> 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 


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: