Sonic autoethnographies: personal listening as compositional context

This article discusses a range of self-reflexive tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, and explores examples of sonic practices and works in which the personal listening experiences of the composer are a key contextual and compositional element. As broad areas for discussion, particular attention is given to soundscape composition as self-narrative (exploring the representation of the recordist in soundscape works) and to producing the hyperreal and the liminal (considering spatial characteristics of contemporary auditory experience and their consequences for sonic practice). The discussion then focuses on the specific application of autoethnographic research methods to the practice and the understanding of soundscape composition. Compositional strategies employed in two recent pieces by the author are considered in detail. The aim of this discussion is to link autoethnography to specific ideas about sound and listening, and to some tendencies in field recording, soundscape composition and studio production, while also providing context for the discussion of the author’s own practice and works. In drawing together this range of ideas, methods and work, sonic autoethnography is aligned with an emerging discourse around reflexive, embodied sound work

Virtual auditory reality: inhabiting digital pop music as simulated space

This article examines popular music listening in light of recent research in auditory perception and spatial experience, record production, and virtual reality, while considering parallel developments in digital pop music production practice. The discussion begins by considering theories of listening and embodiment by Brandon LaBelle, Eric Clarke, Salomè Voegelin and Linda Salter, examining relations between listening subjects and aural environments, conceptualising listening as a process of environmental ‘inhabiting’, and considering auditory experience as the real-time construction of ‘reality’. These ideas are discussed in relation to recent research on popular music production and perception, with a focus on matters of spatial sound design, the virtual ‘staging’ of music performances and performing bodies, digital editing methods and effects, and on shifting relations between musical spatiality, singer-persona, audio technologies, and listener. Writings on music and virtual space by Martin Knakkergaard, Allan Moore, Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen & Anne Danielsen, Denis Smalley, Dale Chapman, Kodwo Eshun and Holger Schulze are discussed, before being related to conceptions of VR sound and user experience by Jaron Lanier, Rolf Nordahl & Niels Nilsson, Mel Slater, Tom Garner and Frances Dyson. This critical framework informs three short aural analyses of digital pop tracks released during the last 10 years - Titanium (Guetta & Sia 2010), Ultralight Beam (West 2016) and 2099 (Charli XCX 2019) - presented in the form of autoethnographic ‘listening notes’. Through this discussion on personal popular music listening and virtual spatiality, a theory of pop listening as embodied inhabiting of simulated narrative space, or virtual story-world, with reference to ‘aural-dominant realities’ (Salter), ‘sonic possible worlds’ (Voegelin), and ‘sonic fictions’ (Eshun), is developed. By examining personal music listening in relation to VR user experience, this study proposes listening to pop music in the 21st century as a mode of immersive, embodied ‘storyliving’, or ‘storydoing’ (Allen & Tucker)

Sonic autoethnographies: six records of the listening self

This commentary accompanies a portfolio of pieces which combine soundscape composition and record production methods with aspects of autoethnographic practice. This work constitutes embodied research into relations between everyday auditory experience, music production and reception, and selfhood. The commentary draws together the methods and practices from which the pieces have emerged - which range across field recording, sound collage, installation, audio-visual composition, and performative action - to present the project as a cohesive series of sonic autoethnographies. Recent theory and practice in sound and in autoethnography is considered in relation to the portfolio, which presents a personal listening culture through multiple and layered representations of self. Discussion of the pieces is used to propose generalisable insights in the related areas of personal listening, record production, and soundscape composition

The sound of my hands typing: autoethnography as reflexive methodology in arts-based research

Through this chapter I present both an overview and an example of autoethnography, a research process and method that uses critically engaged, autobiographical writing as the basis for socio-cultural inquiry, and that may be useful to practice-based researchers. My general aims in writing this are threefold: 1. to introduce autoethnography as an approach that comprises certain methods, forms and objectives, that in turn afford certain possibilities 2. to consider and discuss its usefulness and relevance to practice-based researchers in general, and specifically to those working the arts, drawing upon my own work as a sound artist and researcher, and 3. to generate an example of this methodology ‘in action’, by telling a story of doing this research, the writing that you are now reading, a stop-start process unfolding over a nine month period, and embedded within the particular, personal, subjective, embodied, emotional, local and specifically challenging context of working, parenting and living with my partner and young children during COVID-19 and under lockdown

Faux départ 5

Imagination dead imagine autoethnography-collage hat-tip catalysed by Samuel Beckett’s Faux Départ 4 dredged up from no put together by no channelled through no done by no end to end of end of end of end of end of end of beginning again etc. Couldn’t have got in, can’t get out etc. Field recordings of recordings of recordings of recordings of listening to listening to listening. Sat still, still as possible, still again, still sat still, again sat still again. starts again, ends again. Reflexive impotence etc. and piano. Also funny

Postface

Double CD and digital release. Collect of pieces combining field recording, found audio, pop samples, tape manipulation and studio production

Fifty-one aural selfies // real time

This collection nested problem self occupation form of dreaming i don’t know why i overproduce my focus listening to solitary listening doing the life world at extreme proximity the recording captures a listening process body wired, restless street sounds still turn one inside the other each in out to all here hearing networks feeling for a now that sings !_—————-!———————

More No Place

Album-length sound art release exploring personal soundscapes, sonic proximity, intimacy and interiority through methods of first-person field recording and autoethnographic collage

Auto travelin thru flux flay fusion land

Collection of sound art pieces combining field recording, found audio and improvised performance

Auto travelin AV

Live audiovisual performance at Glasgow International Biennial Festival