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org/vol04/nr01/a01

Journal  of  Sonic  Studies,  volume  4,  nr.  1  (May  2013)

EDITORIAL:  TOWARDS  NEW  SONIC  EPISTEMOLOGIES

Marcel  Cobussen,  Holger  Schulze,  Vincent  Meelberg

Sonic  Disclosures
Brian  De  Palma’s  famous  1981  thriller  film  Blow  Out  starts  with  a  movie  sound  effects  technician,
Jack,  who,  while  recording  sounds  for  a  low-­budget  slasher  film  in  a  wooded  area  near  a  river,
serendipitously  captures  audio  evidence  of  an  assassination  involving  a  presidential  candidate.  The
candidate  is  sitting  in  a  car  that  gets  a  blowout;;  the  car  slips  into  the  water,  and  the  candidate  drowns.
However,  listening  to  the  audiotape  he  inadvertently  recorded  of  the  accident,  Jack  distinctly  hears  a
gunshot  just  before  the  blowout.  What  appears  to  be  an  accident  caused  by  a  flat  tire  turns  out  to  be
an  attempted  murder.

What  might  seem  to  be  just  another  successful  thriller  turns  out  to  be  a  film  that  is  quite  interesting
from  a  sound  studies  perspective  as  well.  The  plot  (implicitly)  centers  on  the  premise  that  the
combination  of  sound  recording  and  careful  listening  leads  to  fundamental  new  insights  into  an  event,
insights  which  could  not  have  been  obtained  otherwise.  Here,  sound  gives  access  to  new  and  crucial
knowledge,  which  prevents  a  crime  from  being  smothered  up.  Sonic  evidence  finally  leads  to  the
solving  of  an  assassination.

Albeit  on  a  modest  and  maybe  even  superficial  level,  Blow  Out  provides  a  model  for  the  main
questions  that  formed  the  basis  of  the  call  for  papers  for  JSS4:

How  can  we  approach,  analyze,  and  study  sound?

How  can  we  disseminate  our  findings  intersubjectively?

In  fact,  Blow  Out’s  most  important  agent  is  the  attentive  ear  of  the  sound  technician;;  only  a  well-­
trained  listener  would  notice  the  quite  subtle  difference  between  a  recorded  gunshot  and  a  blowout.  It
is  through  careful  and  attentive  listening  that  the  world  appears  in  a  different  way,  or,  perhaps  better,
another  world  is  brought  into  unconcealment.  And  the  sonic  disclosure  of  this  world  often  happens
through  the  use  of  technology,  more  and  more  through  mobile  audio  recording  devices.  Recording
techniques  allow  for  repeated  listening,  for  listening  to  places  that  are  otherwise  inaccessible,  for
listening  to  otherwise  inaccessible  sounds,  for  creating  ever-­new  sonic  environments,  for  re-­
experiencing  an  audible  past.

In  other  words,  it  is  primarily  through  technological  developments  that  sounds  are  perceived,  studied,
disseminated,  and  intersubjectively  shared.

Towards  a  Sonic  Materialism

Although  research  on  sound  may  be  widespread,  widely  accepted,  and  even  already  commodified  by
now,  scant  attention  has  been  paid  so  far  to  its  epistemological  values.  Although  Veit  Erlmann  warns
against  a  countermonopoly  of  the  ear  in  a  (western)  world  that  seems  to  be  dominated  by  the  visual,
and  rightfully  remarks  that  the  senses  should  be  regarded  as  an  integrated  network  in  one’s  relating
to  the  world,  this  does  not  invalidate  the  often  proclaimed  idea  –  an  idea  which  we  support  –  that  the
ear  leads  to  a  different  orientation  on  the  world.  Although  human  perception  is  always  synesthetic,
and  visual  experiences,  like  aural  ones,  can  permeate  the  whole  body  –  the  skin  ‘sees’,  the  eyes  ‘feel’
–  the  distinctions  in  the  ways  the  ear  and  the  eye  can  affect  us  should  not  be  neglected.
In  recent  philosophical  accounts  we  discover  approaches  towards  integrating  sonic  epistemologies
into  contemporary  thinking  that  could  prove  as  inspiring  as  they  (might)  prove  irritating.  Those
approaches  even  quite  consciously  engage  in  what  Jonathan  Sterne  calls  an  unbalanced  audiovisual
litany:  they  invert  the  sensory  order  into  a  kind  of  sonocentrism,  but  they  do  so  in  order  to  open  up  a
thinking  which  takes  the  sonic  as  its  starting  point.

In  The  World  is  Sound:  Nada  Brahma  jazz  critic  and  Osho  disciple  Joachim-­Ernst  Berend  sets  the
field  of  the  gaze  (as  being  exterior)  in  opposition  to  the  range  of  hearing  (as  being  depth).  The  eye
explores  surfaces;;  it  analyzes,  divides,  rules,  and  is  directed  towards  the  mind.  The  ear,  on  the
contrary,  cannot  discern  anything  that  does  not  penetrate;;  it  is  receptive  and  intuitive,  belongs  to  the
spirit,  and  perceives  the  whole  as  one.

In  his  essay  “Wo  sind  wir,  wenn  wir  Musik  hören?”  (Where  are  we  when  we  listen  to  music?)  the
German  philosopher  Peter  Sloterdijk  supports  similar  premises.  He  observes  a  spatial  chasm
between  the  subject  that  sees  and  the  object  that  is  seen,  a  chasm  which  is  also  ontological.  An
ocular  subjectivity  implies  a  not-­involved  witnessing,  distance,  and  external  relationships:  the  seeing
subject  is  located  at  the  edge  of  the  world.  Conversely,  the  ear  has  no  opposite;;  it  knows  no  frontal
“sighting”  of  an  object  located  at  some  distance.  Listening  means  being-­in-­sound,  being  amidst  the
acoustic  event,  an  inter-­esse,  a  being  among  things.  This  contact  is  beyond  the  control  and
possibilities  of  the  eye.

Sloterdijk’s  observations  echo  those  of  the  American  philosopher,  psychologist,  and  educational
reformer  John  Dewey  who  wrote  already  in  1927  that  vision  is  a  spectator,  while  hearing  is
participation.

A  further  impulse  toward  a  sonic  ontology  and  a  philosophy  in  which  the  listening  subject  is  central,
has  been  presented  by  the  French  thinker  Jean-­Luc  Nancy  in  his  book  Listening.  Sound,  Nancy
explains,  has  an  internal  resonance  without  which  there  would  be  nothing  to  listen  to.  This  internal
resonance  also  projects  outwards;;  it  spreads  in  space  and  becomes  perceptible,  e.g.  by  a  self,  a
subject.  And  it  is  Nancy’s  claim  that  this  self  is  marked  by  reflection  and  self-­reflection,  in  other  words
by  resonances,  “resonating  from  self  to  self,  in  itself  and  for  itself,  hence  outside  of  itself,  at  once  the
same  and  the  other  than  itself,  one  in  the  echo  of  the  other,  and  this  echo  is  like  the  very  sound  of  its
sense.”  (Nancy  2007:  9)  The  alleged  stable  identity  of  a  subject  is  thus  deconstructed  through  a  shift
from  a  primarily  visual  to  a  primarily  aural  orientation:  a  self  that  vibrates  and  resonates  is  in  a
constant  state  of  becoming,  never  steady,  never  definitive.

Perhaps  the  ideas  presented  above,  on  the  whole  not  systematically  thought  through,  can  be
regarded  as  the  contemporary  germs  of  a  sonic  epistemology  and  ontology.  More  recently,  two
scholars  in  particular  have  initiated  attempts  to  elaborate  further  on  what  a  primarily  aural  orientation
towards  the  world  might  be  like.  Christoph  Cox’s  article  “Beyond  Representation  and  Signification:
Toward  a  Sonic  Materialism”  in  the  Journal  of  Visual  Culture  in  2011  argues  in  favor  of  a  new  sonic
ontology  in  which  the  current  aesthetic  theories  concerned  with  representation  and  signification
should  be  replaced  by  a  sonic  materialism,  and  a  sonic  realism  should  dispel  an  anthropocentric
idealism  and  humanism.  This  materialism  and  realism  must  be  understood  in  a  non-­conventional,
Deleuzian  way,  that  is  to  say,  as  forces,  powers,  and  intensities.  A  materialist  theory  of  sound
emphasizes  events,  change,  and  the  dynamic  flux  of  becoming  instead  of  turning  its  focus  on  objects
and  meaning.

Salomé  Voegelin’s  sonic  fiction  and  philosophical  fairytale  ‘Ethics  of  Listening’  appeared  in  2012  in  the
second  issue  of  the  Journal  of  Sonic  Studies.  Like  Cox,  Voegelin  is  searching  for  a  sonic  materialism
and  a  sonic  reality  that  diverges  from  the  prevailing  ideas  about  concepts  like  materiality  and  reality:
instead  of  fixed  identities  and  meanings,  stability,  nouns,  and  stasis,  the  sonic  exposes  us  to  action
and  movement,  to  fleeting  understandings,  verbs,  and  contingent  possibilities.  The  ear’s  focus  is  on
process,  on  objects  and  events  existing  in  time.  A  sonic  materialism  is  a  temporal  materialism,
grounded  in  a  contingent  encounter  of  listening  –  contingent,  as  Voegelin  connects  this  sonic
materialism  or  sonic  reality  to  the  invention  and  appreciation  of  possibilities  (what  things  could  be
instead  of  what  they  are).
Reconstructing  Sonic  Epistemologies
Sonic  epistemologies  can  be  found  in  specific  sociocultural  fields  in  which  practices  dominate  that  are
not  (yet)  established  as  relevant  epistemic  or  even  scientific  practices.  For  the  most  part,  these
practices  lack  the  reproducibility,  the  discreteness  in  documenting,  and,  therefore,  the  elegance  that
is  topically  postulated  from  relevant  research  practices.  They  are  often  seen  as  rather  esoteric  or
even  unintelligible,  not  justifying  any  further  research  or  even  theoretical  reflection,  perhaps  even
deemed  a  craftsmanship  that  might  be  granted  recognition  for  its  richness  of  tacit  knowledge.  In  so
doing  –  even  in  the  symbolic  honoring  of  craftsmanship  –  the  logocentric  concept  of  epistemology  still
prevails.  Consequently,  if  sonic  epistemologies  are  to  be  taken  seriously,  it  is  necessary  to  ascribe  to
those  alternate,  thoroughly  sonic,  forms  of  knowledge  the  same  dignity  as  ascribed  to  forms  of
knowledge  that  are  easily  transferred  into  discrete  and  reproducible,  semiotic  and  alphanumeric
codes,  easily  functionalized  and  commodified  in  contemporary  consumer  culture  as  well  as  in
industrialized  research.

If  we  approach  sonic  forms  of  knowledge  in  this  way,  from  a  new  materialist  perspective,  it  might  be
possible  to  gain  specific  knowledge  and  insight  into  the  possible  ways  sensory  constellations  function
in  reality  and  how  these  create  thoroughly  different  but  insightful  sensory  representations  of  the
physical  emanations  of  the  world.  This  might  sound  a  bit  strange,  maybe  even  far-­fetched  and
unnecessarily  estranging,  but  only  such  a  broad,  sensorily-­founded  definition  allows  us  to  speak
about  the  whole  of  sensory  experience  in  a  culturally  and  historically  informed  way,  a  way  which  does
not  favor  the  viewpoint  and  sensory  dispositives  of  western,  white  and  male-­dominated  cultures,  but
instead  gives  room  to  the  very  specific  sensory  approaches  of  other  cultures,  other  subcultures  and
other  individual  biographies,  with  their  own  particular  sensory  setup  inscribed  and  embodied  in  their
flesh.  To  accept  and  to  acknowledge  this  rich  diversity  in  sensory  dispositives  and  everyday
performativity  through  all  history  and  cultures  is  only  a  first,  but  crucial,  step  towards  acknowledging
the  existence  of  specific  sonic  forms  of  knowledge,  the  sonic  being  only  one  particular  form,  in  no
way  more  noble,  more  subtle  or  more  lucid  than  any  other  sensory  constellation.

Summing  it  all  up,  sonically-­centered  forms  of  knowledge  may  enable  us  (a)  to  present  a  specific
knowledge  that  is  only,  or  primarily,  accessible  and  presentable  via  the  auditory,  (b)  to  develop  a
number  of  distinct,  trainable,  refinable  and  methodologically-­executable  epistemic  practices,  and  (c)  to
formulate  a  number  of  epistemic  axioms  and  research  interests  that  fundamentally  differ  from
epistemic  axioms  in  well-­known  logocentric  epistemologies,  such  as  the  epistemology  of  processing
sensory  data  or  the  epistemology  of  separated  channels  of  sensory  perception.

New  Ontological,  Epistemological,  and

Methodological  Developments
The  current  issue  of  the  Journal  of  Sonic  Studies  elaborates  on  these  initiatives  to  theorize  more
fundamentally  on  the  epistemologies  and  methodologies  of  sound  studies.  It  opens  with  a  short
reflection  by  Barry  Truax  whose  soundscape  compositions  are  shaped  by  specific  knowledge  about
acoustic,  but  also  social,  political,  or  cultural  concepts  and  contexts.  As  such  Truax’s  works  invoke  a
listener’s  knowledge  of  those  contexts.

The  editors  adhered  to  the  vital  principle  that  a  special  role  should  be  reserved  for  sound  art
contributions,  as  some  of  the  most  intriguing  questions  are  what  sound  as  sound  –  that  is,  beyond  or
before  linguistic  discursivity  –  can  contribute  to  the  accumulation  or  transformation  of  knowledge.
What  can  sound  art  projects  teach  us  about  potential  methodologies  typical  for  sound  studies?
Besides  Truax’s  “From  Epistemology  to  Creativity”,  both  Katharine  Norman’s  “Window  –  an
Undecided  Sound  Essay”  and  J.  Milo  Taylor’s  “Open  Sound  Art  Project”  therefore  deserve  special
attention.

During  a  year,  Norman’s  bedroom  window  -­  hence  the  title  “Window”  -­  acted  as  a  frame  for  collecting
photos  and  sounds,  deployed  to  connect  differently  to  everyday  sensible  impressions.  However,  as
Norman  writes  in  her  accompanying  text  “it  was  not  the  materials,  the  sounds  and  images  of  a  familiar
place,  but  the  way  in  which  familiarity  arises”  that  turned  out  to  be  the  main  topic  of  her  project:  “The
subject  was  the  dynamic  construction  of  place  and  the  human  experience  of  place  through  the
accumulation  of  sensory  perception,  repetition,  memory  and  emotion.”  Her  artwork,  in  which  the
auditory  and  the  visual  support  each  other  but  also  diverge  from  one  another,  added  to  (her)
knowledge  on  the  concept  of  casualness.

J.  Milo  Taylor’s  Internet  artwork  Open  Sound  is  a  European  cooperative  aiming  at  educating  people
through  sound.  With  its  focus  on  local,  regional,  and  international  sonic  differences,  Open  Sound
creates  a  space  to  hear  each  other  and  to  respect  one  another’s  relative  identities  within  an  ever-­
changing  continental  soundscape.  In  one  part  of  the  site  one  can  listen  to  a  soundscape  recording,
after  which  one  is  invited  to  answer  questions  such  as  “How  much  information  are  you  able  to  ‘read’
from  this  recording?”  and  “Can  you,  only  by  listening,  find  out  where  it  was  recorded?”  Open  Sound
makes  clear  that  sounds  contain  all  kinds  of  information  contributing  to  our  knowledge  about  a  place,
an  event,  a  time,  and  a  culture.

Whereas  Norman  and  Taylor  investigate  how  sound  art  in  itself  can  contribute  to  the  way  we  gain
knowledge  about  the  world,  Marinos  Koutsomichalis  poses  the  question  as  to  how  sound  art  that
incorporates  field  recordings  relates  to  the  soundscape  of  a  particular  place.  In  “On  Soundscapes,
Phonography  and  Environmental  Sound  Art”  Koutsomichalis  rejects  the  idea  that  field  recordings  are
somehow  able  to  adequately  and  realistically  represent  particular  soundscapes.  His  claim  is  that
sound  art  inaugurates  alternative  ways  to  think  of,  interpret,  evaluate,  and  represent  soundscapes.
The  impossibility  of  representing  a  soundscape  can  be  made  productive  in  and  through  an  artistic
practice,  thereby  offering  its  audience  alternative  ways  to  encounter  soundscapes,  disclosing  new
experiences  and  thereby  also  new  knowledge.

Implicitly  reacting  to  Taylor’s  project,  Budhaditya  Chattopadhyay,  in  his  essay  "Auditory  Situations:
Notes  from  Nowhere,"  intends  to  develop  a  discourse  on  sound’s  problematic  relationship  to  locating
its  source.  He  argues  that  situational  sonic  phenomena  activate  thought  processes  that  transcend
mere  epistemic  comprehension  of  the  source  identity  and  involve  subjectivity,  contemplation,  poetics,
and  the  mood  of  the  nomadic  listener.  Sonic  accounts  thus  not  only  inform  us  about  the  possible
sources  of  sound,  but  also  about  the  subjectivities  of  those  who  construct  these  accounts.

As  Hayden  White  states  in  his  well-­known  Tropics  of  Discourse  from  1978,  subjectivity  and
objectivity  must,  of  necessity,  meet  in  any  historical  research:  although  a  historian  makes  use  of  (so-­
called)  historical  facts,  he  inevitably  has  to  construct  a  story,  that  is,  to  connect  those  facts  through
the  use  of  certain  tropes  and  interpretative  choices.  In  his  essay  “History  and  its  Acoustic  Context:
Silence,  Resonance,  Echo  and  Where  to  Find  Them  in  the  Archive”  Maarten  Walraven  investigates
how  history  can  and  perhaps  needs  to  be  revisited,  rethought,  and  reinvented  by  paying  more
attention  to  the  sounds  of  a  particular  time  or  past  event.  However,  in  order  to  do  so,  Walraven
claims,  historians  should  have  sufficient  knowledge  of  acoustics  and  the  physics  of  sound.  Only  then
can  historical  research  truly  benefit  from  the  input  of  sonic  data.

Yet  another  way  in  which  sounds  connect  to  knowledge  is  presented  in  "Resounding  Science:  A
Sonic  Ethnography  of  an  Urban  Fifth  Grade  Classroom"  by  Walter  Gershon.  Gershon  discusses  the
process  of  listening  to  the  sounds  of  science.  His  sonic  ethnography  represents  two  years  in  an
ongoing  study  in  which  urban  elementary  and  middle  grades  students  wrote  songs  about  the  science
content  they  learned.  His  aim  is  to  examine  whether  processes  of  songwriting  might  help  bridge  race
and  gender  gaps  in  science  education  for  city  kids.  This  project  was  explicitly  intended  to  document
what  fifth  graders  were  able  to  express  about  science  through  song  and  talk  in  their  weekly  meetings
after  school  and  occasional  lunch  and  recesses.  According  to  Gershon,  the  sonic  portion  of  this
contribution  can  serve  as  another  means  for  considering  what  city  kids  know  about  science,  how
they  are  able  to  express  those  ideas,  and  the  ways  in  which  their  teacher  approaches  supporting
their  science  learning.

A  second  ethnographic  study,  “Caught  in  the  Current:  Writing  Ethnography  that  Listens”  by  Justin
Patch  addresses  the  fundamentally  epistemological  and  methodological  question  as  to  how  the  praxis
of  ethnography,  primarily  or  almost  exclusively  a  writing  praxis  after  performing  some  fieldwork,  might
be  able  to  capture  the  essence  of  sounded  life.  Patch  is  not  interested  in  an  ethnography  that  simply
includes  some  descriptions  of  sound  events  in  its  reporting;;  his  main  question  is:  how  can  the
ethnographical  text  become  what  ears  are:  responsive,  changing,  and  constantly  new?  As  one  of
several  possible  options,  Patch  suggests  an  ethnography  of  “getting  spun”  as  an  affective  mode  of
adding  the  sonic  to  the  written  –  one  that  is  temporal  and  ephemeral.  In  writing  the  act  of  getting  spun,
Patch  concludes,  scholars  can  produce  resonant  writings,  texts  that  listen  and  continue  to  change
with  the  reader.

The  question  how  to  write  about/around  sound  is  also  the  point  of  departure  and  most  important
motive  of  Holger  Schulze’s  “Adventures  in  Sonic  Fiction:  A  Heuristic  of  Sound  Studies.”  As  the  title
already  indicates,  Schulze  is  mainly  interested  in  “telling  stories”  about/around  sound  (which  seems
to  have  some  overlap  with  Hayden  White’s  ideas,  briefly  mentioned  above).  According  to  Schulze,
Kodwo  Eshun’s  More  Brilliant  Than  the  Sun,  Steve  Goodman’s  Sonic  Warfare,  and  Michel  Serres’
The  Five  Senses  could  count  as  almost  paradigmatic  examples  as  to  how  to  write  (about/around)
sound.  He  ends  his  essay  with  an  exploration  of  how  sonic  fiction  could  serve  as  a  heuristic  for
sound  studies  by  presenting  ten  criteria,  the  most  important  one  being  that  sonic  fiction,  through  its
“deviating”  “descriptions”  of  one’s  sensuous  experiences,  contributes  to  a  better  understanding  of
these.

Florian  Hollerweger  is  primarily  interested  in  finding  new  ways  of  articulating  sonic  experience.  In
"Straßenmusik  and  EaRdverts:  Public  Listening  Interventions  as  an  Artistic  Practice  for  Encouraging
Aural  Awareness  in  an  Everyday  Context,"  Hollerweger  discusses  public  listening  interventions  as  an
artistic  research  method  to  encourage  and  study  aural  awareness  in  everyday  environments.
Through  a  discussion  of  his  public  listening  interventions  Straßenmusik  and  EaRdverts,  Hollerweger
suggests  possible  contributions  that  sound  art  can  make  to  discourses  on  sonic  experience.

Michelle  Lewis-­King  has  a  similar  aim.  In  her  contribution  “Touching  as  Listening”  she  discusses  her
Pulse  Project,  a  performance  series  that  explores  the  social  interfaces  between  self  and  other,  art
and  science,  contemporary  western  music  composition  and  traditional  Chinese  medicine.  In  doing  so
she  aims  to  investigate  the  ways  in  which  Pulse  Project  offers  a  new  approach  to  the  study  and
contextualization  of  sound.

In  "Sonic  Facts  for  Sound  Arguments:  Medicine,  Experimental  Physiology,  and  the  Auditory
Construction  of  Knowledge  in  the  19th  Century,"  Axel  Volmar  explores  the  auditory  culture  of  science.
By  reconstructing  case  studies  from  the  history  of  medicine  and  the  life  sciences,  he  intends  to
assess  some  questions  regarding  sonic  ways  of  producing,  representing,  and  constructing  scientific
knowledge.  According  to  Volmar,  sonic  practices  such  as  percussion,  mediate  auscultation,  and  the
telephonic  method  in  electrophysiology  clearly  show  that  acoustemic  practices  and  technologies
contributed  to  the  production  of  scientific  knowledge.

It  is  with  these  often  erudite,  thought  provoking,  artistic,  exploring,  and  trailblazing  essays  that  the
Journal  of  Sonic  Studies  offers  versatile  tracks  to  consider  and  reconsider  the  epistemological,
ontological,  and  methodological  opportunities  for  sound  studies.  In  other  words,  please  encounter
these  contributions  as  an  invitation  to  develop  your  own  ideas  concerning  this  topic.