Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 27. Issue 27 Issue 27

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  Touching Excess: Haptic Sound from the Multispecies Delta (2024) author(s): Sandro Simon published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  Mollusc gleaning in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal, hinges on the situated navigation of a deltaic world in flux. It unfolds both above and below water as well as in the mud and is crucially guided by haptic engagement, which in turn generates sound. Audio/visual inquiry into gleaning explores the sensuality of this haptic engagement and its more-than-human dimensions. Haptic sound, as this article traces, has thereby been key. Indexing to touch and how it creates contact with the self and with the other, haptic sound affords proximity. At the same time, it points beyond the all-knowing and all-sensing self by probing intensities and making us aware of resistance and impenetrability. As such, haptic sound evolves at a limit and harbors excess. In the recordings from the delta, haptic sound is also conveyed by the “indeterminate” and the ways tones and sounds mix and interchange and are difficult to localize and categorize; by the “disproportionate” and the ways the sound of touch is amplified and appears as “too loud”; or by the “imperfect” and the ways sound is grainy, overdriven, distorted, dull, piercing, full of static hiss or windy, and so forth. Thereby, the materiality of recording devices and the constructiveness of mediation with all its affordances and limitations become palpable as well. Haptic sound, this article concludes, is thus touching and, in this touching, evokes both more-than-human sensitivity and alterity. In mobilizing both experience and reflection, it ruptures anthropocentrism and ultimately opens up pathways to reconsider both anthropology and cinema as well as audio/visual practice in general with an ear to an embodied multispecies conviviality.
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  (Back)ground Noise. A multimodal Ethnography of Loudspeakers in a Roma Neighbourhood (2024) author(s): Jonathan LARCHER published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  By combining text and three video essays, this contribution presents a multimodal ethnography of loudspeakers in the Roma neighborhood of a Romanian village. It is based on video recordings, which were left out of the analysis and editing of my documentary films because of sound distortion. Revisiting my fieldnotes and the “ethnographic rubbish,” here I establish a critical study of my initial position – for 15 years I wasn’t paying attention to loudspeakers as an object of study in their own right – and I argue how these sounds have become auditory markers of the neighborhood since, at least, the beginning of the 2000s. The article thereby contributes to the fields of both anthropology and sound studies. It shows how the use of loudspeakers is made up of rivalry, interference, fame, fraternity, and familism. Moreover, the analysis shows how the lines between public and private spaces, and between oblique listening and noise cancellation are continually reconfigured in a community obsessed with mutual acquaintance.
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  How to Fail a Field Recording. An Ethnomusicologist’s Perspective (2024) author(s): Victor A. Stoichita published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  This paper reflects on the relation between “field” and “recording” in listening to “field recordings.” It is rooted in the author’s experience as a student and, subsequently, a researcher in the anthropology of music. The paper strives to map the gap between academic and artistic conceptions of field recording by asking whether and how field recordings can be failed. The author’s own experience with the genre is indeed one of frequent disenchantment. The paper identifies different meanings of field, discusses how recordings are supposed to make those fields available to the listener, and asks whether in field recording “music” and “soundscapes” should be treated as different kinds of objects.
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  Introduction: Exploring the Phenomenon of Sonic Waste in Anthropology (2024) author(s): Heikki Wilenius, Jonathan LARCHER published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  The introduction to this special issue of The Journal of Sonic Studies addresses the concept of sonic waste in anthropological research. Stemming from a laboratory session titled "Rubbish, Noise, Experimentations: New Afterlives of Field Recordings" at the 2020 European Association of Social Anthropologists conference, this collection reconsiders ethnographic recordings traditionally categorized as noise or errors. The text sets the stage for the ensuing contributions that critically engage with discarded audio materials, challenging the long-standing emphasis on clarity and precision in field recordings. This introduction explores the notion of “ethnographic rubbish” – recordings that fall outside the ethnographer's initial analytical framework – and positions this rubbish as worthy of scholarly attention. It argues for the inclusion of these “noisy” artifacts in the broader ethnographic narrative, suggesting that they can offer unique insights into the affective and infrastructural aspects of the researched environments. By foregrounding the materiality of sound and advocating for a multimodal ethnographic approach, this introduction invites a reassessment of what constitutes valuable data.
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  A Conversation on Discarded Recordings (2024) author(s): Heikki Wilenius, Ernst Karel, Jonathan LARCHER published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  What can be considered as a discarded recording in an ethnographic inquiry? Do the instabilities and technical errors show that technology is really part of the encounter of ethnographic situations? Furthermore, is there a limit beyond which a sound that is too degraded can no longer be restored but simply described in writing, the preferred medium of the human sciences in general and anthropology in particular? These three ideas were at the center of an online conversation with Ernst Karel, starting with the film Expedition Content (2020) made with Veronika Kusumaryati from the sound archives of the Harvard-Peabody expedition (1961) in Dutch New Guinea. The many errors and failures that punctuate Rockefeller's recordings – we also listened to some recordings that did not appear in Expedition Content – form a fertile ground for thinking about the tactics and listening that can make examining ethnographic rubbish a heuristic, both for the history of the anthropological discipline and for the history of the place where it was recorded.
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  Authoring Noise, Noising Authority: Loudness and Oratory in an East Javanese Family Gathering (2024) author(s): Heikki Wilenius published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  In this article, Heikki Wilenius reexamines an initially disregarded field recording from a family meeting in East Java, Indonesia, to understand the interplay between loudness and authority. The focal point of the analysis is the presence of a massive sound system in the gathering and its impact on social interactions. Wilenius explores the oratorical practices within the context of the event and examines the different ways speakers attempt to speak in an authoritative manner. Additionally, he investigates the semiotics of noise, considering it not as a mere lack of structure but as a moment of interruption that can produce insights upon closer analysis. Wilenius argues that the loudness of oratory events in Java implies power but can also risk being perceived as empty rhetoric. He suggests that authority in Java has a semiotic ideology where refined, ignorable sounds can coexist with harsh, compelling ones. The article concludes that the materiality of the recording itself serves as an ethnographic object that resists assimilation into a cultural context, offering insights into the dynamics of authority at play. By embracing the "deficiencies" of the recording, Wilenius uncovers new dimensions of the ethnographic experience, proposing a methodology of repeated listening to reveal structures within seemingly arbitrary sounds.
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