture, we have become accustomed to the falsification and substitution of sounds.
This is perhaps one reason why it is more common to discuss recognisable sounds in electroacoustic music in terms of source/cause and imagination rather than actual physical source. This is compounded by what Brian Kane describes as the ‘underdetermination’ of source and cause in sound separated from its context, a condition inherent to the acousmatic situation. ‘Just because a sonic effect is the result of an interaction of a source and a cause does not entail that a listener is certain about the source and cause based on hearing the sonic effect alone’ (Kane Reference Kane2014: 8). The listener can either treat the sound as a discrete sound object or search for a cause.
I’ve described how the intertwining of indexical and iconic aspects of photography is the basis of much of the fascination for the medium. Whilst this still exists in the realm of audio recording, the iconic aspects of the sound are less readily identified, in many cases, than their visual equivalents. The cultural preference for the visual does not negate the potential power of recorded sound’s privileged connection to its source; the indexical relationship remains intact. However, the difference in relative cultural uses and expectations of the two art forms makes it more important for the composer, if desired, to communicate this relationship.
Ambrose Field addresses the issue of sonic identification in discussing Andrew Lewis’ Scherzo ([Reference Lewis2009] Reference Lewis2013). Field observes that as we do not know Lewis’ children, whose voices feature in the piece, the work evokes the concept of children in general (Field Reference Field and Emmerson2000: 49). Likewise, Katherine Norman’s London (Reference Norman1996) presents a generic soundscape until certain ‘keynote’ sounds are introduced which locate it. He suggests that recognisable sounds ‘often lack the specific contextual details that are required to associate them to particular extramusical events. For example, sounds of passing cars, birdsong and environmental ambiences are so common that it is difficult to assign them to particular times or places’ (Field Reference Field and Emmerson2000: 42).
This is true also with photography, from a photograph of a passing car it is likely not possible to pick out the exact city unless there is some recognisable landmark or other identifiable information. However, the context of presentation, the temporal ephemerality of recorded sound and the discrepancy of details between objects that reflect light and those that emit sound makes this a particular issue for recorded sound used to convey extramusical meaning.
Anette Vandsø provides the concept of the ‘paratext’ to describe how context can be communicated in ‘compositions that refer to a very specific event, space, place or category’ and where ‘we cannot identify the real-world context from the sounds alone’ (Vandsø Reference Vandsø2017: 3). This is a concept Vandsø has borrowed from Gérard Genette (Reference Genette1997) and refers to the ‘texts that are not exactly on the inside of the artwork, nor the outside’ (Vandsø Reference Vandsø2017: 5), for example, the liner notes, programme notes, album cover or title.
Where the audible content of the work is not recognisable, including where it is heavily manipulated, then these become increasingly important. Without this explicit stating of the context, the understanding of these works is lost, or vastly different. Paratexts serve the same purpose for works of electroacoustic music as captions or gallery labels do for photographs and works of visual art.
5.2. Temporality
Salomé Voegelin compares sounds to ghosts, writing ‘the spectre of sound unsettles the idea of visual stability and involves us as listeners in the production of an invisible world’ (Voegelin Reference Voegelin2010: 12). This is a poetic allusion to the fact that sound is only perceived following some transfer of energy. Unlike the mostly stable visual world, sound is ephemeral and does not provide a clear overview of its causal object. In the acousmatic presentation of sound, this invisibility is amplified.
When played back, recorded sound is experienced ephemerally, whereas photographic images are, in practical terms, static and unchanging. As a result of this, the focus and attention of the audience of recorded sound is to a greater extent in the control of the creator who can choose the duration of exposure to each sound. This may also compound the above point relating to iconic recognition: sounds can appear and disappear without much chance for study, contemplation or recognition.
A key aspect of photography is its stasis − its apparent ability to fix a single moment in time. This is a defining element of photography that cannot be shared by recorded sound due to its temporal nature. Rather than rendering movement still through the recording of light energy, recorded sound is solely a representation of movement and the transfer of kinetic energy; the still elements of a landscape are not audibly recorded.
Christian Metz argues that unlike in still photography, the temporality of motion picture is experienced as being present (Metz Reference Metz1974: 8). In film, this allows the audience to become immersed in the world presented. However, this also grants the potential for a greater sympathy from audiences when emotive subjects are reproduced. While a photograph may represent what has been, the temporal formats of sound and film recreate motion and consequences unfolding in real time − it is, as Metz puts it, participatory (Reference Metz1974: 8).
The apparent participatory nature of temporal medium allows for a more engaging artefact than the still photograph. Watching film or listening to audio of an atrocity can impact our emotions more than looking at a photograph. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag describes the desensitising effects of seeing painful photographs (Sontag Reference Sontag2003: 41). This can be linked to the ‘that has been’ quality which Barthes suggested (Reference Barthes1981: 79). While the audience of pre-recorded temporal media acknowledges that what they are experiencing has also been and cannot be altered, the unfolding participatory nature of the experience adds a tension that is not present in still photography and can be used creatively, especially when working with confronting or challenging source sounds. Brandon LaBelle alludes to this tension in the context of sound, writing that ‘every sound is an index of an event that, by the time we hear it, has already transpired […] The articulated presence of any sound, at one and the same moment, is to be found in its disappearance and its becoming’ (LaBelle Reference LaBelle2018: 96).
5.3. Spatial elements in recorded sound
Sound differs from photography (including motion picture photography) in its spatiality. Photographs are generally speaking confined to a frame. When printed, they are separated from the lived environment by virtue of their own characteristics, namely their flatness and their defined edges. As Walton pointed out: ‘Only in the most exotic circumstances would one mistake a photograph for the objects photographed’ (Walton Reference Walton1984: 249). This is not true of recorded sound, which as discussed by Michel Chion (Reference Chion2015: 105), fills a space and can be difficult to pinpoint. Even when recordings are presented in mono, sound can be difficult to distinguish from those of the listening environment. When presented over multiple channels, as is common in electroacoustic performance, a spatial stage is created making this distinction between the art and the lived environment even more diffuse.
Casey O’Callaghan suggests that this phenomenon, which he terms ‘mediated awareness’, may be down to the fact that the sound heard over a loudspeaker is ‘the same metaphysical kind as the purported object of mediated awareness’ (O’Callaghan Reference O’Callaghan2007: 150). Hearing a recorded sound is the same perceptual experience as hearing the original sound in situ, which is not the case with still photographs.
This makes the idea that when hearing a recorded sound, you are hearing the object represented more compelling than its photographic equivalent offered by Bazin. This is an area of recorded sound where the potential realism granted by the combination of indexical and iconic aspects of the sound can be exploited to greater effect than in photography.
6. The sonic trace and electroacoustic music
The sonic trace can be defined as the physical, indexical and often iconic link between a recorded sound and the specific real-world acoustic energy that caused it. It is the sonic equivalent of the photographic trace which serves as the bedrock of the theory discussed in section 4 and allows for similar concepts to be applied to recorded sound. This framework can be used for understanding recorded sound in relation to its sources and functions simultaneously as an ontological category, an analytical tool and a compositional strategy. I will now consider some examples before laying out a practical framework.
6.1. Phonography and soundscape composition
Photographic thinking is most directly applicable to the sonic arts which already seek to engage with the real, namely works of phonography and minimally edited soundscape composition. Here, a study of photographic theory beyond that which I have covered briefly in this article will provide a rich and useful means of understanding and probing the relationship of the real to the recorded sound.
As demonstrated by the varied interviews in Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle’s book In the Field (Reference Lane and Carlyle2013), there is no unified approach or philosophy adopted by practitioners. There is a spectrum in phonographic works between those which withhold paratextual references to their sources and those where context is more explicitly revealed. It is in phonography that we generally find aesthetically chosen sounds which directly engage with aspects of the real world through the embrace of their indexical relationship to their referent. An example of this is David Michael’s The Slaughterhouse (Reference Michael2012), which present largely unprocessed sounds from an abattoir.
The Slaughterhouse is confrontational in its transparency. The recordings are presented with very little, if any, post editing beyond selection of a start and end point. Sonically, they feature the sounds of whirring machinery, reverberant conversations and the squeals of animals for the slaughter. The work has a truth claim which is established through paratexts including the title of the album as well as individual track names such as ‘Prepping the cutting room’, ‘Skinning’ and ‘The head comes off, the innards come out’.
The work functions photographically. It evokes fascination and is emotionally charged through its representation of extramusical content and the knowledge that this content is causally linked to events in the real world. This is accomplished through seemingly transparent presentation, paratexts and a knowledge on the part of the audience that what they are listening to has a physical connection to a real event – in this case a disquieting event. These are curated fragments of lived experience which have been reproduced in an art context.
6.2. The human voice
The human voice is a uniquely recognisable subject matter, is widely used in electroacoustic music and is difficult to objectify or apply reduced listening principles to. We can recognise and distinguish between voices in a way that we cannot with any other type of sound. Recent research has uncovered that the same area of the brain is activated in voice recognition as in visual recognition of faces (Rhone et al. Reference Rhone, Rupp, Hect, Harford, Tranel, Howard and Abel2023). This peculiarity of human voice as a source sound makes it a particularly compelling area of electroacoustic composition to approach from a photographic perspective.
Cathy Lane has coined the term ‘Docu-music’ in reference to the use of archival recordings in electroacoustic works, of which she writes ‘the main function of the spoken word material is as a signifier to historical authenticity, a voice of authority or verité … it signifies a witness and it is a carrier of the past’ (Lane Reference Lane2011: 9). Here, the relationship to extramusical meaning is accomplished by an authentic and indexical connection between recording and witness. Works she uses to illustrate this include Steve Reich’s Different Trains ([Reference Reich1988] Reference Reich1989) and Gavin Bryars’ The Sinking of the Titanic ([Reference Bryars1969] Reference Bryars1975).
Although not electroacoustic works, these are useful examples because the semantic content does not betray the message. The connection to the holocaust in Different Trains and the sinking of the Titanic in The Sinking of the Titanic is largely established through contextual information rather than the content of the speech itself. Yet the inclusion of the archival material, and the knowledge that what is being heard is the voices of survivors and witnesses to known historical tragedies, makes these works profoundly moving in a way that would be lessened significantly had the same words been spoken by actors.
Trevor Wishart’s catalogue offers numerous works which engage well-known public voices and embrace their extramusical associations − notably Two Women ([Reference Wishart1990] Reference Wishart2000) and American Triptych ([Reference Wishart1990] Reference Wishart2000). The utterances in American Triptych are used as sound objects and contorted musically. The recognition and associations are created through the timbre and rhythm of the edited voices rather than semantic content, with voices clearly recognisable as Neil Armstrong, Elvis Presley and Martin Luther King. Although Wishart downplays the importance of these indexical connections to historical figures (Wishart Reference Wishart and Lane2008: 72), they form an integral part of the work and its interpretation.
Wishart’s composition Encounters in The Republic of Heaven ([Reference Wishart2010] Reference Wishart2011) is a useful contrast to The Slaughterhouse. Wishart heavily transforms his material to the point of complete abstraction during the piece whilst maintaining the sonic trace and clear indexical connection to the material throughout. Apart from a brass band, all material used in the work is spoken voice recordings. These are transformed to various degrees of transparency, but always retain some semblance of either pitch, timbre or rhythm and are largely presented in the context of their spoken source material.
This can be quite extreme, if we take for example the section of the piece called The Dancer’s Tale, Wishart uses a pitch following filter and a harmonic field filter with very high Q to produce from the voice single sinusoidal tones, which are then further processed with reverb, time stretching, vibrato and tremolo (Wishart Reference Wishart2020: 25). Taken out of context, these sounds appear completely synthetic and hold very little iconic resemblance to the human voice. However, within the piece, their origin remains clear and traceable. They are opaque sounds, but, due to their temporal positioning alongside the more transparent material along with the commonality of pitch, this material shares enough resemblance with their source to maintain a sonic trace.
Extensive paratexts accompany the work, with a 64-page booklet accompanying the CD and programme notes accompanying performances. However, the trace functions without this additional information due to the inherent recognisability of the human voice and the progressive and consistent way transformations are handled. Wishart’s portraits convey a distinct character to each contributor which is clearly conveyed and often exaggerated through the editing, providing an equivalent to the photographic portrait.
Anecdotally, I have found that the representation of a known subject in recorded sound is even more profound than in photography. Hearing the voice of a lost loved one is often more arresting for the survivors than a photograph would be. This is likely related to a combination of the implied vitality which Barthes describes as well as the participatory nature of temporal media as discussed by Metz.
This emotional response is tied to the indexical relationship between the recording and the subject of a now deceased being, while alive. As with Barthes’ punctum, this is reliant on the relationship of the listener to the represented sound. There is a unique vitality imbued in the voice, especially when phrases are kept intact, which is not present to the same extent in the motionless recorded image. This can be used to great effect in works of electroacoustic music.
7. A framework for the sonic trace
Recorded sound is inherently an indexical medium, and it is often uncannily iconic. It is the intertwining of these two qualities which allows for the potential emotional response I’ve labelled fascination, and it is through compositional choices that these properties are revealed or concealed. The choice of source sounds, degree of transparency, interplay of materials and the paratexts are all key parameters in highlighting or concealing the sonic trace in any given composition.
For a work to forefront the sonic trace and have the potential to elicit a fascination response, the choice of source material is important. They will often be specific and compelling in some way, perhaps carrying some historical, cultural or psychological weight. Fascination is not universal, but unique to each audience member. Just as there are plenty of boring photographs of interesting subjects, there is no guarantee of establishing fascination through sound recordings.
Jonty Harrison’s Klang ([Reference Harrison1982] Reference Harrison2004) is a useful example here. Klang carries the sonic trace of a casserole dish; this is well communicated through paratexts and can be recognised through the sequential and gradual abstraction. The work is musically satisfying, but there is little cause for fascination with the source sound: a casserole dish does not elicit an emotional response for most audience members.
Walton’s transparency serves as a useful way to consider the communication of the sonic trace in composition of a work. For the sake of electroacoustic composition, it is useful to think of sonic transparency as being on a sliding scale dependent on the treatment of sound as well as the expectations and knowledge of the audience. Generally, an unprocessed field recording sits at one end, with complete abstraction from the source at the other. These can be treated as musical parameters and used to build tension and release within a piece.
Transparent recordings do not necessarily need to be recognisable as the sound they represent. Just as seeing through a microscope allows us to see the microbial world that we otherwise could not, listening to a minimally edited contact microphone recording of metal allows us to hear a world of resonance we otherwise could not. This is still a transparent recording, although functionally it is abstract.
If we filter this recording of metallic resonance so that the pitches are just tones, retaining the rhythm of the wind igniting the metal or the clanks of chains against bars, we have a sound that is partly transparent. It is still recognisably derived from the original recording, which is indexically linked to the original site.
If we granulate that recording so that those tones blur into a drone and the rhythm is lost, this sound becomes more opaque again, but there is still some semblance of that original connection to the real. If we modulate that material, shifting the pitches to a musical scale, we are nearing a point of complete opacity where there is very little of the original sound left.
Depending on how these treatments play out in the piece, this sound may still retain a recognisable connection to the original recorded sound and to the real. If each of the steps above happen sequentially and can be linked together, the audience may recognise the progression and link the cloud of pitches to the original source as with the Wishart example described above. However, the decontextualised presentation of purely opaque sounds is unlikely to carry the sonic trace in a way which is perceived by the audience.
Paratexts can be thought of as compositional parameters, as they are instrumental in communicating the source of a sound which can be hinted at or reinforced as strongly as desired. A truth claim can be established, or cast into doubt through these paratexts and through the means of presentation directly impacting the reception of the work.
If in our example the metal which we attached our contact microphone to had some wider cultural significance, we may be able to engender fascination. If the metal we were recording was a twisted iron girder in the midst of a war zone resonating through mortar blasts, or the wind causing the gates of a concentration camp to vibrate, or even the jewellery of a lost relative, then this would become a significant sound source. If this information was effectively conveyed to the audience through paratexts and a truth claim established, we could create a work of electroacoustic music which although being functionally abstract and musically satisfying would also hold a tangible and meaningful connection to the real world and one with the potential to emotionally resonate with an audience.
8. Conclusion
Not every piece of electroacoustic music would benefit from an engagement with the sonic trace. But by applying an intermedial framework that adapts existing theories of photography’s relation to the real, the connection between sounds and the external world can be revealed, discussed and exploited beyond resemblance and metaphor. By recognising the potential power of the sonic trace, the composer gains the means to access and conceptualise a unique form of fascination – one that allows an indistinct recording of a whirring machine on the surface of Mars to hold enough weight to stun a room into silence.
