//Unheard_Landscapes - listening | resonating | inhabiting 10th FKL/ENP/AAU_CRESSON International Symposium on Soundscape BLOIS | October 27 -30

Unheard landscapes: this metaphor leaves space to imagination, to the un-thought, to the un-known, to past and future, as well as unexplored sound scenarios. It also reaches the field of auditory perception, the acoustic domain. Sound, through auditive qualities, acoustic phenomena, design practices, artistic creations, and listening experiences, offers an inspiring transversal entry onto landscapes and ambiances. Beyond the discussions on “soundscape”, approaching ordinary environments through sounds increases the awareness of our own capacities to feel, while we inhabit and move across different worlds. From an ecological perspective, resonance appears a key word, too. It puts sound and space together. It implies the idea of a plurality of bodies, things and living beings vibrating all together, sharing common contexts of time and space. The act of listening bypasses the passive meaning it usually receives. It contains in itself a completely unexpressed potential, connoted with «project», «pro-action» and «active decision» by individuals. What will be the sounds of the future and the soundscapes in which we will live, or would like to? How can listening practices evolve, how will we listen or how differently could we listen to the world around us, tomorrow? Inhabiting the world brings to us questions about how we want to manage our being in it. How do we want to inhabit the world sonically? How sound and listening do actually affect our way to inhabit it? Have we lost some of our abilities to resonate with the world? What remains to be heard? Where could the practices of listening and attuning take us to?

Anne SOURDRIL | FR |

Paper

SONATAS. Écouter l’environnement changer, ou comment les perceptions des sons construisent les savoirs écologiques locaux… et scientifiques.

Abstract

SONATAS (Listening to the SOund of NATure to understAnd environmental changeS - funded by LabEx(s) DynamiTe and Driihm 2018-2021) is a set of multidisciplinary research projects around perceptions of the sounds of nature. Through these projects we aim to understand (i) how local communities perceive their landscapes and ecosystems through their immediate sound environments, in a context of strong changes in societies and their environment; (ii) how these populations view adaptation to environmental changes; and (iii) what sounds tell us about the state of ecosystems and our societies. Our projects, combining anthropology, geography, ecology, and bioacoustics, are located in contrasting field sites in France (Ile de France, Vosges and Occitanie) and in the United States (Arizona). These lands are facing multiple changes, including global warming, urbanization, agricultural and land-use changes, erosion of biodiversity. Through investigations combining acoustic recordings and sensory ethnography (participant observations, semi-structured interviews, or guided walks), we seek to understand how the environment is heard by local communities and how sounds contribute to the construction of local diagnostics of changes in their immediate environment. We explore the coexistence, on the same territory, of different types of ecological knowledge (local, experts, scientists…) and therefore of potential variations within the perceptions of sounds. This communication will be an opportunity for us to question the definitions concerning the sounds/noises that we share (or not) between the different researchers of the project (what is anthrophony for example and is it a component of soundscapes or pollution to be removed from recordings?). We also want to question the methodological and conceptual issues that this poses and which allow us to move forward on the mutual conception that we have of sounds.

Anne Sourdril is an anthropologist, researcher at the CNRS, and a member of the UMR 7533 Ladyss. Her research focuses on the dynamics of socio-ecological systems in the context of long-term environmental changes. She is interested in the dynamics of ordinary biodiversity and associated knowledge and representations (place of local, expert, or scientific knowledge in conservation programs) and addresses these questions in interdisciplinary and comparative research programs. Lately, she has focused on the sounds of nature as a local indicator of environmental and sociological changes. Her research fields are located in southwestern France, western North Carolina, and southern Arizona (United States). Luc Barbaro is a researcher at INRA and the University of Toulouse (UMR Dynafor), France. She is a conservation ecologist and biogeographer studying bird, bat, and insect communities in fragmented forest landscapes. She is especially interested in linking bird and bat conservation to the ecosystem services they provide to forest and agro-ecosystems by regulating insect herbivory. She favors community- and trait-based approaches to study the effects of land-use changes on bird and bat diversity, and has recently supervised two PhDs on bat and bird ecology using large-scale passive acoustic monitoring.

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