As I’ve been doing my essay, I’ve been learning more about different field recording practices and sort of deciding how I should do my own piece. As I’m currently unsure where I stand with it, I’m keen to use old analogue equipment but the eBay listings are very expensive and I’m not sure how I want to do this, so it kind of feels like I’m back at the drawing board.
When doing research for my essay which is around field recording practice I came across Peter Cusack and his work Sounds From Dangerous Places. His book simply asks the question “What can we learn by listening to the sounds of dangerous places?” it touches on places in the world that are home to extreme and hostile conditions, pollution, social injustice, military or geopolitical. I read his book alongside the two CDs of audio.
The Cd when loaded came with photos of the locations and the sounds. Peter speaks in the first section about Chornobyl and his experience visiting and understanding the disaster. He speaks on the damage it caused people, and that society should be worried about powerful technology such as nuclear reactors in case an accident happens like this one, how do gauge the positives to negatives? He speaks on the politics of the area, the comparisons with other nuclear disasters such as Fukushima, and the idea that a nuclear future isn’t safe for us. He also finishes his essay with a clear and beautiful quote, he coins the term sonic journalism. The idea of sonic journalism for Cusack is.
“Sonic Journalism is based on the idea that all sound, including non-speech, gives information about places and events and that careful listening provides valuable insights different from, but complementary to, visual images and language. This does not exclude speech but readdresses the balance towards the relevance of other sounds. In practice, field recordings become the means to achieve this. Recordings can, of course, be used in many ways. In my view, sonic journalism occurs when field recordings are allowed adequate space and time to be heard in their own right when the focus is on their original factual and emotional content, and when they are valued for what they are rather than as source material for further work as is often the case in around art or music. Sonic journalism can be specifically created or can refer to these qualities in recordings originally made for other purposes.”
Peter Cusack, Sounds from Dangerous Places
I found this whole idea of sonic journalism and using sound alongside other mediums really interesting as an artist myself. I’m curious about how I can potentially use sonic journalism in a piece of work, and how other mediums can benefit the use of sound in some way? I then went along with the book and started listening to the CD alongside the photography and explanation of the places.
The CD companies texts and photos in the book, some of my favourite sounds within it were.
2. Ferris Wheel, Pripyat, the sound of the Ferris wheel creaking and standing in the wind, recorded with a contact mic attached to the frame.
3. Power cable crackle, recording the energy going into the exclusion zone to still run the old nuclear reactor, showcasing how this area isn’t as absent as some think.
6. Cuckoo and radiometer, I found this juxtaposition between nature and the radiometer so powerful, the idea that death is being measured to see how dangerous the area is, alongside nature always prevailing in these circumstances.
8. People, where should I look for you? In a poem recorded of a local in the area, she speaks about her love for the area, nature and the sadness of leaving.
The second part of the book is titled Caspian Oil and Uk Sites, he speaks that his trip to Bibi Heybat in Azerbaijan sparked his idea for this project and lead him to look at current UK sites as well as Chornobyl. He says something that strikes me as important “I also visited UK sites where, on a smaller but still significant scale, sound indicates not only environmental dynamics but, sometimes, the responses of people involved.”
It also continues to other Uk sites such as Sellafield a huge nuclear plant. Cusack speaks on how he was searched twice while recording for these sounds and makes a comparison with the sound of nuclear power plants as the sound of authority in our society. “constantly present-unchanging, featureless, soulless, utterly authoritarian and rarely touched by the small sounds of life.
I’ve found his work so powerful in understanding specific issues, I’m interested perhaps if I could do sonic journalism for my practical element as well. I think his ideas of recording these places really touched me and my mentality with sound and political stance. Some of these recordings have really spoken to me, and the power that sound can transmit through them. I also admire his idea of letting the sounds do the work, that sonic journalism isn’t perhaps the idea to record sounds to use for another piece of art but for the sounds themselves to be listened to and understood as recordings themselves. I want to look a bit more into other works of Peter Cusack If possible. I also perhaps want to visit the same sites in the UK, maybe not all but the closest sites and experience it for myself, see if the locations have changed and see if I can create an updated version. I do however speculate that this will take a lot of time and i only have two weeks and a few days until the hand in.