Field recordings as invitation and transportation

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the history, methods, engagements, and longstanding debates of the sonic medium of field recording. It considers not just standalone field recordings but diverse music and sound art genres where environmental sounds feature. Although they diverge in their approaches, field recordists (and those who apply these recordings in creative practice) are united in the belief that field recordings grant access to and precipitate emotionally heightened spaces. These positively-valenced emotions can potentially ameliorate the emotional toll of living through a time of socio-ecological crisis. In addition, some recordists claim that their field recordings provoke environmental reflection or inspire new environmental commitments – or both. Three exemplars – soundscapes featuring whales, birds, and a menagerie of creatures – guide a discussion on measuring field recordings’ efficacy and impact. I argue that the robust link between nature connectedness (including soundscapes) and pro-environmental behaviour demonstrated in recent studies should be drawn upon more widely to bolster projects in fields like sound art, soundscape studies, and acoustic ecology. In linking art and activism, these trans-disciplinary collaborations reveal the emotional power of field recordings, the challenge of identifying qualitative results, and the promise of art-science alliances in stimulating urgent public conversations vis-à-vis environmental awareness and action.

KEYWORDS:

• Field recording
• soundscape
• acoustic ecology
• nature connectedness
• eco-anxiety

Introduction

Like other musics and sound art, field recordings grant access to and precipitate emotionally heightened spaces. Environmental recordings can unhook us from the quotidian, transporting us to another place and time. They offer us the prospect of losing ourselves or finding ourselves. Below, I review which emotions might be evoked by field recordings, as well as whether such recordings can accomplish more than simply being good to listen to and feel with. In this time of socio-ecological crisis, field recordings and creative works incorporating them may be tasked by their creators with provoking ecological reflection and prompting new environmental commitments. A key question pursued over the course of this article concerns how the medium might be efficacious in introducing an ethical or activist dimension to the emotional responses it elicits and how this can be measured. I review an expanding body of new quantitative studies that confirms the benefits of psychological connectedness to the natural world, including those that commend the sounds of nature for their therapeutic powers and ability to promote pro-environmental behaviour. I will argue that practices like sound art, soundscape studies, and acoustic ecology have yet to take full advantage of this literature to validate their creative interventions.

Field recordings and the sounding environment

I begin by reviewing the medium’s history, methods, engagements, and longstanding debates. Field recordings are non-studio recordings of the ambient sound of an environment. They may pan out to the entirety of a site’s acoustic phenomena or restrict their ambit as much as possible to a single sound source. Ludwig Koch (1956) made the earliest recording of birdsong in 1889 (also see Bruyninckx 2018). Originally striving to represent ‘nature’ at its most natural – to engage with remote places and animal others – recordists today also pay attention to urban and built environments.

Chion (1994, 101) coined phonogenic to describe how some acoustic phenomena are considered more charismatic and attractive than others, thus increasing acoustic engagement and awareness. However, recordists have documented to stunning effect places not traditionally considered beautiful. For instance, acoustic ecologist Peter Cusack’s (2012, 2014) ‘sonic journalism’ explores Sounds from Dangerous Places: ‘Caspian Oilfields’, ‘Bradwell Nuclear Power Station’, and ‘Chernobyl’. They are unexpected, sonically arresting, and troublingly meaningful. Recordists and theorists have also turned their attention to our planet’s vibrations and their affective qualities (e.g. Deleuze and Guattari 1994; Grosz 2008; Goodman 2010; Kahn 2013; Gallagher 2015, 570; ‘Alan Lamb’ 2022). Both infrasonic and ultrasonic sound events have been recorded and made available to our ears (English 2022).

In re-sounding a space, field recordings present their audiences with diverse listening orientations: they can inspire listening ‘for acoustics and fidelity’ (Sterne 2003, 98), serve as a soundtrack to activities like massage or meditation, or stimulate ‘a way of knowing and interacting with the world’ (Sterne 2003, 98). Not all field recordings strive to be artful; instead, they may be products of the routine acoustic monitoring of animals (Marsland et al. 2019, 1189) or other ecological investigations (ecoacoustics) (Sueur and Farina 2015, Quinn et al. 2018). Efforts may target entire soundscapes to monitor animal biodiversity (bioacoustics) (Burivalova, Game, and Butler 2019). When conducted as meticulous data collection, field recordings are trans-generational, providing material both for current and future discoveries (Taylor 2017, 260).

Field recording may investigate personal connections to place (Anderson and Rennie 2016, Findlay-Walsh 2017) or marginalized groups (Anderson and Rennie 2016), or it may combine the ethnographic aspects of anthropology with the interests of sound artists and soundscape composers, of which anthropologist Stephen Feld is a notable example (Smiley, 2015, Feld and Brenneis 2004).

Longstanding debates drift and pull in many directions, rehashing the ‘purity’ and validity of recordings in controlled laboratories versus the authenticity of an animal’s natural environment, the recording of a single species versus an entire soundscape, and the ethics of processed versus unprocessed tracks, as well as endless discussions on gear (e.g. Virostek 2012, Brennan, Delli, and Tucker 2016). Emmy award – winner Gordon Hempton (2016, 89) maintains, ‘It is the moral obligation of sound designers to present Earth’s living music authentically’. Unlike Hempton, recordist and long-time David Attenborough collaborator Chris Watson’s field recordings are source material for unapologetic artistic manipulation (Jamieson 2021, 217), although he is also avid about creating ‘a strong sense and spirit of place’ (‘Chris Watson’ 2022a). Many internal debates on field recording belie the fact that all recordings are subjective and edited to a greater or lesser extent, first by the proclivities, affinities, and goals of the recordist, then by their equipment, technology, and technique – and not just all recordings: all listening experiences are filtered and edited through a listener’s ears.

For my purposes, I do not separate ‘field’ from ‘recording’. Art critic Berger (0000 has accomplished this admirably in his essay on the qualities of an ideal field. I also resist categorizing field recording as a kind of textual practice (e.g. Olsen 2018). Acoustic commitments and requirements can be debated interminably. However, like musician and music theorist Chris Cutler (2020, 100—fn70), I insist that ‘music [and field recordings] always be a sounding event’.

Environmental sounds in diverse music and sound art genres

Musicians and composers have a centuries-long aesthetic engagement with environmental sounds, from imitation to inspiration to abstraction (Taylor 2011). Will Montgomery (2018, 103) has noted the proficiency of field recordings in memorializing place and time, but also their capacity to ‘expand the range of acoustic possibility open to composer, performer and listener’ (also see Benson 2018). Diverse contemporary approaches to composing with field recordings include art music (both experimental, like musique concrète, and traditional), ambient music, soundscape composition (Westerkamp 2002, Martin 2017), environmental sound art (Bianchi and Manzo 2016), and eco-structuralism (Opie and Brown 2006). Some of these genres concentrate on human ‘improvements’ to recordings of the natural world. However, environmental philosopher Val Plumwood (2009, 115) employs the term hyperseparation to place pressure on how human-centredness ‘damages our ability to see ourselves as part of ecosystems’. The practices considered below cleave to a reverence for all life – to connectedness, generosity, wonder, and obligation – so as to heal ourselves and our planet from anthropocentric assumptions. For them, field recordings lend relevance rather than exoticism. Therefore, this article will pay close attention to environmental sounds that facilitate border crossings, placing us and representing us not just in nature but of nature.

In The Tuning of the World, composer and environmentalist R. Murray Schafer (1977) alerted us to our planet’s changing environmental sounds, thus charting the course for soundscape studies. The World Soundscape Project provoked composition outcomes, with composers like Barry Truax and Hildegaard Westerkamp collaborating with Schafer. Truax (1996, 55) understands the emotional mission of soundscape composition as ‘to invoke the listener’s associations, memories, and imagination related to the soundscape’ (also see Truax 2008, 2011).

Their work falls under the rubric acoustic ecology, with its concerns about the relationship between listeners and their sonic environment. (Soundscape ecology, its cousin in the natural sciences, assesses biodiversity via the acoustic footprint of a location.) This article’s trajectory, which proceeds from field recordings to emotional responses to ethical/activist concerns, is likewise conspicuous in acoustic ecology, where practitioners are mindful of the ethico-political dimensions and outcomes of their endeavours. Recordists Bernie Krause (2002, 2012) and David Monacchi (2016) call attention to species decline and loss. ‘I had to determine how my art could be a platform and forum for environmental awareness, while maintaining a scientific and ecological methodology’, Monacchi (2016, 160) writes.

In music composition genres that incorporate field recordings, we also encounter disputes vis-à-vis authenticity and process. Whilst Schaeffer eschews reference to (and disguises) his original sound sources, Westerkamp (2002, 53) holds that a soundscape composition must preserve and refer to the sonic environment from where it was made: ‘It is never abstract’. In any case, we can thank in large part film music with the transformation of what we are willing to accept as music, as well as technology’s capacity to enhance a listening experience. Composer David Dunn (2008, n.p.) declares, ‘I am willing to contend that this capacity to hear the soundscape as music is simultaneously one of the most archaic ways of listening and the most modern’. Meanwhile, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg (2019, 91) reminds us, ‘no sound is ever safe from being considered music’.

By highlighting the porous borders of field recording, music, and sound art and by using the terms somewhat interchangeably, I push back against the prestige differentials of the problematic term music. This also allows discussions of field recordings vis-à-vis emotion to benefit from research on the confluence of music and emotion. The next section explores a range of emotional responses that might be evoked by field recordings and how this might work.

The emotional work of field recordings

Field recordings, like music, both express and arouse emotions (Dowling and Dane, 1986, Gabrielsson and Juslin 1996). They tap into ancient emotions and aesthetics (Reybrouck 2013, Prum 2017). If the listener is enthralled, they will construct a narrative, whether one is proposed or not. The eye is greedy, but the ear is imaginative in this multispecies contact zone. No straightforward path leads to the description of a listening experience and the emotions elicited. For instance, ‘[s]ad music induces pleasant emotion’ (Kawakami et al. 2013; also see Huron 2007). In addition, Henry Stobart (2013, 114) notes the considerable emotional, sensory, and aesthetic enjoyment that ‘culturally unfamiliar’ music may provide, whilst acknowledging the opposite reaction is also common. In short, musical emotions can be mixed and bundled up; they can be paradoxical and contradictory.

A number of noteworthy recordists and theorists speak to the emotional work field recordings (whether incorporated in a larger project or standalone) can accomplish – how they can put a listener in a receptive space and touch their emotions. Below, I chart aspirations recordists claim for their work, whether to evoke emotion, provoke environmental reflection, inspire new environmental commitments, or some combination of these. The selection is highly abridged but demonstrates the range of approaches.

Field recordist Paul Virostek emphasizes that his recordings are meant to arouse emotions, although he does not specify them:

I use vibrant recordings to transport listeners and invoke new emotions using only sound. … I believe that sound effects have immense power to inspire, immerse, and compel emotion. … I believe that human emotion in the subject and the recordist is the defining element in good sound. Not the price of your equipment. (‘Paul Virostek’ 2022b)

Michael Gallagher also focuses on how field recordings evoke emotion, but in this case, he identifies them. Gallagher (2015, 560) catalogues ‘sensations of joy, sadness, or a sense of the uncanny’, as well as ‘more mundane affects such as boredom, irritation, or indifference’. He suggests ‘that some of the most vibrant, evocative field recordings are those that make full use of both of these registers simultaneously’ (Gallagher 2015, 560).

In his collaboration with the Bosavi people, Feld also describes what a field recording can accomplish: ‘The recording [Voices of the Rainforest] takes you there, into that place, and you can have a very sensuous, affecting, feelingful relationship with voice and place by listening’ (Feld and Brenneis 2004, 468). In this passage, Feld dwells on affect but also hints at environmental reflection, as does composer Daryl Jamieson (2021, 214), who argues for field recording to be understood as ‘a genre of music (and/or sound art) which affords reconnecting the listener with the environment that surrounds them and reawakening their sense of magic’. The emotions of awe and wonder seem relevant to his understanding of field recordings’ task.

Sound artist and acoustic ecologist Leah Barclay is a practitioner who manifestly embraces all three aspirations above in her environmental recording of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Barclay (2016, 179) believes that ‘listening to changing environments and immersive interpretations of climate change can connect us at a deeply philosophical, empathetic and sensory level’. Although she mentions empathy and inspiration, as well as sound’s ability to create a ‘sense of wonder and curiosity’ (Barclay 2016, 198), her primary focus is on how these connections translate into new environmental commitments. Her projects Biosphere Soundscapes and River Listening promote community engagement through workshops, monitoring programs, and collaborations with local conservation organizations as participants listen to the sounds of their changing environments. The work of other acoustic ecologists like Schafer, Krause, Truax, Westerkamp, Monacchi, and Dunn place a similar emphasis on activism over emotion.

Ecological emotions

Thus far, this survey has concentrated on positively-valenced emotions, but things are out of whack. My own field recordings document stunning birdsongs but also the changing sounds of a warming, urbanized planet – distressing interruptions and broken promises of nature’s free services. Birds are sentinel species in steep decline. The emotional impact of this crisis challenges me to address how numbing numbers affect my capacity to take action. Sound not only affects audiences but its recordists as well. I rage, I grieve – and then I resist. I use being down to discover and create.

I have committed myself to sounding the songs and stories of individual birds. My field recordings and compositions incorporating them set up a charged space that can be harnessed to musical advantage. In my birdsong concerts, I begin with my emotions, both positive and negative, and attempt to foster ecological reflection in others. I am not inclined towards a pastoral character that would romanticize nature. The intent is rather to underscore compelling aspects (including eco-political ones) of places where I have recorded.

Other people variously name, experience, interpret, report, and manage their ecological emotions – as well as succumb to or resist the stress they bring on. The emotional and psychological impacts of drought, flood, fire, and extinction manifest in common parlance as sadness, anxiety, grief, frustration, worry, distress, and despair. Climate-influenced emotions enter the medical literature as climate distress, climate change anxiety, and climate anxiety (Bouman et al. 2020, Wu, Snell, and Samji 2020, Hogg et al. 2021, Westoby et al. 2022). Albrecht et al. (2007) assign psychoterratic syndromes with the neologism solastalgia to describe the stress of environmental change on mental human health and well-being, while Ágoston et al. (2022) parse eco-anxiety, eco-guilt, eco-grief, and eco-coping.

This state of affairs stimulates new issues scholars are challenged to address, including how these negatively-valenced emotions erode people’s capacity to take action (Curnock and Heron 2019). Contra Bekoff (2010), some claim that emotions must be kept out of conservation management – that the fuzzy logic inherent in compassion distorts our reasoning, rendering ‘compassionate conservation’ an oxymoron (Callen et al. 2020). However, we are an emotional species, and very little happens without emotion. Where science struggles to embrace the relational and cultural, people may turn to the arts to proffer a remedy. ‘Modern ecologists may have reached a limit on how effectively they can convey messages to the public’, ecologist Mark Moffett observes, ‘and they may now need to draw upon the emotional vibrancy offered by the arts’ (as quoted in Chadabe 2016, viii). Jamieson (2021, 213) nominates field recording to this undertaking, believing it ‘affords reconnecting its audience with the enchantment of the ignored world surrounding them’. My sense that field recordings might by turns provoke and provide an antidote to eco-anxiety is echoed in a study that found ‘nature is both the trigger for, and answer to, our ecological grief, anger, and anxiety, and, as such, is at the epicentre of human emotions’ (Westoby et al. 2022).

Measuring field recordings’ efficacy and impact

In this section, I contemplate the efficacy and impact of field recordings, including whether they indeed produce activist results. The arts may enchant, but the term result suggests a cause-effect that often cannot be straightforwardly documented in artistic practice. Holding this complexity in mind, we take a brief sideways glance at how related disciplines measure the impact of environmental sounds. In the natural sciences, soundscape ecology has undeniably demonstrated how bioacoustic data are valuable in estimating species richness and health, in identifying the presence of pest species, and in tracking migration pathways and the cultural evolution of birdsong. Architects, designers, engineers, and planners have begun to pay close attention to the emotional reactions to soundscapes in built environments (Cain, Jennings, and Poxon 2013). Ethnographies of sound have compellingly argued how the soundscape can be ‘dense with significance’ to those of us beyond the natural sciences (Samuels et al. 2010). A soundscape is a powerful descriptor able to potentially inform land management strategies and buttress conservation initiatives, and part of that power comes from the emotions they stir in the general public (Taylor 2017, 260).

That field recordings evoke emotions seems uncontroversial. The sense that field recordings provoke ecological reflection is widespread chez recordists, composers, and sound artists, who may assess a field recording’s success on feedback like audience attendance, applause, CD sales, invitations, and commissions – supplemented by comments made in person, via email, or on social media. While recordists like Barclay believe that field recordings can prompt an ethical or activist dimension, their projects typically lack the means to demonstrate impact by way of clinical studies or big data. Qualitative findings may suffice for some purposes, but other projects face more documentation pressure.

Fortunately, a burgeoning body of new studies substantiates how psychological connectedness to the natural world both benefits well-being and encourages pro-environmental behaviour (see, for instance, Capaldi, Dopko, and Zelenski 2014, Mackay and Schmitt 2019, Schmitt et al. 2019, Curll et al. 2022, Smalley et al. 2022, Westoby et al. 2022). These studies concur that the antonym of climate worry could be nature connectedness; some specifically commend the sounds of nature for their therapeutic powers and capacity to promote of pro-environmental behaviour (Annerstedt et al. 2013, Smalley et al. 2022). This research is typically carried out under the banners of psychology, physiology, sustainability, and environmental policy. Artists and humanities scholars who would avoid quantitative engagements can instead seek out and cite these complementary studies.

Next, three exemplars expand our assessment of efficacy and impact.

Three exemplars: whales, birds, and a menagerie of creatures

Art-science alliances stimulate urgent trans-disciplinary (but also public) conversations. Below, three field recording projects speak to the power of sound with an LP, a CD/online download, and a website. The first is a well-documented historical achievement, while the next two are contemporary.

The ethereal sounds and vast success of the 1970 record Songs of the Humpback Whale dramatically changed the cultural consciousness about these large (but largely unknown) deep-sea creatures (Payne 1970). We humans detect emotion and expressivity in whale song. Historian Burnett (2012, 2) describes how whales were suddenly transformed into ‘musical friends of humanity, symbols of ecological holism, bellwethers of environmental welfare, and even totems of a movement to transform the world and our attitude towards it’ (also see Grover Friedlander 2020, Blok 2007). A host of musicians soon incorporated whale song in their music, most with activist purposes (see Rothenberg 2008).

A more recent example indicates that whale song may not be a one-off in terms of the popular appeal of animals’ acoustic constructs. Comprised entirely of the songs and calls of 53 threatened Australian songbird species, the CD Songs of Disappearance, has found surprise commercial success (Dick and Shams 2021). Produced by Anthony Albrecht and the Bowerbird Collective (2022), the project unites musicians, sound recordists, conservationists (BirdLife Australia), and academics to save these birds. The title track is an arranged ‘fantasy’ dawn chorus of all 53 threatened species, and subsequent tracks are very brief recordings like those found on birdsong identification apps (‘Songs of Disappearance’ 2022c). The project also has animated, painted, and digitized oscillogram outcomes.

The Bowerbird Collective pointedly considers how emotion might impact conservation action (Garnett and Albrecht 2022, n.p.). Crafted to monitor emotions and changes of behaviour, their survey wonders:

… whether this project and others like it can have a lasting effect on conservation outcomes. We wish to know, for example, whether the CD has affected people emotionally. Conservation, like art, is a belief system driven by deep emotions. … We know bird song, like music, boosts mental well-being. But can it turn intention into action? And if so, what sort of action?

Preliminary results count sales of 8,000+ physical copies and thousands more digital ones. ‘While bringing international media attention … and reaching No.2 on the ARIA Album charts’, Albrecht reports, ‘the album has also raised tens of thousands of dollars for BirdLife Australia’s threatened species work’ (pers. comm., August 4, 2022).

Albrecht also measured impact via a survey of 350+ respondents, finding ‘over 80% said the album had increased their awareness of the need for threatened bird conservation, and 40% described an emotional response of 9 or above on a scale of 0–10’. However, the emotional responses are not specified. Albrecht concludes: ‘Over 80% said that listening to the album made them more likely to engage further in bird conservation’ (pers. comm., August 4, 2022).

Another recent trans-disciplinary investigation led by a designer and an ecologist also explore the promise of storytelling, emotional vibrancy, and enchantment. They set about ‘to use ecological data to convey not just facts but feelings’ (Whitelaw and Wassens 2022, n.p., author emphasis). The Sound of Water: Environmental Flows in Nap Nap Swamp is a digital portrait of a Murrumbidgee wetland in SW New South Wales (‘The Sound of Water’ 2022d). The audio begins quietly, before the water flow has arrived, and follows a crescendo of transformation, culminating in a wall of sound. As the water brings the wetland to life, the gorgeous sound and elegant images bring the story alive: the geophony of wind blowing through the lignum and pounding rain and the biophony of dusk and dawn choruses, including fairywrens and kookaburras, magpies and galahs, and even pacific black duck splashing around. Still, the frogs deserve top billing: the rusty-gate ‘eeeeeeeek’ of Murray valley froglets; the non-diatonic (to Western ears, ‘out-of-tune’), arhythmic (to Western ears, ‘out-of-rhythm’) ‘bonks’ of the inland banjo frog; the three-note staccato of the spotted marsh frog; the deep booming of the southern bell frog; and the ‘maniacal cackle frog’ (also known as Peron’s tree frog).

Normally, environmental data is harvested for scientific reports, but in this case, the researchers confess to a more ambitious agenda: to use this data to ‘amplify humanity’s attachment to the living world’ (Whitelaw and Wassens 2022, n.p.). Science increasingly understands how the gathering, interpretation, and communication of their data is a cultural act producing a cultural product that could stimulate cultural change. Nonetheless, change is problematic to substantiate. Professor Mitchell Whitelaw identifies the predominant social media responses to the Sound of Water as ‘aesthetic appreciation (“beautiful”, etc.) and gratitude’. Rather than commending a successful environmental intervention, visitors to his website comment on their emotions and sensory experience – or, as Whitelaw characterizes it, ‘no eco-anxiety but plenty of eco-appreciation’ (pers. comm., July 29, 2022).

Conclusion

The sonic art of field recording documents and sparks contact zones; it fosters connections with other species. The medium resonates with strong public interest in the natural world and locates sound practices within wider themes. This survey of aspirations that recordists hold for their work began with how vibrant acoustic encounters elicit diverse, often positively-valenced emotions; these can potentially ameliorate the emotional toll of living through this climate and biodiversity crisis. Next, I reviewed the ambition to provoke environmental reflection, which links to Wendell Berry’s admonition that wonder and fascination vis-à-vis the natural world are requisite for its preservation (as quoted in McKibben 1989, 194). A large contingent of artists and scholars believe that emotions can also spur environmental awareness and engagement that lead to new environmental commitments.

Three exemplars on three platforms guided our assessment of field recordings’ efficacy and impact. Although a handful of countries still conduct whaling, the success of the historical whale exemplar is indisputable. The two contemporary projects are ongoing and manifest striking commitment. Songs of Disappearance is currently able to assemble more hard statistics than The Sound of Water, but this is an evidential issue, not an aesthetic one or a suggested ranking. Both are motivated by a politics of hope and based on the belief that field recordings and the positive emotions they elicit have a significant role to play in conservation. This is supported by studies demonstrating a robust link between nature connectedness (including listening to soundscapes) and pro-environmental behaviour, which I have argued could be drawn on more widely by practitioners who lack the means to document the impact of their creative praxis with quantitative data.

In linking art and activism, these trans-disciplinary collaborations reveal the emotional power of field recordings, the challenge of identifying qualitative results, and the promise of art-science alliances in stimulating urgent public conversations vis-à-vis environmental awareness and action.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant FT190100605.