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Articles
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INTRODUCTION
Field recordings have traditionally been perceived as authentic, impartial and neutral documents of both humanly populated and non-humanly populated soundscapes. The humans involved in these recordings, and their relationships to these recordings, have generally been silent and un-voiced. This article interrogates the presumptions that have led to this approach, arguing that a narrative between recordist and recording is present in all field recording, and to identify such a presence is both unavoidable and beneficial. This article will discuss how many sonic arts practitioners have already employed a more self-reflexive approach to field recording within their work. However, this story of field recording is still poorly told in sound studies discourses. This, the authors argue, follows a historical pattern of favouring scientific knowledge over other creative, narrative forms of understanding. Furthermore, the continued and widespread negating of the personal narrative inherent within field recording becomes, in the authors' opinion, a failure to acknowledge a fundamental and useful part of the practice itself.
Sonic arts practices and sound studies discourses have long embraced narrative as an underpinning structural element. This is present, for example, in composed acousmatic and soundscape works that convey narrative ideas or themes through abstracted sound.1This notion has recently become theorised in James Andean's discussion of narratology in acousmatic music (Andean 2014). Even so, within sonic arts practice, field recording has predominantly remained a process of sound collection for compositional departure points, rather than heard as a material that contains narrative content and overt human presence.
The approach outlined in this article is distinct from the above, and instead draws from the 'narrative turn' in the social sciences, which emerged during the late twentieth century and introduced a 'self-reflexive', narrative approach to fieldwork (Czarniawska 2004). Within disciplines such as anthropology and human geography, this 'turn' has been applied to field notes and field recording, to become an integral element of their research and practice (Barz and Cooley 2008). In comparison, sound studies discourse has historically overlooked the complex narrative between recordist, recording and environment in field recordings. The authors therefore argue that the insights gained through the narrative turn in the social sciences can be of great benefit...