Practices:
- Field Recording:
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- Individually record local environmental sounds such as streams, animals, machines, and urban silence. Pay attention to the nuances and variations in these sounds, and consider how they contribute to the ecological memory of the place. You can do these recording by using a hand-held digital recorder if you have one, or the voice recording app that is already in your cellphone. I personally like to use a cassette recorder for this, because of the crispiness in the sounds and how beautifully they are transformed by the tape, and then I connect the tape recorder and transfer it, or do a second round of recording from the analog tape recorder to a digital recorder or computer. Play around with this and let yourself be surprised by what sounds allow us to feel, how they transport us.
- Personal Sonic Archive:
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- Create a personal archive of intergenerational lullabies, songs, or sonic traditions that represent your transgenerational map of memories. That which was passed on to you by the elders, or that which you pass on to others as part of your culture. You can do this in writing, as a list, or as a playlist, or by recording bits and pieces.
- Reflect on how these sounds have been passed down through generations and their significance in preserving ecological memory. In your Memory Journal, write down these discoveries, and any other reflection and memory that came to mind along the way.
Exercise: Once you’ve played with this for long enough you will discover that you have an amalgam of stories to tell using these sounds, or using them as inspiration. Create an eco-sonic collage or sound-poem that combines your voice, field recordings, and archival fragments. This can be connected to the poem you wrote in the previous lesson, or something completely new, or a response, or a continuation.
Explore affect and memory through resonance and rhythm, drawing from Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed to understand listening as an act of relational pedagogy. Use the sounds you have recorded and the stories in your personal sonic archive as inspiration for your collage or poem.
Visit the Poetic Phonotheque: http://www.poeticphonotheque.com