A SONIC BRIDGING OF SPECIE TIME-WORLDS - Extract

A B S T

R A C T

Inspired by the rhizomatic form, what follows is an attempt to bridge between different worlds of time and species, focusing on the sonic temporal convergences that occur.

Over time, my attempts at the rhizomatic depiction of different time species and our entanglements became, in truth, a search for stillness. There have been unignorable factors during the writing, and I am acutely aware of the impact and contamination these have had on my texts. Contamination is not to be viewed as a negative.

between those that cross and entangle into our time-worlds.

My experiences are a part of my time-world, and for the reader to collaborate, in any form, with my world of time, a transparentness must be shared. A practice in vulnerability in search of stillness.

Stillness, in a way, my own way, was found during the pursuit of knowledge in accessing other species in time. As you will soon discover, my discoveries led from horology to mycelium, symbiosis, gravitational waves, acoustic ecology, and extending recording and listening.

These contaminations are an empowering need for all beings to accept and thrive from, to form collaborative connections

It is in the listening, I found my stillness.

'I'm interested in understanding a sound and its context as part of a purposeful, living system with attributes of mind.

For certain composers, their interest is in taking these sources as raw material for manipulation. I'm interested in regarding these as conscious living systems with which I'm interacting. It isn't to manipulate the sources and create "groovy" sounds that no one has ever heard before. I want to regard these sources as sentient being and

their sounds as the evidence of complex-minded systems. The compositions then become a process of setting up an interactive situation in order to create a collaborative work that is evocative and representative of a larger system of mind inclusive of myself and other living systems.89 - David Dunn

89 Dunn and Lampert, p. 99.

Read by my late Grandad Paul Price (2012)

Fig 11. Laura Selby, Paul Price reading David Dunn Recording, Cheam, 2012.

O F L I S T E N I N G

In attempts to cross time scales of species sonically, the need to understand ideas in listening practice is critical for the engagement between boundaries beyond our own temporal auditory perception.

First, we should consider ear cleanliness.

'Before ear training, it should be recognized that we require ear cleaning. Before we train a surgeon to perform delicate operations, we first ask him to get into the habit of washing his [or her] hands. Ears also perform delicate operations, and therefore ear cleanliness is an important prerequisite for all music listening and music playing.'90

Murray Schafer put forward many important ideas based around listening and soundscapes that underpin current methods in acoustic ecologies. He first pointed out the dominance of the visual sense, eye culture91 and worked on methods of ear cleaning and subsequent ear training exercises for music students. These involved looking at the many facets of sound, such as timbre, tone, pitch, and texture. Then moving on to explore the musical soundscape, which involved methods such as sourcing contrasting sounds, the spatiality of sound, and how the previous facets of sound he explores earlier on in his outlines interact within the cone of tensions; a journey back and forth in the image below which makes up a musical composition.92 He then explores how: 'The most obvious kinds of sounds are the most frequently missed, and the earcleaning operation, therefore

90 R. Murray Schafer, Ear Cleaning: Notes for an Experimental Music Course (Toronto: Berandol, 1967), p. 1.

91 Joachim-Ernst Berendt, The Third Ear: On Listening to the World, 1st Owl book/American ed (New York: H. Holt, 1992).

Fig 12. R. Murray Schafer Cone of Tensions, Ear Cleaning: Notes for an Experimental Music Course, 1967.

concentrates on them.'93 This became the basis for Schafer's work in the soundscape and formalising terminology such as: keynotes, background sounds or sound signals, foreground sounds, and soundmarks94 . Could we understand these terms as the beginnings of a language into bridging between different temporal gestures, linking human experience with other specie worlds?

92 Schafer, p. 25.

93 Schafer, p. 37.

94 Community recognised sound sources and a term derived from landmark.

Inner Listening

In understanding listening as a practice to connect across specie time scales, a need arises to explore the listening of the self.

Hildegard Westerkamp notes how an additional part of the ear cleaning and training programme should include a rigorous introverted analysis of ourselves before experiencing a deeper understanding of how we as a listener and soundmaker consider issues of acoustic ecology and balance.95 Better awareness of self could elevate the fear of letting go of control, and in the loosening of these tethers, we can continue revealing the in-between spaces and attempt to cross into them. The term inner listening is noted by Pauline Oliveros as 'an altered state

of consciousness full of inner sounds that engaged my attention and eventually made me want to compose.'96 Could inner listening be applied to our own perception of physical form, not a separation completely from the mind? When discussing inner listening, we consider responding to our consciousness voice, but could we not extend this to our internal materiality and micro species such as our gut biomes or even further our own blood circularity, synaptic signalling, movement, internal breath, and pulse?

informational overload. Could it ever be possible to move past these auditory tolerances? Is there a way to extend current meditational practices of listening to external auditory stimulations? Perhaps durational listening of your own heartbeat, the bodily rhythm of your own time universe? Considering the multispecies our bodies are made up of, we as selves, are not only one temporal gesture. Is there a way to access this?

Deep listening

95 Discussing acoustic ecology, balance and inner listening prerequisites flux in states of being. Sonically we can consider beings beyond inside and outside where audio information constantly exchanges, gets lost,

The anechoic chamber can provide the listening environment for this. However spending long periods in these acoustic environments are near impossible for the most individuals; as the sounds of inner bodily self, grow in auditory awareness, there is a sensory and and is found again. Through vulnerability to this we can better bring the other closer to the body.

96 Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: A Composers’s Sound Practice (New York Shanghai: iUniverse, 2005), p. xv.

97 ‘Hearing Australian Identity : Feature Article : Australian Music Centre’.

97

"Acoustic space is where time and space merge as they are articulated by sound."

Pauline Oliveros developed the practice of deep listening, with the premise resting on the understanding that 'listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening… very little of the information transmitted to the brain by the sense organs is perceived at a conscious level.'98 99

The key difference is in the attention given to not only the physical sound waves we perceive in our hearing but how we interpret these into meaning and associations. All sounds are part of the deep listening practice. The word deep conveys the progression beyond boundaries and in the context of listening, how our auditory perception can be

98 Oliveros, pp. 12-13.

99 Anne M. Treisman, ‘Strategies and Models of Selective Attention.’, Psychological Review, 76.3 (1969), 282–99

<https://doi.org/10.1037/h0027242>.

expanded focusing on the detail and vast complexities of sounds. Oliveros explains that 'The practice is intended to expand consciousness to the whole space/time continuum of sound/silences.'100 During the practice of deep listening exercises Oliveros demonstrates the overlap in meditational disciplines, particularly the need to facilitate awareness of the space you hold, the disconnect you may feel, and the compassion required to reveal new depths of perception.

Collective Listening

During my own experiences of collective listening to hidden sound worlds, I felt a profound polyphonic connection to beings of the same and differing species. The joy in our shared purpose, curiosity, and stillness in the act of listening together to a time species so removed in scale to our own, left a profound thread between us. Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations is a series of group exercises, requiring no specific abilities to take part, of shared deep listening's in these Oliveros explains that as a group positive energy may be developed, influencing those less experienced and that overtime 'the group may achieve greater awareness and sensitivity to each other.'101

100 Oliveros, p. 15.

101 P. Oliveros, Sonic Meditations, American Music, v. 7 (Smith Publications, 1974), p. 2

<https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=etIIAQA AMAAJ>.

D I F F E R E N T T I M E

S P E C I E S

A method for extended listening102

A sonic bridge to different time species

In this proposed listening exercise there is a desired set of equipment to use to extend the listeners' auditory spectrum. This is not a requirement. Tempo - the rate or speed of motion or activity; pace.103

Phase 1

Suggested Equipment:

Contact Microphone x2 Recorder

Headphone Set Up

Place the contact microphone/s onto the matter/being you desire to bridge to.

Aim to have as much contact to the surface as possible.

Set up your recorder to monitor the signal pathway from the contact microphone/s.

*Record if appropriate but not required. Find a comfortable spot as close to the time species as possible.

Without headphones

Listening to your own tempo through time.

Place hands in contact with your own form.

Count your breath cycles. How many counts for breath intake

How many counts for breath hold

How many counts for breath release

Once you have found your comfortable tempo, focus on this cycle for as long as is needed. Move your attention to your hands and the contact point.

What do you notice in the touch of contact between your hands and your connection point to your form?

Can you differentiate the sense of touch from your hands to your point of contact?

Can you sense your contact with the materials around you?

Consider: The weight of your body

The surface you are resting upon The movement outside of your breathing cycle

Can you hear these movements?

102 This is an attempt of a proposed listening method inspired by the Sonic Meditations of Pauline Oliveros.

103 ‘Definition of TEMPO’ <https://www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/tempo> [accessed 6 July 2022].

With headphones

Phase 2

Return to your breathing cycle tempo

What can you hear?

What can you perceive in the collection of sounds?

Consider: How many voices are present? Can you distinguish between the layers?

What texture are they made of? Where do they situate in the space? Do the sounds change in form?

After an unknown amount of time let your listening attentions within the sound spectrum naturally move as you feel led to.

Post listening reflection

How was your own tempo affected? Did you experience any collaboration with the tempos of sounds around you?

Collective listening

Suggested Equipment: Contact Microphone x2 Recorder Headphone splitter Headphones per individual taking part

Follow set up instructions for Phase 1.

Fluctuate between closed and open eyes. Does the visual presence of the group affect your tempo cycles?

Has your connection with your collective changed in any way? If so, consider how you could describe this change.

Is there a tempo present?

Try to adjust your breath cycle in collaboration or use your hand's contact point on your form to move in time.

Feel free to drift between different tempos.

Try to notice your change in listening attention as you move between tempos.

Form a space together around the time species.

Follow instructions for without and then with headphones with these additional reflections: What sounds from the collective can you hear? Can you influence each other's tempo counts?

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A P P E

N D I

C E S

Wake up 4.20am

I am now writing this so terribly late. First journey leg from Kings Cross to Edinburgh, fine, then up to Glenshee by car with a few stops. One being an amazing antique shop and garden centre, felt like finding the toilet was an impossible task in the internal maze of plants and antique clocks.

Finally we made it to the Glen by 4pm and I made my base in the Osprey room, my domain for the week.

Wandered out for a while in a small scouting party, on our small ramble we came across a plaque realising the violent history of the tranquil Glen. Odd to be reading about such violence as the delicate brook babbled away beside us, as it has always done and will continue to. Babbling through the terror. Babbling. The Shee Water.

Finally dinner. My stomach was already into its 5th cadenza of growls, worth the wait for a chicken bean celebration. Post dinner introductions were made as each visitor gave a quick introduction, so many brilliant perspectives. Then a mic drop

A mini expedition to drop and leave a Soundfield mic each pause along the way our guide drops a nugget of wisdom. Keyword: Ill-defined sound. Same subject with different listening perspectives recorded gives a several dimensions to the sound. Otherwise our brains can make the connection. Our ears are not so easily deceived from listening to a subject from the live listening event.

It never seems to get dark, there is still some light now. The Moon is bright.

Species: midges, cuckoo, bats and more midges.

The mega trek.

Walked to the loch today, which already feels like a massive simplification of the fact.

I have never walked that distance before, 12 miles if in a straight line with no elevation. In fact, 16 miles 31,856 steps in total, the mountain that forever loomed in front of my trudging, conquered. We began in one group slowly breaking up into smaller collections as we meandered along. I peeled off at about mile 3 and sat for a while alone trying to capture a spatial ambisonic recording of some Wagtails swooping and circling us in alarm. Was I near to a nest or just within their world boundary, their territory? My recorder H2n Zoom let me down, so I gave up on documenting and found a small moss nook and settled in. At first captivated at the swirling calls as the Wagtail dipped and twirled around me never settling too close by. Then I began drifting into their movement feeling the agitated energy. Something I have felt on my own scale of being, unable to find stillness, a need to always be distracted. I moved from my captivation, realising I had found stillness for a moment in listening to the Wagtail's exclamations, but the need now was to move on, give it peace as I continued in pursuit of my own.

I had now lost the group completely, out of sight, with only sheep left for company. For some time, I tackled the trudging on my own, lost in the rhythm. The unsteady rhythm of my feet moving through space impacting the pebbles, soil, microworlds I could not see, persistent in my goal.

The hardest mile was the last one to the loch. Upwards towards the waterfall, crossing and following the Shee water, a barrier and then the path itself. A thread tying me to the land and carrying my tired feet away, upward, and across. There was a moment on the last mile that I wonder if I've made it past

104 Is it because so many have died here that my imagery is so violent?

the last ridge of loose pebbles. Alas, merely the core of the waterfall appears and in that moment of disarray, euphoria hits as I turn, full face to the breeze.

I can now see the full extent of the river's veins extending away from me. Gripping through the terrain, a deep jagged claw scar.104

I don't want to move. let me stop for a moment.

The intensity of the wind refuels me, the throbbing in my heels dulled as I bodily decide to move on. With the roar of wind in my ears I push on up, then flat and finally, silence.

The loch is revealed, vast and enveloping. Silent.

I begin to take in my fellow wanderers collapsed collectively listening, absorbing in the soundscape. Wild swimming, hydrophone dipping, sandwich eating, and many lying motionless, being.

I find my own spot and nestle my DPA mics into the grass and heather. I let my hydrophones loose to capture the gentle lapping of water against the pebbles beneath the surface. I feel the cold in the wind now, not just a whining gesture in my recording. No jumper was a poor choice. After what feels only a moment by the loch, back we go.

The mile down is nothing, feet thrumming, discussions on capitalism and selfeducation syllabus creation and time. A call catches the attention. We listen and record two birds caught in a duet a fair distance away using the valley walls to reverberate their song around the Glen.

Finally, I make it back and the food never tasted so good.

Species: Wagtails, curlews, and owls.

2.30am I wake up to record the dawn.

The light never really went.

My first location is stationed by a wall, listening, falling into the space between consciousness and the beyond. I move to an unidentified tree and here I stay, cuckoos, robins, and blackbirds. She passes me at 3.45am, rabbits, but I didn't hear them.

Back to bed and swiftly the summoning of the unconscious envelopes me. I return, heat is unbearable as I wrench the window open for breath, and back

I go into dreams.

I am jolted awake by a shot of sound. A. not realising I am still asleep in my duvet cocoon closes the window which requires some force. The jolt lifts me upright, back into the sunlit world.

I manage to make the film workshop, a flurry of messing with 16mm film which involves glitter, bleach, scratches, and plants. All on archive nature documentary footage which has a way of saying the word 'acorrrns' sending giggles across the room. We listen to a talk on extended microphone techniques and examples. In one of the examples infrasound is discussed and the sound of the earth revolving is heard. The sound of the earths revolutions in process was wonderment to behold, the centrifugal force, life sustaining vibrations. We set out to understand better methods of recording in the rain. But the rain is no more, and my focus is taken to a rhubarb which I attempt to record. Back to more walking with the group, absorbing the space listening to fascinating anecdote as we avoid the midges persistently invading our worlds.

Next more discussions on special recording techniques, specifically the ambisonic format. The orders of playback, a strange hierarchy assigned to what we define as space and sound in space.

Tonight, the focus is bats. We move as a group using a bat detector to capture bat calls, then transforming them through time expansion to a humanly

audible pitch. I am handed control for a moment. Transfixed at trapping and expanding the previously hidden sound world the practically inaudible squeaks on the monitor, slowed down to reveal the intricacies of the bat searching and finally homing in on the midge food source, the intensity and pitch changes audible now. The audio technology bridge allowing us access for a moment to the midge bat hunt that night, in their world of time.

I leave my DPA mics out overnight, while owls call to each other as their sounds and others that night are documented.

Species: Cuckoos,

I was already aware before my alarm, no need to wake the others, time to grab my mic drop before the morning rain arrives. As I retrace my steps soaking my feet on the dew I notice a poppy bud has opened, the first of a cluster, red ablaze leading the others to the morning battle. My mics are fine, still recording and I hurry in their retrieval desperate to return back to bed and to warmth and sleep.

The waking up is more difficult. I wasn't sure if I even made it back into my unconscious world. I feel adrift and think of things I am not ready to process.

Today we are heading to an ancient forest, the Linn of Dee. First a stop in Braemar and an exploration into The Fife Arms. A hotel and art gallery. We all carefully bundle in not entirely confident we are welcome in our hiking attire and heavy footfalls around the space. Picasso, Bourgeois and Queen Victoria along our small tour, an unbelievable trove of spaces with a strange mix of warmth and death. The gun room of many heads, five of which we were informed are now exinct. I found it hard looking up at the faces. My attention is taken by a rhizomatic sketch, the threads of a river.

Then off to the ancient forest, Linn of Dee, where we followed J. to find a tree who's root flows we would choose to document and listen to. We settled on one whose roots stretched outward slightly above the moss line. Using modified contact mics the root was linked to the recorder as we all added our headphones to the splitter to listen in. My first time experiencing collective listening in such a way.

At first exclamations of excitement as the root's sound world came into a new defined form of focus, never heard before by many, myself included. Then a lull. As each listener absorbed themselves and settled into the listening state together, collectively. The joy felt in that moment made it hard to leave but onward I went to find my own listening points in the woodland. I found it

hard since the collective euphoria of the root no other listening quite compared.

I tried to listen in on a tree beside a river with wood ants around, but as I learned from past chats the thundering river made the micro sound textures ill-defined in nature. I moved on trying out the roots of fallen trees, the river from different perspectives and a giant abdomen ant. Could it be a queen wood ant exploring over my DPA mic, lost from her ant court? Perhaps she had been disturbed by the field recorders I passed exclaiming at the sounds from the ant hill they were recording, that the queen may have now abandoned. Our actions must seem so violent, even in our joy, to species from perspectives smaller than our own.

I then settled by a quieter pool listening to the tiny creatures living in their higher frequency realms I know I can only hear a fraction of their world. At first they feel so small barely audible but slowly the crescendo of pops and crackles, scrapes and shuffles fill the spaces of my consciousness. The universe of life in the seemingly small pond of water now vast as my listening tumbles into their world.

I only stopped and moved on because I knew my collective in the human world would be waiting. One of our group is late so I am able to find the tree that had been mentioned as a good listening point earlier in our groups explorations. Part of the bark had already been torn away and my contact mics rest safely inside. The tree's sound immediately envelopes me: vast rumbles, smaller creaks and textures, strange the scale of sound from such a slight tree compared to the ancient giants close by.

I never made it to the ancient part, perhaps next time I'll walk and listen among them.

Species: Roots, Queen Wood Ant, Water based Invertebrates

Today we were on the hunt for moss to record in Leanouch Mhor. We began on a small stream pipe way beside the road, C. instructed us that the best way to find fresh moss was to follow the water. Sadly the moss we found was dried out but we all persevered and found our own spots.

I moved from the main group as I meandered onward through the wetlands and found a spot of moss by a tilting tree at the bank side. I connected my contact mics and was instantly transported. Slowly the rest of the group joined and sat to listen in on the moss plane of reality I was submerged in. We all revelled together for a while then slowly each drifted to their own spots, then left altogether.

I was alone sitting in the moss listening a while. A robin came over to inspect my presence as though I had already begun blurring into the environment.

In time I eventually returned to listen in to a talk describing the many sound recording adventures of C. I thought it would be interesting to record the talk from the perspective of the spiral staircase situated in the middle of the room. The voice changed materiality, a granular fuzz merged words into metallic gestures, his laugh the more resonant as though the stairs sympathised. We have a playback session where my recordings of the moss that day are played back on speakers into the room. It isn't the same but could it ever be knowing it's not in real time but a document of one aspect, without the setting, the other senses of that moment silenced.

Species: Moss, Robins and Metal Spiral Staircase.

Last day of a week that has been wonderful, a moment away. New species and worlds. For the morning we all move together to the fences that dot the landscape I meander off with a few others to find my own spot along the wire.

I then fasten my contact mics and listen in. For thirty minutes I sit there looking at the landscape beyond me fastened into the world of the fence looking on to the world as though from the fence's perspective. Each wind gust, echoes through me, the smallest of vibrations zapping the soundscape into new textures momentarily.

I need to move on, I follow a broken-down stone wall, wires are extruding in odd directions, these too make a sound, but the lack of tension makes them more chaotic and fainter in clarity.

I find a piece of sheet metal torn and twisted on itself, the sounds I extract are a severe low resonance as I move the resonance changes and becomes a gesture. Is it absorbing my resonance, is it resonating a part of myself that I

cannot hear without the connection to the metal? I explore the woodland close by, and it is here I place my contact mics between two tilted trees, I can feel the weight of the two pieces in the sound, wind moving through their structures are not passing through me.

Later I return to the fence with P. and together we improvise with our interactions with the fence, I use a cello bow and P. uses a speaker driver, resonating the fence with pre composed sounds that travel through the wire meeting my bowing gestures. Rain crashes down and there is a moment as the rain subside that changes the timbre completely of the wire's sound world. Later we listen and hear about the unheard, sometimes silenced human sound history of the female identifying sound recorders I hurry to take down as many names as possible to store them in my own noted history so their existence can continue in my plane at the very least.

Species: Wire, Trees and Sound Recorders, Female specifically.