On the ecology of quiet sounds
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‘Inclusive [listening] means also to listen closely to silences, background noises, the concealed, and unsaid’ (Palme in Fischer-Lessiak 2022, p. 92).
Let’s start where we left off yesterday, with today’s thoughts on this beautiful idea. For some reason I have become obsessed with exploring very quiet sounds. This probably intensified during the pandemic when we were all stuck at home and the world was quieter. It extends through to my fascination with birdcalls and other small, delicate sounds of nature I have increasingly observed since moving to an extraordinary wild environment 14 years ago. Always the die-hard urbanite, I had hitherto disregarded such sounds as whimsy, trivial, irrelevant. I had taken them for granted. Now I have come to respect, understand and pay attention to them as essential to the environment I rely upon. I observe the tiny sounds, sometimes the raucous ones, of my fellow creatures as signatures that mark the weather, the time of day, the presence of others – family, mate, or predator - sounds of their feeding and sleeping, playing and breeding; these sounds have now become integral to my daily life. I have also become aware that these other beings listen to me; the cricket that stops chirping as I pass, the frog that silences its pulse when I speak, the snake that writhes away from my footfall, the sulphur-crested cockatoos that cock their heads at my conversation and respond in a cadence that mirrors it. This has allowed me to understand sound as something which passes through me and listening as, ‘an ecology in which we are not only listening, but listened to’ (Robinson 2020, p.98). I turn again to acoustic ecologist and soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp in my attempt to articulate the new directions this is taking my practice in:
‘We are the ones that make listening and working with sound and music our profession. It is therefore a logical extension that we would also be concerned about the ecological health of our acoustic environment and all living beings within. If we — who are specialists in listening and sound-making — are not concerned about the acoustic environment, then who will be? …Why then should composers and musicians not make it their calling to use their special knowledge and education to listen to the world from the ecological perspective?’ (Westerkamp 2002).
Composers have been co-constructing the idea of an ecology of music since the 1960s. Important practitioners and thinkers in this area include William Kay Archer, John Cage, R. Murray Schafer, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, and of course, Westerkamp (Palme 2002, p. 50-1). Pia Palme says that ecology influences the contextual parameters of music making: ‘the content, the structure, and form – the aesthetics – of composing as well’ (ibid., p. 51). This is increasingly true of my own compositional and improvisational practice, evident in my works which directly examine ecological and environmental questions (e.g. Tipping Point 2021; Currawong Call 2021; Call and (a) Response 2022). However, in my view, such an ‘ecological perspective’ should not only include, but might also stretch beyond, the realm of nature and other species with whom we share our planet to members of our own species who may be hidden from view, struggling to survive, silenced by the forces of our masculinised, militarised, industrial society and the structures of patriarchy. I feel we must attend to, to emphasise Westerkamp’s phrase: ‘the ecological health of our acoustic environment and all living beings within it’ (Westerkamp 2002). In other words: certain people, ideas, and voices that we don’t usually get to hear above the din. I have developed a determination to seek them out in Emergenc/y and other works I am making in this phase of my career. Thus, I am interested in invoking processes through these works that ask for a different quality of listening to music and sound, to each other, and to ourselves, making the act of creating work a ‘journey that circumscribes the relationship, the conversation between composer and sound sources’ (ibid.) – and that invites the audience to enter into the act of curious listening too.
A conceptual underpinning of Emergenc/y is to consider the question of gender from different angles. I myself have often experienced objectification due to my gender, or trivialisation, or worse. On such occasions it felt absurd that here I was, presenting myself in my entirety as a human being, while the other person was only seeing me for my gender and judging me according to their own gendered prejudices. This was a thread echoed by respondents across the recent study I conducted with over 200 female and gender diverse music creators resulting in the Women and Minority Genders in Music report (Wilcox & Shannon 2023). Thus, I felt that in Emergenc/y, we might explore ways of going past the external physical features of a person to investigate their internal corporeal reality as a framing for some of the practice-based research.
I asked performers (see Emergenc/y page on this website for performer bios) to investigate the internal structures of their instruments, as well as any very quiet sounds they might yield through radical extended techniques and preparations. Composers such as John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Cor Fuhler, Aphex Twin, Liza Lim, Malin Bång, and many improvisers such as Magda Mayas, Laura Altman, Aviva Endean, Jim Denley have explored such ideas. They have similarly been a feature of the exploratory practice I investigate with my collaborators John Encarnaçao and Lloyd Swanton in our improvising project, W.E.S.T. (see Cooke & Wilcox 2022). But such ultra-quiet sounds are not traditionally considered suitable within an operatic context – if for no other reason than that they would simply not be audible.
Also as a metaphor for ‘amplifying the voices’ of the marginalised; I was interested in recording these super quiet, internal sounds in optimal conditions, and then during the performance magnifying them through amplification. This even led to enquiries about using the anechoic studios at my university for recording with a near-silent noise floor (an idea that hit a logistical stumbling block). I did however engage my sound designer, Bob Scott, to make recordings of the super quiet sounds we had together with the performers identified as being of interest to the project, using hyper-sensitive mics, a sound-proof room and professional speakers to accurately gauge the result. These recordings were made at a sample rate of 96k, in 7.1, and aside from capturing performances of mostly very quiet, isolated sounds resulting from radical extended techniques and preparations, they also captured free improvisations by the performers using these techniques (and others) that lasted several minutes. These improvisations are precious artefacts, in that they range across techniques in ways particular to each improviser, bringing the inner and outer dimensions of both performer and their instrument together ‘and in this totality the entire ecosystem can be heard’ (Palme 2022, p.51). I am now in the process of devising ways to include them in the final work. Listen to this space!
Cooke, G. & Wilcox, F. 2022. Audiovisual Gesture and Spectromorphology: the Invalid Data W.E.S.T. project. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media. Vol. 18(1). London: Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.1080/14794713.2022.2101317Palme, P. 2022. Composing futures. Activism and ecology in contemporary music. In: Sounding Fragilities, I. Lehmann & P. Palme (eds.) Wolke Verlag, Hofheim.
Robinson, D. 2020. Hungry Listening. Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Westerkamp, H. 2002. Linking Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology. Organized Sound, Volume 7, Number 1, 2002.
Wilcox, F. & Shannon, B. 2023. Women and Minority Genders in Music, University of Technology Sydney: Sydney. https://www.wmgmreport.com
