Sounding Together: Exploring Ethics and Reflexivity in Social, Participatory, and Ethnographic Sound Recording

Special thanks to Professor Laurie Beth Clark and Dr. Jenna Loyd

This essay stems from a place of fondness and passion as a sound artist working in participatory practice. Throughout my life of sound recording, I have made endless mistakes. I have made mistakes in the methods by which I invite people to be recorded, in the ways in which I speak to them in the recording, in the manner by which I speak to them when we are not recording, and on and on and on. In my long-term social and sonic ethnographic project, Drowning Out the Noise, I once confused two participants with the same first name, emailing personal information about one participant to another and causing them to withdraw from the project. I also often listen to recordings from this project and find moments where I could have been far more understanding, where my responses could have been more grounded in cultural context, and ultimately where I feel I have failed. While the project has gone on to be published in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, and shown for three months at the Tang Museum, I am still haunted by these impersonal mistakes. To quote Rose Gillian on reflexivity, this essay is “written from a sense of failure.” ¹ I adore participatory sound recording. I find it to be an absolutely enriching, thrilling, and knowledge-generating practice. However, I am inclined to be sharply critical of the practice as it pertains to the wellbeing of the individuals involved in knowledge creation. I intend to utilize the framework built by Caroline Lenette in an attempt to further the “cultural safety” of people invited to be involved in arts-based research, and the extent to which this practice may challenge who is able to “create new knowledge.” ²

Before speaking reflexively, it is pertinent to define the practices being spoken about within the bounds of this discussion. I hope to speak to those sound works wherein people, out with the organizing artist(s), are involved in knowledge creation and artistic endeavors. Vadim Keylin references Anna Dezeuze’s three modes of multi-person artmaking, “interactive artworks, where ‘content is generated by the artist and arranged by the participants,’ participatory artworks, where ‘content is generated by the participants and curated by the artist,’ and collaboration, that ‘aims at erasing altogether the difference between producers and recipients.” ³ Dezeuze immediately speaks to the rigidity of these categories, and Keylin furthers this discussion by addressing the ways in which sonic art may complicate these definitions. For the purposes of this discussion, I intend to focus on the latter two, broadly-defined modes of participatory and collaborative artmaking, or those modes where people besides the main organizers of the artwork are contributing personal content to the knowledge-making practice.

In my above definition, I use the term “people” purposefully, as to even label individuals as “participants,” “co-artists,” “others,” etc. is to assign them a role which places them in a particular category. That is to say, as socially engaged artists, even simply the language by which we define those taking part in a project is to classify them, and ultimately classify the project. To quote Hal Foster, the end of the 20th century saw an “ethnographic turn” in art-making, where he warns of the all-too-quick acceptance of the “self” vs. “other” paradigm. ⁴ Where sound artists, practitioners, and organisers may be inclined to define roles within a socially engaged or participatory project, is the “artist” vs. “participant” dichotomy ultimately reminiscent of Foster’s hierarchy? As we pick up the microphone, how do we denote our own role in relation to the role of those being recorded? How might we be subconsciously furthering colonial, classist, and inequitable matrices in our choices of who we record, how we record them, and what we call them? Other considerations which further these provocations have to do with how those participating might be named and given credit. Do we attribute “their” name to “our” projects? Or, to restate, how do we decide when and how to denote “ownership” and “authorship?” If another is making the sound but I am holding the microphone, who has created the sound? If a participatory sound work is sold into a museum collection, to whom are the earnings given? Who has the agency to sell the artwork in the first place? I recognise that I have presented an endless stream of questions with no answers, but in truth, this is because I do not have the answers. I suppose one can begin answering these questions by asking, “where does ‘making’ begin?”

Laurie Beth Clark and Michael Peterson’s 2020 essay “Making” describes “making” from a variety of perspectives. They discuss the contrast between material making and conceptual making. ⁵ Here, the dichotomy between “making with one’s hands” and “making with one’s mind” is broken down explicitly, allowing us to examine where real “making” might lie, or if there might be multiple modes of “making” which are equally as “real.” Clark and Peterson also note the “making” of an artistic event or experience, which causes the participants to, “behave in ways they would not without the artists’ influence” ⁶ In Clark and Peterson’s exposition, the “making” might either lie in the making of the experience by the artist, or in the ultimate influenced behavior or output of the participant. If the latter is quantified as the “making,” then who is defined as the author of this making? Perhaps in social and participatory sound recording, we are required to contend with the fact that an artwork may have multiple “makers” and multiple “authors,” and that these roles are not always mutually exclusive. Additionally, perhaps these multiple “makers” and “authors” will not know each other closely, or at all, but become “co-authors” or “co-makers” through the enactment of the artwork.

As we analyse “making,” we must also analyse “success” in making. Lenette cites Brown and Strega, who discuss the decolonisation of research methods and Western standards of what is considered “good” or “acceptable.” ⁷ Brown and Strega consider these ideas in regards to designing methodology, asking how we may decolonise and promote equity in norms surrounding knowledge creation. I am interested in furthering this conversation with ideas discussed by artist Katrine Faber regarding the breakdown of these norms for participants and collaborators. In her 2019 participatory performance Let Us Sing Your Place, she discusses the significance of participant wellbeing, specifically as it relates to their understanding of their own “success” in the project. She states,

“I try to go in there, and be a little ugly myself, and be very human, not perfect. I’m not delivering a beautiful performance, I’m not singing opera to impress. […] I try to create this atmosphere that—this is not about being perfect, or good, or fantastic” - interview with Faber, in Keylin 2023, 94

It is apparent that Farber has deeply considered the wellbeing of those who collaborate in her participatory performance. By remaining conscious of participants’ preconceived notions of what constitutes a “good” or “fantastic” contribution, she is able to make intentional choices in her own performance in order to promote comfort and security in those participating. In my own experience with participatory and collaborative artmaking, many people I have worked with (including myself) have vacillated on the “perfection” or “quality” of an artwork or final product. As Clark and Peterson discuss, the actual “product” of the artwork is not the actual “made” item, but rather the conceptual process of the “making.” ⁸ Ultimately, I challenge us as social organisers to not find “success” in the societal judgement of a finished product, but rather to find our own markers of success as they relate to the process of artmaking itself.

Raphael Vella and Margerita Pulè state, regarding participatory arts research, “Some participants may not appreciate the level of experimentation that artists envision for their projects.” ⁹ While in a sense I find this to be a truthful statement, I struggle with its implication. For it is not a participants’ responsibility to hold an extensive background in sound studies or sonic art. It is instead the organising artists’ role to design a project that is accessible to the audience with which it hopes to engage. I encourage us as artists to not design projects wherein the aesthetic relies on those collaborating to lack knowledge, artistic or otherwise. The role of the participating person is not to be made to look unknowing or unenlightened. Should the project be methodologically complex or experimental, the organiser must locate a creative method by which to relay its structure and purpose to those participating. Ultimately, it is our role as organizers to design a framework by which to communicate our methods and backgrounds to those participating in order for those individuals to feel secure and confident in their collaboration.

Lenette discusses this security in her 2022 reflexive essay examining cultural safety in arts-based research, wherein she asks: “How do co-researchers feel about their engagement in the research process and about the content explored?” ¹⁰ She then discusses the extent to which culturally safe practices ensure that “co-researchers,” or those involved in the artmaking, feel confident that their contributions will be significant to the project, “without fear of being misunderstood or diminished.” ¹¹ I am inclined to take Lenette’s rigorous framework a step further and state that our goal as practitioners and artistic organisers could perhaps be expanded upon in order to ensure those participating not only feel confident and understood, but ultimately feel good; feel positive, feel self-confident, feel as though they have contributed, or made something beautiful or meaningful. While our primary priorities as artists may include goals such as knowledge creation, artistic experimentation, archiving, etc., I do feel that we should prioritise an additional goal in regards to the wellbeing and happiness of those who give time, energy, thought and sound to our projects. Those who make themselves so vulnerable as to be recorded, as to relinquish control of the positionality of the microphone and its holder. They deserve to walk away from the project with a sense of contentment and security.

I want to draw attention to a method in which audiences are often discussed in relation to contemporary sound art. Below is a portion of text from the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, discussing Takuro Shibayama’s 2023 project Participatory Sounds. The center’s statement on the project, exhibited within The Denshi Onkyo People Project, ¹² reads as follows:

This genre [electroacoustic music] is often seen by the general public as ‘the Other’ in music. As a consequence, this genre is denied a large and broad audience. In order to counteract this and to convey the special sound design possibilities of this genre as well as the general joy of musicking, Takuro Shibayama runs workshops with interested people of all ages and different backgrounds, for whom electroacoustic music is rather unknown and in whose lives it plays no role.

- ZKM Karlsruhe

I find the above statement to be a relatively common method to speak about those involved in participatory or communal sound projects. I am immediately inclined to ask whether the public truly views electronic music poorly because it is “the Other,” or if it is because they find it inaccessible. This inaccessibility may result from the poor outlook these same musicians may develop of audiences that have no familiarity with the genre, as is the case above. To say “[the] genre is denied a large and broad audience” is to imply that the genre is somehow deserving of this audience, and that it is the audience’s own fault for the genre’s inaccessibility. Furthermore, will participants of the workshop lacking familiarity with the genre truly enjoy or take pleasure from a workshop where they have no background or grounding in the material presented to them?

Much of Lenette’s writings on cultural safety include the decolonising of participatory methods in pursuit of equitable frameworks which take into account cultural differences. ¹³ As artists, we must reflexively examine our own biases within our practices and participating groups in order to prioritise the wellbeing and confidence of those who give us their time and attention.

Ultimately, this essay serves not as a guide or instructional handbook, but rather as a provocation. How may we as sonic artists more widely challenge existing power hierarchies, both within our own genres and across cultures? I hope that in following such lines of thought and practice, we may avoid a participatory and collaborative aesthetic where we expect participants to operate as empty canvases or blank slates on which to apply our artistic hopes and goals. Rather, I aspire to the pursuit of an artmaking where the needs, wants, opinions, experiences, feelings, and thoughts of those participating are not only considered, but ultimately constitute the artmaking and knowledge synthesising itself.

References

• Clark, Laurie Beth, and Michael Peterson. “Making.” In A Concise Companion to Visual Culture, edited by A. Joan Saab, Aubrey Anable, & Catherine Zuromskis, 335-355. Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.

• Foster, Hal. “10. The Artist as Ethnographer?” In Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology edited by George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers, 302-309. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

• Keylin, Vadim. Participatory Sound Art: Technologies, Aesthetics, Politics. Springer Nature, 2023.

• Lenette, Caroline. “Cultural safety in participatory arts-based research: How can we do better?” Journal of Participatory Research Methods 3, no. 1 (2022).

• Rose, Gillian. “Situating knowledges: positionality, reflexivities and other tactics.” Progress in Human Geography 21, no. 3 (1997): 305-320.

• Shibayama, Takuro. “Participatory Sounds.” ZKM Center for Art & Media Karlsruhe. Accessed 31 May, 2025. https://zkm.de/en/2024/09/takuro-shibayama-konzert-participatory-sounds .

• Vella, Raphael, and Margerita Pulè. “Conducting participatory arts projects: A practical toolkit” (2021).

Footnotes

1. Rose, Gillian, “Situating knowledges: positionality, reflexivities and other tactics,” Progress in Human Geography 21, no. 3 (1997): 305. ↩
2. Caroline Lenette, “Cultural safety in participatory arts-based research: How can we do better?” Journal of Participatory Research Methods 3, no. 1 (2022): 3. ↩
3. Vadim Keylin. Participatory Sound Art: Technologies, Aesthetics, Politics. (Springer Nature, 2023), 14. ↩
4. Foster, Hal. “10. The Artist as Ethnographer?” In Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology ed. George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 174-178. ↩
5. Laurie Beth Clark and Michael Peterson. “Making.” In A Concise Companion to Visual Culture, ed. A. Joan Saab, Aubrey Anable, & Catherine Zuromskis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 339-341. ↩
6. Clark and Peterson, Making, 343. ↩
7. Lenette, Cultural safety in participatory arts-based research: How can we do better?, 4. ↩
8. Clark and Peterson, Making, 339-341. ↩
9. Raphael Vella and Margerita Pulè. “Conducting participatory arts projects: A practical toolkit” (2021): 32. ↩
10. Lenette, Cultural safety in participatory arts-based research: How can we do better?, 5. ↩
11. Ibid. ↩
12. Shibayama, Takuro, “Participatory Sounds,” ZKM Center for Art & Media Karlsruhe, Accessed 31 May, 2025. https://zkm.de/en/2024/09/takuro-shibayama-konzert-participatory-sounds . ↩
13. Lenette, Cultural safety in participatory arts-based research: How can we do better?, 7. ↩