2011 AMS Annual Meeting
At the 2011 AMS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the Ecocriticism Study Group held a session entitled “Composing Ecology: the Art of Soundscape and the Science of Field Recording.” Session participants Aaron S. Allen (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), Tyler Kinnear (University of British Columbia), Naomi Perley (City University of New York), Rachel Mundy (Columbia University) and Aaron Ximm (composer) discussed soundscape and field recordings made by San Francisco-area artists and bioacousticians.
Abstract:
AMS ESG San Francisco 2011
“Composing Ecology: The Art of Soundscape and the Science of Field Recording”
Since the soundscape experiments of Murray Schafer and Steven Feld in the 1970s, contemporary musicians have taken an increasingly active role in blurring the lines between the ‘art’ of composition and the ‘science’ of field recording. Recent musical engagements like those by David Dunn, Aaron Ximm, and Bill Fontana demarcate the ambiguous territory between evidence and aesthetics, offering an important contribution to an ongoing musical discourse about the difference between sound recording as (to borrow from Charles Seeger) a descriptive medium, and composition as a prescriptive one.
Focusing on soundscape and field recordings made by San Francisco-area artists and bioacousticians, this session probes sound recording’s unique point of entry at the boundary between musical art and scientific evidence. Combining elements of a traditional panel with a more open discussion format, this session will take as its starting point three recorded samples accessible online through the Ecocriticism Study Group’s webpage (www.ams-esg.org): excerpts from Aaron Ximm’s hydrophone study of the Grand Canyon’s Ribbon Falls; composer Bill Fontana’s sound sculpture “Spiraling Echoes,” created for the rotunda of San Francisco’s City Hall; and samples from University of California biologist Peter Marler’s field recordings of the white-crowned sparrow. After a short introduction surveying the interplay between soundscape and field recording that has emerged since the 1970s, a 10-minute commentary and introduction to each of the works will be provided, followed immediately by excerpted examples. The floor will then open to general discussion, framed by the larger question of how recorded sound offers a productive medium through which to re-imagine objective inquiry about the environment.
Links:
Bill Fontana
Recording of “Spiraling Echoes”
Writings on “Spiraling Echoes”
Peter Marler
Peter Marler bio