key terms defined
Dadirri
A form of deep listening practised by many Indigenous Australians. Dadirri is a kind of still awareness.
Anthropocentrism
The belief that human beings are the most important entity in the universe.
Observational Eros
An emotional fascination with your subject that is so strong that it overpowers the desire to make anything new.
Deep listening
A form of meditation focusing on active and thoughtful awareness of sound championed by composer Pauline Oliveros in the wake of the Vietnam War.
Anthropogenic noise
Sound produced by human activity and infrastructure.
Bioregionalism
Advocacy of the belief that human activity should be largely constrained by ecological or geographical boundaries rather than political ones.
‘…careful listening gives us incredibly useful tools by which to evaluate the health of a habitat across the entire spectrum of life.’ (Kraus 2013)
When the UN released the landmark IPBES biodiversity report in May 2019 (IPBES 2019) Sir Robert Watson, chair of the IPBES, warned ‘we are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.’ (Metherell 2019) In a world grappling with comprehending the scale of climate change, let alone coordinate a coherent, sustainable response to it ‘it matters what stories tell stories.’ (Haraway 2016 p35) As a visual communications student (with a keen interest in the aural) I’m also curious about the mediums used to tell these stories.
It is not news to us that scientists, particularly climate scientists, have often struggled to communicate their findings in the face of apathy, ignorance and fear but writers and designers are also now having to tackle the enormity of these ecological concerns in their work. No easy task when ‘...the ethical urgency one feels is tempered by a sense of the futility of the gesture in the face of such enormity...How can one poem or one song or one novel make a difference?’ (Bradley 2017) While singular design outcomes are unlikely to change the world, a sweeping change in the way we tell stories is essential in helping us respond proactively to the ecological crisis we are already experiencing. ‘There is no question the new world the human race is creating offers profound challenges to almost every aspect of our societies...altering our ideas about what it means to be human, and the relationship of the human to the world.’ (Bradley 2017)
Theorists such as Donna Haraway, Anna Tsing and Aaron S. Allen have made it clear that future narratives cannot and should not remain anthropocentric or reliant on tired language, narrators, terminology and forms - and that we should instead develop curiosity, entanglement and a fascination with the ‘critters’ to whom we are deeply connected. (Haraway 2016)
‘…our first step is to bring back curiosity - unencumbered by the simplications of progress narratives, the knots and pulses and patchiness are there to explore!’ (Tsing 2015)
listening and media
Unfortunately, when we tell ecological stories we are often working in mediums that actively divert, misdirect or diminish our attention. The prevailing media culture has not been kind to science journalism or our attention spans. Instead it ‘relies on the proliferation of chatter, the irrelevance of opinion and discourse….an immense information overload and an actual siege of attention….’ (Berardi 2011)
Often desensitizing or overstimulating audiences with waves of information, our current media landscape is predominantly visual, largely screen-based, frenzied and reliant on a level of constant connectivity that divorces us from our environment and ourselves. Our engagement with the 24hr news cycle via smartphones is problematic in that it enables what Jenny Odell refers to as a ‘...colonisation of the self by capitalist ideas of productivity and efficiency..’ and a ‘financially incentivised proliferation of chatter.’ (Odell 2017)
This ‘difficulty of maintaining any kind of silence or interiority’ ie ‘Doing Nothing’ (Odell 2017) has serious consequences for our bodily, sensory connection with local ecosystems as well as our ability to find and meaningfully absorb what genuine, truthful ecological stories exist in the media. Our indiscriminate engagement with heavily screen-based media alienates us under the guise of ‘connection,’ regularly exposing us to disingenuous narratives while discouraging moments of contemplation (ie. ‘doing nothing’). Odell identifies that ‘Those same means by which we give over hours and days are the same with which we assault ourselves with information and misinformation, at a rare that is frankly inhumane...’ (Odell 2017)
‘…in nature, things that grow unchecked are often parasitic or cancerous. And yet, we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative.’ (Odell 2017)
listening and ecosystems
Our media landscape is a reflection of a wider culture still peddling the myth of constant productivity and eternal growth. It's also important to note the absence of listening both metaphorically and actually in a culture that encourages ‘having a take’ over listening (Odell 2017). Tsing, Haraway and Odell assert that climate change is partially a result of culture - and we can change this culture by designing physical and digital experiences that promote stillness, contemplation, bioregionalism and listening. Designers can create opportunities for experiences of ‘direct sensuous reality...for an experiential world now inundated with electronically-generated vistas...” (Abram 2010) and counter the ‘deeper cultural and psychic dissonance engendered by our growing estrangement from the natural world’ (Bradley 2017) by focusing on specific species.
Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway embody a nuanced methodology in their feminist post-humanist narratives which advocates holistic ‘entangled’ understandings of the world, charting affinity between organisms that were once considered disparate and speculating on species resurgence. Anna Tsing’s feminist approach to the Anthropocene reveals similar entangled networks - as the Matsutake Mushroom she examines in her book ‘The Mushroom At The End Of The World’ becomes a device used to explore the latticework of ecology, economy, climate and communities. (Tsing 2015) In Weird Fishes, I have attempted a similar approach by focusing my research, narrative and outcome around sea urchins (Centrostephanus rodgersii). The observational eros Odell recounts in her tales of bird watching (or what she playfully refers to as ‘bird listening’ or ‘bird noticing’) (Odell 2017) is the same attentiveness and fascination Tsing relates to the Matsutake Mushroom and which I apply to my animations of sea urchins.
Tsing proposes a relational view of the world - where unexpected connections and collaborations between organisms may become vital for survival (Tsing 2015) and similar notions are raised by Dr Natalie Soars and Dr Ann Jones during their discussion of bioacoustics and anthropogenic noise on Off Track. My design practice focuses on creating visual narratives that encourage curiosity by privileging sound and renew connections between audience and ecology, approaching science journalism differently as ‘It is in this dilemma that new tools for noticing seem so important. Indeed, life on earth seems at stake.’ (Tsing 2015)
‘…common sayings like “seeing is believing” give our eyes the central role in our engagement with the world. But there is little doubt that listening plays a critical part in how we navigate and understand our environment.’ (English 2016)
One such ‘new tool for noticing’ is sound. Sound is visceral as well as archival, moving in a liminal realm that opens up interpretive possibilities and brings us closer to connecting with non-human life in a “relational epistemology of diversity, interconnectedness, and co-presence.” (Titon 2013, p.8) Titon confirms my suspicion that sound offers a visceral narrative device for sympoietic stories, an emerging method of scientific research (bioacoustics) and an alternative to the current highly visual media approach to ecological narratives (with RN Off Tracks ‘Sea Urchin Solo In The Coral Reef Choir’ being an aural exception to this trend).
Field recordings are increasingly being used to document the rapid ecological changes occurring on our planet and monitor the health of ecosystems and sound is now presenting itself as an intriguing bridge between science, storytelling and conservation (it’s archival, visceral, a narrative device, and a method of data collection and distribution). As Lawrence English notes ‘we are vulnerable to sound…it has a primordial quality that reaches deep inside us.’ (English 2016).
Bernie Kraus’ work in soundscape ecology and observations in ‘The Great Animal Orchestra’ provides a biological basis for Englishes assertions (Kraus 2012). Kraus posits that ‘...where environmental sciences have typically tried to understand the world from what we see, a much fuller understanding can be got from what we hear.’ (Kraus 2013) His years of field recordings reacquaint us with the earth’s vast, interconnected, natural chorus and provide stark sonic evidence of the impacts of resource extraction, human noise and habitat destruction. ‘Biophonies help clarify our understanding of the natural world’ Kraus notes. ‘As we hear them, we're endowed with a sense of place, the true story of the world we live in. In a matter of seconds, a soundscape reveals much more information from many perspectives, from quantifiable data to cultural inspiration.’ (Kraus 2013)
Tsing also evokes bioacoustics, employing polyphony in her call for alternative, species driven narratives. Tsing’s analysis of polyphony and rhythm show her focus on the ‘divergent, layered and confined projects that make up our worlds’ (Tsing 2015 p.22) that we often fail to notice (or listen to). Polyphony becomes not just a metaphor but a method of storytelling - and a practice of increasing what Odell refers to as our ‘granularity of attention’ where ‘as perceptual details of our environment unfold in surprising ways so too do our own intricacies and contradictions.’ (Odell 2017)
Ecomusicologist Aaron S. Allen is another theorist in support of the entangled, holistic approach posited by Kraus, Odell and Tsing, viewing sound as an essential tool to ‘understanding the cultural roots of the environmental crisis - and promoting change.’ (Allen 2011 p. 647) ‘...music and sound are particularly appropriate media for making truly trans-/cross -/ interdisciplinary connections between the sciences, arts, and humanities in rigorous ways that can open up intellectual understanding and aesthetic meaning (i.e., ‘poetic’) and that can also be a part of political realisations feeding an activist agenda (i.e., ‘practical’)’ (Allen 2011 p. 647)
listening as activism
‘…it is our own family stories of the land that centre our feelings and harmonise a mindful bodily connection to place. To decolonise our emotions we look deep within our bodies, in our guts — and not just in our hearts.’ (Desantolo 2019)
Pauline Oliveros’ espousal of Deep Listening during the Vietnam War speaks volumes for the therapeutic uses of sound. (Oliveros 2005) Oliveros turned to experimental music and Deep Listening as tools to find peace amidst the violence and upheaval of the times, stating that “the key product of all this training is the development of receptivity. In general, our cultural training….tends to devalue the receptive mode which consists of observation and intuition....’ (Oliveros 2015) Jenny Odell posits Oliveros’ Deep Listening as a form of self-protection and activism, framing it as “...taking control of our attention from the capitalist forces determined to monetize it and reconnecting with the world around us as a critical form of resistance.” (Odell 2019)
The use of Deep Listening as a form of ecological activism is reflected in the Indigenous practice of Dadirri in the face of colonisation - something Jason Desantolo refers to as ‘Gawrajara bar Jangkar...the voices and stories that shape renewal of the relational world through song, dance, ceremony and ancient practice of the land.’ (Desantolo 2019) ‘Dadirri’ is a Ngangikurungkurr word which loosely translated as ‘contemplation,’ ‘tuning in’ or ‘quiet, still awareness’ (MiriamRoseFoundation 2017) and is an Indigenous methodology of Deep Listening disseminated by Miriam-Rose Ungumerr-Bauman who calls it ‘the gift that Australia is thirsting for.’ (Eureka Street 2010) Dadirri is described by Ungumerr-Baumann as a feeling of deep receptivity and attunement to your surroundings and the ‘deep spring within us’ through listening, and she notes that ‘It’s not an aboriginal speciality - everyone’s got it…it’s just that they haven’t found it.’(Eureka Street 2010) Deep Listening and Dadirri represent legitimate methods to better understand ecology, and can be seen as a form of neuro-decolonisation, a way to ‘reflect and think and sustain and heal ourselves.’ (Odell 2019) ‘In re-orientating sensory experiences we must get personal.’ Desantolo notes.
(Monterey Bay Aquarium 2019)
designed listening
Considerations of Deep Listening and Dadirri are not limited to personal experiences, these moments of reflection can be curated and designed in what Odell refers to as ‘the practice of doing nothing and the architecture of nothing.’ (Odell 2017) Odell argues that the artist (or designer) ‘creates a structure - whether that’s a map or a cordoned-off area - that holds open a contemplative space against the pressures of habit and familiarity that constantly threaten to close it.’ (Odell 2017)
Odell’s uses labyrinths as a metaphor for this Deep Listening, framing them as a deliberate structure designed to ‘manipulate your sense of space and time’ and facilitate concentration. ‘Labyrinths seem to function similarly to how they appear, a sort of dense unfolding of attention’ (Odell 2017) Works such as Scott Polach’s Applause Encouraged (Polach 2015) and James Turrell’s Sky Pesher (Turrell 2005) are examples of design and art functioning to ‘hold open’ these contemplative experiences for viewers and providing welcome respite and reflection. This ‘unfolding of attention’ need not be spatial - focused attention and Deep Listening can also be elicited on web platforms such as the interactive audio-driven animation ‘My Grandmother’s Lingo,’ (SBS 2016) in radio works in the same vein as Off Tracks ‘Sea Urchin Solo In The Coral Reef Choir’(Off Track 2019) and immersive sonic installation artworks such as Jane Baker’s The Inward Eye.’ (Baker 2018) My material practice has proven that motion and soundscapes can complement each other to create design outcomes that foster an 'unfolding of attention' and an understanding of ourselves ‘not just in relation to that world, but to the world.’ (Odell 2017)