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.
Home page JSS
(2024)
author(s): Journal of Sonic Studies
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Home page of the Journal of Sonic Studies
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.
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.
Sound Scraps and Resources of Ethnographic Writing
(2024)
author(s): Julie Métais
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Ethnographic work generally involves making sound recordings (recorded interviews, field recordings, or archival documents), whether or not the research includes a sonic dimension. But the sonic corpus of ethnographical research does not stop there; it also includes recorded "notepads," recordings related to daily life, telephone messages, etc. A large part of these sound data is discarded at the time of analysis and writing. What if it were otherwise? Relying on my research on cultural expressions of political conflicts in Oaxaca (Mexico), I propose a reflective approach to an initially discarded corpus of sounds, in order to reevaluate my listening and recording position as an anthropologist.