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Blind Listening
- Wesleyan University Press
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Blind Listening Many nature recordings as well as some current sound art embody an aesthetic that is governed by traditional bioacoustic principles, which emphasize procedural , contextual, or intentional levels of reference. Whenever there is such a stress on the representational/relational aspect of nature recordings, the meaning of the sounds is diminished, and their inner world is dissipated. Counter to this trend, I believe in the possibility of a “blind” listening, a profound listening that delves deeply into the sounds and is freed as much as possible from such constraints. This form of listening doesn’t negate what is outside the sounds but explores and aYrms all that is inside them. In my sound work I am not attempting to document or represent a richer and more significant world. My compositions are oVered as openings through which the listener can access and focus on this inner world of sounds, the transcendental dimension of the sound matter itself. My piece La Selva, for example , was not meant to be a representation of La Selva, the reserve in Costa Rica. While it certainly contains elements that could be construed as representational , this sound work is rooted in a sound matter paradigm rather than having a documentary intent. Structurally, La Selva follows a prototypical day cycle of the rainy season, beginning and ending at night. This was a compositional decision. La Selva was conceived and created as a musical composition. My apprehension of sound matter itself, and not any possible intention of documenting the place, dictated all editing and montage decisions. The sounds of many animal species are included in the recordings that constitute my work La Selva, and they have even been identified, but none of them has been singled out in the processes of recording and editing. With traditional bioacoustics, the calls, songs, or other sounds of a certain species are usually isolated from the “background” sound of its environment in both the recording and the editing processes, and the contrast between the foregrounded species and its background is even further enhanced. In La Selva the sound-producing animal species appear together with other accompanying biotic and nonbiotic components that inhere in the sound environment . Any resulting distinction between foreground and background was [ 163 ] francisco lópez ⢇ not arranged purposefully but emerged incidentally, due to the location of the microphones, as might occur with our ears. My attention was “focused” on the sound environment as a whole, which is one of the reasons why there are no indexes on the cd. I wanted to discourage a focal listening centered on the entrances of species or other sonic events. The habitual focus on animals as the main elements in a sound environment is particularly limiting. Not only are nonbiotic sound sources evident in many nature environments (rainfall, rivers, storms, wind), but there is also a type of sound-producing biotic component that is usually overlooked and exists in almost every environment: plants. In most cases—especially forests—what we tend to refer to as the sound of rain or wind might more aptly be called the sound of plant leaves and branches. If our reception of nature sounds were more focused on the environment as a whole, rather than on the organisms we perceive to be most similar to us, we would be more likely to take the bioacoustics of plants into account. Further, a sound environment is the consequence not only of all its sound-producing components but also of all its sound-transmitting and sound-modifying elements . The birdsong we hear in the forest is as much a consequence of the trees or the forest floor as it is of the bird. If we listen attentively, the topography , the degree of humidity of the air, or the type of materials in the topsoil become as essential and definitory of the sonic environment as the soundproducing animals that inhabit a certain space. Addressing the call to widen our scope of attention from individual species to the whole environment, Bernie Krause has oVered his “niche hypothesis,” in which diVerent aural niches are basically defined in terms of the frequency bands of the sound spectrum that are occupied by diVerent species. This approach interests me because of its explicit intention of expanding classical bioacoustics from an auto-ecological (single-species) to a more systemic perspective , considering assemblages of sound-producing animal species at an ecosystem level. But this hypothesis is still indebted to the field of bioacoustics in that...