> Turbine; infrasound
> Bird and flying insects; ultrasound


> 1980: After oil money
> 1987: A straight border (reclamation)
> 1988: Unemployment, divorce, and suicide
> 1996: Down the drain
> 2011: Finally bright?
> 2018: Into the (re)wild


> Body as an active instrument
> First-person listening
> A field listening diary






Written by Minji Kim
Situated listening modes in an ecological place; Sihwa 
Opening the Essay

On the afternoon of July 1st, the bus bound for Sihwa was bustling with passengers, from students to elders. The air in the bus was filled with the smell of dead fish (like any other fishing village), mingling with the bus's sway and the heat inside, making me feel queasy. As the bus approached the bridge, the driver switched on the microphone and announced:

"The bus will be accelerating on the bridge. Please hold onto the handrails and refrain from moving."

The bus picked up speed as it gained the bridge. Spanning a total length of 2.76 km, this bridge① serves both as a roadway and a sluice gate for the artificial lake of Sihwa②which has been erected at the bay between Siheung and Hwaseong. I glanced out the window. The grey sky of recent rain, and fog. Arrayed in a line, transmission towers blinked rhythmically in the mist. On the bus, I felt like I was floating in mid-air; like a scene from a sci-fi film. As the bus passed the middle of the bridge, the open sea on the right and the inland sea on the left presented a contrast. Cranes from distant ports moved slowly on the former. Smoke drifted into the sky from nearby factories③, as it does in all industrial areas. The inland sea on the opposite side were exposed tidal flats, across which birds with long, pointed bills foraged in the carved-out creeks. Beneath the bridge's midpoint, a sluice gate④ sent artificial tides into the inland sea. The ecosystem of the artificial lake of Sihwa has been adapted to the rhythm of these tides generated by the sluice gate. Inside the bus, my nausea dissolved into Sihwa's clear divide between inside and outside, past and future, artificial and ecological.

In July 2023, I conducted field research at Sihwa on the west coast of Korea, residing there for a month in collaboration with a multidisciplinary collective⑤ consisting of a landscape architect, a curator, a visual artist, a marine ecologist, and a maritime humanities researcher. Sihwa has been mitigating pollution caused by anti-ecological reclamation projects, diluting it through artificial currents to improve water quality and the surrounding marine ecology. This field research aimed to archive meaningful acoustic communication between maritime infrastructure and surrounding ecology within this re-wilding process.

This essay contained, in particular, a series of reflections on the listening modes encountered in the ecological field research. Important questions were addressed: How does one come to understand the entanglements of Sihwa through listening, and what listening modes can convey to listeners the contextual web surrounding Sihwa? I am trying to provide context in order to prime the listener to my blend of stories in the ecological place before I press record on my recorder. The reason for this attempt is that I believe meaningful acoustic communication can be realised through acknowledging the complexity of situated listening modes and with specific sonic knowledge.

The situated listening modes I conceived in the field research and what I describe in this essay are categorised to correlate with my three chapters. The first chapter, “Listening with Technologies; What we cannot Hear”, describes examples of infrasound waves radiated by the machines that constitute Sihwa's re-engineering in relation to the hearing of fish and, furthermore, examines Sihwa's crowded flying non-human ultrasonic sound communication. This is a conceptual framework of listening that perceives, through technology, the non-human-oriented inaccessible layers of sound that construct ecological places.  

The second chapter, “Geo-political Stories of the Place”, includes the tale of Sihwa’s 30-year reclamation in a geopolitical context, which is revealed through pluralistic collaboration by listening to unwoven stories and unheard voices. These expose the human roots of construction in the place and attune the ears to non-human perspectives of pollution.  

The third chapter, “Embodied Listening while Counting my Listening Body”, emphasizes the listener's embodiment and subjectivity in the field to avoid vesting the authority of the voice of an ecological place. Memories, emotions, and the listener's culture/knowledge system are counted and revealed in field listening, and a self-reflective orientation is added to the listening mode.


①    Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station aerial view (Ansan:  Arne Müseler, April 9, 2020), CC BY-SA 3.0.


②   Satellite photo of Sihwa Lake (Ansan: Seok-jae Kwon(KORDI), February 29, 2008), Permission to use photo from Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology



③   Smoke drifted into the sky from nearby factories in industrial areas (Ansan: Minji Kim, July, 2023), Author's collection



④    Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Plant Power Plant Exterior (Ansan: Jin-soon Park(KIOST), July 1, 2013), Permission to use photo from Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology



⑤   Getbollab, https://getbollab.org/


I. Listening with Technologies; What we cannot Hear

Imagine we are holding a microphone. What can the microphone sense and how it is different to what we sense? What sound can we hear and what sound can we not? Sound is not only of the human, and undermines human exceptionalism. Everything vibrates on some frequency and is touched by vibration, regardless of how imperceptible to human sensibility this might be⑥. Regarding inaccessible frequency, we can roughly grasp where it is using technical devices. This could be somewhere physically far away or beneath somewhere our bodies hardly access such as under the ground, or under the water. And the inaccessible frequency includes hearing beyond the sonic frequencies of our bare ears. We cannot comprehend the sound of what we cannot hear, but to perceive with the help of a technical device that there is a sonic world where beings interact outside human auditory awareness can be a way to encounter the ecological place.


Turbine; infrasound⑦

An infrasound is an acoustic oscillation whose frequency is low, and under the mechanical range of human hearing. The ear is the most sensitive receptor for sound. If we cannot hear a sound, we cannot perceive it in other ways and it does not affect us⑧. There are many natural sources of infrasound, including meteors, volcanic eruptions, ocean waves, wind, and any effect which leads to slow air oscillations. Manmade sources of infrasound include explosions, large combustion processes, slow-speed fans, and machinery⑨.

Sihwa is an entangled place of machinery and atmospheric infrasound. The hydronic turbine①⓪ of the Sihwa tidal power plant controls the current between Sihwa's open and inner seas while extracting the tidal energy. In research①① regarding the correlation between infrasound and the hydronic turbine, the changes in tidal flow and rotor rotation at the time of the power plant were measured and compared to the levels of noise. The average rotation speeds of the rotor and water wheel during power plant operation were 748 rpm and 43 rpm, respectively. These were converted to frequency. This resulted in 12 Hz and 0.7 Hz①②, meaning that in the process of producing electricity through a hydronic turbine, a water wheel moved by the current generates infrasound. Meanwhile, it is reported that the main frequency of underwater noise generated by the vibration of marine structures is consistent with the frequency of the structure①③. This is an example in Sihwa of acoustic communication between infrasonic and non-humans that humans almost cannot hear. For example, most fish can hear infrasound. They live in acoustically complex environments and are well-equipped to make use of the sound they sense to increase their likelihood of survival. They use their auditory ability for the same purposes as mammals—to detect, locate, and identify their surroundings, conspecifics, predators, and prey①④.

In addition to turbines there are transmission towers, the vibrations of a bridge when the vehicles pass over, cranes at the harbour, ships and many more motors that radiate infrasound. Although there is a case that pollution has been reduced due to tidal power plants, the infrasound of machinery in Sihwa and that of non-humans are conflicted. We realise in this conflict that the ecological consequence of sound is not always clarified directly; we can only speculate the consequence of sound. Sound creates a suspension of immediate understanding through its nonlinear duration, along with its ambiguity. It can be both immediate and run on epic time scales, and the hesitancy that sound creates underpins an epistemological perplexity and vulnerability, one designed with meaning primarily in concrete situations and practices①⑤ .


Bird and flying insects; ultrasound

Constrastingly, ultrasound is a form of mechanical energy that has frequencies above human hearing. The earliest known sources of ultrasound are those emanating from the non-human world. Dogs, birds, crickets, and bats are well-unknown animals whose communication signals extend to the range of ultrasound①⑥.

On the way to the inner shore of Sihwa, forbidden to the public for over a decade, most of the road signs were covered by bushes. Wild dogs crossed the roads of unused pedestrian crossings. Countless species of birds flew in the sky. Sun-mi Park, a resident and activist in the Sihwa area, accompanied me on the field visit. She stopped the car to birdwatch with binoculars. We drove carefully towards the shore, because of swarms of nameless flying insects buzzing around. Overwhelmed by the almost wild world that non-humans had occupied, I arrived at the shore①⑦. Blue-green waves gently broke, accompanied by a harmonious chorus of cicadas. The resonant calls of bullfrogs and the sharp buzz of bees created an orchestral tapestry①⑧. Sihwa is densely inhabited by birds and flying insects①⑨. As the population of benthic organisms decreased due to water pollution in the Sihwa area, birds and flying insects were threatened. However, once public access was prohibited, and after the operation of the Sihwa Tidal Power Plant began, the population of benthic organisms almost completely recovered②⓪. Therefore, in 2009, a total of 2,258 entities of 49 species of resident birds inhabited and migratory birds visited the Sihwa inner sea's side of the land②①.  

Non-humans are above humans in the sense that they communicate in frequencies above our hearing. The ultrasonic layer represents the communication occurring actively in Sihwa that is inaccessible to human ears. Analysing the ultrasound communication of non-humans has been a historical research method of acoustic ecologists (and biology acousticians) in the field of ecology or biology but also in musicology, as Schafer described in his book②②. Any microphone captures plurality ②③. Technology mediates from listening to what we cannot hear②④. However, beyond analysing the rhythm and frequencies of ultrasound non-humans make to figure out their voices, can also more conceptually frame this ultrasound by listening to Sihwa-specific context. This is how to take off the human-centred idea of a place that has a long history of reclamation and artificiality and come to know there are more invisible, inaccessible layers to humans.


⑥   Kanngieser, Anja. 2015. “Geopolitics and the Anthropocene: Five Propositions for Sound.” GeoHumanities, (September). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2015.1075360.

⑦    The frequency definition of infrasound and others (Minji Kim, July, 2023), Author's collection


⑧ Leventhall, Geoff. 2006. “What is infrasound?” Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 93 (2007) (August): 130–137. 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2006.07.006.

⑨   Ibid.

①⓪   Sihwa Tidal Power Plant Turbine Installation (Ansan: Jin-soon Park(KIOST), July 1, 2013), Permission to use photo from Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology


①①   Korea Institute of Ocean Science ＆ Technology. 2012. “Development of Techniques for Improving Performance of Tidal Power Generation System.” (December).

①②   Korea Institute of Ocean Science ＆ Technology. 2012. “Development of Techniques for Improving Performance of Tidal Power Generation System.” (December): 204.  

①③   Korea Institute of Ocean Science ＆ Technology. 2012. “Development of Techniques for Improving Performance of Tidal Power Generation System.” (December): 196.

 ①④   Copping, AE, MB Halvorsen, and TJ Carlson. 2011. “Effects of Tidal Turbine Noise on Fish Task 2.1.3.2: Effects on Aquatic Organisms: Acoustics/Noise – Fiscal Year 2011 Progress Report.” Environmental Effects of Marine and Hydrokinetic Energy, (September): 1-2. DE-AC05-76RL01830.

①⑤   Kanngieser, Anja. 2015. “Geopolitics and the Anthropocene: Five Propositions for Sound.” GeoHumanities, (September). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2373566X.2015.1075360.

①⑥   Repacholi, M.H., Martino Gandolfo, and A. Rindi. 2011. “Ultrasound: Medical Applications, Biological Effects, and Hazard Potential.” Edited by M.H. Repacholi, Martino Gandolfo, and A. Rindi. 29p.: Springer US.

①⑦   The shore of inner sea of Sihwa (Ansan: Minji Kim, July, 2023), Author's collection



①⑧   Kim, Minji. 2024. “Into the (re)wild.” Ecoes #6 (January).

①⑨   Birds and flying insects in Sihwa (Minji Kim, July, 2023), Author's collection



②⓪   Kim, Minkyu, and Bon Joo Koo. 2015. “The Intertidal Area in Lake Sihwa After Operation of the Tidal Power Plant.” Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment and Energy Vol. 18, no. 4 (November): pp. 310-316.

②①   Park, Chi-Young, Ho-Joon Kim, In-Hwan Paik, Jae-Pyoung Yu, Woon-Kee Paik, and Joon-Woo Lee. “Characteristics of Bird Community in Sihwa South Grassland, Korea.” Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology. Korea Society of Environment and Ecology, August 31, 2015. doi:10.13047/kjee.2015.29.4.516.

②②   Schafer, R. M. 1993. “The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World.” TWO: The Sounds of Life.: Inner Traditions/Bear.

②③   Wright, Mark P. 2023. “Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice.” 95p.: Bloomsbury Academic.

②④   Ibid.




II. Geo-political Stories of the Place

How can human listeners be situated in the geo-political context of Sihwa? The one important layer of Sihwa as an ecological place is the pollution from 30 years of national-scale reclamation projects, which I situate in a geo-political context. Most of the sounds in this context of the place are collections of unwoven stories rather than sonic materials that can be measured. So, to learn about the pollution of Sihwa, listening needs to be a conceptual framework: reading the unwoven stories and hearing unheard voices regarding the social-political actions of humans that have been done. This mode of listening arises from experiments with ways of knowing and inhabiting the world, gesturing toward disciplines concerned with sound, the politics of language, and the physical and philosophical environment. Sound is also about becoming aware of unfamiliar registers that have much political significance. Indeed, it is the responsibility of a human being to learn the causality of pollution. Most crucially, exposing the human roots of construction in the place by listening to geo-political stories makes it possible to build a bridge across and situate the ears close to non-human perspectives on pollution.

Listening to the geo-political context of Sihwa also became integral to the multidisciplinary collective, GetbolLAB, which I collaborate. As part of this collective, during a seminar led by Jung-hwa Kim, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, we explored how the coastal areas are positioned within urban planning. Through discussions with Sun-mi Park, a resident and activist in the Sihwa area, and visits along Sihwa's open and inner seas, we established a direction for tracing the intricacies of Sihwa encountered during field research. Therefore, in the following writings, I explore the geo-political and ecological history intertwined within Sihwa, tracing the process of re-wilding alongside the chronology of 30 years of reclamation, aiming to learn about the layers of the place.      
*You can read the original version of this chapter in "Into the (re)wild" which I authored, and which was published by Ecoes #6 by Sonic Acts.

1980: After oil money
During the first oil crisis, Gulf countries flourished economically and, leveraging their accumulated wealth, formulated plans to construct social infrastructures such as roads and harbours. The rapid pace of construction served as an opportunity to absorb labour from overseas due to the scarcity of the Gulf domestic workforce②⑤. In Korea, this led to a remarkable increase in the proportion of foreign labourers, from 37% in 1975 to 65% in 1985②⑥. This period also witnessed a significant surge in the migration of South Korean labour to the Middle East. This phenomenon was propelled by the nationwide, post-Korean War slogan ‘Live Well’, coupled with vigorous corporate expansion and the aspirations of young people to escape poverty. However, in 1980, following oil-producing countries’ increasing emphasis on domestic project orders, many South Korean heavy equipment operators and labourers working abroad returned home. This phenomenon coincided with large-scale South Korean reclamation projects, such as the Sihwa development project. Efforts were instead concentrated on bolstering the domestic economy and expanding national territory. By bringing fresh water from artificial reservoirs to the reclaimed agricultural and industrial areas, these projects aimed to form coastal industrial belts on the western coast, dispersing the population from within the capital region and regulating the influx of business facilities into the Seoul metropolitan area②⑦.

1987: A straight border (reclamation)
The Sihwa District Development Project began with the construction of a seawall. To develop the 17,300-ha reclamation area of vast tidal flats spread around the city of Siheung and Hwaseong county, a seawall spanning 12.7 km with five sluice gates was built, creating a freshwater reservoir to hold approximately 180 million tons of water. This was the longest seawall built in Korea and the largest reclamation project in Asia at the time. The project gave hope to the local fishermen and merchants, who sold their homes at bargain prices, exchanging their livelihoods for compensation and the high prospect for economic growth. However, following the commencement of the seawall construction, the bright prospects for Lake Sihwa began to disintegrate. The cessation of seawater inflow led to accelerated anthropogenic contamination from heavy metals, resulting in eutrophication and the rapid formation of lifeless zones. Nearby factories also illicitly discharged wastewater.

1988: Unemployment, divorce, and suicide
During low tide, using simple fishing tools, the residents of the villages gathered clams and octopuses. They also cultivated various shellfish species such as oysters, clams, Venus clams, and cockles to sustain their income②⑧. However, following the construction of the seawall, the marine environment started rapidly declining. Ultimately, maintaining their livelihoods through fishing became increasingly challenging. Furthermore, the tidal flats, which were considered a common resource (part of the sea), historically shared equally among fishing communities, given the absence of individually owned agricultural land, made it difficult to claim compensation. In 1988, this situation prompted almost all the villages around Lake Sihwa to engage in class-action lawsuits against the government seeking compensation for traditional fisheries②⑨. Through the first and second rounds of litigation, they won and received individual payouts. With this compensation, the fishermen sold their goods in nearby rural areas and sought jobs in urban centres. However, accustomed to relatively flexible working hours governed by the tides, many found it difficult to adjust to the fixed schedule of the city. Possessing limited skills beyond fishing, a large number returned to their villages. Additionally, as the government’s final appeal was won at the Supreme Court, villagers found themselves forced to repay the compensation they had already received, increasing their debts③⓪. The Daebudo Island village of Donguri gradually collapsed due to poverty. Once home to around 130 households, now only around 40 families remain, a testament to its decline③①.

1996: Down the drain
A total of 332 million tons of wastewater from Sihwa were released into the nearby ocean③②. By the mid-1990s, the Sihwa Lake freshwater reservoir had become severely contaminated, making it unusable not only for agricultural and industrial purposes but for any other uses as well. The once-clear water turned murky, with foam on the surface and a foul odour pervading the waves. Anchored, motionless ships rusted and fell apart and there was widespread crop failure in the Sihwa surrounding areas. As the water of Sihwa Lake evaporated, the wind swept across the exposed salt flats, covering farms and villages with salt deposits that piled up on windowsills like dust③③. Within the waters of Sihwa Lake, a marine ecosystem survey revealed species globally recognised as indicators of organic pollution, consistently dominating the benthic community③④. As pollutants entered via these pathways, the proliferation of phytoplankton continued, leading to phenomena such as red, brown, and green tides③⑤. As Sihwa’s pollution gained international notoriety, the government took a surreptitious approach, releasing the polluted water into the sea at night. The Ministry of Environment argued that the released water met the discharge standards set by the Water Quality and Ecosystem Conservation Act, discarding the issue③⑥. However, when considering the chemical oxygen demand test, the contaminant load was astronomically high, exceeding more than tenfold the amount of wastewater discharged by all of Korea’s factories combined in a single day.

2011: Finally bright?
Ironically, named ‘Finally Bright,’ as organisms died off in swarms and residents left, colloquially Sihwa began to be referred to as the ‘Lake of Death’. The government proposed solutions to address the worst of the water pollution and, in the process, suggested the conversion of Sihwa from a freshwater reservoir (as originally intended) to a seawater lake by constructing tidal power plants with sluice gates (this led to the discharge of polluted water from Sihwa into the open sea). Tidal power generation, in principle similar to low-head hydropower, utilises the tidal range, the difference in water level between high and low tide, to create kinetic, and then electrical energy③⑦. The unique aspect of the tides, the rising and falling sea level is one of the most predictable oceanic phenomena, governed by the gravitational forces of the Moon and Sun, and the balance of Earth’s rotation③⑧. The government requested a preliminary review of the feasibility and economic viability of installing tidal power plants by the Marine Research Institute. The procedure was deemed viable, and construction commenced. With an investment of 355.1 billion KRW③⑨ (resulting in a total amount of approximately 24.36 trillion KRW for all construction at Sihwa, including the seawall and tidal power plants), the project began in the mid-2000s and was completed in 2011.

2018: Into the (re)wild
Re-wilding is the process of reconstructing a natural ecosystem on a large scale, in the aftermath of significant human interference④⓪. It involves restoring natural processes and regenerating a complete or near-complete food web at all trophic levels, resulting in a robust and self-sustaining ecosystem where biota can thrive as if the disruption had not occurred. The conversion of Sihwa to a seawater lake and the establishment of tidal power plants fundamentally encompassed the objective of re-wilding, attracting considerable attention from various research institutions④①. A study released in 2019, examined the spatial variation of heavy metal contamination in sediment after the implementation of tidal power plants④②. Surface sediments, sediment cores, and particulate matter in suspension were analysed, comparing the findings with the data from 2009. The results indicated an average reduction of 8% to 31% in heavy metal concentrations, though core samples from upstream areas with industrial complexes still exceeded safety limits. Significant accumulation of heavy metal-contaminated sediment exceeding 40 cm in width was observed in these cores, indicating that industrial pollution through sedimentation remains a concern. While increased seawater circulation resulting from the operation of tidal power plants contributed to a decrease in contamination, pollution from industrial activities persisted. It was concluded that the potential discharge of contaminated sediment from Sihwa into the outer regions could have adverse effects on the environment and ecosystems. Sihwa’s recovery has progressed more slowly than expected. A local activist who had been monitoring the site for years noted that rather than the toxic pollutants being swiftly discharged into the distance overnight, as many might assume, the process is lengthy. Pollutants are swept out by high tide in the morning and then, during low tide in the evening, return, albeit in depleted concentrations.


②⑤   National Institute of Korean History. "The Economic Boom of Middle Eastern Oil-producing Countries and Korea's Entry into the Middle East Construction Market." Our History Net. , http://contents.history. go.kr/mobile/kc/view.do?levelId=kc_i503200&code=kc_age_50.

②⑥   Ibid.

②⑦   Lee, Jong-won, and Hong, Sung-man. “The Versatility of Public Projects and Policy Improvement.” 1162p. Korean Public Administration Journal, 2009.

②⑧   Ansan City Editorial Committee. “History of Ansan; Siwhaho and Ansan.” Ansan: Ansan City Editorial Committee, November 30, 2012.

②⑨   Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. “Fishermen's Lives and Fishing Activities in Intertidal Zones.” 4p.: Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, 2021.

③⓪   Park, Hyun-kyu. “Current Status and Response to Resident Damage Due to Siwha Freshwater Lake Policy.” Green Law Center. Accessed n.d. https://greenlaw.or.kr/?p=46733.

 ③①   Ibid.

③②   Ibid.

③③   Ibid.

 ③④   Park, Byeong-sang. “Giant Failure Siwhaho.” 1p.: Hwanghae Culture, 1996.

③⑤   Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology, Ecology and Environment Research Division. “Environmental Assessment of Siwha Lake Using the Coastal Pollution Index (BPI).” 198p.: Ocean and Polar Research, 2003.

③⑥   Kim, Eun-soo. "Study on Environmental Changes in Siwhaho and Establishment of Conservation Measures (2nd year)." 31p.: Korea Institute of Ocean Research, 1998.

③⑦   Kim, Jung-wook. "Pollution in Siwhaho and the Role of Citizens." 4p.: Hwanghae Culture, 1996.

③⑧   Choi Young-seok. Ansan Newspaper. "After Auditor's Inspection of Siwha Lake, Neglect in Post-Inspection Check." October 14, 2003.

③⑨   Korea Water Resources Corporation. “Siwha Lake Tidal Power Plant Plan and Prospects.” 39p.: Korea Energy Forum bulletin no.63, 2003.

④⓪   Conservation Biology. "Guiding Principles for Rewilding." 1888p.: Conservation Biology, 2021.

④①   Lee Kwang-su. Infrastructure Development Center for Power Generation Projects. "Establishment of Support Measures for Areas around the Tidal Power Plant." 21p.: Infrastructure Development Center for Power Generation Projects, 2009.

④②   Lee Jeong. Korea Economy. "[Green Changes the World] Korea Water Resources Corporation ‥ Completion of Siwha Tidal Power Plant Next Year." February 5, 2009. https://www.hankyung.com/economy/article/2009020455331.




III. Embodied Listening while Counting my Listening Body

“My own movement was perhaps the most ironic of all④③.” Whether or not ecological ethics takes account of artistic research, there are always ecological costs associated with listening in the actual place④④. Could listening be more ecologically productive, despite the carbon emissions of the aeroplane from the Netherlands to Sihwa? Of course, one of the answers can be explained in previous chapters––with learning the place through technology and perceiving that which we cannot hear in the first chapter, and with geopolitics what humans have done in the second chapter. For situations in a contact zone like Sihwa, attentive listening on location reveals sonic threads running through the narratives and issues under examination and suggests unexpected questions and directions to be followed④⑤. This is a conceptual framework for producing meaningful sonic knowledge.


Body as an active instrument

However, just as the footprints of my physical body from human activities accumulated through this field research, listening with my body and participating in an ecological place is an important way to learn about it. Many examples of acoustic ecology and its listening are cerebrally privileged in the understanding of fieldwork practice, and thus the bodily experience of the fieldworker has been under-scrutinised④⑥. The cerebral works include the contextual learning of sound through labelling or mapping to frequency and timing. However, when the sound is translated into language, does the authority belong to the listener in the field? How can listeners avoid to represent the voices in the ecological place? Whether while listening, conducting field research, or returning, a listener has no choice but to confront his or her own memories, bodily experiences, and cultural/knowledge systems. In the book, fieldwork embodied (2007)④⑦, Judith Oakley insists that interactive encounters in the field with others through the instrument of one’s own body are not simply cerebral but a kinetic and sensual process both conscious and unconscious which occurs in unpredictable, uncontrollable ways. So, at the same phase as the others to a listener, a listener in the field may be sexed, racialised, or othered in other different contexts.

In Steven Feld’s essay (1994)④⑧, he mentioned the Kantian view that all knowledge begins in experience④⑨ and although he admitted it is still ultimately impossible to become others. However, in the process, we can counter the arrogance of colonial authority, of history, written in one narrative⑤⓪. The method presented in his essay is not to approach unfamiliar cultures with Western objectivity but to acknowledge the impossible and learn by becoming to others. Feld’s idea here relates to Haraway’s situated knowledge⑤①: that bodies as objects of knowledge are material-semiotic generative nodes⑤② and that knowledge is not a resource to be mapped and appropriated⑤③ (in this context, ‘becoming with’ is more relevant than Feld’s ‘becoming to’). Although not fully explicated in Feld’s essay, the listener should be actively involved in counting their ears and either nose, skin, or tongue, that is, their own cultural background and knowledge system. To reveal that the listener is not a standard of absoluteness and objectivity is becoming ‘with’ an active body of others in the ecological place.


First-person listening

The sensation of fog touching the skin, the moist, grassy scent filling the lungs with each breath. The tension felt underfoot when stepping on mud. The pink seaweeds are partially submerged in water⑤④. Thus, for me, Sihwa was an enigmatic place. The fog and the grassy scent would dissipate with the tide. Where there was once mud and seaweed, there would be a complete sea at high tide. I found myself other in the ever-changing Sihwa. These shifting patterns were not about the sun but about the moon—about tidal phases. That is, I must understand the patterns on a scale of the moon's 29-day orbit around the Earth, which I am not used to in my daily life. Furthermore, Sihwa's inner sea adds a layer of artificial complexity. During low tide, when seawater rises to a certain height at a sluice gate, the open sea rushes in, swiftly transforming what was once mud into a sea⑤⑤. When I realised that all the ecological inhabitants of Sihwa were swept in and out by this intricate rhythm, I found myself in a paradoxical situation and asked: Where am I?    

Isobel Anderson and Tullis Rennie (2016)⑤⑥ point out that historically, within the discourse of field listening practice and research, there has been no clear indication by whom the records were made, possibly due to a historical Western favouring of logio-scientific knowledge, and examining the common assumption that records are represented as the field. The authors list several works that utilise self-reflective narration in their works, emphasising the listener's emotional interaction in the identified field and clarifying the active agency of anyone there. This is more relevant when converting the field listening experience into a narrative rather than about the field listening mode itself. However, this self-reflextional, first-person orientation of listening reminds us of the ecological, social, and physical emplacement of our listening in an ecological place and allows us to situate our coordinates.

④③   Wright, Mark P. 2023. “Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice.” vii.: Bloomsbury Academic.

④④    Galloway, Kate. 2022. “On the Ethics of Extraction in Environmental Sound Art.” MUSICultures 49 (December): 111-134.

④⑤    Feld, Steven, and Scott Sinkler. 1994. “The Sound World of Bosavi.” Acoustic Ecology Institute. https://aeinews.org/aeiarchive/edu/educurrbosavi.html.

④⑥   Okely, Judith. 2007. “Fieldwork Embodied.” Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects Volume 55, no. Issue 1 (May): 65 - 79. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00693.x.

④⑦    Feld, Steven, and Scott Sinkler. 1994. “The Sound World of Bosavi.” Acoustic Ecology Institute. https://aeinews.org/aeiarchive/edu/educurrbosavi.html.

④⑧   Ibid.

④⑨   Ibid.

⑤⓪   Ibid.

⑤①  Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies Vol. 14, no. No. 3 (Autumn): 575 - 599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066.

⑤②   Ibid.


⑤③   Ibid.


⑤④    The pink seaweeds are partially submerged in water (Ansan: Minji Kim, July, 2023), Author's collection



⑤⑤   When the open sea rushes in, swiftly transforming what was once mud into a sea (Ansan: Minji Kim, July, 2023), Author's collection



⑤⑥   Anderson, Isobel, and Tullis Rennie. “Thoughts in the Field: ‘Self-Reflexive Narrative’ in Field Recording.” Organised Sound 21, no. 3 (2016): 222–32. https://doi-org.ezproxy.leidenuniv.nl/10.1017/S1355771816000194.
 A field listening diary

3rd July, 2023
Cicadas Harmony:

Birds and machines in the distance:

Water pooled on rocks:

Softly chriping insects:

9th July, 2023
Hidden in the thicket:

Some movement(in dirty water):

A foul oder:

Plastic covers:

16th July, 2023
Conversations of those who fly and walk:

Transition and to shells:

Submerging artificial tides:

Empty shells:

Above my ears:

24th July, 2023
Refueling:

Creatures coexisting in the water:

Waves and creaking sounds:

Harbor, waves, people:

A quiet spot:



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