4.3 Acousphere
Approaching the relationship between human and more-than-human actors from an acoustic viewpoint, their interaction occurs through an interplay of direct and reflected sound waves. From an Indigenous Sámi perspective, this interaction is grounded in the co-presence of human and more-than-human worlds and an interchange between human actors and the living environment – spiritual forms understood as persons who inhabit and permeate natural elements, landscapes, and material substances (Mulk and Bayliss-Smith 2007; Helander-Renvall 2010: 45–46), such as rocks and mountains in the case of this study. Understanding this interaction in terms of sonic materiality implies an exchange of vibrational energies, flowing back and forth between the human and more-than-human agencies, in which the active imperative voice is ascribed to the latter.
To depict a site’s acoustic space as one comprised of self-generating vibrational energies – emerging through interaction with human vibrational energies – the concept of acousphere is proposed here. This concept builds on the idea of self-creating and self-functioning biological and cultural systems as formulated in the notions of biosphere (Vernadsky 1998) and semiosphere (Lotman 1990). While the biosphere represents the global ecosystem, understood as the life-producing stratum of Earth that continuously circulates matter and energy, the semiosphere is conceived as a self-operating semiotic space in which constantly evolving processes of semiosis result in the creation of new information. Both concepts refer to integral, self-regulating systems defined through their interactions and the interconnectedness of their parts and newly emerging entities.
With the caveat that acousphere is not to be understood as a global system but rather as existing within a local site’s ecosphere, it encompasses both human and more-than-human sound agencies and consists of circulating sound matter in which direct and reflected energies operate in reciprocal interaction. The space is therefore characterized by coexistence, interconnectedness, and polyphony – terms that resonate with a barrier-free inter-subjective sharing of presence and mutual conditioning by humans and spirits as described in Indigenous research (Helander-Renvall 2010: 49–50).
Echophony, referring to a site’s sound reflections, is an implicit part of the soundscape activated by more-than-human sound agency within an acousphere and must be considered as part of the local ecosystem, alongside its geophony, biophony, and anthropophony (Krause 2013).[19] Although echoes are sounds mainly produced by nonbiological terrestrial formations, classifying them as geophony is insufficient to account for the interactive qualities of these distinctive sounds. Likewise, reflected sounds do not fall neatly within anthropophony or biophony, as these sonic energies are ultimately generated through geological structures as part of a site’s natural, interactive relationship with human and more-than-human entities.
Developing the concept of the acousphere further: this space can be understood as an entanglement of human and more-than human voices and presences. This understanding closely aligns with musicologist Stéphane Aubinet’s notion of enchantment (2020: 198, 200, 206), articulated as the ability of Sámi chants to resound places with vivid presences.[20] This notion is applied to yoiking as a relational act between human and more-than-human agencies, in which the environment is endowed with its own yoiking voice, enchanting force, and vitality. Thus, the acousphere emerges as an acoustic space of echoing sites, comprising intertwined sonic strata and operating through correlation, convergence, and interchange between human and more-than-human sound waves. With the rock – or similar reflecting surface – acting as a medium, the acousphere converts human-made sound waves into sound waves generated by something larger: the environment, the ecosphere, or even the entire universe.
From the perspective of sonic matter, an acousphere provides a space of vibrational confluence, where human sonic energies and those originating from reflecting material bodies interact and engage in communicative processes. In conclusion, combining materiality with an Indigenous Fennoscandian perspective, the concept of the acousphere can be defined as an acoustic space that represents the entanglement of human and more-than-human vibrational energies as experiences of co-creation and mutual continuation of each other’s voices. Conditioned by sacred landscapes, an acousphere is a medium through which material vitality and vibrant matter become explicit, and human and spiritual forces share their vibrational nature.