Earwitnessing: Critical reflections on sonic historical geographies

Boasting an impressive array of maps, statistics, and graphics, the Historical Atlas of Canada has undoubtedly contributed to a broadened portrayal of Canadian geographies.¹ Like many cartographic materials of its time and place, however, the Atlas was a silent – and silencing – text. Nearly a quarter of a century since its first publication, it is useful to consider what could be learned about cultural, historical, environmental, and political landscapes of Canada if we shift the focus towards sound. What might sonic methods and knowledge contribute to historical-geographical scholarship, and what challenges might be posed by a renewed emphasis on listening? Our position is that greater attunement to the soundworld, as part of new or "repositioned" methodologies, can produce polyphonic understandings of past, present, and future worlds. We caution, however, against unreflexive calls for listening that may reproduce settler colonialism or other forms of oppression.

Critical listening is by no means a new endeavour. Sonic ways of knowing have been particularly central to and enlivened by diverse indigenous cultural practices of past and present. Likewise, oral history and phonography have increasingly held a place in social science research. Scholars have long championed the importance of listening to diverse knowledge bearers, training early researchers to ask open-ended questions that encourage rich oral accounts full of emotion, history, and meaning. And we have now lived twenty years with the Delgamuukw ruling that oral evidence can be admitted as proof of a bond between people and territory.² Yet sonic imaginations remain relatively under-flexed within geographical scholarship.³ What kind of openings might sound waves provide for understanding historical-geographical change?

Advocating for sonic methodologies in historical research requires more careful consideration of seemingly mundane questions like what sound is, what attending to the soundworld involves, and what kind of work listening does. When we speak of the need for a "re-positioning" of listening, four ways come to mind. First, we encourage geographers to move sonic ways of knowing out of the methodological margins, designing research projects that are rooted in listening and making sound. Importantly, this must include more concerted attempts to engage with the materialities of sound and listening.⁴ Thinking of properties of sound as vibrational relationships expands conceptions of space, time, and rhythm, and creates openings for interdisciplinary collaboration. Second, recognizing that listening is active and embodied, a greater "spatial auditory awareness" may involve bodily re-positioning to hear in more nuanced ways.⁵ At times this involves moving to willfully interact with or make sound waves; other circumstances may require carving out spaces of stillness or silence to hear otherwise imperceptible sounds. Third, critical sonic geographies might also encourage the re-positioning of existing geographical techniques, instruments, and auditory technologies to listen in more inclusive and ethical ways. Finally, as we discuss later, it is important to consider the role of listening in decolonizing processes, which includes thinking about how listening itself might be decolonised.

The ephemeral, slippery qualities of sound provide unique challenges especially for hearing the past.⁶ Indeed, decay is a key property of most sound events; without equipment, it is difficult to hear or recall certain sounds, especially those that have dissipated beyond earshot. Yet we must not be too quick to dismiss bodily, institutional, and inter-generational memories of sound. Despite the admitted challenges of listening, sonic methods invite questions about how even fleeting or decayed sounds might be revived or made audible through material objects, digital technologies, and spaces of playback. These are challenging tasks in a field relatively new to sonic methods, but could lead to enhanced ways of listening to (and for) the past, present, and future. In what follows, we draw on our own ongoing research projects to show examples of sonic methods informing historical-geographical scholarship.

Matt Rogalsky and Laura Cameron's research on sonic field technologies and techniques of the early Canadian sound recordist, William W.H. Gunn, showcases the potential for historical geographers to explore more technically how equipment, recording styles, mixing practices, and spatialities of playback have shaped (predominantly settler) conceptualisations of nature-culture, nationalism, and migration.⁷ Their outdoor sound installation, "Into the Middle of Things," was part of group exhibition entitled "SOUNDWORK" held at Fieldwork, a rural art space near Perth, Ontario.⁸ As the title suggests, they wanted to put the listener right "into the middle of things": spatially (the middle of a proposed trail and the largest indigenous land claim in Ontario), temporally (raising questions about the role of future, current and buried geographies), and ethically (critically addressing settler perception through the use of historical field recordings). The piece incorporates Gunn's 1954 recordings of the white-throated sparrow, a bird frequently heard as strongly symbolic of Canada.⁹ Conveying a spatial distinction between birds recorded in Algonquin Park and those captured in the Adirondacks, Rogalsky and Cameron fed the Algonquin sparrow recordings through the right ear and the Adirondack calls through the left. A microphone is also present in the field, on a stand, picking up live ambient sounds and mixing them in listeners' ears with the songs of the sparrows. Such an installation thus invites listeners to bear witness to more-than-human sounds of past and silenced geographies while also becoming active performers in the moment.

Rogalsky and Cameron's work helps identify at least three distinct approaches to sound-based inquiry in historical-geographical research: using sonic methods to inform broader historical inquiry, undertaking historical analyses of sonic field recording practice, and exploring the life geographies of early recordists and sound studies scholars. Each of these routes can incorporate sonic and non-sonic methods to stitch together geographies of past and present.

Impulse responses: Recording carceral space

In addition to working with historical sound recordings, Matt Rogalsky experiments with impulse responses to fuse together more-than-human lives, places, and times. Impulse response techniques involve activating a space acoustically by creating an impulse (such as popping a balloon) and recording to the result as an "acoustic snapshot" that can then be used to digitally recreate the reverberation of the space. Katie Hemsworth, for instance, used impulse recordings Rogalsky collected from the now-closed Kingston Penitentiary (1835-2013) to further exemplify her writing on the acoustic spatialities of prisons.¹⁰ As an accompaniment to her written text, she recorded herself reading her abstract and later processed the audio through Rogalsky's recordings of different areas of the prison, demonstrating the changing aural architecture and affective soundscapes of the historic penitentiary as if she was taking the reader-listener on a tour of the penitentiary. Demonstrating their versatility, Rogalsky used the same impulse responses for reverberation on drums and vocals in his production of a rock music album, weaving together the acoustics of the 19^th century penitentiary with contemporary performances of the band PS I Love You, from their 2012 album Death Dreams.¹¹ We highlight these examples to show the flexible uses of such recording techniques; both projects created an opportunity to represent and re-imagine the penitentiary through acoustic space. Future research might consider how or whether impulse response techniques provide less intrusive engagement with restricted, abandoned, or endangered environments through sonic simulation.

Expanding the (sound) archive

Biodiversity change is often heard before it can be seen. Reflecting on A.E. Douglass's notion of "talkative trees,"¹² historical geographers might ask: what kinds of sonic histories do trees, birds, and other living entities tell, and how might we re-position our research practices to better hear (or feel) such histories without inflicting environmental harm? Such questions, investigated by Katie Hemsworth, are part of a broader "critical dendro-provenancing" project led by Kirsten Greer on the histories of the British North Atlantic timber trade.¹³ Greer, Hemsworth, and several co-researchers are creating a multi-sensory GIS story map that reconstructs the "socio-biophysical landscapes" of the British North Atlantic timber trade.¹⁴ Part of this research trajectory involves the creation of a more-than-human sound archive of Bermuda to reflect changes in soundscape over the past two centuries. Historical recordings of now-extinct, endangered, or revitalised species (including recordings from the aforementioned William W.H. Gunn's library) helps the otherwise visual story map come alive sonically. The story map provides a launching point toward the application of sound art to communicate scientific and historical findings related to climate change, energy transition, and imperial trade. Such a project is inspired by existing art-science collaborations that sonify climate change data through music, drawing connections between sonic, digital, scientific, and arts-based methods.¹⁵ Through this project, Greer and Hemsworth will show how sonic information creates openings for mobilizing and expanding the archive.

Decolonising listening?

Calls for listening as part of reconciliation have re-centred orality and aurality in the telling of more inclusive histories of Canada and Turtle Island (music to these sonic geographers' ears!). Part of a reflexive approach to sonic methods, however, must involve critical recognition that sonic environments tell their own stories of the effects of settler colonialism.¹⁶ It is well documented that place names are potent examples of re-writing place as techniques of colonial power, yet rarely is settler colonialism conceptualised as re-tuning or even un-hearing place.¹⁷

Sonic methods offer exciting potential for producing polyvocal teachings of the past. Scholars also have a responsibility, however, to think critically about how sonic methods might (unintentionally) reproduce auditory violence and related effects of settler colonialism. When settler-recordist William Gunn asked children to "listen with all their might" in an exercise called "Nature Music," it presented a different and exciting way of engaging the world, one that invited deeper connections with sonic environments.¹⁸ It is worth asking, however, if such a call might also be interpreted as acquisitive, disciplinary, or competitive listening, bearing traces of colonialism through acts of silencing and non-consensual earwitnessing. Silence can be a powerful form of resistance and survival in specific contexts, but as Jason Ryle states in his introduction to the sound installation, Noodaagun. Beacons., "the history of colonisation is also one of silence and oppression."¹⁹ Sonic methods and field practice thus raise critical questions about enforced silence and other forms of acoustic violence, recognizing the physical force of sound as well as the affective potential for sound and recording equipment to elicit fear.²⁰ In addition to these cautions, a critical exploration of sonic sovereignty has yet to be effectively studied. Part of this will involve making concerted efforts to understand the dynamic ethics of consent, reciprocity, and ownership. Historical geographers might also consider the role they play in helping return auditory stories to the people and places from where they were taken. The sound-based practices discussed in this brief intervention, which might be part of a broader project of decolonizing listening, are best done in careful consultation with non-academic communities and with a keen ear for more-than-human well-being.²¹

Critical engagement with listening as a way of knowing means recognizing the cultural histories of making and listening to sound, but also, importantly, forming deeper knowledges of acoustics, vibrations, and materialities that shape sonic experience. If historical geographies shift to re-position sonic ways of knowing more centrally, questions about what is (and is not) heard must be expanded to reflect the notion that critical listening takes time as well as place.