Sounds only

Woche 37 - 42 / 8.09. - 19.10.08

"Hearing Places" kuratiert von Ros Bandt

Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time, Culture How do we hear and respond to place?
37 international artists and scholars have responded to this question from their unique perspectives, interrogating place as acoustic space where sound, place, time and culture collide. This book transcends the boundaries of geography, time and discipline through its imaginative and scholarly writings and CD, provoking us all to pay attention to how we hear place.

01. Jay Needham / Listening at the Border / 2:33
02.-05. Peter Read / At the Cemetery a) - d) / 6:11
06.-09. Aaron Ximm, Cathedral in the Desert /3:18
10. Roger Dean / Space of History / 3:03
11. Johannes S. Sistermanns / Klangort / 3:32
12. Ruth Hadlow – Noetoko / Truck Journey / 0:40,
13. Ruth Hadlow – Noetoko / Dawan Prayer / 0:45
14. Ruth Hadlow – Noetoko / Grave Digging / 1:08,
15. Ruth Hadlow – Noetoko / Pig by the Graveside / 0:21
16. Ruth Hadlow – Noetoko / Salam Maria Prayer / 0:44
17.-18. Carolyn Birdsall / All of Germany Listens to the Fuhrer: Sondermeldung 24/6/1940 / 2:33 / und 5/5/1943 /0:34
19. Paul Carter / The Irish Famine Memorial / 3.38
20. Kumi Kato / Waiting for the Tide: Japanese Ama Divers / 3:31
21. Kozo Hiramatsu / Gion Festival / 2:39
22. Ros Bandt / Goats in Crete’s White Mountains / 0:50,
23. Ros Bandt / Holy Girdle Arriving / 2:45,
24. Ros Bandt Lyrakia Café / 1:20
25. Le Tuan Hung / Ho Mai Nhi / 2:58
26. Cilia Erens / Transit Soundwalk / 1:25
27. Cilia Erens / X Minutes of Silence / 1:56
28. Garth Paine / Reeds / 1:07
29. Garth Paine / Map 1 / 1:03
30. Garth Paine / Gestation / 1:03
31. Ricardo Huisman / The Sound Pill / 3:05
32.-34. Wang Zheng Ting / From Huangpu to the Yarra and Back: Shanghai / 0:24 / Melbourne Promenade / 0:56 / Shanghai/ Melbourne / 0:43 /
35. Iain Mott / Zhong Shuo / 2:44
36. Kiera Lindsey / Ear To The Ground / 1:50

INTRODUCTION
ROS BANDT, MICHELLE DUFFY AND DOLLY MACKINNON

Hearing Places brings together thirty-seven scholars and artists whose work explores the concept of place as a variety of sonic landscapes, and the significance of the sounds and many voices that inscribe and create such landscapes. This anthology contributes to the recent interest in sound and the sonic environment, such as The Auditory Reader (2003), Hearing Cultures (2004), Hearing History (2004), Empire of the Senses (2005) and Spaces Speak, Are You Listening (2006). This publication is the first edited collection by both scholars and artists of different disciplines that interrogates, from theoretical and creative perspectives, the relationship of sound, time, place, and culture. Drawing on a diverse range of evidence—a defined landscape, a geographical location, a printed page, a sonic habitat or an intersection of human communication—contributors have responded to how “hearing place” is understood and interpreted across social, cultural, artistic, historical and geographical perspectives.

Section One explores the significance of listening and how this shapes our ideas and perceptions about a place and its inhabitants. Sound fragments, overheard conversations, “auditory glances,” witnessing, and silences—these everyday, almost mundane sounds contribute to our relationship to place, yet, these are not simply passive and untroubled activities. Listening and not listening have moral and ethical implications, not only for the voices that speak and are heard, but also for the ways in which voices constitute particular forms of power that can entrap others in muted, misheard or silenced spaces. The activity of hearing refocuses our attention on the experience of place, for we are asked then to take note of our connection to, and immersion in, place through sound. In Section Two, place is constructed, remembered, embodied, restored and re-created through certain aural signatures that enable us to interact with that place in new ways. Yet, as these authors point out, this experiential approach to place is not simply one of immediacy, even though the sounds themselves may be ephemeral. Rather, such aural signatures are the outcomes of our complex relationship to place, representations that arise out of our Introduction to memories, our perceptions and needs, as well as the cognitive and creative responses generated through sound.

The chapters of Section Three ask us to consider the challenges faced in attempting to hear other voices often obscured by the activities and beliefs of the everyday. Our daily lives are haunted by numerous soundscapes, not only in the sense of the past entering the present, but also in the physical presence of “others”—or, as one author discusses, the way we can be made ‘other’ in an alien landscape. What is evident in these writings is the way in which sound becomes a signifier of identity and power, and the ramifications this has for those deemed “outsiders.” These chapters address ways we can perhaps enable such voices to be heard, so reminding us of the heterogeneity of place (and time), as well as the ways in which deeply political, historical, social and cultural relations are embedded but often hidden within our daily soundscapes. In Section Four, authors and artists examine how soundscapes are transformed through the introduction of difference, in particular, difference as embodied in cultural or ethnic identity. Evoking different places, times and identities, these chapters explore the ways in which the presence of others transforms the taken-for-grantedness of the everyday, so problematising ideas of being-in-place. The case studies discussed in this section demonstrate how the cross-cultural dialogues arising from these interjections of difference serve to reinvigorate notions of belonging and place.

The accompanying audio disc is a fundamental component of this publication, in which both scholars and artists interrogate sound and place. It is in these samples that we can hear place, expressing what we cannot in language.1 We ask that you take the time to listen to these extracts.

Title: Hearing Places: Sound, Place, Time and Culture; Binding: Hardback; Editor: Ros Bandt, Michelle Duffy and Dolly MacKinnon; Date of Publication: 2007-08-01; UK: £39.99 US: $79.99

Dr Ros Bandt, International sound artist, author and senior research fellow in sound culture at the Australian Centre, The University of Melbourne where she directs the Australian Sound Design Website and online gallery, dedicated to audible research and heritage of innovative sound designs in public space.

Dr Michelle Duffy, Cultural geographer based at the Australian Centre, The University of Melbourne, whose research interests include the significance of music and performance to ideas of place, belonging and alienation.

Dr Dolly MacKinnon, Research Fellow, Historical Studies, The University of Melbourne. Author of "Revealing the Early Modern Landscape of England:Earls Colne, Essex" (Ashgate forthcoming), and co-editor of "'Madness' in Australia"(2003) with Catharine Coleborne.

Hier werden Produktionen aus Archiven der Elektroakustischen Musik, wie z.B. dem Archiv der DEGEM oder dem IDEAMA- und dem DEGEM-Archiv des ZKM, dem Archiv des elektronischen Studios der TU Berlin sowie anderen internationalen Archiven und Dokumentationen elektroakustischer Kunst unter verschiedenen Aspekten präsentiert.