Introduction

By Jim Cummings
Founder, AcousticEcology.org (sound-related
environmental issues, resources and info) and EarthEar.com (sound
art catalog/collaborative)
From the roots of nature sound recording, originally focused
on species identification and later popularized with LPs of much-loved
natural sounds, the field of environmental sound production is
branching wildly. Much as photography emerged as a creative medium
a century ago, soundscape art is coming alive, exploring terrain
that is at once more subtle, more vivid, and more experimental.
I am pleased and excited to offer this online exhibition featuring
some of the most creative, committed producers at work in the world
today.
These new place-inspired artists deserve a spot alongside the
writers, photographers, and filmmakers whose works have enriched
our sense of the connections-and the rifts-between humanity, nature,
and spirit. Whether you live in a city or at the edge of the wilderness
(or, like most of us, in a place where the human world is expanding
ever deeper into various local remnants of the primal richness
that once filled your region) the work of these soundscape composers
will help you notice the voice of the place you walk in day to
day. For all of them, it's about being affected-and changed-by
the experience of deep listening.
We've all had our own experiences of the power of sound. In the
multi-layered community of voices around a woodland lake or the
exhilarating heart of ridgeline thunderstorm, in the gentle ambience
of a neighborhood or the soul-shaking urban cacophony, we find
our place in something larger than ourselves. Often, we notice
our soundscapes only in passing. At times, we sink in deeply and
reap the rewards of connection, feeling a context within which
humanity's dance is but a peculiarly inattentive piece of the whole.
Most of the time, it's not all that dramatic. . . . it's simply
about letting sound expand our awareness, both in the practical
sense of revealing actions and beings that are not visible from
where we are, and in the more ineffable way that attention to sound
can seem to make us more present in a place. Sound is connective,
revealing the living webs of community and relationship that surround
us; it is physical, emotional, and direct in ways that sight alone
can never quite be. Certainly, paying attention to sound in consort
with the visual beauties of the world leads to a deeply enriched
experience.
Offering touchstones on a path of remembering, these sound
sculptors have spent thousands of hours seeking, responding
to, and recording
the voices of our world-from mountains to subways. They then
dance with their muses in the studio, weaving sonic essays
and aural
portraits in a delightful range of styles.
The paradox of recorded nature
The producers presented here all recognize that no recording
can re-create the experience of being immersed in the sounds of
a place. The limitations of recording and playback technology,
and of course the physical power of direct experience, make this
impossible. These recordings do not duplicate even just the sonic
experience you'd have in any of the places they were made. In this
is their strangeness, and their power. The world outside your door
is likely indescribably more vivid than any recording; though there
may be fewer, less "dramatic" sounds there, you are immersed in
those sounds, they surround you, penetrate your skin, move invisibly
through your heart and spirit, in ways these recordings never will.
Yet these sound recordists are not spending their lives in futile
attempts to recreate natural soundscapes. No, they cast their lots
to the currents of wonder, and the tiny fragments of their field
work that end up on CDs are their most successful moments of evoking
something central to that place. Or of a more general and universal
respect for relationship. Or of a dream they had one early morning.
Or perhaps a passing sense of delight, or sadness. No matter their
intent, for your experience in hearing the work will be different
than theirs, anyway. This is the way of the muse.
As you surely know from your own life, the kind of wonder you
can remember, carry with you, speak about, or let your creativity
play with, is not the same wonder you experience in the living
moment. The memory of wonder that we bring back is like a photograph,
a sketch, a scribbled note, compared to the moment of connection
itself. As we listen to soundscape art, we are offered opportunities
to have an experience that has links, both obvious and uncharted,
with the moments we have known in the world (and with those we
are yet to know). There is a stimulation of, and an exchange with,
parts of ourselves and between ourselves and our planetary context.
If we choose, we can be changed by this meeting with pure sound.
The hope of these recordists is that we may discover a deeper
appreciation for the rich variety and abundant unity of the voice
of our planet. Perhaps these aural portraits and sonic essays can
remind us of ways that our voices may blend in more graciously,
more respectfully, more receptively; from there, we may find ourselves
echoing an old story, one that walks in relationship with all of
life. As we grow back into this connectedness, modern humans in
consort with our places, we might once again begin to hear - and
know ourselves as a part of - the eternal story, told in its original
language.
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