Disparate Soundscapes and Ecotones: Critically Sounding the Amazon and Arctic
Popular media representations of jungles and arctic territories tend to center around either lush and pristine rainforests or remote Northern landscapes (e.g. Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922)). Often beyond these captivating visual depictions lie comp...
| Summary: | Popular media representations of jungles and arctic territories tend to center around either lush and pristine rainforests or remote Northern landscapes (e.g. Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1982), Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922)). Often beyond these captivating visual depictions lie complex soundscapes that reveal information about environments that is difficult to decipher through vision alone. Disparate Soundscapes and Ecotones is a research-creation project that proposes active and critical modes of perceiving and composing with environmental sound. This project takes the form of a long-form stereo soundscape composition incorporating audio field recordings I collected in the Northern Canadian community of Inukjuak, Nunavik during 2009 and the Brazilian Amazon during 2011. Cultural and natural sounds are digitally processed and arranged in order to investigate the deeper referential meanings of environmental sounds including their musical, social and ecological resonances. Furthermore, this project explores how the extraction of these environmental sounds from their original contexts and integration within a studio composition affect their communicational properties. The exploitation of studio processing and editing to both highlight and undermine indexical relationships between composed soundscapes and “real” soundscapes is at the heart of my investigation. This project draws from but also questions the conceptual aims and techniques of the soundscape composition genre. Additionally, I consider the importance of ethical studio methodologies when processing and consequently abstracting sensitive sound material such as Inuit throat singing and traditional kayak building. |
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