Category: Globe Sonic Culture

This unit cover a lot of topic and for myself, the second half are more interesting. First we talked about decolonisation which for me is a big topic in heritage as I am grow up in Hong Kong, a British colony for hundreds years and more. For me, I think colonisation shape the culture of Hong Kong. We either not Chinese, nor British. We are the mixture of both. Of course, colonisation demolished a lot of traditional culture. For example, in a traditional Chinese music setting nowadays become like Orchestra, they have similar setup and they even have European instrument like cello in the performance. However, colonisation not always bad. Hong Kong is a good example. We were being colonised, therefore, we can be different from the socialist main land China and we become one of the wealthy city in east Asia in past few decade. Compare to how we were being treaded under communist Chinese government, the end to the colonies period were even better than present.

Indigeneity is an interesting topic where the first instrument I learned is djembe (a west African drum). When I was learning this instrument, I also learned a lot about their culture as every songs have their function and meaning. For example the song Toro (means pain) would play during the boys circumcision. For me, the indigenous culture always fascinate me where they always have the different perspective to see the world, no matter in music and sounds, all the social structure, mythology, etc. We are too used to European central and American way to see the world, which kind of set the ‘normal’.

The topic of my essay was ethnography of wild camping. At first, I found there have very little academic articles about wild camping. UAL don’t have the access to few article I found on google scholars about wild camping which one called Satisfaction in camping: A conceptualization and guide to social research. I sound very related to my essay which I was disappointed that I don’t have access to this article.

Then I started to twist the perspective of my essay which lead me to ethnography of nature and also how nature can heal psychologically. I found a journal article talks a lot about different research and experiments regard this topic. Firstly, talked about what made people feel recovered which it pointed out that it can’t be done with only one sensory. For example, showing the picture of nature only to the patient were not effective at all. They may even related it to loneness. However, when they immersed sounds and visual element of nature, patient have more positive reaction.

The other point that interested me in the article is the experiment of white and pink noise. They play white and pink noise to the participants, and told one groups that is waterfall and tell it is machinery to the others. The result was the waterfall group would consider it as relax soundscape. The restorative property of natural sounds are depends on the perspective of the listener and also how recognisable the sound are.

He is one of the author of the book In The Field that I am reading at the moment. I was also excited to his lecture. However, Im not really into his practice.

He is very good sound scholar which he is the member of CRiSAP. Other than academic world, his artistic practice is ‘not input’ field recording. His approach to field work is field notes. It is like sonic ethnography which he would drop down the note instantly. His approach is interesting which I haven’t seen any of field recording (or is it still recording?) approach like hime. He also suggest that field note is awkward, partial, mistaken, oblique. His approach are more focus on written language. However, for myself, I feel like the reason why I like to use sound is because a lot of feeling and thought can’t be express through language, in this case, is written words. I understand the power of language, which by using field note, the field work would be easy since we don’t need those technology (field recorder, mic, etc) and the problem of those things other than mobility is when we record outside, people around us would act differently since they saw a big microphones in front of them. Field note can prevent that. In the audience point of view, the descriptive language of sonic environment in the field create a lot of spaces for them to imagine those sounds.

She is the sculptor who started do sound installation at first. Then she moved this practice to performance setting. She collect different tiny objects (which she claim is because easy to carry around) and most of them are from friends and things she found in everyday life. She did a short performance during the lecture and show us how she usually setup her object in a performance setting. She said the way she set up are depend on the venues and the audience. The acoustic of the room, the material of the floor, the position of the audience. She said she are shy, so she like to set things up behind the audience which sonically very intriguing. All the objects are powered by a small electric motor and every one of them didn’t have mic or anything to amplified their sounds. Different objects have different sonic textures and different physical motions and they were all around the lecture hall. Sonically, the tiny sounds which lead me to trace what and where is it come from as I can’t see all the object in my sit and that lead me to walk around and found them out. The tininess of physical objects and the sounds draw people in and that made the whole room very focus and the motion of the objects also very intriguing visually as well.

She stated as the classical training in vocal and cello, and she is the vocalist who is doing experimental improvisational performance. During the lecture, she talked a lot about her story: how she become sound artist, how her personal story shape her practice now. The identity as an individual and her life-experience drive her to create her own sonic language. She said most of her work didn’t have the specific intention which she just expressing herself by improvise and also listen to other player. Her lecture reminded me that sometime we don’t have to have a clear intention to achieve something or showing something huge. We can just be ourselves.

This also can be applied in improvisation. During the workshop, she said the best state of mind while improvising is to get lost. Be present. It is a bit like mediation. Let the body and instinct dive you around. Sonically, I am not the big fans of her works, but the idea of how to improvise really inspire me and remind me of how to create my own arts work. Everyone have their story and history, and those shape who we are and it all shows in our creation, so embrace them.

I am so excited for her lecture because recently I’m reading the book In The Field by her and Angus Carlyle. I’m interested in field recording which Cathy is one of the expert in this area. I’m also curios about her approach to field recording because her book didn’t talk much about themself.

One of her work call:The Hebrides Suite: mapping the islands in sound at Museum nan Eilean, Isle of Benbecula, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. This project investigate human activity in the past and present in the certain places which is the island in Scotland. Can we trace the history sonically and how the past affect the present sonic environment. She went to field recoding in the Island as well as doing workshop with the students in Caitriona and Lisa from Museum nan Eilean, and asking them to interview their parents or grand parents about the story of places.

The most interesting point that Cathy said during the lecture was the function of field recording. She said field recording have the function of documentary which for me, I haven’t think about it as documentary. For me, field recording is gathering sounds from the outside and that contrasting the conventional way to create composition. I am not sitting in the room to create sounds by using instruments. I am gathering the excessing sounds and manipulating those sounds. This way, I think it is more organic and the idea of the ‘normal’ everyday sounds can be interesting which depends how to listen them.