My direction of interest has almost completely shifted in the past week. Currently, I am reading Swamp, Sound, Sign: Reflections on interspecies difference in compositional practice by William Bertrand. It has been fascinating to hear Bertrand discuss soundscape composition in relation to non-human communication and ecologies. Bertrand references several different sonic theories such as Steven Feld’s acoustemology. Bertrand notes that, “soundscape composition can attest to a speculative sonic knowing which takes inspiration from Feld’s knowing-through-sound as ‘relational ontology’ and a ‘connectedness of being’ (Feld Reference Feld and Novak2015: 13) across interspecies lines, built on listening and sounding.” The author also invites the ideas of Hildegard Westerkamp and her “insistence on composers’ own attentive listening to their environment, writing that ‘the actual recorded materials are of course important, but the listening experiences while recording and while going about one’s life are just as important.”

While researching the topic of interspecies sound art I have been interested in the thoughts that stem from this dialogue. Interestingly enough the interspecies sound art seems to intersect with Ecofeminism, a type of feminism “that sees environmentalism, and the relationship between women and the earth, as foundational to its analysis and practice.” An article called Sonic Metaphors: Music, Sound, and Ecofeminist Theology as well as an article called Interspecies Bodies and Watery SonospheresListening in the Lab, the Archives and the Field discuss the role of deep listening and ecological communications in terms of feminist approaches.

“In this text, the author brings together scientific interspecies communication experiments, artistic practice and feminist posthumanities to inquire into the transformative role of sound and listening”

Interspecies Bodies and Watery Sonospheres Listening in the Lab, the Archives and the Field

Another interesting article I stumbled across had to do with voice connection across human and more than human relationships. The article Wild Arrangements: sonic and performative strategies for interspecies encounters detailed one artists “site-specific performative strategies” such as “field-recording analysis and sonification, to soundwalks and extended vocal performances, to radio interventions – all somehow gathered around the possibilities of attunement, entanglement and co-habitation.”