Communal Listening

There are as many ways of listening as there are listeners. When we talk about listening, we often focus on content. We discuss the sounds themselves and their symbolism. However, it is equally important to consider the contextual elements of listening. Who exactly is doing the listening and under what circumstances? My interest in sound has always centered around its experiential qualities, rather than its representation. The more one listens, the more one understands about listening. There are some aspects of listening that can only be grasped by doing it for yourself. Before we discuss these aspects of listening, we must first establish some basic terms. Some appropriate questions to start with might be: What do we mean by ‘listening’, and how is listening distinct from hearing? To keep things simple, let’s adhere to the distinction made by Roland Barthes whereby hearing is defined as a “physiological phenomenon” and listening as a “psychological act.” ¹ To hear is to detect through the sensorial organs of the body, it is our ability to perceive sound and vibrations. Listening requires us to go beyond perception, placing our attention on these sensations and actively engaging with phenomena. Although hearing is not passive, listening requires a commitment to action. It is the conscious act of placing one’s attention on sound and vibration. Listening always combines the physical with the contextual, the sensual with the cerebral. Our interactions with sound are “neither purely sensible nor solely signifying” ² as described by François J. Bonnet. This text does not propose a new model of listening, nor is it a technical guide on how to practise listening. My intention here is to reflect upon the nature of listening. It is informed from research and fieldwork conducted in ecotone environments over the last few years. Reading about listening can only take us so far. That being said, I hope that curious listeners will find something of interest in what is written here. I encourage you to engage with the sounds of your environment as you read on.
It is essential to acknowledge the physical presence of one’s body. Take a moment to reflect upon the fact that your body has been present for every listening experience you have ever had. Consider your body with its unique physiology and myriad of functions. Study the distinctive shape and form of your facial features and sensing apparatuses. Observe the rhythmic susurrations of the breath with its characteristic nasal resonances. Listen to the whirring neural activity, full of thoughts, desires, memories, and to-do lists. No matter where you are listening, your body – unique in its aliveness with all of its beautifully-idiosyncratic complexity – will always be present, and will always be sounding. The emerging field of ‘auraldiversity’ ³ argues against the idea of a normative or idealised listener and instead acknowledges the implicit differences in how we each listen. We are all situated on a spectrum of listening abilities and sensitivities. It is worth reiterating that listening is a bodily experience and is not exclusive to the ear.
Anyone who has experienced an anechoic chamber ⁴ or spent time in a very quiet space can attest to the reality that one’s body is never silent. An uneasiness can arise when our listening is turned inwards, confronted with the sounds of our own physicality. Whether we notice the heaviness of our breath or our heart thumping in our chest – or perhaps less welcome emissions such as persistent tinnitus, a gurgling digestive tract, or the imaginary phonomnetic sounds generated by our minds – all of these exist regardless of observation. Our bodies are alive with sound and vibration whether we pay attention or not. Each time we listen, our noisy bodies are present in our sonic field. Bodily noises are rarely considered within the contents of listening despite them colouring our every experience. In many recording situations, such sounds are actively avoided. Is it not curious that most environmental field recordings do not contain audible evidence of human presence? Where are the breaths or the footsteps of the field recordist? Mark Peter Wright describes this act of self-silencing as the Noisy-Nonself, attributing its existence to the “colonial roots of anthropology.” ⁵ But despite their best efforts, the recordist is always present on the recording, regardless of whether or not the body is audible. The sonic traces of the body may have been purposefully culled in the edit but one could argue that their phonographic ‘silence’ is perceivable. If we cannot hear the actions or movements of the recordist, what can we conclude from this? A lack of footsteps may indicate that the recordist is sitting in silence trying to remain perfectly still. Perhaps the recordist has placed their microphones at a great distance to attain greater bodily autonomy and freedom over their emissions. Physically, the recordist may be completely absent. They may have conducted the recording remotely or through mechanical automation. However, the recordist’s breathing was still present somewhere during the time of recording. They contributed to their surrounding airflow, though perhaps not within the proximity of the microphone. Mediated silence can reveal a lot about the recordist, their environment, the recording context, the equipment used, and all entities and phenomena present at the time of recording. To be physically present and inaudible might imply that one’s silence was accepted as part of a social contract or prior agreement. In contrast, it may indicate that the recording took place without the awareness or consent of all parties present. It could also suggest that the recording equipment was concealed or independent from the body of the recordist. In many spaces, entering with visible recording gear on one’s person is simply not possible without being engaged in conversation about one’s intentions or having one’s presence challenged. For some, there are public spaces impossible to enter without meeting resistance. Listening is difficult in environments where there are no guarantees for one’s safety, where one struggles to peacefully exist. On record, the privilege and agency of the recordist are always distinctly audible. Wherever we listen, the same is true.

Our bodies bring sounds to every environment we inhabit. A living body is an audible body. Wherever we are, we contribute to our surroundings whether we intend to or not – sonically and in every other conceivable way. It is not possible to listen without simultaneously producing sound. If the body is present, it is sonorous. Sitting in silence will not grant the listener passivity nor invisibility. We cannot conceal the exchange of gases used in respiration, diminish the electro-magnetic field generated by the heart, or hide the scents and oils produced by our microbial skin flora. Nor should we want to. There are many autonomous bodily functions that we do not have agency over. The subtle effects produced by the workings of the body will be noticed by others even if we cannot perceive them ourselves. Our presence impacts the environment, phenomena, and other entities in ways we may never consider or understand. Staying silent will not deter mosquitoes from detecting the carbon dioxide leaving your body through your breath and to a lesser degree through the pores of the skin. It can be interesting to contemplate the distinctions we draw between what we consider to be ‘us’ and what is considered ‘the environment’. We are entangled. Despite one’s best intentions to be silent, the body will always betray you.
Every breath is an environmental contribution. Every step taken produces an effect. We do not have the ability to listen from outside the perspective of our body. Mediated sound and field recordings often give us the impression that we are listening from the perspective of another, but this is never wholly the case. Whatever acoustic environment an audio recording depicts, the body of the listener remains situated wherever it is, in a different time, space, and context. Mediated sounds are always experienced in addition to the sounds of our current environment. Headphone listening may offer us impressions that we are situated deep within a remote rainforest or sitting in front of an intimate musical sound stage – but this immersion is fragile. It will likely be broken by the sirens of a passing ambulance or a neighbour’s blaring television, at which point the drapery falls and our true perspective of audition is brought back into focus. Sometimes all it takes is a single breath to alert us to the discrepancies between the acoustics of the mediated environment and that of our current location. Third-party sounds can only ever be experienced first-hand. To have one’s immersion interrupted is a common occurrence. One can experience them at any concert hall or theatre performance. No matter the fidelity of the sound system or the extent of acoustic treatment, we will always be reminded of our true listening perspective when a fellow audience member suddenly bursts into a fit of coughing, or when a mobile phone rings or vibrates in our proximity. We gain awareness during the nervous rustling of programme notes and the piercing shriek of an accidentally-moved item of furniture… This is of course what is to be expected when listening with others. During truly communal listening experiences, everyone present bears responsibility for the sounds produced. Audience etiquette varies wildly across culture and context but whenever we gather to listen collectively, we enter into an agreement with our peers. We accept the potential emissions of all present. Everyone present is there to experience the modulation of a huge body of air in very specific, highly technical ways. At a large event, when one shares a space with hundreds or thousands of people, it is easy to forget you are coexisting with many other living, breathing, sensorial, and sonorous physical entities. Collective listening requires the cooperation of all present (and many that are not).
There are many ways in which we can inform and adapt our listening practices but we can never truly embody the lived experience or the position of another. We can conduct thought experiments and practice empathy but these activities will only ever exist on a conceptual or cerebral level, not an experiential one. Listening with others can be a humbling experience. Open discussions allow us to confront aspects of our listening that we might take for granted. No two people will ever perceive a sound the same way. The notion of a neutral observer or a passive listener is a myth. There is no way to listen that is not filtered through our life experience or current state of being. Learning how others listen can add nuance to our internal biases, raising doubts regarding factors that we had assumed to be universal qualities of listening. “Privilege is invisible to those who have it” ⁶ as sociologist Michael Kimmel once stated. Some conversations and experiences will change the way you listen forever. Each of us may share a similar physiology, but the variance of our life experiences hugely impacts how we listen and what we hear. Xwélmexw scholar Dylan Robinson calls this our “critical listening positionality” ⁷ where each of us carry “listening privilege, listening biases, and listening abilities that are never wholly positive or negative.” ⁸ It is important to be curious about how others perceive and experience the world as it can help us better understand our own position and what we bring to every listening experience. However, we can never truly know what it is like to experience consciousness as another being, nor can we know how another listens. It is not possible to experience the world through the ears or the body of another. In his famous 1974 paper What is it Like to be a Bat? philosopher Thomas Nagel describes this condition as the “subjective character of experience.” ⁹ Whilst it is possible to comprehend the details of how another perceives, we can never authentically embody this information on an experiential level. It is important to consider what listening is to another entity, to nurture empathy for another’s listening capabilities and earnestly try to understand the diversity of listening positions and habits. For example, through research and observation we may gain a greater understanding of how bats navigate their environments using infrasound. With specialist equipment we can detect and reproduce their ultrasonic calls, transposing them into the audible human range. We can attempt to listen like a bat, but we can never listen as a bat. ¹⁰ We cannot listen as another does – human, animal, bacteria, machine, or otherwise. We could describe this human-specific quality of listening as ‘perceptually anthropocentric’, ¹¹ a term proposed by environmental theorist Ben Mylius. Mylius uses this term to define the specific experiential qualities of humans, whilst also differentiating from other forms of anthropocentrism which privilege humanity in various problematic ways. Perceptually anthropocentric listening is a bit of a mouthful, but a term such as anthropic listening ¹² might be appropriate to define the human-specific qualities of listening whilst avoiding many of the negative connotations of human exceptionalism and dominance. Regardless of how we describe it, the humanness of our perspective is fundamental to how we listen. We can create artworks or devise complex technologies to expand our listening capabilities but, ultimately, anything perceived through these means will be experienced through our current state of consciousness. Our physical bodies, the microbiome, and the senses afforded to us will always define our listening. To perceive is to experience the world from a subjective, highly-individualised position. Individually, each of us represents a tiny fraction of possible human perspectives, and yet all of our positions remain distinctly human.
No sound is ever heard in isolation. At the point of the body, we don’t hear discrete sounds, we hear environments. We perceive sounds in the context of ecosystems. To listen is to attune to the totality of an environment through a limited first-person perspective. The sonic field is a massive body of air and vibrating matter that we are enveloped in. It is a never-ending stream of numerous, constantly-changing sonic actors, and sound-producing elements that are modulating the atmosphere around us. Listening is placing our attention towards this continuum. Experientially, we do not sense individual sounds, where each is separated by indeterminate durations of silence. When we listen we do not wait for sounds to happen, to break a silence, we perceive a never-ending stream of activity. Separating this stream of information into discrete sounds is a function of the neurological domain of hearing. It does not necessarily represent the reality of the physical world, nor does it represent every possible experience or aspect of listening. When we listen, it is the totality of the sonic field we perceive, not its constituents. Every sonic event plays a role in modulating the huge body of air surrounding our bodies at any given time. The atmosphere is not an empty void in which sounds traverse, sounds are the air itself. Philosopher David Abram reminds us that the air is not vacuous, it is a sensuous, enveloping medium “filled with invisible but nonetheless tactile, olfactory, and audible influences.” ¹³ In The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram posits that our bodies are situated in the atmosphere “as surely as fish are immersed in the sea.” ¹⁴ Similarly, Tim Ingold contends that our engagement with the materiality of the world is from a position of immersion, as if we are swimming inside a living “ocean of materials.” ¹⁵ Such expansive perspectives can be useful to re-imagine our relationships with our environments, especially when listening. To be immersed within an ‘ocean of sound’ is a profoundly different position than one which considers humans as separate entities from our surroundings, isolated from other lifeforms and matter. It breaks down the object-subject dichotomy, blurring the distinctions between the listener and the listened. In my experience, ‘the field’ is not something we enter and exit, the field moves with us as we navigate the world.
To listen ecologically one must attempt to consider the relationships between listeners, their environments, and other entities. We need to examine the contextual bonds between the listener and their habitat, and engage with all perceivable (and many unperceivable) elements that are beyond the immediately obvious. Some parts of this process are easier to grasp than others. Identifying the role that external technologies play in our listening is easier to achieve than to analyse and deconstruct the hierarchical systems that form one’s worldview. Some important questions we can continue to ask include: What is our listening contingent on? What is being perceived? When listening to mediated sounds we should be specific about what it is that is heard. We do not only hear the audio’s content. The mix formatted onto the record, the CD, or the audio file is not the only thing perceived. The format of the medium itself is audible. Every time we press play, we listen to these mediated sounds packaged with artefacts and technological colours that are added at every stage of production. With every reproduction, new sounds emerge too. For example, we can listen to the sensitivity and character of the microphone’s diaphragm. We can direct our attention to the directionality or the frequency biases of the microphone. The noise floor and the sonic characteristics of every piece of equipment used can be heard. We can hear if pop shields or wind protection systems were used to tame low frequency activity. We can listen to the recording apparatus, picking up on mechanical elements and distinctive format-specific artefacts. Notice the clouds of analogue tape hiss and the buzzing of electrical circuitry. We hear every piece of equipment used in the signal chain and the elemental materials embedded within their construction. We hear the spatial relationship between the recording environment and its documentation. In the mix itself, we hear the distribution of sounds in the spatial field, the sequence of signal processing, any changes in amplitude, added reverb, compression, etc. And what of the system we use to reproduce these sounds? Don’t forget that we also listen to the size, material, and quality of the speaker drivers. Tune into the response of the electroacoustic mechanisms that transduce the electric current into the acoustic domain. Listen to the materiality in the structural resonances of your headphones, loudspeaker cabinets, and other listening devices. We hear the summed characteristics of the stylus, turntable, amplifier, mixing desk, and the multitude of auxiliary interfaces and tools. Listen to find out if all of the equipment was suitably earthed or not. Hear the remnants of the many conversions where signals are exchanged between the analogue and digital domains. The stages of amplification, power supplies, and the totality of cables and adapters are all audible. We hear the surface noise of the record, the dust in the groove, the compression algorithm of the file type, and so on…
The point of these laboured descriptions is not to draw unnecessary distinctions between the technological and the non-technological, nor to place mediated sounds in opposition to those that originate elsewhere. If we are looking to adopt an ecological approach to listening, surely we must be willing to listen to everything that we hear. Regardless of origin, if it can be heard it has relevance and it should be considered. Here, we could adopt Pauline Oliveros’ practice of Quantum Listening that encourages “listening in as many ways as possible simultaneously,” ¹⁶ and to embrace the act of “listening to listening itself.” ¹⁷
To be clear, the aspects described above are perceivable. Not on a theoretical level but rather an experiential one. All of the factors mentioned above, like anything else we will perceive, will be experienced through our in-built listening apparatus in addition to sounds of our bodies and others present, in the context of our current environment. It is unlikely that one could identify all of these aspects on any given recording, nor distinguish one factor from another. But all of these elements contribute to what is heard. To listen through technologies, is to listen to technologies. To listen to a recorded sound is to listen to “the domestication of the sonorous.” ¹⁸ An entire atmosphere reduced to a singular point of reference. Environments are filtered as signals are interpreted and converted, passing from one stage to another, from technology to technology. No technology is ever neutral or passive. Every device and medium brings its own hierarchical systems of biases. To faithfully ‘reproduce*’* a sound is an infinitely complex task. Representations are exactly that: representations. Bernie Krause once remarked that to obtain fifteen minutes of usable environmental recordings typically requires 500 hours to be spent on location. ¹⁹ The reason that such a massive time commitment is necessary is due to recordings being frequently interrupted by noises of human origin. It can be interesting to consider this aspect of representation when we listen to mediated sounds. Is an environmental recording that took thirty hours to record representative of its environment? What would it take for a recording to be representative of an environment? An ecological stance might suggest that such a task is futile. There is no idealised position in which we can understand the whole. No representation will ever be able to reproduce the experiential aspects of listening. With or without technological assistance, one can never perceive the totality of an environment. However, by listening ecologically, perhaps we will each learn to accept the limitations of our unique listening perspective.

Bibliography

• Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Vintage Books, 1996.
• Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. Hill and Wang, 1985.
• Bonnet, François J. The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago. Urbanomic, 2016.
• Drever, John Levack. “‘Primacy of the Ear’–But Whose Ear?: The case for auraldiversity in sonic arts practice and discourse,” Organised Sound 24, no. 1 (2019): 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355771819000086
• Ingold, Tim, “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 14, no. 1 (2007): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127
• Krause, Bernard L. “The Habitat Niche Hypothesis: A Hidden Symphony of Animal Sounds,” The Literary Review 36, no. 1 (1992): 40-45.
• Lucier, Alvin. Chambers. Wesleyan University Press, 1980.
• Mylius, Ben. “Three Types of Anthropocentrism.” Environmental Philosophy 15, no. 2 (2018):159–194. https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil20184564
• Nagel, Thomas. ‘What is it Like to be a Bat?’, The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4. (1974): 435–450. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914
• Oliveros, Pauline. “Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (To Practice Practice).” In Culture and Humanity in the New Millennium: The Future of Human Values, edited by Chan Sin-wai and Kwok Siu Tong. The Chinese University Press, 2002.
• Robinson, Dylan. Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies. University of Minnesota Press, 2020.
• Smith, Fiona. “Privilege is Invisible to Those Who Have it: Engaging Men in Workplace Equality.” The Guardian, June 8, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jun/08/workplace-gender-equality-invisible-privilege .
• Wright, Mark Peter. “The Noisy-Nonself: Towards a Monstrous Practice of More-than-Human Listening.” Evental Aesthetics 6, no. 1 (2017): 24–42.

Footnotes

1. Roland Barthes, The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation (Hill and Wang, 1985), 245. ↩
2. François J. Bonnet, The Order of Sounds: A Sonorous Archipelago (Urbanomic, 2016), 8. ↩
3. John Levack Drever, “‘Primacy of the Ear’–But Whose Ear?: The case for auraldiversity in sonic arts practice and discourse,” Organised Sound 24, no. 1 (2019): 85. ↩
4. An anechoic (lit. ‘without echoes’) chamber is an acoustically-treated space built to minimise reflections and reverberations. ↩
5. Mark Peter Wright, “The Noisy-Nonself: Towards a Monstrous Practice of More-than-Human Listening,” Evental Aesthetics 6, no. 1 (2017): 33. ↩
6. Fiona Smith, “Privilege is Invisible to Those Who Have it: Engaging Men in Workplace Equality,” The Guardian, June 8, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/jun/08/workplace-gender-equality-invisible-privilege . ↩
7. Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), 9. ↩
8. ibid., p. 10. ↩
9. Thomas Nagel, “What is it Like to be a Bat?,” The Philosophical Review 83, no. 4 (1974): 436. ↩
10. For anyone curious about exploring the experiential qualities of echolocation I highly recommend staging a performance of Alvin Lucier’s 1969 work Vespers. The piece draws inspiration from the more-than-human world (particularly Vespertilionidae bats) and the text score directs blindfolded performers to interact with the structure of their environment through sound. Many years ago I set up a few performances of this work and it was a hugely meaningful experience for those who performed it. Navigating through pitch darkness equipped with only a constant 10kHz sine wave emitted from a handheld speaker remains a poignant memory! ↩
11.  Ben Mylius, “Three Types of Anthropocentrism,” Environmental Philosophy 15, no. 2 (2018): 159. ↩
12. Anthropic is to pertain to mankind or human existence. ↩
13. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage Books, 1996), 26. ↩
14. ibid., p. 225. ↩
15. Tim Ingold, “Materials against Materiality,” Archaeological Dialogues 14, no. 1 (2007): 7. ↩
16. Pauline Oliveros, “Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (To Practice Practice),” in Culture and Humanity in the New Millennium: The Future of Human Values, ed. Chan Sin-wai and Kwok Siu Tong (The Chinese University Press, 2002), 28. ↩
17. ibid., p. 39. ↩
18. Bonnet, The Order of Sounds, 14. ↩
19. Bernard L. Krause, “The Habitat Niche Hypothesis: A Hidden Symphony of Animal Sounds,” The Literary Review 36, no. 1 (1992): 42. ↩