Keywords in sound

Bibliography

Notes

acoustemology

Go to annotation“Acoustemology conjoins “acoustics” and “epistemology” to theorize sound as a way ofknowing. In doing so it inquires into what is knowable, and how it becomes known, through sounding and listening.” (“Keywords in sound”, 2015, p. 12)

Go to annotation“This was where and how the conceptual term “acoustemology” was born: in years of listening to how sounding-as- and sounding-throughknowing is an audible archive of long-lived relational attunements and antagonisms that have come to be naturalized as place and voice.” (“Keywords in sound”, 2015, p. 19)

  • acoustemology is a way of inqury interested in and through the relationality of things

Go to annotation“Knowing through relations insists that one does not simply “acquire” knowledge but, rather, that one knows through an ongoing cumulative and interactive process of participation and reflection.” (“Keywords in sound”, 2015, p. 13)

Go to annotation“It is only a matter of seconds before a twelve-year-old Bosavi kid can identify a bird by sound, describe its location in the forest density, and tell a good bit more about the location of its food, nests, and partners. How does this knowledge happen? The lesson was bodily, powerful, and gripping.” (“Keywords in sound”, 2015, p. 18)

This former paragraph might be a bit of an overstatement. The knowledge attached to this bodily experience doesn’t appear out of thin air. I’m sure that the Bosavi people invested a lot of effort into formalizing and transmitting that knowledge.

listenting

Go to annotation“The OED defines “listening” as “the action oft he verb ‘to listen,’ meaning to hear attentively; to give ear to; to pay attention to (a person speaking or what is said).” Unlike hearing, then, listening is understood to involve a deliberate channeling of attention toward a sound.” (“Keywords in sound”, 2015, p. 99)

Go to annotation“Certainly, thinking in terms of distinct listening modes may not accurately reflect-and indeed may at times distort—the perception oflistening as it occurs within the holistic context oflived experience. The embodied, emplaced, and multisensory activity ofethnographie fieldwork brought home the fluid and sometimes unpredictable manner in which listening practices overlap with other aspects ofattention, experience, and subjectivity.” (“Keywords in sound”, 2015, p. 108)

Notes

See also