Budhaditya Chattopadhyay | University of Applied Sciences and Arts FHNW, Switzerland (original) (raw)

Journal Articles by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

Proceedings of Politics of the Machines - Rogue Research (POM 2021), 2022

This paper unpacks the finesse and intricacies with which some of the pre-colonial and premodern ... more This paper unpacks the finesse and intricacies with which some of the pre-colonial and premodern sound-producing instruments were conceived and built in South Asia using indigenous technologies. The paper argues that these indigenous technologies were as sophisticated as the technology we know today from a Western modernist and colonialist understanding of it riding on ideas of control, surveillance and exploitation of nature and human resources. The paper intends to substantiate this view that these indigenous technologies had an embedded quality to them and it makes no sense today to adhere to the hierarchy of "high tech" and "low tech". The paper suggests expanding the terms media arts and "TechArts" or technology-driven arts in the Western taxonomies, represented often by large-scale, spectacular immersive arts proliferated in European and American festivals. Given the historical examples of artistic practices using pre-modern technologies in South Asia, the paper proposes to redefine what "TechArt" means, aiming to decolonize media arts field giving due credits to tech-artists and artisans from the Global South.

VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, 2019

This exposition responds to the current flux of migration and the resulting condition of estrange... more This exposition responds to the current flux of migration and the resulting condition of estrangement. The projects – an augmented book project and a corresponding media artwork – respond to mass migration, hyper-mobility, placeless-ness and nomadism, which are blurring the boundaries between the local and the global, the corporeal and the digital, the private and the public. Through an exploration of the poetic and critical capacities embedded in everyday listening, the two projects attempt to shed light on the aesthetics of addressing the notion of exile, alienation, and estrangement. The exposition lets the viewer/reader engage with the artistic matter; namely, the field recordings and on-site writings - artistic acts of poetic contemplation grounded in a personal experience of the urban alienation, with the aim of moving towards self-understanding and emancipation.

A Peer-Reviewed Journal About, 2014

For some time, I have been deeply con- cerned with the mindful potential of listening as the subj... more For some time, I have been deeply con- cerned with the mindful potential of listening as the subjective ramification of auditory perception. The thoughts that envelop these concerns essentially stem from questions of perpetual mobility, flow, fluidity, flexibility, and nomadism that are perhaps symptomatic of the contemporary post-digital culture. A nomadic listener is affected by a fleeting sound, which appears and diminishes as it triggers an amorphous stream of subjective contemplation and thoughts bordering on the immediate known-ness of the sonic phenom- enon yet simultaneously moving toward the realm of the unknown.

Organised Sound, 2018

This article seeks to articulate the interaction between archival sound recordings and the contem... more This article seeks to articulate the interaction between archival sound recordings and the contemporary media, arguing that digitisation and post-digital mediation have led to the interpretation of historical sound recordings as object-disoriented sonic artefacts drifting through the contemporary media environment. Investigating past, current and ongoing sound-based artistic projects and artworks as case studies, the article substantiates the argument by addressing questions of identity, mediation and interpretation in the post-digital condition of contemporary media. These projects are examined in order to gain understanding of how the source materials are often derived from older sounds, such as the pre-electric era early sound recordings made in India on shellacs and cylinders, and how they are reused in artistic production following their re-interpretation as object-disoriented sonic artefacts.

In this article I reflect on sound’s relationship to the written word that is attempting to descr... more In this article I reflect on sound’s relationship to the written word that is attempting to describe, explain, and articulate sonic phenomena. The article’s interdisciplinary nature seeks to shed light on the inherent problems of writing on sound, particularly in the field of sound studies.Through the exploration of a number of sound-based writing projects and their methodologies, I argue that sonic phenomena often activate thought processes that, when expressed in writing, can transcend current epistemological constraints on sound and involve the listener’s poetic or contemplative mood, a process outlining the listener’s auditory situation.

Leonardo Music Journal, 2014

Does a city project a certain inner character within the subjective auditory perception of the li... more Does a city project a certain inner character within the subjective auditory perception of the listener’s experience of its complex sound environment? This paper examines the artistic processes involved in the author’s recent composition elegy for Bangalore, which sheds light on the methodologies of listening to and field recording in an emerging and transfiguring Indian city toward composing its urban character.

Organised Sound, 2012

This article investigates the essential association between location and sound, mediated and repr... more This article investigates the essential association between location and sound, mediated and represented by the process of recording and the subsequent creation of an artwork. The basic argument this article would like to develop is that location-specific sound recording, as practised by artists and phonographers, is basically an exercise in disembodiment of sound from environment, whether it is observational or immersive in approach; if the purpose of this mediation by recording is artistically reconstructive, the location-specificity of the recorded sound is displaced by the further mediation of the creative process. By developing the argument from an experimental angle, in relation to an audio art project Landscape in Metamorphoses, this article will try to examine how the discourse of acoustic ecology becomes reconfigured in the shift from environmental sound content recorded at location to production of soundscape composition as audio artwork. Today, the application of digital ...

SoundEffects - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience, 2013

Studying and perceiving an emerging city by listening to its sounds might be phenomenologically r... more Studying and perceiving an emerging city by listening to its sounds might be phenomenologically reductive in approach, but it can lead to a framework for understanding the fabric of the urban environment through artistic practice. This paper describes a sound work, Elegy for Bangalore, and examines its artistic processes in order to shed light on the methodologies for listening to an expanding city by engaging with multilayered urban contexts and, subsequently, evoking the psychogeography of the city through sound-based artistic practice. The paper further investigates the project’s approach, development and method to speculate on present urban conditions in countries like India experiencing rapid growth. Devising the unfolding auditory situation of an Indian city in corresponding acts of drifting, listening, recording and composing, this paper examines the processes of perceiving an apparently chaotic and disorganised urban environment with its multisensory complexity.

Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 2017

Communication and the Public, 2017

We encounter our immediate environment in different ways; they are not only physical experiences,... more We encounter our immediate environment in different ways; they are not only physical experiences, but become increasingly mediated in the contemporary context of pervasive digital media. A mobile phone user records sound and image from a place and sends it to another user out-of-place; one environment gets merged with another as we overhear a place on cell phones. We perceive place in YouTube videos, Google maps and closed-circuit surveillance television as we move, migrate and navigate from one environment to another, more virtually than we do physically. In the contemporary world of ubiquitous computing, locative environment requires to be perceived and understood in the context of digital media.

Experiential Walks for Urban Design, 2021

Contemporary Indian films, in their essentially digitalised realms, incorporate techniques such a... more Contemporary Indian films, in their essentially digitalised realms, incorporate techniques such as the location-based multitrack “sync” recording, and surround sound design that reorder the organization of cinematic sound. These practices contrast with the earlier mono- or stereo formats by reconfiguring the linear construct of a soundtrack to produce a spatially evocative sonic environment that engages the listener with a more life-like auditory experience of the fictional site. Using significant examples from post-2000 Indian films, this article shows how earlier production practices are being replaced by “sync” sound recording and surround sound mixing with a richly spatial arrangement of site-specific ambience. The article argues that these layers of ambient sounds lead to audiences establishing their embodied experience of presence in regards to the fictional site via auditory spatial cognition and immersion in a cinematic soundscape. By situating contemporary sound production practices within the various trajectories of Indian cinema, this article contributes to the broader field of research on the key developments in constructing spatial environments for cinema.

Ambient sound is a standard term used by sound practitioners to denote the site-specific backgrou... more Ambient sound is a standard term used by sound practitioners to denote the site-specific background sound component that provides a characteristic atmosphere and spatial information in a sound work. In this project I set out to examine how ambient sound is used as a site-specific element to create spatial awareness in sound production. Taking a critical attitude towards the notions of diegetic sound, mimesis, presence, artistic transformations of soundscapes, and technological innovations, the project highlights the inherent similarities and differences between the ways ambient sounds are used in film and sound art; the aim has been to investigate how the latter practice informs the former and vice versa. The dissertation cites examples from a substantial number of representative Indian films and focuses on three of my recent sound artworks. These case studies are examined via critical listening, historical mapping, and thorough analyses of the sound production processes. The projec...

Proceedings of Politics of the Machines - Rogue Research (POM 2021), 2022

VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, 2019

A Peer-Reviewed Journal About, 2014

Organised Sound, 2018

Leonardo Music Journal, 2014

Organised Sound, 2012

SoundEffects - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience, 2013

Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, 2017

Communication and the Public, 2017

Experiential Walks for Urban Design, 2021

Risonanze e Coesistenze. Suono territori e margini, 2022

On 4 November 2018, the Liminaria edition included in the programme of collateral events of the i... more On 4 November 2018, the Liminaria edition included in the programme of collateral events of the international biennial of contemporary art Manifesta12 ended in Palermo. With the intervention in Sicily, Liminaria closed a cycle of five years of study, research and action in different territories of Southern Italy: from Irpinia to the Sannio Benevento, from Puglia to Molise, from Cilento to Sicily. Rural areas, abandoned places, areas on the margins crossed by means of listening methods and artistic practices that connote a dimension of otherness both from the sensorial point of view and in terms of the resonances of thought.
The reference territory of the project has long been the Fortore beneventano, which for several years has represented an open space in which to rethink the concepts of place, rurality and ecology through the resonances and dissonances of the landscape, understood as a complex context of forces and assemblages of material and invisible elements.
This volume recounts in a rhizomatic and non-linear manner what has happened in these years, from 2017 to 2020, through the voices of artists, critics and scholars who have intervened in the project in different ways and at different times. They, the curators of both this book and the project from 2015 to 2018, have been asked to provide contributions of reflection and analysis on themes around which they have worked through their own research in practice. All texts are published, by choice of the editors, in the original language and without translation.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021

Sound is a new area of interest in the Arts and Humanities. The study of sound in cinema has only... more Sound is a new area of interest in the Arts and Humanities. The study of sound in cinema has only recently been established in Film and Media Studies. Furthermore, so far, attention has focused on Hollywood and European cinema in this regard. Reading sound from other world cinemas, particularly those from the global South, remains underexplored. As India is currently the world’s largest producer of films with a formidable global presence, this book bridges the gap with a collection of interviews, introducing leading film industry sound practitioners from the subcontinent. The book examines historical developments from the advent of the talkies to present-day digital cinema productions, providing an embodied understanding of the unique Indian film sound world with new perspectives on cinematic narration in the practitioner’s own words.

Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art, 2019

This book takes you through and beyond a map of Nordic artistic experiments, conceptual reconfigu... more This book takes you through and beyond a map of Nordic artistic experiments, conceptual reconfigurations and new modes of artistic agency.

Offering an in-depth exploration of art’s contingent evolution with technology and digital culture, this book goes far beyond familiar depictions of ‘Nordic aesthetics’ in art. It explores art’s role and inquiries in response to changing sociopolitical realities in the welfare state and in the wider world. First-hand perspectives of pioneering and pivotal artists form the basis of chapters penned by leading scholars and curators of Nordic art. Digital Dynamics in Nordic Contemporary Art recasts the Nordic art context in an expanding digital condition and reveals horizontal ways to write its histories.

Chapters by Tanya Toft Ag, Jamie Allen, Laura Beloff, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Bernhard Garnicnig, Elizabeth Jochum, Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen, Jens Tang Kristensen, Mads Dejbjerg Lind, Björn Norberg, Margrét Elísabet Ólafsdóttir, Jøran Rudi, Lorella Scacco, Morten Søndergaard, Mette-Marie Zacher Sørensen, and Stahl Stenslie.

Artist testimonials by Katja Aglert, Matti Aikio, Hrund Atladóttir, AUJIK (Stefan Larsson), Laura Beloff, Bombina Bombast (Emma Bexell and Stefan Stanisic), Niels Bonde, Jesper Carlsen, A K Dolven, Tor Jørgen van Eijk, Aberto Frigo, Søren Thilo, Funder, HC Gilje, Goto80 (Anders Carlsson), Marie Munk Hartwig, Bjørn Erik Haugen, Ilpo Heikkinen, Marianne Heske, Hanna Husberg, IC-98 (Patrik Söderlund and Visa Suonpää), Illutron (Nicolas Padfield and Mads Høbye), Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Ewa Jacobsson, Mogens Jacobsen, Johan Knattrup Jensen, Vibeke Jensen, Lisa Jevbratt, Erik Johansson, Arijana Kajfes, Tove Kjellmark, Kollision, Jette Gejl Kristensen, Kristina Kvalvik, Marita Liulia, Lundahl & Seitl (Christer Lundahl & Martina Seitl), Anastasios Logothetis, Dark Matters, Mia Makela, Teemu Mäki, Elisabeth Molin, Tone Myskja, N55, Nuleinn (Rine Rodin & Magga Ploder), Marjatta Oja, Erik Parr, Andrew Gryf Paterson, Pink Twins (Juha Vehviläinen & Vesa Vehviläinen), Tuomo Rainio, Juan Duarte Regino, Jacob Remin, Stian Remvik, Carl-Johan Rosén, Petri Ruikka, Anne Katrine Senstad, Joonas Siren, Mats Jørgen Sivertsen, Jacek Smolicki, Lisa Strömbeck, Egill Sæbjörnsson, Tina Tarpgaard (recoil performance group), Hanne Lise Thomsen, Björk Viggósdóttir, Magnus Wassborg, Jana Winderen, Kristoffer Ørum.

Tanya Toft Ag (editor) is a curator and scholar specializing in media and digital art and its urban implications.

Published by Intellect 2019, distributed by Chicago University Press and John Wiley & Sons.

ISBN 9781783209484

Cover image: Jana Winderen, Jana Winderen (2014). Krísuvik, Iceland. Photo by Finnbogi Pétursson. Courtesy of the artist.

London: Palgrave Macmillan , 2022

This book delves into the unique sound worlds of key regions in the Global South, through an auto... more This book delves into the unique sound worlds of key regions in the Global South, through an auto-ethnographic method of self-reflexive conversations with prominent sound practitioners from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The conversations navigate trajectories of sound practices, illuminating intricate processes of listening, thinking, exposing, and performing with sound. Through a practice-based approach to sound theory and production, the book builds a ground-up knowledge about aural cultures and sonic aesthetics, moving beyond the Eurocentric focus of contemporary sound studies. Instead of understanding sound practices via the lens of consumption and entertainment, they are explored as complex cultural and aesthetic systems, learning from the practitioners themselves and their sonic methodologies. The book reveals a tension between the West’s predominant colonial-consumerist cultures, and the collective desires of the practitioners to resist colonial models of listening by expressing themselves in terms of their critical making.

Conversations with:
Clarence Barlow, Sandeep Bhagwati, Rajesh K. Mehta, Sharif Sehnaoui, Ximena Alarcón Díaz, Hardi Kurda, Mario de Vega, Luka Mukhavele, Khyam Allami, Cedrik Fermont, Khaled Kaddal, David Velez, Juan Duarte, Youmna Saba, Abdellah M. Hassak, Mariana Marcassa, Amanda Gutiérrez, Syma Tariq, Alma Laprida, Siamak Anvari, Mohamad Safa, Debashis Sinha, Zouheir Atbane, Constanza Bizraelli, Jatin Vidyarthi, Joseph Kamaru, Surabhi Saraf, Isuru Kumarasinghe, and Hemant Sreekumar

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Apr 1, 2021

The Auditory Setting introduces and investigates how narrative and a sense of place are construct... more The Auditory Setting introduces and investigates how narrative and a sense of place are constructed in film and media arts through the reproduction and mediation of site-specific environmental sounds, or ‘ambience’. Although this sonic backdrop acts as the acoustically mediated space where a story or event can take place, there has been little academic study of sound’s undervalued role in cinematic setting and production. Drawing on theories of narrative, diegesis, mimesis and presence, and following a varied number of relevant audio-visual works, this book is a ground-breaking exploration of human agency in mediating environmental sounds and the nature of the sonic experience in the Anthropocene.

Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, 2020

Based on the author's artistic research on migration, contemporary urban experience, and sonic al... more Based on the author's artistic research on migration, contemporary urban experience, and sonic alienation, The Nomadic Listener is composed of a series of texts stemming from psychogeographic explorations of contemporary cities, including Copenhagen, Berlin, Kolkata, Vienna, Delhi, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and New York, among others.
Each text is an act of listening, where the author records his surrounding environment and attunes to the sonic fluctuations of movement and the passing of events. What surfaces is a collection of meditations on the occurrences of life movingly interwoven with memories, associations, desires, and reflections. Readers are brought into a tender map of contemporary urban experience and the often lonely, surprising, and random interactions found in traveling. The Nomadic Listener includes parallel drawings based on the original audio recordings and appears as ghostly renderings of the corresponding experiences. The recordings are published by Gruenrekorder and accessed through a QR code in the book.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023

This book is the first-ever systematic attempt to study film sound in the Indian subcontinent thr... more This book is the first-ever systematic attempt to study film sound in the Indian subcontinent through artistic research. The book aims to fill the scholarly void on the issues of sound and listening in the Global Souths’ cultures. It develops a comprehensive understanding of the unique sound world of Indian film and audiovisual media through the examination of historical developments of sound from early optical recordings to contemporary digital audio technologies. The book is enriched with a practice-based methodology informed by the author’s practice and based on extensive conversations with leading sound practitioners in the Indian subcontinent. The book locates an emerging social and spatial awareness in Indian film and media production aided by a creative practice of sound, occurring alongside the traditionally transcendental, oral, and pluriversal approach to listening. By tracing this confluence of tradition and modernity, the book makes valuable contributions to film history, sound, and media studies.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction
2 The Technological Frameworks
2.1 Optical recording and direct sound
2.2 Magnetic recording and dubbing
2.3 Digital recording, sync sound, and surround design
3 Direct Sound and Early Talkies
4 Sound of the Golden Age
5 Tracing the Sound in Satyajit Ray’s Film-works
6 Popular Films from the Dubbing Era
7 Parallel Sounds, Radical Listening - Part I
8 Sholay, Stereo Sound and the Auditory Spectacle
9 The Advent of Digital Sync Sound
10 The Surround Revolution
11 Sound in the Audiovisual Media Arts
12 Parallel Sounds, Radical Listening - Part II
13 A Concluding Voiceover
Appendix: Bibliography and works cited

International Conference on Artistic Research, The Royal Academy of Art, and Royal Conservatoire, The Hague, 2016

Sound Art Matters, Aarhus University, 2016

RESONANT WORLDS: Sound, Art & Science, ISACS 2017, ZKM Karlsruhe, 2017

Sonologia, 2019

In the arts and humanities, Sound Studies has rapidly established itself as a vibrant and product... more In the arts and humanities, Sound Studies has rapidly established itself as a vibrant and productive academic field resulting in a profusion of scholarly writings on sound. Two consecutive compendia such as The Routledge Sound Studies Reader (2012) and The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (2013) have been complemented with handy anthologies like Keywords in Sound (2015) and a number of peer-reviewed journals that are entirely dedicated to the studies of sound. These publications show that now sound studies indeed is a rewarding area of research receiving wider academic attention within and outside of the broader disciplines of music, film and media studies, performing arts, and musicology. Notwithstanding this rapidly growing body of work (Sterne 2003, 2006, 2012; Born 2013; Théberge, Devine & Everrett 2015; Dyson 2009, 2014; Demers 2010; Novak and Sakakeeny 2015; Blesser 2007; Bijsterveld and Pinch 2013), much of the attention has been invested in studying sound within an American and/or European media cultural context. Sounds in other Non-Western/Non-European contexts have largely remained underexplored and ignored. The above-mentioned
works have been canonized in the global community of sound researchers by the sheer amount of citations and reviews but they have a negligible number of non-White and non-Western contributors. Furthermore, there is a serious lack of representation from the non-White, non-Western scholars, thinkers and researchers in the bibliographic resources and reference list of these works, which are now considered classics. One concerned with this problem of a serious lack of representation may lament that Sound Studies indeed is overwhelmingly white as well as Eurocentric, and the racial conservatism
is limiting the fields’ research as well as social outreach. It is an
act of complacent ignorance not to engage with African and Asian thinkers regarding their sonically rich cultures; while, many of their works are now available in translation. The proposed paper addresses this concern about an unfair social divide upheld in Sound Studies. The paper intends to fill this void by developing a comprehensive understanding of the unique sonic sensibility and sound aesthetics in a non-Western culture like India, through Extended Abstract 148 a literature review as well as the examination of historical developments of sound practice and the corresponding aesthetic shifts. By drawing attention
to this ignored line of inquiry, the proposed paper confronts a number
fundamental issue in the studies of sound, i.e. subjectivity.

Nivel 13 - Publication Series of the Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, 2020

Artistic research is based on the assumption that artistic practice can make epistemic claims. Ho... more Artistic research is based on the assumption that artistic practice can make epistemic claims. However, there has been little effort to consider artists’ own practice as a significant mode of knowledge production. In the last few years, the field of artistic research has emerged and gained currency by a gradual recognition in academia. But most of these revered academics and scholars are not artists themselves, and often the process of knowledge production and transmission remain hierarchical and largely dominated by non-practitioners in the arts. Artists proper remain marginal in this institutional hierarchy of academia. This paper advocates for a change in this situation and asserts that artists need to claim their work as research-creation in the arts through various methods, materials, and media. The paper argues that this growing need for the artists’ active intervention in the arts-based research and pedagogy incorporating their inherent real-world knowledge and processual understanding of spaces, sites, materials, and objects, is what requires adequate and sustained attention in the future of artistic research. The presentation focuses on the field of sound art. It advocates for a change in the current (academic) situation of artistic research around sound and listening and asserts that sound artists need to claim their work as research-creation in the arts through various methods, materials, and medial dispositive.

Center for Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut, 2019

Artist and researcher Budhaditya Chattopadhyay gave a talk on his research in sound studies, and ... more Artist and researcher Budhaditya Chattopadhyay gave a talk on his research in sound studies, and artistic practice with sound and listening. The talk considered listening as a creative act in a broader context to compassionately engage with the contemporary world marred by intensified conflict. Drawing on his artistic practice, the talk revolved around the notions of presence, affect, and reciprocity based on an inclusive, poetic and contemplative mode of listening as a methodology in conflict resolution. It argued that the root of all conflicts is embedded in a lack of ability to listen to the other. As philosopher Gemma Corradi Fiumara suggests, a propensity to listen without making immediate judgments may potentially lead to bridge the troubled water of difference. Departing from the idea of hearing as immediate meaning-making to arrive at conclusions in order to navigate the everyday in a merely utilitarian way, the talk advocated for an active listening practice that explores the mindful, transcendental and emancipatory aspects of sound. This act indicated transcending the ontological and epistemological constrains of everyday sounds towards including the poetic and contemplative subjectivity of the listener.

LECTURES-SYMPOSIA: WORLD-MUSIC, Ethnomusicology Lab – Room B544 – Schoenberg Music Building, 2019

The presentation by Dr. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay will address an unfair social divide upheld in S... more The presentation by Dr. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay will address an unfair social divide upheld in Sound Studies owing to a lack of critical engagement with the artists and thinkers from the Global South. The presentation intends to fill this gulf by developing a comprehensive understanding of the unique sonic sensibility and the sound aesthetics of the Global South, through a literature review as well as examining the historical developments of the auditory culture. By drawing attention to these ignored sites of inquiry, the presentation examines the intersection of the aural traditions, and confronts a number of critical issues in the studies of sound, advocating for an equal and reciprocal relationship between Global North and its Southern counterparts through interaction and dialogue. In this context, Chattopadhyay will introduce two of his upcoming scholarly works, and the ongoing postdoctoral project Connecting Resonances, playing back many sound examples.

Sound Arts Visiting Practitioners Series, London College of Communication, 2020

AI for Good global summit, 2020

What do we take for granted? Consider the ritualistic sounds of ringing bells. What if we could c... more What do we take for granted? Consider the ritualistic sounds of ringing bells. What if we could create from this? What if we could bring back historical figures through sound art? Hear the story of Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, as transforms the mundane into a beautiful symphony of wonder.

TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
– Entering the world of AI
– Ritual sound as the activator
– Data as the fuel for sound art and sound sculptures
– Bringing back historical figures for contemporary times
– Balancing the human and the machine

Climata - Capturing change at a time of ecological crisis, 2020

The “sound objects” under consideration in this talk include recording media such as early shella... more The “sound objects” under consideration in this talk include recording media such as early shellac discs and wax cylinders: tools of Western modernity that were distributed and employed throughout the Global South as components of imperial and colonial invasion and plunder. "Recording”, in the sense of fixing sound via these technologies, was both an alien and mutating idea for many of the Global South’s established sound cultures. The imperialist “mapping” of those cultures – for example, the recording of the "timeless" improvisations of Indian and many other Eastern musical traditions – proved both intrusive and objectifying, cutting across cultural and philosophical traditions that were millennia-long. In Indian linguistics and aesthetics, the potential construction of multiple meanings from single sounds and speech acts – the transmission of immeasurable poetic expressions, and the explosion of affective resonance through mindful listening – are theorised within the longstanding concept of sphoṭa. Little wonder, therefore, that the colonial pursuit of sound recording onto two-minute-long cylinders or shellac discs was met with resistance by musicians. Drawing on his current postdoctoral project (Connecting Resonances), the talk will discuss the politics of ethnographic field recording. This event includes a critical listening to recordings taken during expeditions in the Global South post-1900, and look at strategies employed by music and sound practitioners to evade “capture” by colonial technologies.

Art & Design Education in Times of Change, 2017

Hyper-listening: Praxis is a series of workshops that operates as a set of exercises and collabor... more Hyper-listening: Praxis is a series of workshops that operates as a set of exercises and collaborative experiments involving the methodology of hyper-listening. As a conceptual framework hyper-listening intends to explore the mindful and transcendental aspect of listening and engaged learning about the surrounding environment through community art practice. The participants are asked to locate certain sites that trigger a multitude of associations, imaginings or personal memories. They are guided to utilize these auditory associations embedded in everyday navigation helping the participants to engage inclusively with their environments. This paper theorizes the intent and method of the workshop series.

The Auditory Setting, 2021

The fourth chapter is a reflection on the book’s findings regarding presence, rendering and sonic... more The fourth chapter is a reflection on the book’s findings regarding presence, rendering and sonic reality presented across three chapters. In critically listening to the trajectories of sound production within world cinema and audiovisual media arts, it is observed that sites have been irregularly rendered and produced through various phases of sound production. Three primary historical markers are underscored that seem useful when locating and mapping prominent technological shifts. These developmental stages have manifested as aesthetic choices embraced by sound practitioners. This chapter details how these principles are reflected in the production of a site’s sonic presence. In other words, the various forms and formats of technological innovations and transformation have informed the degree of site-specific presence produced through the use of ambient sound components. Critical listening, reflection and analysis of the passages of sound from representative films, specifically d...

The Auditory Setting, 2021

From the very advent of sound in cinema, ambient sound has been a practical production concern. I... more From the very advent of sound in cinema, ambient sound has been a practical production concern. Initially, it was considered negatively, as unwanted ‘background noise’ from the location, and then positively, as site-specific information to be included in the film’s diegesis. The latter clearly explains ambient sound’s relevance and considered role within film sound production. Every site depicted in a cinematic narrative contains distinct and subtle sounds emanating from its environment. These sound sources can include, for example, wind, rain, running water, rustling leaves, distant traffic, aircraft and machinery noise, the sound of distant human movement and speech, creaks and pops from thermal contraction, air conditioners and plumbing, the noise from fans and motors, the hum of electrical machines, room tone, etc. Although film sound has received extensive academic interest, much of this attention has been invested in explaining the role of voice and music in relation to the vi...

The Auditory Setting, 2021

When I was seven years old, I once got lost in the forest. I had been following my father, who wa... more When I was seven years old, I once got lost in the forest. I had been following my father, who walked faster than me, on our way through the trees behind our house to meet someone in the tribal village. At a certain point, I realised that I couldn’t hear my father’s footsteps in front of me – sounds that I had been tracing while looking around in curiosity. I had been taken by the sunlight as it played on the leaves and butterflies as they passed by in solemn unison with the green leaves and dark tree branches. Then, I found myself alone. The murmurs of wind blowing through leaves and the friction between movement and stasis had already drowned out my father’s footsteps – my lone sonic navigational tool in the forest. Their absence accentuated other sounds. The intimate whispering wind carrying news of fallen leaves, its intensity and proximity suddenly sounded ominous and dreadful. Surrounded by this maze of sound, I lost my sense of orientation and security. I wanted to escape thi...

The Auditory Setting, 2021

As I have shown in the previous chapter, ‘dubbing’ was introduced in cinema in order to avoid cam... more As I have shown in the previous chapter, ‘dubbing’ was introduced in cinema in order to avoid camera noise emanating from the popular and affordable Arriflex 35 III cameras along with other incidental background noises from the location of shooting. Dubbing, like ‘looping’, quickly became a norm in the sound techniques of producing the auditory setting primarily inside sound studios. Such sound practices in the dubbing era, with an emphasis on post-synchronisation, effectively destroyed perspective in cinema as argued by many film writers like ...

The Auditory Setting, 2021

On a hectic morning in a busy street, pedestrians are walking by without looking at one another. ... more On a hectic morning in a busy street, pedestrians are walking by without looking at one another. They may listen to the footsteps of others, but such listening implies recognition of the social other’s existence and encourages public confrontation through eye contact. Such private contact within public spaces, whether streets, squares, parks or public gardens, counteracts the rhythm that city life demands. Many people are absorbed by the acute socio-political aura that urban sites underscore. Sounds of heavy traffic, electrical machinery and electronic devices, directly human-made sounds such as rustling clothes, a cough, discernible footsteps, a car horn being used, a shout carved out from the background – all of these sounds will eventually dissolve into the city’s monotone, leaving no trace. Little memory of their occurrence will remain. Everyday urban sounds are indifferent; they alienate by absorbing everything into one great cacophony. City inhabitants may endeavour to survive...

The Auditory Setting, 2021

Ever since I was a child, I have been afraid of water. My mother’s only brother drowned in a lake... more Ever since I was a child, I have been afraid of water. My mother’s only brother drowned in a lake while learning to swim. He was just twelve years old at the time. I have developed a deep fear of unknown depths and underwater crevasses, knowing that the only uncle I could have had from my mother’s side of the family was taken away by water. In the bathroom of my childhood home shivers would run down my spine when I looked at the world under the water scattered on the floor, even though they were mere reflections upside down. I have never learnt to swim because every time I went underwater I would hear ghostly, unknowable, otherworldly sounds that were beyond my cognitive universe....

The Auditory Setting, 2021

The Greek notion of storytelling, diegesis, which denotes the use of a narrative process to const... more The Greek notion of storytelling, diegesis, which denotes the use of a narrative process to construct the diegetic world, is often cited in film theory. Mary Ann Doane refers to it as ‘the internal space’ of the cinematic universe (Doane 1985b) framed and constructed by the technical tools of filmmaking. Translated to sound, this term could be understood in relation to the environmental, incidental and other location-specific sounds that are made to emanate from the story space in which events occur (...

The Auditory Setting, 2021

The Auditory Setting takes a practice-based approach to its investigation of how ambient sound re... more The Auditory Setting takes a practice-based approach to its investigation of how ambient sound recorded from particular sites as sonic material contributes to the production of mediated environments in films and media artworks. Places are studied for their specific sonic environment and as sites recorded and (re)presented, firstly, in a number of films and, secondly, in a few sound and media artworks developed from field recordings made at specific sites. Methodologically, five primary tracks are followed that open dialogue with one another: a historical overview; ethnographic research and fieldwork; personal input, including interviews with artists and practitioners; artistic research; and self-reflective analysis....

The Auditory Setting

The seat next to me is unoccupied. Someone drops her glance after momentary eye contact. The subt... more The seat next to me is unoccupied. Someone drops her glance after momentary eye contact. The subtle vibration of the moving train progresses rhythmically; the city’s trace slips backwards beyond the partly soundproofed window. Dark, heavy clouds are gloomy in the sky, but I can’t hear any incoming thunderstorm. I drop a hint in the hope of opening a conversation with the person sitting opposite to me. In response, the face turns opaque. The look of most co-passengers is fixed on nowhere as if they are waiting for a catastrophe to happen. The shared space in the compartment is speechless. The absence of any preconceived dialogue in the faces around me renders our environment one of soliloquy. Sporadic announcements cause everyone to focus intensely on the disembodied voice, but it disappears, leaving some information about the direction of the train and the name of the next stop in an automated voice to evaporate. What do the boy and woman sitting in opposing seats think about one an...

The Auditory Setting

Where land meets water such as at a city’s riverbanks or on a seashore, a dynamic encounter betwe... more Where land meets water such as at a city’s riverbanks or on a seashore, a dynamic encounter between stillness and motion is enacted. Relentless waves crashing on a shore invite land to break away and delve into an unknown realm, a wild nature of abandon. However, the land cannot always move. It is often bound by girders and fences, culture and civilisation. The subtle drama that emerges from this tension (sound-)marks most water sites: riverbank, beach or island. This is a collection of interrelated sites; all of these, however, are situated around water. There are degrees of human involvement in these sites. Some of them could be natural as such. On the whole, I refer to the cityscapes, as in the river by a city, whose banks have been constructed. Island would perhaps be the least humanly constructed. When these sites are recorded on media, the constructed auditory settings provide a glimpse of the conflict between water and human habitat, mobility and stasis, nature and culture....

The Auditory Setting

In Michel Chion’s book, Film, a Sound Art (2009), he argues that watching movies is more than jus... more In Michel Chion’s book, Film, a Sound Art (2009), he argues that watching movies is more than just a visual exercise, describing it also as a process of ‘audio-viewing’. The audiovisual makes use of a wealth of tropes, devices, techniques and effects that convert multiple sensations into image and sound, therefore rendering, instead of reproducing, the world through cinema as a ‘truly audiovisual language’. Chion’s formulation adheres to the image-centric reading of sound in cinema and, therefore, fails to make a clear distinction between approaches towards the auditory and visual setting as two distinct production practices. This book aspires to make this distinction clear not only by using the coinage ‘sound art’ and ‘media arts’ as a metaphor but, unlike Chion, to also cite real works of sound-centric media artwork to show how the creative possibilities and potentials of sound in film are delimited and often suppressed to cater to the industrial needs of storytelling, diegesis an...

The Auditory Setting

The third chapter consists of nine smaller sub chapters that discuss relevant sequences from film... more The third chapter consists of nine smaller sub chapters that discuss relevant sequences from film and sound/media artworks where generic sites (e.g. land, field, meadow; forest, jungle; village, rural environment; indoors; riverbank, beach, island; street, public squares, urban neighbourhood; public transport; airport; underwater, outer space) are the specific settings for narration or the select sites for recording and documenting sound for site-aware artwork. Critical listening is employed to analyse relevant passages from a number of films and representative artworks developed from specific sites. The critical listening and reflective analysis of these artworks shed light on the artistic transformation of ambient sounds recorded from select sites producing what will be termed ‘manufactured presence’ and ‘poetic presence’ in the spatial experiences of films and media artworks, respectively. These works are studied thoroughly to understand the strategies employed in their productio...

The Auditory Setting

The second chapter titled Sonic trajectories consists of three broad sub chapters that investigat... more The second chapter titled Sonic trajectories consists of three broad sub chapters that investigate the technological trajectories of sound practices and conceptualises the use of ambient sound from optical recording to the contemporary digital realm. By historicising the developments in the use of ambient sound through different intersecting phases of optical recording and monaural mixing, magnetic recording and stereophonic mixing, digital sync recording and surround design, the second chapter demarcates, rationalises and historicises the primary eras of sound production. Each of these sub chapters mentions specific film and media art examples from global film and media as historical markers in sound production. The chapter also provides a comparative analysis of global film industries in their working with sound; and various concurrent practices that were emerging from local cultures despite colonial pressures and influence of the Hollywood norms and techniques. The chapter helps ...

The Auditory Setting

The airport is a site of perpetual movement, punctuated by awkward periods of waiting, inclined t... more The airport is a site of perpetual movement, punctuated by awkward periods of waiting, inclined towards an insular private way of being in an essentially public space. Such a public site is usually built with large metallic pillars and transparent glass panels on which the empty face of a nomadic passenger may fall and be distorted. Voices slip away and are rendered redundant. A gentrified lounge has no odour. Rows of metallic doors open and shut silently. Elevators go up and down carrying tired travellers keen to rest for a little while. Instructions appear on large LED screens. The lack of curiosity on the faces of itinerant travellers breeds social alienation. Moments of interest in an unknown other evaporate as the gentle automated announcement makes people aware that the time to leave is approaching. The sounds of escalators echo aimlessly along grey walls and ceiling skylights. Reclining figures and their organised belongings keep changing places. A vacant seat doesn’t remain ...

The Auditory Setting, Apr 13, 2021

Sound Practices in the Global South, 2022

Edited by Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox and Georgios PapadopoulosPost-digital, once underst... more Edited by Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox and Georgios PapadopoulosPost-digital, once understood as a critical reflection of “digital” aesthetic immaterialism, now describes the messy and paradoxical condition of art and media after digital technology revolutions. “Post-digital” neither recognizes the distinction between “old” and “new” media, nor ideological affirmation of the one or the other. It merges “old” and “new”, often applying network cultural experimentation to analog technologies which it re-investigates and re-uses. It tends to focus on the experiential rather than the conceptual. It looks for DIY agency outside totalitarian innovation ideology, and for networking off big data capitalism. At the same time, it already has become commercialized

Amsterdam University Press eBooks, Dec 6, 2023